You’ve probably seen this happen. You commission a Leadership or Sales Programme. On the day, it’s a huge success – participants are highly engaged, the facilitator is excellent and the feedback forms come back glowing: 4.6 out of 5.
Six months later, the CFO asks what the business got for its money. The honest answer is: you’re not sure and you can’t quantify it. No matter how good the experience was on the day, if nothing happens afterwards – no practice, no follow-up or reinforcement, then behaviour tends to slide back.
That’s the Doom Loop. It’s where much of development spending ends up, and it goes like this:
- A one-off programme is commissioned, often chosen on price.
- It’s delivered well, and feedback on the day is excellent
- Nothing happens afterwards. There’s no practice, follow-up or reinforcement, so behaviour slides back.
- There’s no evidence of return, so the CFO can’t justify the next investment.
- The budget shrinks or moves elsewhere. The next programme has to be cheaper, shorter and even more one-off. And round it goes.
Each turn makes the next one harder, because nothing carries over.
The slide is predictable
It’s not a failing of the people in the room. It’s how learning works. In a study of 150 organisations, training professionals estimated that 62% of employees applied their training straight away, 44% were still applying it at six months and 34% at a year (Saks & Belcourt, 2006). So even on trainers’ own estimates, two thirds have stopped within a year.
Most organisations aren’t set up to stop the slide. The CIPD’s 2023 Learning at Work survey found that only 7% of UK organisations strongly agree they support learning transfer, and only 29% track whether it happens at all. That leaves most L&D teams able to show only one number, and it’s the one that tells the CFO least: how people felt on the day.
What we do at Business Linked Teams to break the loop
We believe that the way to break this cycle is to change what happens on either side of the programme. It’s about creating a smarter approach and creating measurable performance metrics. The following components are built into BLT’s Programmes as standard:
- Agree the behaviours before you start: Choose five specific things you want people to do more of, and measure where they are now. We use our BLT Leadership And Sales Competency Frameworks to guide and inform discussions with clients
- Measure again at six months: BLT conducts reviews with participants, as standard, 6 months after completion of the programme. By then most of the slide has happened, so it’s the honest test of the programme’s performance
- Bring managers and peers in: Research shows that support from peers, managers and the organisation explains around a third of whether training transfers to the job – we build this support into every programme
- Space the learning: We never deliver one-off training workshops at BLT, each of our programmes includes spaced delivery and practice on real work situations during and between programme elements
If you recognise the Doom Loop, you’re not alone. Most organisations are somewhere on it. The way out isn’t a bigger budget or a better workshop. It’s a different conversation at the start about what you want to change, and how you’ll know when it has. If you’d like to have a conversation, get in touch.
Samantha Caine