ePM Training Services

We mentioned in Project Management Training that IQ – “intellectual competence” - is also necessary for project managers. For completeness, we need to examine this further.

Here’s the definition of the IQ leadership competence as proposed by Dulewicz and Higgs (2003):

• Critical Analysis and judgment
• Vision and imagination
• Strategic perspective

We should mention here that IQ (leadership competence) is different to IQ (intelligence quotient) that some of us were subjected to at school.  An intelligence quotient is a score from one of several different tests attempting to measure a person’s intelligence. We won’t tackle the debate about whether it is desirable, or even possible to accurately define someone’s intelligence. The IQ’s of a large number of people can be modeled with a Normal Distribution, around the figure of 100.

The American Psychological Association’s report Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns states that other individual characteristics such as interpersonal skills, aspects of personality etc. are probably of equal or greater importance than IQ.

Others have argued that IQ is the best tool to help figure out who to hire at any career stage as it is independent of experience, personality bias or any formal training the subject has acquired.

Here at EPM Training Services we believe that Intelligence Quotient is another tool that can help us in certain limited circumstances, and should be used with care. IQ tests might not be appropriate in today’s multicultural societies, as they measure what white middle-class academics regard as intelligence. Performance in them may simply measure length of time spent in education.

Moving back to Intellectual Competence:

Critical Analysis and judgment might involve determining the meaning and significance of what is observed or expressed, and determining whether there is adequate justification to accept a particular conclusion as true.

Vision and imagination can involve the ability to see mental images in your mind of something that exists, and also the ability to imagine objects, situations or circumstances that do not exist now. Imagination involves all the five senses of sight, sound, taste, smell or touch.

Strategic perspective involves developing a long-term, broad-based perspective on successful project initiatives, and converting the vision into an action plan. The project manager also needs to revises the strategy in the light of changing circumstances.

We’ll also mention a few general details about intelligence, gathered from various psychology text-books:

• Intelligence reaches a peak around the age of 30 (Wechsler, 1955).
• Older generations inevitably have lower general intelligence due to poorer diet. People today are smarter (Schaie, 1983).
• (Talland, 1968) found that participants aged 77 to 89 remembered less than half the number of items that a 20-25 year old age group could recall on a short-term memory test.
• (Kimmel, 1990) suggested that older people show highly competent memory skills in areas such as long-term recall or expert memory skills.

We recommend enhancing your intellectual competence by keeping active, healthy, and empowering yourself by gaining knowledge from books, the internet, and attending relevant training courses.

Project Management Intellectual competence

EPM Training Services organizes and runs project management training courses for our clients. We are therefore very interested in the results of those training programs. Are they beneficial to the participants and their employers? How do we measure the results of training in an organization?

Assessing the effectiveness of training is often performed using the four-level model developed by Donald Kirkpatrick, whose ideas were first published in 1959. The four levels of Kirkpatrick’s evaluation model essentially measure:

• Reaction of student (their thoughts, feelings and perceptions about the training). Did they like it? Was the material relevant to their work? This type of evaluation is often called a “happy-sheet” which students complete at the end of any training session.

• Learning (the increase in knowledge or capability as a result of the training). Evaluation at this level attempts to assess how far students have advanced in skills, knowledge, or attitude. Measurement methods include formal to informal testing, team assessment, and self-assessment.This might involve participants taking an assessment before the training (pretest) and after training (post test) to determine the amount of learning that has been transferred.

• Behavior (the extent of behavior and capability improvement and application). Are the newly acquired skills, knowledge, or attitude being used in the everyday environment of the learner?

• Results (effects on the business or environment resulting from the trainee’s performance). This level measures the success of the training program in business terms including increased productivity, better quality, decreased costs, reduced frequency of accidents, and increased sales.

Notice anything missing here? What about Return On Investment (ROI)?

The financial benefits of training can’t be measured in terms of student reactions, nor the amount of  learning that has been achieved, or even the extent to which behavior may have changed. The real benefits come from improved performance – traditionally the hardest training outcome to measure.

Jack J. Phillips proposed that we use ROI as the fifth-level of evaluation. Did the monetary value of the results exceed the cost for the program? This is probably going to be the most difficult thing for the poor overworked Human Resources Department to measure, as it’s only the very senior management who are able to get access to this information. Therefore, senior level support is essential. The cost of measurement is also going to be high. Recognizing this, Phillips proposes a 5% evaluation target for this level of assessment (compared to a 100% target for Level-1). A company would only want to undertake this increased level of assessment for the highest cost, or highest visibility, project management training programs.

Here’s the book:  How To Measure Training Results

ROI is defined like this:

(Net Program Benefits) / (Program Costs) X 100 = ROI

Total benefits include money saved by the organization, and money made.

Total costs include the obvious and the not-so-obvious: Development costs, learner’s time away from work, overhead of HR department, materials, meals, refreshments, facilities, cost of coordination, cost of job coverage during training, and any other cost incurred.

Measuring the outcome of your project management training is an essential part of any training program, and will show you the value of training  and justify the investment.

Project Management Training Project Management, Project Management Training, Return On Investment