Interdisciplinary human performance expertise is deep and growing rapidly within the military. Rapid recovery techniques blend with performance enhancement in ways that expand perspectives and establish new norms. Communicating the objective value of human performance can be challenging for those in military environments, but not yet trained in budget, programmatics, and government requirements.

The Audience Focus 

The most common mistake in ROI communication is treating it as a single conversation. A brigade commander, a financial manager, a contracting officer, and individual soldier may each need to hear a different part of the whole story. Leading with the right focus first can frame the story and permit it to be understood by different audiences.

Leaders need to understand mission impact. They’re accountable for outcomes and they need to see that the investment makes sense in terms of operational relevance. Many times this information doesn’t come from only one human performance domain.

Financial managers work cost-benefit analyses, so they need unemotional facts and how they connect to the dollars and resources invested. Providing them first with the numbers they ask for is the simplest way to help them help you.

Contracting officers need to know what the investment is and the details of the actual requirements. It helps to understand that they are held accountable for each part of a documented process and have little wiggle room to offer.

Practitioners and Service members need to see the program working for them each day or week. Implementing the process that consistently delivers training and treatments as expected can be the easiest way to show value.

One program and four conversations from the same data. The professionals who get this right learn to “read the room” and speak/write to what matters to the person in front of them. 

A Framework that Helps

One of the most practical tools for organizing  ROI communication is the logic model.  It’s a straightforward framework that connects the investment of your Planned Work to the return of your Intended Results.  Each of these have subcategories.

• Planned Work (the Investment)
  • Inputs are what goes into the program, such as people, equipment, buildings, and funding.
  • Activities are what the inputs do or provide and are measured by your metrics, like training, treatments, and consultations.
• Intended Results (the Return)
  • Outputs are what the inputs and activities produce, such as training sessions delivered, treatments received by Service members, and consultations completed, all measured in time, type, and frequency.
  • Outcomes are the big impacts in short-, medium-, and long-term increments, like reduced fatigue during field training exercises, reduction in musculoskeletal and behavioral health profiles, and commander data-informed resource reallocation.

The value of this framework is in the completeness of the data you collect and report across the spectrum for telling an objectively compelling story.  Instead of just saying, “here’s what we did,” you can confidently know that you are prepared to describe, “here’s what was invested, what happened, what we delivered, and what changed because of it.”

Use this method to manage expectations. The logic model gives you a credible, structured way to explain what you have when you have it, and how to honestly answer for what you won’t have until the team has been on board long enough for various interactions to have occurred. Inputs and activities are known before work ever starts. Outputs are produced incrementally and build upon each other. Outcomes take time.

Keep the Box Tight 

The most effective ROI narratives are specific. When programs try to claim credit for everything, they end up convincing stakeholders of nothing. A tight story with clean inputs, specific outputs, and measurable outcomes connected to mission priorities, is far more persuasive than a list of accomplishments. 

When you embark on using the logic model, get all of your stakeholders in on the planning, implementation, and revisions. Early and often, remember to communicate the reason for all of this: Serving those who serve. If you don’t, you’ll get accused of bean counting for the sake of counting beans. 

Remember that each audience member is a stakeholder in some way and that even when they ask you for something ultra-specific to support the logic model, this is about evaluating a program that’s supposed to treat and train Service members.

Get your stakeholders what they need and remember audience members what they 

In a military human performance context, that’s the soldier. Every data point, every outcome, every cost-benefit figure should connect back to readiness and the human being at the center of it. 

What We’re Seeing in the Field 

These conversations were front and center at H2F Symposium last week, where Teamworks joined Army leaders, practitioners, and human performance professionals from across the military community. Teamworks Tactical Chief of Staff, Dr. Travis Harvey, led a session at the event on exactly this topic, and the discussion that followed made clear that this is something the field is actively working through. The frameworks aren’t new, but the intentional application of them to military human performance is still developing.

It’s a skill worth investing in now.