Chapter 2: Decoding Value

In this Chapter:

• Step 1 of the financial value process: define audience

• How to play the game and break the ROI code

• How cascading metrics create financial value chains

• How to translate from the language of performance to the language of finance and back again

• Why you must make the translation clear for your audience

• Why understanding your audience ‚ s ROI timeframe makes a difference in getting them to pay attention to your value statements.

‚“What is my return-on-investment for this program? ‚½ This question is one of the most frustrating questions today ‚ s WLP professional can face. Even if you, as a WLP professional, give what you think is a good answer, you may often get the sinking feeling that your audience is thinking politely that you just don ‚ t get it. Even if you ‚ ve gone to the effort to determine a return-on-investment answer of, for example, 125 percent, you may still be left with the sense that you didn ‚ t answer the real question and that you ‚ ve blown it, but you don ‚ t know why. What went wrong?