Should We Revisit Our Success Measures?
Photo by Meagan Carsience on Unsplash
I just finished reading an article in this month’s Atlantic about MasterClass. It gives the history of the company — from its origins involving a $500k check from an investor despite the co-founder David Rogier only having a vague idea of the concept, to its launch in 2015 with the first three courses by “instructors” Dustin Hoffman, Serena Williams, and James Patterson, and then to its growth and evolution, especially during the pandemic with people seeking new forms of entertainment or having more time to focus on personal development. In fact, they discussed how the platform delivers something that is perhaps less education than it is entertainment. People know that Thomas Keller is a world-famous chef — the best of the best — so they tune in to see him work his magic and to learn his secrets. But is he the best teacher? Is his magic something that can even be taught? What is the objective of the course, really?
And this brings me to an interesting part of the article where they discuss completion rates: “As for whether it matters if a MasterClass member finishes a course, Rogier said, ‘Most education sites look at completion rates. But I think that’s the wrong metric. The measure I look at is what’s the impact we have on your life. I know it’s going to sound fluffy, but we legitimately ask people if we changed their life’—which nearly 20 percent of those polled said it did.”
I’d be curious to hear if any of you have ever included that question in your post-course surveys — I know I haven’t. It’s almost silly to assume that one course could change a learner’s life. I’ve asked if they thought the course would improve their performance, which I guess by extension could change their lives. That’s just not how I’ve typically thought about the learning experiences I design. I suppose that’s because the training we do tends to have different goals — we’re targeting a specific performance or behavior change. Our training is more of a means to an end — and the end is our organization being able to achieve their success measures. MasterClass’s goal is to draw people in, compel them to spend money, and deliver something that satisfies them and justifies the purchase price. But even though we think about our goals differently, wouldn’t it be great if our learners could say our courses changed their lives? The more I think about it, the more I’m drawn to the idea.
What would it take for our training to change learners’ lives?
We can learn from MasterClass’s approach. They make learners feel that they’re learning something important or useful that will make them a better, well-rounded person, that they’re improving themselves and also receiving value for their money. We’d have to take the long view and weave that narrative of personal growth and achievement and the exercise of vision-setting throughout all of our learning programs, regardless of the content, so that our learners would always be thinking of themselves developing and working toward something bigger.
We’d also have to go big. We’d have to ensure the tone of every communication — even automated emails from the LMS — reflected our larger goals. This would need to be a forever campaign, and it would need to be genuine, somehow. Employees would need to be able to see that this training on a specific aspect of their jobs was part of the organization’s goal to help them develop new skills and advance to achieve their own goals as people. It would need to speak to their yearning for personal improvement.
We’d have to loosen up on nit-picky things like completion criteria. We’d have to convey the expectation of completion but do it in a trusting way. Or, we’d design a course where “completion” is not the goal but rather performance improvement. How do we do that? For many organizations, that’s so far from the tone and design of their current programs that it seems difficult to imagine. But it’s possible. It would require a real human-centered design approach, which we can benefit from practicing anyway.
It seems like something good to work toward — and maybe even measure as we design new programs and look to continuously improve our learning approach. The idea of changing our learners’ lives is certainly inspiring and motivating. Maybe it’s a good thing to aspire to in this upcoming year.