Recently I had a series of questions from one of my Predictive Evaluation (PE) students who was reading my book and preparing to start her Predictive Evaluation Certification .  It is a conversation that gets to the heart of PE – defining what successful training is and then what to do with it.  These questions are from Sue – I know she will soon be an outstanding evaluator using PE.  Enjoy.

QUESTION: If the participants do not meet the percentage of acceptable goals upon completion of the course, does that mean that the goals they have written do not meet the required standard AND if not isn’t it too late to correct this once the participants have left the class?

DAVE’S ANSWER: Good question.  My advice is actual results against the standard.  If the Intention Success Gate is 90% and you hit, say 88%, I would not worry about the few who were judged unacceptable and not try to change them.  However, if your results are say 50% on a gate of 90%, you have to find the root cause which could be many things: design, instructor, goal writing of students, etc.  Depending upon the root cause you may do some remedial training/goal writing after students have graduated.

QUESTION: If the intention score is below the Success Gate I’m assuming we can’t press on to the “ Adoption ” phase of PE.  Correct?

DAVE’S ANSWER: Again depends on results relative to the Success Gate.  If you are close you can press on, but if you are way low then yes Adoption could be an issue.

QUESTION: How do we get the “Intention” phase corrected with the participants before we move on to the “Adoption” phase if this happens?

DAVE’S ANSWER: Determining the root cause points you in the direction for continuous improvement.  If it is a design/instructor issue you can correct those for the next session.  This is makes it hard on the recent graduates because it is not their fault.  Their goals have come from a bad design/instructor.  You will have to make a business decision to retrain them with the right design/instructor to get their goals in line.  Most of my clients do not do this.  They work on the next session.  If the issue is with the students then the best way is to work with their manager to get the right Intention goals – again another business decision.

As always, I look forward to your comments on this.