Four Tips for Getting Knowledge Out of SME’s Heads

More often than not, instructional designers create learning on topics that they are not experts in. This means they must rely on subject matter experts (SMEs) to provide the content, while they design the learning process. Trouble is, SMEs are not that easy to work with. It’s likely they have never had to fill this role before and don’t know why you are asking so many questions. Some of them can feel threatened and be purposefully uncooperative.  Only twice in my career have I had SMEs say “Hallelujah! You’re here!” 

Over my 25-year career designing custom training curriculum for all sorts of industries and topics, I’ve developed a few techniques for getting information out of SME’s heads. See if these work for you. 

1 - Do Your Homework

I once had an SME at an aerospace company make me read an entire textbook on Material Requirements Planning (#MRP)– “then you can talk to me,” he said. Let me tell you, if you are not an engineer, that is not fun reading. This SME taught me a very valuable lesson: don’t walk into your meeting expecting them to take you from the ground up. Learn all you can about the topic (and in today’s day and age, that is not hard to do) so that you can at least follow acronyms and ask semi-intelligent questions. And speaking of questions… 

2 - Ask At Least Three Questions 

Lots of SME’s like to tell you “special case” scenarios to demonstrate their extreme knowledge, but that information doesn’t help someone learning a new skill. No matter what the SME tells you, ask at least three questions to pull out more information or have them explain it in a different way. 

Some suggestions are: Is that true in all cases? When would someone do this (what is the trigger)? Why? How did you get from A to B? Is that a typical cause (or outcome)? Can you explain that in a different way? So, is that similar to (relate to a “real world” scenario)?

Example: When working with a casual clothing retailer I was assigned a “shoe guru” who was helping me to design training for the salespeople on the floor (interesting factoid:  Nike will not let you sell their shoes of $100 or more if you do not have a full-service footwear sales staff). He was adamant that we had to include the history of each of the 8 manufacturers they represented. Why? Because he was a guru. He loved athletic footwear. But knowing the history of each company was not going to help the salespeople do their jobs better. It was quite a tussle between the two of us,

He: Must be included

Me: People can sell shoes without knowing this

Finally, we compromised and included the eight manufacturers’ histories in an appendix of the “selling shoes bible” we created. 

3 - Make Best Guesses For Them To Correct 

Most SMEs are so smart and skilled that they don’t know what they know. I remember when I was learning to ride a motorcycle I thought, “This training is terrible, I’d change this, this, and this.” I had every intention of writing to the state entity that ran the school and telling them what they were doing wrong. Now, 15 years in, I have no recollection of why it was so hard to learn. 

At times, when I’ve had trouble getting intel out of an SME’s head, I’ve simply gone ahead and made stuff up. Based on observation or best guesses, I’ll document what I think is happening. I have found it is easier for an SME to see what is wrong and correct it, than to tell me out of the gate what is the right way to do something. This is where being an uninformed neophyte is helpful. Sometimes we shouldn’t be getting our direction from the most skilled individual but rather from the newbie.

4 - Give Them Deadlines, Then Move On! 

As an instructional designer, you have deadlines to meet (usually impossibly short deadlines, but that’s a different blog post). When you are dependent on an SME for the content (not the learning process, but the content) it can be difficult to stay on track because your deadlines are not the SMEs deadlines. It may seem punitive, but you must give the SME deadlines for reviewing the learning and giving you feedback and if you don’t get it – move on. I generally allow 4 – 10 working days. I have also found it helpful to set a meeting and actually be there in the room (or the Zoom) during the review.
This is helpful in two ways: 

• If it is an appointment on their calendar, it (almost always) ensures they do the review

• It can save me time by doing the edits during the meeting

The longest meeting of my life was a 6-hour review and working session, via phone, but we got it done! 

Bonus Tip: Thank Them Profusely! 

You couldn’t have gotten your job done without the help of the SME, so be sure to thank them profusely. Put a recommendation on their LinkedIn profile. Drop an email to their boss thanking them for allowing the SME to take the time to work with you and praising how easy they were to work with. You may even go so far as sending a small gift – once, a colleague and I so enjoyed working with an SME for the better part of a year that we had our picture taken with him and framed it to leave behind as a memento.

