Interviewers: Mariham Magdy & Mahmoud Mansi
“We particularly want to help the nonprofits use the ROI Methodology to be more efficient and have more impact with the great programs that they offer.”
Dr. Jack Phillips
The World Renowned and Award Winning Thought Leader, recognized around the world for his work with measurement, evaluation and ROI
ABOUT THE INTERVIEWEE
Dr. Jack Phillips is the developer of the ROI Methodology™, the most used evaluation system in the world. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek, Fortune, and on CNN.
Dr. Phillips is the author of the first book on training evaluation in the United States in 1983. He has authored/edited more than 120 books in evaluation, metrics, and analytics. He provides consulting services for more than half of the Fortune 500 companies and workshops for major conference providers worldwide.
Dr. Phillips has served as head of HR for three organizations, including a Fortune 500 company for eight years, and was recently awarded a Brand Personality Award from The Brand Laureate in conjunction with the Asia Pacific Brands Foundation (APBF).
THE INTERVIEW
1- HR Revolution Middle East: Welcome Dr. Jack, we are really thrilled to interview your good-self & help our people get inspired and learn more from your precious stories, philosophies, researches & books. Having a long journey of more than 45 years of success; we are so curious then to know more from you about the first motives that encouraged you to start your research, application & writings about the ROI Methodology™.
Dr. Jack Phillips: First, I have a very quantitative educational background with engineering, math, and physics degrees. That gave me a quantitative focus. I had a particular event that started this process. A top executive asked me to show the value of a cooperative education program. This is a program for college students working on engineering degree where they alternated work and school. As I was struggling to show the value for that program, I needed a thesis topic as I worked on a master’s degree in Decision Sciences, which is statistics. I conducted this study and it satisfied the requirements for my master’s thesis at the same time. When I presented the results to executives, I saw the power of this type of analysis. It helped me keep my budget, build partnerships, improve the program, and build support for the program.
2- HR Revolution Middle East: Dr. Jack we believe that – just as all scientists & researchers – you must have faced a lot of criticism & maybe discouragement at the beginning of your researches; how were you able to overcome all this & prove the value & applicability of your researches world-wide? When was the first time you really celebrated the success of the ROI Methodology™ & felt finally reaping the fruits of your researches & efforts?
Dr. Jack Phillips: I had the advantage of trying this methodology myself and using it initially at Lockheed Martin Aerospace, then at a privately held steel company called Stockham Valves and Fittings, and then later at Vulcan Materials Company, a Fortune 500 company where I was head of HR. I knew it would work because I had used it in my own work. With that background, I began to write about it, speak about it, and share it with others.
Yes, there were critics. Some people said it wouldn’t work, it wasn’t needed, or I shouldn’t be doing this. These were not malicious people, they were just misinformed, and I knew more about this issue than anyone else. So, I just kept pursuing it because I knew it was needed and I knew it would work. I knew that someday it would gain acceptance from a large part of a particular profession, and finally it came. First, with the learning and development community and next with the HR community.
3- HR Revolution Middle East: Which country do you consider at the top now in learning & applying the ROI Methodology™? What are the areas you believe that the ROI Methodology™ supports enormously in proving their non-capital investments? Do you believe that there is another method in the world that can achieve the same results as the ROI Methodology™?
Dr. Jack Phillips: First, I have to say that the country where we have made the most progress is the United States, not because of it’s size, but because we’ve been working here longer and had more resources devoted to that country. However, I think it’s working quite well in several other countries outside of the U.S., and this changes over time. It’s working well in the Netherlands, Chile, and Singapore, due in part to having good partners there. In Singapore, we have had many organizations and universities involved in our process, making it an important part of the landscape there.
The ROI Methodology can work with any field or project. I think the place where it really shines is in the soft skills, particularly with leadership development. This is because it’s not that difficult to conduct an ROI study, but seems mysterious to so many.
We haven’t found another method that matches up to this process. Yes, there are some competitors, and some are our former partners, but nothing compares to the credibility of this process. This is because of the unusual way in which it was developed. It was proven in several organizations before it was made public. We adjusted it repeatedly and created standards. We had our users review and approve the standards, so it’s user-driven. It is also designed to meet the needs of chief financial officers, university professors, and users – three groups that are very difficult to satisfy all at the same time. I doubt that anyone else will take the patience and time over several years to develop and fine-tune a process that is going to be better than this. Incidentally, if there is a way to make this better, we would welcome the opportunity to make it better and make changes.
4- HR Revolution Middle East: Which study do you consider as one of the most impressive ROI studies you have done that you were personally amazed about its results and thus helped a great deal in changing the project’s scale of application?
Dr. Jack Phillips: Although there are many great examples, two in particular are very special to us. One of those is our business coaching study, which showed in a very credible way how coaching is evaluated. It came at a time when the coaching field was struggling with this issue, and they needed some help to make it work. This case study provided the spark.
The second case study is a work-at-home study where top executives wanted to see the ROI for allowing a large segment of their employees to work at home in an office especially designed by the company. This was an amazing study that attracted much interest from environmentalists, who suggest that working at home is critical to saving the environment; technology companies, who say that you can now have the technology to work anywhere; and HR teams, who are struggling with flexible work systems. It was the most downloaded case study in the Society of Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) database.
5- HR Revolution Middle East: You have conducted a lot of training programs & workshops. When was a time you have learnt something new from one of your delegates? What was it?
