ROE, sorry but no thanks

I was at the conference of the Learning and Skills Group in London yesterday and enjoyed attending the session from Charles Jennings of Thomson Reuters which he called Are we trying to perfect the irrelevant? The only issue I didn't agree with Charles on was the shift in emphasis in terms of evaluation from return on investment (ROI) to return on expectations (ROE). This echoed the work done by the CIPD as described in my posting, What's Wrong with Kirkpatrick?

I'm sorry but I just don't buy into the idea of ROE as a way for learning and development people to measure success. The problem in my experience is that the expectations of l&d from their stakeholders is often incredibly low, sometimes no more than 'keep doing what you've always done, just don't rock the boat'. That's not good enough.

If I'd relied just on meeting my customers' expectations, I may have made more profit in the short term, but I'd have achieved a tiny fraction of what I have done in my career. What's more important is to do the 'right thing' - to deliver real value in performance terms. Sometimes that means saying 'no' - something no client expects.