Now You See It... Now You GET It - The Power of Visuals in Learning

First, some important factoids regarding our vision:

• Vision is the hardest working process in our bodies

• Vision takes up 30% of the brain's processing capabilities

• Neuroscientists know more about our vison than any other sensory system in our body

• We don't see with our eyes, we see with our brains

As important as vision is for survival (is that a saber toothed tiger I see charging toward me?) it also trumps all our other senses when it comes to learning, interpreting and understanding the world around us. Vision is probably the best single tool we have for learning anything, so says John Medina author of Brain Rules (check it out at www.brainrules.net).

One of the reasons that vision (and thereby the use of visuals) is so powerful is because something that we see is easy to label, identify, categorize and recall later. What's the circular thing with buckets that twirls at the carnival? Oh right. A Ferris Wheel.

Visual input is so important, neuroscience has given it a fancy title: Pictorial Superiority Effect (or PSE). In one experiment, test subjects were shown 2,500 pictures for 10 seconds each. Several days after the exposure to the pictures, the subjects were able to recall 90% of the pictures. The same type of experiment, utilizing words, fell to an abysmal 10% recall three-days after exposure. But the RIGHT words can help learners create visuals.

Words Create Pictures

The very tall man folded his body, in order to fit in to the sports car, then sped away.Did you "see" those words in your mind as you read them? Everyone did. And everyone saw a different picture. Very tall is relative. Sports car is generic. But you have a picture in your head related to what you just read. We don't see with our eyes - we see with our brains. You did not physically see the scenario that was described but you have a picture of it in your mind. Amazing.

Pictures Create Emotion

Additionally, pictures can evoke emotion, which helps with retention and recall. Think about the image of the Ferris Wheel a few paragraphs back. You pictured a Ferris Wheel in order to help you recall it's name, didn't you? Many of you also remembered experiencing a Ferris Wheel in some way - either the glee (or terror) of riding it, looking up at it all colorful and bright, or being at the carnival - with the smells and sounds - where you encountered it. You have a vivid memory of a Ferris Wheel. That memory is defined in a picture.

Important Ways to Incorporate Visuals in Learning

Because using visuals is so crucial to understanding and remembering, it is imperative that we give just as much thought to the visuals we use in training, as to the content we are creating. Here are some ways you can utilize visuals in your training:

Slides / Photos - include pictures - especially photos - especially photos of people - on your slides. Photos are more realistic than graphics or clip art and therefore more engaging to the brain. Photos of people are especially memorable. We like to see people "just like us."

Physical objects - whenever possible, include a real representation of the visual. Sometimes you'll have to stretch to make it work - but the stretch will be worth it because it will sear the message in to the learner's brain. More than 2 decades ago I attended a presentation given by a man. I have no idea who he was. I have no idea what his topic was. I DO remember that we were in a hotel meeting room (visual) and I DO remember that he said "Many years ago a computer would fill a room of this size, and now that same computing power can fit in something as small as this little pink packet."  And he held up an artificial sugar packet.  The room was large; the little pink packet was hard to see. It's a bit of a stretch from computer processing power to sugar packet... but the image (and the point he was making) has remained for decades. That's powerful.

Mental imagery - sometimes it's just impossible to find a photo or physical object to represent your message. Perhaps you are teaching virtually and there is no way to show the physical object (or the object is too big, or too small, or doesn't actually exist yet).  Instead you can help learners to create a visual in their "mind's eye."  (Definition: To see something in one's visual memory or imagination. Bet you always wondered what that phrase meant. Now you know. The first known use of the term dates back to Chaucer, in 1390. By the time Shakespeare used it in Hamlet, the phrase had been around for over 200 years! )

In Medina's book, Brain Rules (see link above), he talks about DNA and how long and complex it is. He says fitting a strand of DNA in to the nucleus of our cells is like trying to stuff 30 miles of fishing line in to a blueberry. IMPOSSIBLE! But memorable.  I may not remember much about DNA in the future, but I will always remember that it is long and complex.