Dr. Jack Phillips: We always learn from our audience. We learned so much from our participants early on as we began conducting workshops, and this has extended over time. We’ve encountered so much that it is difficult now to see anything new arise. But there is occasionally something new. Recently in Dubai, a participant challenged me on a case study that we were discussing that was very positive. We began to see some potential negative consequences of the study that were probably not tracked, and I think she was correct. There was perhaps an omission, and the study owners might have missed capturing some unwanted adverse impacts that could have been present. This reinforces the need to always look for the unintended positive and negative outcomes. Although I knew to do this, I hadn’t thought about that in the term of this particular case.
6- HR Revolution Middle East: What piece of advice would you give to professionals from different disciplines to consider applying the ROI Methodology™ in their projects?
Dr. Jack Phillips: My advice for any discipline is to consider the value chain that’s offered in the ROI Methodology. It fits any scenario. Start thinking this way, practicing it, and learning about it. Start applying it in a deliberate pace, not just when you have time, but on a schedule of learning and applying. The less your particular field has been evaluated at this level, the more it will seem to be impossible. After all, if it is so easy, why haven’t others done it? The reality is that they may not have done this because there wasn’t a need to… but now there is. The worst thing you can do is to wait until someone forces you. Then it’s too late. My advice is to quickly get in there and start doing it in a routine, systematic way.
7- HR Revolution Middle East: When you first founded The ROI Institute in 1992, did you first calculate its “return on investment”?
Dr. Jack Phillips: I actually didn’t present the ROI to the executive group, but I was prepared to. When the executives saw the impact, they were impressed enough to want to keep the program. I was uncomfortable presenting some of the ROI data. After that, we began to push the ROI and calculate the ROI. Now, we try to do that on almost every project we are involved in.
8- HR Revolution Middle East: The ROI Institute recognizes exemplary practices in the application of the ROI Methodology™ and honors individuals for their outstanding work in measurement and evaluation; when did you decide to launch these awards? What impact do you believe these awards have on their winners & how do they participate in spreading the ROI applications world-wide?
Dr. Jack Phillips: The awards are very helpful for recognizing individuals who have made outstanding progress, while at the same time allowing others to learn from them. We started the awards in 1997 and, with the exception of a few years, they have been in place ever since. At one time, we had a newsletter that would help spread the word, and now we just let others know through press releases and summaries of the rewards. We probably need to examine how we can capture the best practices from these award winners each year. When we see great examples, we usually work some of these studies into our books with the proper credit. I think the awards are important to recognize the great work that our clients have achieved. Some are very excited about these awards, and they mean a lot to them and their organization. We are very pleased and excited to give them each year.
9- HR Revolution Middle East: If the ROI Methodology™ is to be manifested in a “person”, what would be the most suitable technical & behavioral competencies that would describe this person?
Dr. Jack Phillips: This is a very good question. A great “ROI person” would have a desire to be a problem-solver, exploring what’s caused a problem. She would have to have a comfort level with numbers. She would be an excellent communicator, written and oral. She would have a lot of curiosity to locate information and would have the tenacity to stay with a project until it’s over. Lastly, she wouldn’t mind getting into details and analyzing the results.
10- HR Revolution Middle East: Dr. Jack you have authored till now more than 120 books, most of them are bestsellers on Amazon stores; how do you find the (time & innovation) to write your books despite all your occupation in providing consulting services for more than half of the Fortune 100 companies, in addition to your workshops & participations in the major conferences world-wide?
Dr. Jack Phillips: First, these books have been written over almost a 35-year period with the first book published in 1983. There are several factors that allow us to write.
First, we see it as an important part of our business. We often say that we wouldn’t have a business without our books, but books are not our business. We don’t write books for the royalties – we write books to use in our consulting and workshop activities.
Next, we have a system. It takes a system to make it work, one that we follow consistently.
Third, we have a good team to support us. We could not do it without our editorial team who supports us quite well.
Fourth, we have good publishers who recognize the value of what we do. They make it easy for us to work with them.
We all have our different styles. I do my best editing on long flights, which are common for me. It helps to have good organization and a good filing and reference system as well.
11- HR Revolution Middle East: Past April 2017 you launched the second round for the Business Writers Conference with the above campaign; encouraging business writers to write their book, publish it, and even build a business around it. How do you select the jury? And what is the selection criteria the jury members use in order to choose the winners? When would you launch the next round for this amazing conference & might you consider launching it in different countries?
Dr. Jack Phillips: The actual jury for these books will be the publishers. For the Business Writers Conference, we invite authors, prospective authors, publishers, agents, publicists, and book consultants. We encourage people to write books, but the ultimate judge of the book being published by a publisher is the acquisition editor. We prepare individuals to make a proposal in a way that attracts the attention and secures the book contract. This is for traditional publishing.
At the other end of the publishing spectrum is self-publishing. Some people prefer not to have a jury and just publish the book themselves. That’s not our desired approach. There is an approach in the middle called hybrid publishing where you can have publishers do part of it and you do the rest of it. With the hybrid approach, the jury is still the publisher because they will not work with you unless you have a worthy book.
We will probably offer the conference again. It may be held in late 2018, or maybe even early 2019. We would like to take it to other countries, but it takes time and it does detract (to a certain extent) from some of our work at the ROI Institute.
12- HR Revolution Middle East: Dr. Jack, finally can you share with us what is the dream that you feel you haven’t yet accomplished?
Dr. Jack Phillips: We want to see this work quite well in the public-sector space. We work now in governments, nonprofits, nongovernmental organizations, foundations, associations, and school systems. We particularly want to help the nonprofits use the ROI Methodology to be more efficient and have more impact with the great programs that they offer.
THANK YOU
