Ecosystem Query, 2

Here’s a simpler rendition of what I was trying to ask yesterday.

Learning consists of people interacting with other people and with stuff. Learning professionals work on improving connections, having the right information on tap, and opening up the conduits to the sources of learning. They focus on everything but the learner. I don’t understand why we stop before addressing this last piece of the learning ecosystem.

For example, daily meditation calms the mind, eases stress, promotes concentration, improves health, builds self-confidence, and reduces anxiety. These all improve learning. Since they improve the process of learning, they are “gifts that keep on giving.”

Meditation doesn’t take long to teach, let’s say four hours. Let’s examine the costs and benefits of teaching your organization’s people to meditate.

Assume that four out of five people will never meditate; it’s just not their thing. The one knowledge worker who does meditate makes, what?, 5% better decisions and productivity improvements. Let’s assume that stress reduction reduces current turnover by 10%. We won’t even count the benefits of being healthy and self-confident.

• Here’s the math. Estimated annual compensation per knowledge worker, all-in, is $100,000. Expected contribution to profit, also our opportunity cost, is 2x, i.e. $200,000/year.
• Opportunity cost of four hours of training = (1/2 day in workshop)/(200 useful days/year) * $200K = 200000/400 = $500. We’ll assume you went all out, with private one-on-one instruction and coaching at a cost of $500 per learner. Overall cost of training is $500 + $500 = $1,000.
• Value of improved decisions and level-headed work = 5% of contribution to profit = $10,000. Cost of turnover avoided = (1.5*$100,000) * 10% *.20= $3,000. (The 1.5 is the cost of replacing someone as a proportion of annual compensation; 20% is prevailing rate of turnover.) Annual benefit from meditation practice = $10K + $3K = $13,000. Net Present Value of $13,000, assuming a cost of capital of 7% and a ten-year run, is $55,600.
• For our five knowledge workers, our cost is $5,000. Our benefit is $55,000+.

The payback is more than 10:1. That’s a phenomenal return compared to most training investments. Even if my math is off a bit, there’s a large potential return for a relatively low investment.

Who’s responsible for something like this in your organization? If not the CLO, who? That’s the gist of my question: Shouldn’t someone be looking at an organization’s learning ecology holistically?