Here is a challenge for you: Go back through the courses you already have and re-evaluate the visuals you are using. Can you add visuals to slides? Can you associate the content with physical objects? Can you make an analogy or tell a story that causes the learner to create a mental image in his "mind's eye?"  If you can - I guarantee - recall and comprehension will increase.  You will also see test scores go up. Your learners will become brilliant - thanks to you (and visuals).

Updated May 15, 2017: Nelson Dellis, the USA Memory Champ, was recently a guest on Lewis Howes' podcast, discussing how he can easily remember things. One of his tricks is to make abstract things - such as numbers - in to visuals that are easier to remember.  For instance, the number 32 is Charlie Brown and the number 95 is Tom Brady.  Associating those images with others helps him to combine numbers more easily - so Homer Simpson fighting a sword battle becomes a 4 digit number . This type of visualization technique earned him the record for the longest string of numbers committed to memory - 201. If you have an hour, listen to the podcast and learn about the power of Mind Palaces as a visualization / memorization technique as well. 

The Limits of Working Memory and Training Effectiveness

learning

In this fascinating blog post from Patti Shank on the ATD site, she discusses the reasons we can't have a one-size-fits-all approach to training.

Aside from the typical learning styles excuse, Patti explores an interesting point related to neuroscience: knowledge and experience dictates the way we can present the content and further impacts the way the learner is able to work with it.

The crux of the difference is working memory vs. long term memory. When newbies are learning a topic, everything they "know" is in working memory - and they are paddling madly to keep processing and applying that information to the learning process. But when a more knowledgeable or more experienced employee has long-term memory associated with a topic, we can work with that topic in deeper and more meaningful ways for the learner.

This chart is an excellent comparison of working memory approaches to training vs. long term memory approaches.  This chart may cause you to rethink your training designs altogether.

Stop Teaching So Much! Learn to Chunk.

frustrated-with-computer

We recently reviewed a day-long course on coaching which was actually an excellent class, the only thing it suffered from was the typical: Too much content!

The course taught 4 different coaching techniques and their best-use given a particular type of workplace situation or a particular type of worker, and then participants were given some time to choose one of their own workers with whom they thought the technique might work. Finally, they were divided in to trios to practice the technique.

This learn-and-practice process was repeated four times for each of the four techniques.  The problem with this course was that the learning outcomes were just not going  to be that great. It is impossible to learn four different techniques, and remember  when they apply, and the nuances of usage, when you get back on the job when you've been taught them all in one-fell-swoop.The expected learning outcomes for this class just weren't being achieved, despite excellent content and a "reasonable enough" teaching strategy.

While it certainly takes longer to teach in chunks, and allow participants real-world  practice and application, it does lead to better learning outcomes.The next time you are designing a course - especially one that requires practice in order to master - ask yourself: Will people really be able to do Skill #1 when they are back on the job if that information and technique has been "over written" by additional knowledge and skills by the end of the day?

Chances are, you can achieve much better learning outcomes by chunking the content and the periods of teaching, and allowing your participants to have time to not only reflect on what they learned, but also put it in to practice, and then reflecting on how effective that practice and its outcomes really were.

Great Work Everyone! Here's an Avocado for your Efforts!

Do you regularly give out candy as a reward during your F2F training sessions? Well, you're not doing your learners any favors. Instead put out piles of beans, eggs, fish, berries and, ok, dark chocolate.

In this fascinating article (and quick read) by Jeremy Teitelbaum, he challenges us to think about our "tried and true" methods of delivering training and learning, using what we know from 25 years of brain research. Suggestions include:

Stop forcing people to multitask.

He cites research by Stanford University which determined that even when people claim they are multi-tasking, they really are not processing more than one piece of information at once.

Feed the mind to teach the mind.

The author makes an interesting point: In recent years physical fitness training has included the mind and the way it thinks about fitness, body image, health, eating habits and the like; but the opposite hasn't proven true. Nobody training the mind thinks about what the body needs to enable the mind to be successful. Hmmmm

You are unique - just like everyone else.

