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4 Measurement Strategies That Create The Right Incentives For Learning
4 Measurement Strategies That Create The Right Incentives For Learning
Ariely,
best-‐selling
author
of
Predictably
Irrational
(link),
tells
a
story
about
his
time
teaching
behavioral
economics:
"When
I
was
at
MIT,
I
was
measured
on
my
ability
to
handle
my
yearly
teaching
load,
using
a
complex
equation
of
teaching
points.
The
rating,
devised
to
track
performance
on
a
variety
of
dimensions,
quickly
became
an
end
in
itself.
Even
though
I
enjoyed
teaching,
I
found
myself
spending
less
time
with
students
because
I
could
earn
more
points
doing
other
things.
I
began
to
scrutinize
opportunities
according
to
how
many
points
were
at
stake.
In
optimizing
this
measure,
I
was
not
striving
to
gain
more
wealth
or
happiness.
Nor
did
I
believe
that
earning
the
most
points
would
result
in
more
effective
learning.
It
was
merely
the
standard
of
measurement
given
to
me,
so
I
tried
to
do
well
against
it
(and
I
admit
that
I
was
rather
good
at
it)."
Ariely
came
to
regret
this
arrangement.
Though
he
wasn't
exactly
bad
at
his
job,
the
point
system
incentivized
him
to
behave
in
ways
that
were
not
in
the
best
interests
of
his
students
or
even
himself.
Instead,
he
was
driven
to
optimize
his
score.
The
rest
of
us
are
in
the
same
boat.
As
human
beings,
we
are
compelled
to
match
our
behavior
to
the
metrics
we
are
held
against.
You
may
have
heard
the
maxim
"what
you
measure
is
what
you
get."
Management
guru
H.
Thomas
Johnson
spelled
it
out
even
further:
“Perhaps
what
you
measure
is
what
you
get.
More
likely,
what
you
measure
is
all
you’ll
get.
What
you
don’t
(or
can’t)
measure
is
lost."
And
so
when
in
our
organizations,
we
measure
learning
by
counting
up
attendance
numbers,
course
completions,
and
hours
of
training
delivered,
what
we
get
is
attendance,
completions,
and
training
time.
What
we
don't
get
is
effective
learning,
behavior
change,
or
business
impact.
For
those
readers
who
have
been
struggling
to
make
their
way
up
the
Kirkpatrick
scale
or
calculate
ROI,
let
me
reiterate
Johnson's
point.
If
we
don't
measure
effective
learning,
behavior
change,
and
business
impact,
it's
not
just
that
we
fail
to
report
on
those
things.
They
are
likely
not
happening
at
all.
QUESTION
OR
BREAK
Your
measurement
strategy
is
an
incentive
strategy.
If
you
give
people
points
to
learn,
they
will
care
more
about
the
points
than
the
learning.
(This
is
incidentally
a
central
danger
of
gamification.)
If
instead
you
challenge
them
and
give
them
the
chance
to
be
recognized
for
their
real
achievements,
you
have
the
basis
of
a
successful
measurement
strategy.
Here
are
four
measurement
approaches
that
create
the
right
incentives
and
trigger
intrinsic
motivation
for
learning:
BEHAVIORAL
SURVEYS
What
are
they?
Behavioral
surveys
get
right
down
to
asking
about
what
people
actually
do.
Respondents
are
asked
to
self-‐report
how
frequently
they
perform
a
set
of
behaviors.
[sidebar]
At
Grovo
we
like
to
break
a
behavior
down
into
microbehaviors
-‐
the
component
actions
-‐
and
ask
about
those
to
get
a
full
picture
of
what
someone
is
doing,
or
at
least
believes
they
are
doing.
With
a
frequency
rating
scale,
you
can
avoid
a
lot
of
the
fuzzy
data
that
that
comes
from
asking
about
learners'
subjective
feelings
(e.g.
"how
much
do
you
agree
or
disagree?"
or
"how
satisfied
are
you?").
And
you
can
make
the
frequencies
more
specific
(e.g.
"once
per
day"
instead
of
"sometimes")
so
that
the
distinctions
between
answer
choices
are
clear
for
the
respondents.
Free
or
freemium
apps
like
Typeform,
SurveyMonkey,
or
Google
Forms
make
it
easy
to
build,
deliver,
and
track
behavioral
surveys.
How
behavioral
surveys
help
you
measure
By
surveying
your
learners
about
the
frequency
of
their
behaviors,
you
can
set
a
behavioral
baseline
prior
to
a
learning
experience.
