development investments. It was expensive, took a long time, and was confusing to the majority of the industry. But it was creeping into the lexicon. Software vendors were organizing and pitching new platforms to simplify people data.
Against that landscape, I began to think about ways to push the industry toward showing more business-oriented results on their LearningElite applications. I wanted to see a learning function showing data-driven links between dollars invested in learning and results that were important to the business. Gradually, companies like Accenture, Lowe’s, and the U.S. government reported that they were using quantitative and qualitative data to go beyond reporting on training’s status. These organizations were assessing training’s impact on the bottom line and employing predictive analytics to make strategic decisions. Even smaller businesses were starting to leverage data and use advanced analytics to make organizational decisions. At CLO, we began offering consulting packages to entrants. We would take an award application, and then put together some recommendations based on the organization’s current state benchmarked against other similar organizations and feedback from LearningElite judges to propose a consulting engagement with the company. Remembering Diana’s 2005 presentation, I made a pitch to McDonald’s and received a first meeting with Diana. At the time, Diana had a vision for what measurement could do for Hamburger University, but she didn’t know how to bring it to life. She had brought in consultants and software vendors, but the market for learning evaluation was so immature at the time that she hadn’t been able to achieve her vision of showing the business how learning investments drove sales in the restaurants. She and I began to collaborate, and the rest, well, you’ll learn in this book!
Today, I run my own consulting firm. I help other organizations harness their people data and make smarter decisions. My firm also has a strong presence in the not-for-profit arena, showing how investments in communities foster long-term growth and success.
Diana
I launched my career with McDonald’s Corporation as a sixteen-year-old crew member in a Maryland restaurant. My job there was hostess, which meant I was supposed to greet customers and interact with them while they were in the restaurant. Initially intimidated, I soon learned how to talk to customers. Little did I know how important this would be throughout my career, as meeting the needs of customers became a critical touchstone at every major point of decision. As I entered college, I began climbing through the ranks at my restaurant. Shortly before I graduated from college, I completed a career assessment, which told me I was well suited for human resources. I inquired about opportunities with McDonald’s and was granted an internship in Washington, D.C., that led to a long-term role recruiting crew and managers, as well as partnering with colleges on career programs.
Although I was one of the younger leaders working in that D.C. regional office, I was rarely intimidated. I’d been blessed with tremendously supportive parents who had raised me to believe I could do anything I set my mind to, and also that you can’t get something if you’re afraid to ask for it. I was working under successful leaders and on the lookout for ways to learn from them (and actually learning even more from a few weaker leaders). I had a chance to attend a series of talks by motivational speakers with our leadership team. Two that have stood out in my mind over the years were those by Zig Ziglar and Joel Barker. I felt so inspired by their presence and the messages they delivered, and I was motivated to do whatever I needed to do to become the type of leader who could make people feel that way. In fact, my own leadership platform came from something Joel Barker said in one of these sessions: “An effective leader is someone who you will choose to follow to a place you would not go by yourself.” I began to think more critically about my own personality and skills and how I could channel those into becoming the type of leader people would want to follow.
My next promotion landed me in the training department at McDonald’s, and I quickly fell in love with my new career direction. Growing up, I had always wanted to be a teacher, so training felt like a natural fit. I started working toward my master’s degree, which culminated in a thesis on leadership. Truth be told, I had a long-standing fascination with the topic. In 2002, I was named dean of Illinois-based Hamburger University and also began studying for my MBA. Personality-wise, I knew that I tended toward big-picture thinking. I was never too detail-oriented and didn’t enjoy working with data and analytics. I began learning how to channel my big-picture thinking into a strategic focus, and I also found a niche helping others around me grow from individual contributor to strategic leader. During this time, we began applying for the LearningElite, even though I felt pretty strongly that we weren’t at the level of the winning organizations. I knew that showing proof of impact was a big gap. Our first entry earned us rank #42, and I looked at that benchmarking process as a chance to grow and improve.
In 2004, I completed my MBA, and shortly before that became vice president of training, learning, and development for McDonald’s U.S. Around this time, feeling quite proud of all I had accomplished, I hosted a networking session at Hamburger University. Bill Wiggenhorn, then chief learning officer at Motorola, was one of the attendees, and it was the first time we met. We got into a conversation about growing and learning as a person, and what was on my mind was all that I had done to get to this point. Bill asked me how I was planning on staying current and abreast of the never-ending changes that would continue to impact learning organizations around the world. I was taken aback as he bluntly told me I would be dated within five years if I couldn’t keep up—and he couldn’t have been more right! Up to this point, I had succeeded largely though formal education and job training. Now that I was on the executive team, I needed to take my development into my own hands. Bill later became a long-term mentor for me, and I also added the role of learner to my own weekly compass. Bill helped me to see that it was essential to nurture my longtime love of learning by continuing to make it an essential, ongoing part of my work and life.
I first met Stacey via networking, as I was a member of the CLO editorial review board. When she came to McDonald’s to talk to me about how we could improve on the weaknesses in our LearningElite application, I began to fully appreciate her combination of deep, analytical knowledge and the ability to highlight what was important from a strategic perspective. Stacey knew how to paint a picture of what data and analytics could do for McDonald’s. I had been sharing business results with our franchisees, but I couldn’t directly link those results to training. No one was asking me to do it, but I knew that day was coming and understood the importance of being able to back up my assertions with facts. Stacey helped to fill in the missing pieces and got us started on a journey at McDonald’s. We began showing concrete results from training, taking baby steps at first (and a few wrong turns!), and it caught on like wildfire. Our stakeholders loved knowing that when they sent their people away for training, they could expect business results.
I retired from McDonald’s in 2015. I’ve realized my lifelong dream of running my own business. Today I’m an executive coach, working with blossoming leaders to help them improve the things that are important to them, as well as helping them to find a healthy balance between their careers and their personal lives.
Our shared experience
One of the benefits of having grown up in the learning industry, and now through our own business pursuits, is that we have worked with leaders in almost every discipline and sector imaginable—from huge public companies, to smaller private organizations, nonprofits, schools, and government. In addition to our work with learning industry leaders, we’ve consulted with and coached leaders in human resources, IT, sales, marketing, new product development, federal agencies, and school district administrations.
And this is the beauty of the model we’ve created: no matter what field you’re in, what type of organization you work for, there is a need for strategic leadership. You need to show your business how its investments are driving performance in the areas that matter. You need to be able
