Part two of our four-part series on escaping The Activity Trap with the CORE framework.
In the first blog in this series, we explored why every successful learning initiative starts with context. Before designing a solution, L&D needs to understand the business problem it’s trying to solve.
But identifying the problem is only half the challenge. The next step is agreeing what success actually looks like.
It sounds obvious, yet this is where many organisations fall back into The Activity Trap. Instead of defining the business outcomes they want to achieve, they define the learning activities they want people to complete.
The result? Learning gets delivered, dashboards get filled, but it’s still difficult to answer the question every stakeholder eventually asks:
So what? What changed?
Every learning programme should have clear learning objectives. People need to develop new knowledge, build skills and demonstrate understanding.
But those objectives are only part of the story.
Take a leadership programme as an example. A typical objective might be that managers complete a series of workshops and demonstrate an understanding of coaching techniques.
That’s a perfectly valid learning outcome.
It just isn’t a business outcome.
A business outcome might be reducing voluntary turnover, improving employee engagement, shortening time to productivity for new starters or increasing team performance. These are the measures senior leaders care about because they reflect whether the investment has created value beyond the learning experience itself.
As Fosway explains in the CORE framework, the Outcomes stage is about defining what a successful solution looks like, identifying the capabilities that need to exist when the problem has been solved, and agreeing the organisational changes that will deliver that success. Outcomes can be linked to productivity, operational performance, commercial results, skills, culture or efficiency, depending on the challenge you’re trying to address.
One of the easiest ways to escape The Activity Trap is to flip the order of your thinking.
Instead of asking:
“What learning should we deliver?”
Ask:
“What needs to be different when this initiative is complete?”
That simple shift changes the conversation completely.
For example, if customer satisfaction scores are declining, success isn’t that every customer service adviser completes a training module. Success is that customers receive faster, more consistent support, leading to higher satisfaction and improved retention.
Likewise, if the goal is to improve compliance, success isn’t simply achieving a 100% completion rate. It’s reducing incidents, improving confidence in decision making and lowering organisational risk.
Learning enables these outcomes, but it shouldn’t become the outcome itself.
Defining outcomes also makes it much easier to measure success later.
Rather than relying solely on learning metrics such as completion rates or assessment scores, organisations can identify the business indicators they expect to improve.
Depending on the challenge, those measures might include:
Not every learning initiative needs to influence every metric. The important thing is selecting the measures that genuinely reflect the business problem you’re trying to solve.
This is one of the key principles of the CORE framework. By agreeing outcomes before designing solutions, L&D creates a clear line of sight between business priorities and the evidence it will eventually use to demonstrate impact.
There’s another benefit to defining outcomes early.
They help L&D have more strategic conversations with stakeholders.
Business leaders rarely ask for learning because they want learning. They ask for it because they’re trying to improve performance somewhere in the organisation.
When L&D responds by talking about courses, completions or content, it’s easy for the conversation to stay focused on delivery.
When L&D responds by talking about reducing risk, improving productivity or increasing customer retention, the conversation immediately shifts to business value.
That’s when learning becomes part of a wider performance strategy rather than a standalone activity.
Of course, agreeing what success looks like doesn’t guarantee you’ll achieve it.
The next challenge is deciding how you’ll get there.
Learning might be part of the answer, but it’s rarely the whole answer.
In the next blog, we’ll explore the third stage of the CORE framework: Route, and why solving business problems often requires much more than delivering a great learning programme. Read here to continue.
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