Next Time

For those who have worked with the Results Chain™ technique found in Macroscope, the most powerful justification for an investment is how it will contribute toward important business outcomes. Here’s how I’d want to use it to approach this question next time. This is a first draft of a model I could use to stimulate deeper understanding and facilitate decisions.

There are some further lines of reasoning, but this gives the main picture.

The Need

I was recently asked to help with a business case for a course. It was a “soft skills” course that would contribute to team building, collaboration, creativity and productivity. The client knew instinctively that the course was important to the development and performance of her people, but she had to convince her boss that they should spend the money now instead of next year.

All Those Pieces – What do we Do?

A Straightforward Approach – Not a Simple one

What we do is complicated. Not because of the multiple layers of technology, but because of the multiple dimensions involved in what we do including people, organization, processes, culture, power structure, etc. There is no simple way to put together a good information system that will visibly contribute to business value. But there are some straightforward things we should do – in collaboration with the business – to improve our success rate.