Brain research focuses on generalizations based on small samples of "brains." This might cause us to categorize people, types of learning, or personality factors.

Hard and Soft Skills Aren't as Important as Emotion

All learning has an emotional component - something most of us in training simply ignore as we 'get down to business.'

Successful Virtually Delivered Training Is Dependent On...

Many organizations are using virtually delivered training programs due to companies’ widespread geographic locations and the just-in-time nature of delivery that the synchronous platforms allow. Unfortunately, not many organizations are doing it well. 

At a minimum, there are three key components for successful virtually delivered training.  None is more important than another – all must be created, tested, and executed to perfection.  The good news is: all are completely within your control.

Content

Many organizations are moving what used to be delivered in a classroom to an online format.  This requires translating concepts and content into a new format.  The face-to-face class simply cannot be replicated in the online environment, so it is important to make critical decisions about what to keep, what to distribute in another way (such as reading or an e-learning module), and what to deliver in another way (such as on-the-job coaching).

Virtually delivered training, by default, is blended learning.  There is no way around it.  Not everything can be delivered successfully in a synchronous online environment, nor should it be.  For example, reading a case study might be done during 5 minutes in the face to face class, but it is not a good use of online time. Therefore the case study should be read at another time (what to distribute in another way).   Doing some work asynchronously (independently) and some work together, during the online session, is the very definition of blended learning.

Materials

Materials are critical in the online environment.  This include slides, because it is a very visually-oriented delivery medium; Participant Guides, because very often a learner will be the sole individual enrolled in a class at his/her location, and the learner needs some sort of reference material or supporting documentation in order to follow along in the class; and scripted Facilitator Guides to ensure the training achieves the intended learning outcomes while ending in the allotted time (virtual, online training is very tightly timed).

Most especially, when it comes to slides, get rid of the PPT templates, get rid of the bullets, and create visual, engaging “canvases” for creating.

Mastering Technology

Luckily, technology is rather fool-proof these days unless something is done that purposefully interferes with its operation.  Like most physical skills, using technology only gets better with practice.  A best-practice is to always rehearse the delivery one or two days in advance of the scheduled class.  No matter how many times a facilitator has delivered the same session, it’s always a good idea to practice it –in the synchronous environment – to be comfortable with the tools, their location, their execution, and their results (e.g.  does it look better to highlight a particular piece of text, or underline it?).

Creating and re-designing training to be delivered via a virtual technology can be a daunting task. 

There are many details to be aware of and manage.  If you find yourself being overwhelmed, concentrate on these three things and you will more than ensure your success.

Thinking Through Instructional Design Choices (Tailored Learning book excerpt)

Depending on the delivery method, designers must consider how these choices influence design, desired impact on the job, and any assessment plan.

Design Implications

Different delivery methods will change the design of the course. A classroom-based course can be very interactive and can include group activities in the design. However, an asynchronous would determine whether the interaction or activity is crucial to the learning, and if not, then determine how the same learning outcome could be achieved by an independent learner.

Impact on the Job

Ultimately, any training program should enable participants to return to their jobs and implement what they have learned during the training. To accomplish this, the learning must be designed in a way that is immediately applicable on the job, and the participant must be motivated to use the new knowledge and skills.

For example, in a classroom-based training course, a follow-on activity might be for the facilitators to check in with the participants once a week to see what kind of success they are having implementing their new knowledge and skills back on the job, as well as to offer support and coaching. However, if the training course is designed to be offered asynchronously, the coaching may have to be offered by the participant's sales manager or more senior salesperson in the office. While the same objective can be met, the methodology for meeting that objective might be quite different.

 The Assessment Plan

If the ultimate goal is to have an individual return to the job prepared to implement new knowledge and skills, then there should be some way of assessing whether the training has been successful in accomplishing that goal. Similar to on-the-job considerations, assessment approaches might differ depending on how the training is delivered. Therefore, the assessment for each objective will be defined once the training approach has been determined.

