Why does training evaporate by Monday, and how would we know if anything changed?
Because most training transfers information, and information is the part people forget. Doing beats listening across 225 controlled studies in the most conservative subjects there are, and generating an answer beats receiving one across hundreds more. What stays is what the body did. As for knowing: measure behaviour at thirty days rather than satisfaction at five o'clock, agree the behaviours before the day, and let your own managers do the rating rather than the supplier.
The short answer. Because most training transfers information, and information is the part people forget. Doing beats listening across 225 controlled studies in the most conservative subjects there are, and generating an answer beats receiving one across hundreds more. What stays is what the body did. As for knowing: measure behaviour at thirty days rather than satisfaction at five o'clock, agree the behaviours before the day, and let your own managers do the rating rather than the supplier.
- Its name in a budget line
- Learning effectiveness. Behaviour change. Training transfer.
- The programme
- What we measure. The measurement design is built into every programme, from a ninety minute session to a three day residential.
- Where
- On your own site, in Kochi and across Kerala, and elsewhere in India for a full day or more. Eight people or more. No artistic background is assumed and nothing is graded.
What is actually going on.
A training day that consists of a person at the front and slides behind them is a transfer of information, and information has a short half life. The evidence on the alternative does not come from the arts. Across 225 controlled studies in undergraduate science, engineering and mathematics, active methods beat lecture by around half a standard deviation, and lectured students failed at roughly one and a half times the rate. A learner who produces the answer retains more than one who is given it, across 86 studies and then across 310 experiments. Material that is performed is remembered better than material that is only read.
The second half of the problem is the feedback form. It is filled in at five o'clock, by people who have had a pleasant day, about whether they had a pleasant day. It measures the wrong thing at the wrong time, and it is the reason most organisations cannot say whether any training they have ever bought changed anything.
What stays is what the body did.
What a session does about it.
Every Artfulness session is built so that the making is the learning. Call and response is not a metaphor for listening. It is listening, with consequences inside two seconds for anyone who stopped. Nobody has to be persuaded that attention matters when its absence is audible to the whole room in the next bar. What a group has done with its hands and voice for a day is not information, and it does not evaporate on the way to the car park.
The measurement is designed before the day. We agree with you which named behaviours the session is meant to produce, in your words. We take a baseline on the seven item psychological safety scale. Afterwards, the room already knows what happened, and our job is to translate it into the language your organisation can act on, in a short note that says what to look for over the next month.
How you would know it worked.
| Measure | How and when |
|---|---|
| Psychological safety | The seven item team scale, anonymous, before the session and again at thirty days. It is free and takes four minutes. Your own HR team runs it. |
| Named behaviours | Agreed before the day. Rated by managers or peers rather than by us, thirty to sixty days later. |
| Salivary cortisol | Before and after, when a client wants the stress claim read physiologically. |
| Thirty day application | Rather than same day recall, because an end of day feedback form measures the wrong thing. |
Because we claim that participants practise specific capacities, we invite the check rather than avoiding it. If the numbers do not move, you will know, and so will we.
What we do not claim.
We do not claim that one day permanently improves anyone's cognition. The defensible claim for a day is a concentrated workout of attention, working memory and error monitoring, not a lasting change in them.
We do not claim that the measurement proves a business outcome. It shows whether the behaviours moved. The line from a behaviour to a business result is yours to draw, and we would rather you drew it than we did.
The full list is on one page, alongside the evidence and the claims we have retired.
In Kochi and Kerala.
For a Kerala HR or learning head the measurement design is often the part that gets the programme approved, because it gives a finance head something to look at thirty days later that is not a satisfaction score. We publish the scale, the timing and who does the rating, so a client in Kochi can check us without us in the room.
We work from Kochi and run sessions on the client's own site anywhere in Kerala. Elsewhere in India we travel for a full day or more. If you would rather meet before you book, here is how.
Related questions.
Why does training evaporate by Monday, and how would we know if anything changed?
Because most training transfers information, and information is the part people forget. Doing beats listening across 225 controlled studies in the most conservative subjects there are, and generating an answer beats receiving one across hundreds more. What stays is what the body did. As for knowing: measure behaviour at thirty days rather than satisfaction at five o'clock, agree the behaviours before the day, and let your own managers do the rating rather than the supplier.
Do you provide a feedback form?
Not at five o'clock. We provide a baseline before the day, a short note afterwards translating what happened into the language of learning and development, and a check at thirty days on behaviour rather than satisfaction. An end of day form measures the wrong thing.
Who does the measuring?
Your own people. The psychological safety scale is free and your HR team administers it. The named behaviours are rated by managers or peers who see the participants every day. A supplier marking its own work is not measurement.
What if the numbers do not move?
Then you will know, and so will we, and that is the point of publishing the method. We would rather state the limits ourselves than be caught by them. The evidence page lists what we have retired for exactly that reason.
An end of day feedback form measures the wrong thing.
Eight people, one room, no preparation.