Exploring the Beliefs about Training in Organizations

This is my doctoral dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania, and it started with a question that had frustrated me for most of my career: What value do CFOs feel the learning function provides?

The standard L&D answer is that finance doesn't understand our value, and if we just measured better, with more data and cleaner ROI models, they'd come around. I wasn't convinced. So rather than theorize about what CFOs think, I went and asked them.

What I found reframed the problem for me. CFOs generally do see training as an investment. They're not hostile to it. But they struggle to connect it to business outcomes in a way that holds up against every other thing competing for the same dollar, and most have no working relationship with the learning function at all. They're not rejecting our case. In many organizations they've never actually been presented with one.

That distinction matters enormously. If the problem were skepticism, better evidence would fix it. If the problem is absence, meaning no relationship, no shared language, and no seat at the table before the budget is set, then no amount of measurement rigor will help. You have to build the relationship first.

This research is the foundation under a lot of what I've written since, including The Trusted Learning Advisor.

It's an academic document, so it reads like one. But if you want the evidence behind the argument, it's here. You could probably skip chapter 2 entirely and be just fine.