Blended Learning Uses the Best of all Training Methodologies

Organizations have displayed an increased interest in blended learning, which takes the best of all training methodologies from the perspectives of demographics, economics, and instruction.

Demographics

For the most part, the demographic factors affect learning in the workplace and concern the population of learners.  Especially in today's globally diverse work environments, organizations need to make adjustments for multiple languages, various time zones, multiple generations, and cultural differences.  While the content of the learning program may be the same (basic selling skills, for example), the design or delivery may have to be altered to accommodate varying demographics of the audience.

Economics

Often, training delivery options are dictated by the economics involved.  For example, classroom-based training will require travel expenses, maintaining or renting classroom space, and the printing and reproduction of materials.  Computer-based training options are more economical in many ways; however, they require their own set of economic decisions such as adequate server space, the hosting of a web site, and secure access and record keeping.

Instruction

The design of the actual instruction can vary greatly based on things such as individual learning styles, how immediate the need is for the training, or what access learners have to instructional methodologies.  Do they have individual computer workstations? Are they able to leave their jobs to attend a 4 hour or 8 hour training class?

Want to learn more? Order your own copy here !

Online Collaboration MUST be Designed

One of the most wonderful things about the online classroom is the ability to bring learners together who may otherwise be geographically separated. If one individual in New York and one individual in Arizona need the same training, the virtual classroom not only allows them to partake in that training without travel, but also to take that training with fellow learners.

Too often, however, the virtual classroom is used in presentation-mode rather than in collaborative-mode.

All virtual classroom platforms pledge that their product enables your organization and your learners to work collaboratively. And it is true. All virtual classroom platforms allow for learners to interact verbally, via chat or instant messenger, through the use of feedback symbols or emoticons, and often through breakout rooms which enable smaller discussions and group activities to occur.

This doesn't just happen spontaneously, however. It is imperative that the training be designed to be collaborative.

One of the basic tenets of adult learning is that adults prefer to learn collaboratively; in other words adults prefer to learn with others. Therefore, it is imperative that the focus of the learning process is on the learners working together, discussing, questioning, problem solving, and in general, contributing to the learning process and the learning content.

As Instructional Designers, we must put quite a bit of thought into how we can ensure the learners work together to achieve the learning outcome, rather than sitting at their individual sites being passive recipients of a presentation.

Powerpoint Slides are not Participant Guides

The content and design of a participant guide is critical to its effective use by the learner. Too often, reproductions of PowerPoint slides are considered participant guides. There is absolutely no point in providing participants a reproduction of what they are already looking at. A slide is simply a visual representation of a concept or a reminder of content - it is more for the faciltiator than the participant.

Perhaps the idea of slide-as-participant-guide is the reason participant materials are so often  ineffective  and therefore often are not provided at all.

Participant guides should include, at a minimum:

• The purpose and objectives of the course. Why am I here? What is the point of this training?

• The must-have, need-to-know concepts, so you can ensure the learners left the training with the essentials (facts, rules, procedures)

• Instructions for any activities they will participate in during class (Note: instructions should include both technical ( you will have 30 minutes to work with a group of 4) as well as instructional (your task is to identify three ways we use XYZ in our business and how that differentiates us from our competitors)

• Instructions for any exercises you may want them to complete post-training or instructions for how to begin to implement their new knowledge and skills back on the job (e.g. In the next 2 weeks you should X, Y and Z and report your results to your team lead)

• Any resources they may need on the job like links to web pages (internal or external), reports, books, contact information, etc.

• The participant guide should be just that, a GUIDE for the learning process; not a picture book of what you are presenting in class.

The Key to Outstanding Learning Outcomes: Design Learning Processes

Designing training programs can be an arduous process if you take on the responsibility for designing all the content yourself. You can lighten your load and also achieve a much greater learning outcome by designing learning processes rather than learning content.

In this article we will share three ways to design learning processes.

