I wonder if it's not the tools themselves that are at fault for their situational misuse? A hammer doesn't drive a screw well but I shouldn't blame the hammer for that. I do think that the level of Kirkpatrick's scale is directly proportional to it's value-.99. But it's how you use the tool and interpret the results that matters. Strategic intent, not a matter of course...

I'm a bit off kilter about this comment from Charles. In concept I agree with his point (I've drawn up similar models) but I'm not on board with this statement:

"We all know that improving skills/competencies is only a relatively small factor in overall employee performance and has only moderate impact on performance improvement. "

This is entirely situational. I think this twists the meaning of the data we do have. Skills and competencies can be a tremendous factor in some problems. But as assumptions go, it's often "over-assumed" as a contributing factor. As a whole, training has a moderate impact on performance improvement given the other things we ignore. But Skills and Competencies are often the price of admission, a condition of successful performance. Minimizing these factors as trivial oversteps the bounds of reason, in my opinion.

Let's not minimize the role of skills and competence in performance. Instead, let's highlight the role of other performance influences. Optimism vs. Pessimism. The training people really don't want to play with you anymore when you bring up how ineffective they are in the majority of situations where there is an assumed correlation. And we really need the training folks as allies... And training can be the best solution in some cases.