Then
after
the
experience,
administer
the
same
survey
to
show
the
behavioral
impact
of
what
people
learned.
To
show
the
durability
of
behavior
change,
survey
learners
weeks
or
months
after
the
initial
learning
experience.
They
key
to
effective
behavioral
surveys
Behavioral
surveys
are
subject
to
various
response
biases
that
would
lead
a
learner
to
either
underreport
or
overreport
the
frequency
of
a
particular
behavior.
A
way
to
un-‐bias
results
is
to
confirm
them
by
surveying
the
learners'
peers,
managers,
or
other
colleagues
as
well.
The
knowledge
that
someone
else
is
rating
you
makes
you
more
likely
to
be
honest,
and
any
gaps
in
perception
you
uncover
will
be
interesting
to
explore
further.
You
can
also
anonymize
the
data
to
reduce
response
bias.
You’ll
lose
data
at
the
individual
level,
but
still
collect
it
at
the
department
or
organization
level
to
show
change
happening
in
your
workforce.
For
example,
we
ran
an
internal
one-‐week
program
at
Grovo
to
help
our
managers
run
better
one-‐on-‐one
meetings.
We
surveyed
them
before
the
training,
and
then
a
few
weeks
after.
Here’s
what
we
found:
See
the
positive
uptick
in
behaviors
in
the
right-‐hand
column?
We
were
able
to
share
this
progress
with
the
participants
as
well
as
the
rest
of
our
company.
It
gave
us
a
way
of
demonstrating
how
our
learning
efforts
were
showing
up
in
tangible
ways
across
the
organization
that
everyone
could
see.
For
a
more
sophisticated,
even
less-‐biased
survey
alternative,
see
Will
Thalheimer's
excellent
Performance-‐Focused
Smile
Sheets
(link).
MILESTONES
What
are
they?
SMART
goals,
OKRs,
KPIs,
MBOs
-‐
these
are
a
few
of
the
acronyms
we
use
today
to
set
and
measure
business
goals.
When
we're
trying
to
motivate
learners,
however,
this
goal-‐setting
jargon
often
falls
flat.
Enter
milestones.
A
milestone
is
a
significant
event
in
someone's
development.
Unlike
traditional
learning
objectives,
milestones
describe
achievements
that
by
definition
would
be
meaningful
to
the
learner.
For
example:
make
this
a
chart
• A
milestone
for
someone
learning
to
be
efficient
with
email
might
be
getting
to
inbox
zero
• A
milestone
for
a
salesperson
learning
spin
selling
might
be
to
close
a
$50K
deal
using
the
new
method
• A
milestone
for
an
engineer
learning
a
new
coding
language
might
be
to
deploy
10
lines
of
that
code
in
one
day
• A
milestone
for
a
manager
learning
to
motivate
employees
may
be
to
assign
one
new
business
challenge
to
each
direct
report
How
milestones
help
you
measure
Milestones
are
a
way
to
track
meaningful
progress
toward
a
business
outcome.
When
a
milestone
is
achieved,
you
know
that
change
is
happening
and
that
learning
is
being
transferred
to
the
real
world.
A
good
way
to
measure
the
progress
of
individual
learners
is
to
count
up
the
number
of
milestones
they
are
able
to
achieve
in
a
quarter
or
in
a
year.
Or
measuring
the
%
of
individuals
who
have
achieved
a
specific
milestone
can
tell
you
how
prevalent
a
behavior
is
across
your
organization.
The
key
to
effective
milestones
Select
actions
that
are
easily
observable
to
you
and
the
learner.
Whether
a
milestone
has
been
achieved
should
be
a
clear
yes/no.
For
example
"delivering
a
powerful
presentation"
may
be
an
admirable
goal,
but
it
is
too
subjective
to
be
a
good
milestone.
A
better
milestone
would
be
"presenting
to
an
audience
of
over
200
people"
or
"presenting
from
memory
without
looking
down
at
notes."
ROLE
MODELS
What
are
they?
Role
models
are
people
whose
behavior
learners
can
emulate.
It
needn't
be
any
more
formal
than
that.
Whereas
mentorship
programs
tie
a
single
individual
to
another
and
require
significant
investment
from
both
parties,
role
modeling
is
a
lot
easier
to
implement
and
can
have
a
much
wider
impact.
[Example
role
modeling
image
-‐
e.g.
designing
thinking
image
from
lingo]
For
any
learning
initiative
you
want
to
measure,
identify
individuals
who
excel
at
the
behaviors
you
want
people
to
learn.
