Training Effectiveness 102: Ready to Tackle the Real Work Behind Training Success?

Today, we will discuss how to set the stage for training success by aligning it with your organization’s business goals. Let us address a challenge that is often overlooked: many team leads, managers, and even HR and L&D professionals aren’t fully ready to put in the detailed work needed to see real ROI or ROE from training initiatives.

Too often, training is treated as a checkbox—a way to say, “We trained our people, so our job is done.” But real transformation through training takes much more than that. It requires digging deep to uncover the root causes behind performance issues and aligning the training to solve those specific challenges.

Here’s the reality: This journey is hard work.

Team leads and managers most often don’t want to do the heavy lifting of identifying the real problems. They prefer to send their teams to training, check off that they have “done their part,” and move on. But seeing real outcomes—whether it is ROI (Return on Investment) or ROE (Return on Expectations)—takes more than just sending people to training. It takes focused effort, and many times, even HR and L&D professionals are hesitant to take on this workload because it is tough.

So here is the question: Are you ready to do the work?

This series is not for those looking for quick fixes. It is for the HR and L&D professionals who are determined to make training a strategic driver of real change, even when it means pushing past resistance and putting in the effort.

You will be challenged to:

1. Start doing the deep work of identifying root business challenges and aligning training with them.

2. Stop doing the surface-level, checkbox-style training that doesn’t deliver real results.

3. Continue doing what works, even if it means challenging conventional thinking and facing pushback from leadership.

To see true ROI and ROE, the work will be hard. Yet the reward is worth it. If you are ready to stay the course, this series will equip you with the tools and strategies to not only identify the real problems but also create training that drives measurable business impact.

Have you faced challenges in getting your organization to focus on uncovering the real causes behind training needs? What steps have you taken to tackle this issue? Let us discuss this in the comments. Feel free to drop me a message if you have any specific concerns about your training initiatives. I would love to help!

🔔 Reminder: In tomorrow’s post, we will dive deeper into how you can shift from focusing on skills to focusing on business outcomes. This is where the real work begins!

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