Returns on Leadership Development Investment
We’re often asked to quote a demonstrable Return on Investment (ROI) for the leadership development programs we develop and deliver.
While we’ve seen others suggest quantifiable ROI for such efforts, as an engineer, I find the notion elusive, if not downright impossible.
So, if you want quantifiable, calculable, defensible ROI, we believe you have two options:
– First, hold every other business variable constant during the period of time you’ve made that critical investment in your people through a program like ours. I know…not likely.
– Absent that, we’d want to ask about every other variable present in your business which might contribute to any uptick in performance so that we might conduct an analysis of variance and mathematically back out the contribution leadership development is producing. I know…also not likely.
So, we’re happy to offer anecdotal evidence, results from past program assessments, testimonials, current and former client references, and case studies that offer qualitative evidence, and will keep looking for answers to the question we started with. But in the interest of our organizational integrity, we’ll leave it there.
Finally, given this forum, if you’ve overcome this hurdle, we encourage your comments. It’s a bit of a white buffalo.