1. Use real work.

Learners prefer to accomplish real work while they are in the learning process. So rather than create a contrived situation or a case study scenario that is “representative” of real life, instead have the learners work on real work tasks. For instance, a financial services firm wanted to teach its sales people to read financial statements in order to find cross-selling opportunities in their current client-base. Rather than teach the sales people how to read “generic” financial statements and then leave them to transfer that knowledge and skill to their own client's financial statements, the learning session required them to bring the annual report from two of their current clients. While they learned to read a financial statement (such as a cash flow statement or a profit and loss statement) the learners were working and reviewing the actual financial statements of their own clients. This not only resulted in a better understanding of the learning but it also resulted in the learners being able to have actionable findings be the end of the training class.

2. Create the learning in real time.

Rather than teach your learners a new concept or skill in a large block of time and then expect them to be able to transfer all of that information to their real work responsibilities, break the training up into smaller, actionable learning objectives and on-the-job tasks. That will allow them to implement their new knowledge and skills in smaller chunks and result in more successful implementation on the job.

For example, a sales organization was training their sales people to listen for cues from prospects to better gauge if they could ask for an appointment or not. After a period of time  in the classroom, in which the sales people/learners learned the 5 types of responses which would either open a door for them or not, they were then given an hour to return to their desks and make up to 10 phone calls from their personal prospect list; making notes about types of conversations they had and whether they were able to secure an appointment or not. This approach not only allowed the salespeople to accomplish some real work during the training process, but also created a rich discussion upon returning to the training room because they each had real-world experience implementing their new skills and were able to compare and contrast their outcomes and ask additional questions of the instructor.

If they had simply completed the training and then returned to the job to (attempt to) implement what they had learned, when would they have ever had those rich discussions that serve to cement the learning for adults?

3. Have the learners contribute the content.

A third sales organization wanted to teach overcoming objections in relation to a very complex product that their sales people sold. Rather than try to anticipate all the objections and give the sales people pat answers in reply, the training was designed to first solicit the “5 toughest objection you've encountered when attempting to sell xyz” and then a game was created, dividing the larger group into 3 teams and giving each team the opportunity to craft an appropriate rebuttal to the objection.

The learning process went like this

Team A stated an objection to Team B~Team B had a period of time to craft an appropriate response~Team C had the opportunity to challenge Team B's response~Team A chose what they thought to be the best response and awarded a point to either Team B or Team C accordingly.

This learning process continued in a round-robin style, with Team B next sharing an objection, Team C getting the first opportunity to reply, and Team A being given the opportunity to “challenge” team C’s response, until all of the 15 toughest objections in regard to that topic had been addressed.

This process allowed the learners to share their real-world problems and to get the best and the brightest to assist them with being better prepared the next time they heard that objection.

The next time you are attempting to design learning content take a step back and see if instead you are able to design a learning process that better assists the learners in working with and assimilating that content.

Learning processes can often lead to greater learning outcomes because the learners are more engaged with the content, identify with it more clearly, and have less trouble transferring what they learned in the classroom to what they do on the job. An added bonus, from a logistical standpoint, is that designing a learning process requires much less updating in the future should the content itself change. 

Use your Network to Create + Supply Employee Training

Too often we isolate ourselves and think that we are the only organization that has a particular problem; for instance, quality control issues or the need for sales training on a particular piece of equipment that your company resells. We put a lot of time and effort in to creating a “customized” training program when, in all likelihood, that training program has already been created by somebody else.

Suppliers

Many suppliers already have training programs in place to train their own workforce. Simply ask if you can borrow their programs or perhaps pay a fee to use them with your employees. Often, it is possible to have your supplier-company salesperson or another representative provide the training for you. Case in point: a retail organization wanted to train its store clerks in athletic footwear construction and the best use of each brand or style of footwear so that they could be more responsive to customer needs. The first thing the operations manager of the retailer did was call all eight salespeople at the athletic footwear, manufacturers, and ask what resources were available that the retailer could have or borrow. All eight footwear manufacturers were eager to provide information and assistance with the training project. In fact, all eight salespeople came in on the same day, in one-hour blocks, to present what they felt the clerks should know about their particular brand of footwear and how it was different from the other manufacturers.

