Most people enter the teaching field because they want to make a difference in someone’s life. One of the greatest compliments that I ever received was one student telling me “After this class I will never look at data the same way. This class has changed my life. I only wish I had learned it earlier in my career.” This student felt that they received a great benefit from the instruction they received and knew that it has helped them personally and in their career. Sometimes it is not that easy to determine if a training program is providing the value that it should. At some point everyone has questioned the value training provides and unfortunately training is one of the first things that are cut back during financial hard times of an organization.

While every organization has different measures of value and what makes a training program successful there are a few principles that can be used in all training programs to measure and ensure success. I am going to specifically talk about applying these principles to a LSS training program. One mistake many organizations make when starting a LSS program is to think that training is the program. Training is just one important component along with other critical items including leadership support, connection to company objectives, and organizational change management. This document will only focus on the training aspect of a LSS program and not on the other critical elements.