When someone asks whether a learning program "worked," what they usually mean is: did it change something that matters? Where things go wrong is not in the asking. It's in the instrument we reach for to answer.

Organizations invest meaningfully in high-potential programs. And then, with some regularity, they find themselves a few years later with programs that feel less valuable than they should. The diagnosis I keep returning to isn't about execution failures. It's about a prior question most organizations never explicitly answer. A metaphor I've found useful: a match in this room could be fire. The same match on the moon is a stick.

In 2000, two economists studied what happened when a group of Israeli daycare centers introduced a fine for parents who picked up their children late. The intent was straightforward: create a financial consequence for a behavior that was causing problems, and the behavior would decrease. The opposite happened.