Another example comes from a restaurant trying to increase its dining checks by increasing the level of liquor sales per party. The focus was on wines and how they complemented the various menu items. One liquor salesman, in particular, had a passion for wine and was thrilled to be asked to provide a 90-minute workshop for the restaurant's employees on the different types of wines and the different menu items that they complemented. The salesperson did the training on his own time, certainly with the expectation that his sales would increase if the restaurant’s retailing of wine increased, but also because he was thrilled to talk about something he really loved.

So first: think about how your suppliers can provide you with training or training resources.

Client Companies

Another approach is to look to your client-companies – perhaps your clients have already solved the challenge of lean manufacturing in their organization and would be happy to include your employees in the training that they already offer, or to loan their trainers to your organization to conduct the same type of training. Don’t think of yourself as isolated and trying to solve a problem that is unique to your organization because 80% of the time it is not unique – pick up the phone and call a few of your clients to see if they have faced (and surmounted) the same challenges.

Cooperative Relationships

The last suggestion is to actively seek out similar companies in your industry. As an example, a southeastern state found itself with under-qualified bridge and road inspectors due to an early retirement package offered by the state. The employees that were left did not have as many years experience on the job and no longer had mentors from whom to learn. The state realized it had to create a new training process, but was wise enough to realize it could not be the only state in the nation with that need. So the state’s transportation commissioner called 30 of his colleagues across the US and asked them if they had encountered the same challenge. Of the 30 colleagues contacted, two offered their training program (materials) in their entirety to use as a model or to use carte blanche.

Before attempting to solve a “training problem” in your organization think creatively and cooperatively about who else might also have the need and has perhaps already solved it for you. Very often you will find that you have resources and support at your disposal, quite in abundance, simply for the asking.

5 Questions to Ask a Stakeholder Before Designing Training

Performance problems can be caused by a myriad of things. Perhaps your organization has undergone a downsizing, or perhaps a department is understaffed or their equipment is unreliable. Unfortunately many managers and organizations assume that poor performance is directly linked to a lack of skill or knowledge which can be solved by training.

In my 20 plus years of consulting experience, I’ve found that what is initially presented as a training problem is often something else entirely.

Before embarking on any training program it is imperative that a needs analysis is conducted in order to pinpoint the exact cause of poor performance and to ascertain if the poor performance can be solved by applying training. Unfortunately, most organizations skip the needs analysis, assuming that they already know the cause.

The following 5 questions will help you to pinpoint the true cause of a performance problem and also help with the design process by ascertaining what training truly needs to be created. Ask these questions of the individual in the organization who is requesting that you design and develop a training program to address an assumed training issue.

1. What is the problem you are experiencing?

Often you'll hear a request along the lines of, “My sales team needs training on teamwork." Well that’s putting the cart before the horse, isn't it? Ask the requestor to give you a big picture view of the factors they see as contributing to the poor performance. Do not accept their definition of the performance problem (in this case, lack of team work) until you hear more about the work environment, the intended audience, their job related duties, etc.

2. What are the symptoms that led you to believe this was a problem?

Notice the key word “symptoms." Very often what presents itself to be a performance problem is truly a symptom of a deeper or related organizational problem. For instance, a large publishing company believed it needed customer service training because it came in dead last in the customer service category in a survey published by its industry magazine. When more investigation was done, it was determined that the organization was suffering from an inadequate technology system that led to the symptom of poor customer service.

3. Why do you think this is a training need?

Remember, the person requesting you to design and deliver training has their own perspective on the situation. When this question was posed to a retail executive his response was that a particular department's reports were consistently wrong and therefore they must not know how to use the reporting software. The executive made a huge leap from the evidence of erroneous reports to employee’s lack of skill or knowledge. The intended trainees will also have their own perspective and it's a good idea to ask them, at some point, if they feel a need for training based on the evidence at hand. When further investigation was done with the intended trainee group, from the above mentioned retail organization, it was discovered that the employees lacked basic math skills but knew how to use the software quite well.