These
role
models
can
tell
you
what
gaps
learners
are
exhibiting
and
how
they
are
improving,
or
they
can
observe
learners
practicing
and
performing
and
give
them
feedback
directly.
How
role
models
help
you
measure
Think
of
role
models
as
human
measuring
sticks.
Not
only
can
role
models
provide
feedback
to
learners,
learners
can
measure
their
progress
by
continually
comparing
their
performance
to
that
of
the
role
model.
The
measurement
here
is
more
informal
and
less
quantitative,
but
it
is
deeply
meaningful.
When
offering
critical
feedback,
role
models
are
more
likely
to
point
out
the
correct
flaw
or
offer
the
right
corrective;
and
when
things
go
well,
their
praise
feels
that
much
better
to
receive,
and
is
a
powerful
incentive
to
continue
learning.
The
key
to
effective
role
models
Abandon
the
idea
that
a
role
model
should
be
[
].
If
they
excel
at
a
target
behavior,
they
are
useful
to
help
measure.
And
even
more
so
you
make
them
feel
good
by
asking.
Incentivize
them
to
help.
-‐-‐
It’s
easy
to
hold
up
your
best
and
brightest
employees
on
pedestals,
but
better
to
acknowledge
the
ingredients
of
their
success,
behaviors
and
habits
over
the
unrepeatable
intangibles
of
who
they
are.
When
you
focus
on
efforts
and
contributions
over
intelligence
or
talent,
you
encourage
your
employees
to
model
those
behaviors
in
a
way
that
benefits
all.
When
honoring
an
individual’s
achievements
at
your
organization,
codify
their
success
by
asking
them
what
they
did
and
how
they
did
it.
Have
them
share
best
practices
and
counterexamples
with
the
team,
and
when
they
deliver
these
insights,
make
sure
they
provide
all
the
specific,
nitty
gritty
details
that
got
them
there.
PERFORMANCE
RUBRICS
Performance
rubrics
make
behaviors
more
specific
and
visible
by
spelling
out
the
component
parts
of
a
successful
performance.
A
rubric
of
productivity
behaviors
from
Francis
Wade
Putting
rubrics
into
the
hands
of
managers,
or
even
learners
themselves,
makes
it
much
easier
to
observe
a
behavior,
identify
gaps,
and
give
consistent
feedback.
How
performance
rubrics
help
you
measure
When
giving
learners
regular
feedback
is
impractical,
performance
rubrics
allow
learners
measure
their
progress
against
concrete
criteria.
In
Design
for
How
People
Learn
(my
all-‐time
favorite
learning
book),
Julie
Dirksen
offers
this
example
of
a
self-‐evaluation
flow
that
allows
learners
to
practice,
then
evaluate
their
own
performance
with
a
checklist,
and
finally
hear
from
experts.
The
key
to
effective
performance
rubrics
Whether
you
go
with
a
simple
checklist
or
a
more
sophisticated
rubric
that
spells
out
multiple
levels
of
quality
for
each
component
action,
make
sure
that
all
criteria
are
clear
to
the
people
using
it.
Before
widely
distributing
a
rubric,
observe
a
manager
using
it
to
give
feedback
to
a
learner,
or
observe
a
learner
using
the
rubric
to
evaluate
their
own
performance
after
the
fact.
A
good
rubric
takes
the
guesswork
out
of
measurement,
so
look
for
any
signs
of
confusion,
and
tweak
the
rubric
accordingly.
Each
use
of
the
rubric
also
serves
as
another
reinforcement
of
the
learning
material,
so
the
benefits
of
a
good
rubric
go
beyond
measurement.
NEED
NAME
FOR
THIS
WRAP
UP
SECTION
So
put
a
pause
on
the
point
systems.
Put
your
smile
sheets
away.
Put
that
ROI
calculator
down
for
just
a
moment.
Behavioral
surveys,
milestones,
role
models,
and
performance
rubrics
allow
you
to
both
measure
change
and
create
the
right
internal
incentives
for
learning.
And
beyond
measurement,
these
approaches
reinforce
learning
points
and
give
learners
the
kind
of
feedback
they
need
to
course
correct,
or
celebrate
progress.
These
are
all
good
results.
So
treat
your
measurement
strategy
as
part
of
your
learning
strategy,
not
just
as
a
way
to
evaluate
your
strategy.
CALLOUT
One
of
the
advantages
of
designing
microlearning
experiences
(i.e.
short,
focused
bursts
of
learning)
is
that
you
can
measure
faster
and
more
often.
Learn
how
in
blah
blah
link
to
book