The past week seems to have been one of events in that I attended a change management masterclass hosted by Kogan-Page: People-centered Organizational Change: Strategies for Success. I went to a book launch of Mark and Anna Withers' new book Risky Business: Unlocking Unconscious Biases in Decisions. I spent a day on an Agile Awareness course, and I went to the European Organisation Design Forum event at the Wellcome Trust.
No one has yet asked me what was the return on investment of that time (no money changed hands) or how I would evaluate the benefits of the events. However, those are the sorts of question I do get asked so I thought I'd better have a shot at answering them.
There are various methods of evaluating training effectiveness the four stage Kirkpatrick model is one, the CIPD suggests a similar, but five stage one, another is Brinkerhoff's Success Case Method. Businessballs has a short piece summarising the most common methods and also offering access to a toolkit.