There are many widely held negative beliefs about social experimentation (i.e., L&D evaluation) that limit effective organizational decision making, the ability to generate reliable evidence, and deeply informed insights. There absolutely is some element of truth to the negative beliefs, but I want to weaken these beliefs and arm you with arguments to counter them as you educate your stakeholders and drive smarter decision making.

In 1968, Ford decided to produce the Pinto, a car that weighed less than 2,000 pounds and cost less than $2,000. The Pinto promise was to take on the foreign imports, save jobs for Americans, and make profits for the shareholders. In order to realize this promise, they compressed the normal 3.5 year development process into 2 years so that it would be ready to sell in 1971.

How does an organization balance investments in R&D versus operational improvements? Start-ups may spend up to 20% of revenue on R&D, while mature organizations drop to single digits. This is an act of science and art, as one startup’s CEO spent heavily on sales and marketing since his previous startup lost the industry due to not spending enough...but that came at the expense of R&D. As Yogi Berra said, “Predicting is very hard, especially when about the future.”