4. What organizational factors might be playing a role?

When organizations are in flux, a sense of ennui trickles down to every individual's performance. If the organization has been talking about an acquisition or merger, it can cause people to change their work habits. If a downsizing has occurred and more work needs to be accomplished with less people, it’s logical that poor performance will follow. Perhaps the department has had three different managers in the last 18 months, and every manager has a different perspective on how the work should be done; eventually people start to second-guess their abilities and perform at a minimal level in order to “play it safe.”

5. What training already exists?

Often you'll find that a “training problem” is a frequent issue within the organization, and one that has been addressed in the past. Determining what training already exists is helpful in two ways: 1) it helps you to determine what training people have had in the past and alerts you to look for reasons why that training did not “stick,” and 2) it should minimize your need to reinvent the wheel because it's probable that you can repurpose the existing training content.

Keep It Suitably Simple

While there is still a need for formally-packaged courses, these are for special occasions, when we or our employers require some formal record of achievement (or at least of participation). In the meantime, there's a job to be done, and that's far better achieved through access to videos, PDFs, forums, blogs and simple web articles. These are much easier to produce than highly-structured e-learning and just as easy to consume. Nothing lasts more than five minutes and the emphasis is strictly on practical application.

Excerpted from Clive on Learning - Clive Shephard's blog. You can read the full text here: ttp://tinyurl.com/cc9kwhn

Bring Your Wii to Work!

Too often, e-learning modules end up being glorified PowerPoint presentations. The learner reads through the information in a linear, beginning-to-end format, and is tested for knowledge retention at the end. As detailed in 5 Gaming Elements for Effective E-Learning (Training Industry Quarterly, Fall 2012), there are five takeaways from video games that can take e-learning to the next level.

• Contextualization takes the e-learning out of the void, and puts it into a time and place, such as a scenario or story that provides the back bone for the training.

• Curiosity draws the learner into exploring the e-learning module, enticing them to completeness.

• Control allows participants to direct their own learning, driving the direction of the training, and causing them to retain more information due to engagement.

• Cooperation / Socialization integrates a very popular factor of many online games, removing feelings of isolation and fostering teamwork.

• Engagement / Interactivity puts the learners in situations where they are participating in the training from the start, rather than at the end of a module.

And with the growing popularity of BYOD (bring your own device) we could have everyone bring their Wii controller to work! <grin>

Formalize Informal Training in Your Organization

About 80% of the training that occurs in the workplace doesn't occur in a formal training program.  About 80% of the training that occurs is just one person assisting another in an informal way.  You stand up and look over your cubicle and ask your cubicle mate, “Do you know how to take text out of table and just make it into a paragraph?”  Or, a sales manager decides he's going to take his administrative assistant out on the road for a day so she can actually meet the customers and better understand what their customer's needs are.

This interview, with Dr. Nanette Miner, will discuss ways to formalize informal learning in your organization.

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Miner: Most of new-hire training is what we consider “follow Joe around” training.  This means that you hook a new person up with a more experienced person - follow Joe around and he'll show you how to do your job. Although this is efficient, there are many problems with this style of training. If you have more than one person who is “Joe,” in this case, the training can be different from individual to individual because every trainer is going to emphasize what they think is important or perhaps show shortcuts, or “their way” of doing things which may not be the prescribed way of doing things. So while it is efficient and it doesn't take a formal training process, in the end you can actually have some pretty poorly trained new hires.

One of the things you can do to keep that process in place while making it a little more formal is to create check lists of training so that you have some kind of assurance that everybody's getting the same training process.  For instance, in the retail industry there's a lot of turnover. Organizations tend to hire clerks on an individual basis.  If you had a new hire training checklist you could at least ensure that everybody was getting the same training on the cash register.  For instance you’d show them how to ring a cash sale, how to ring a charge sale, how to run a coupon, how to process a refund – these are a the topics any new hire would need to know, but you could “formalize” the training by prescribing the order of learning from easiest (cash sale) to hardest (refund).

Another way to formalize the training would be to recruit individuals who are interested in training.  Believe it or not, there are a lot of people in organizations who love to transmit their knowledge to others and would be happy to do it for free.  Recruit those people to serve as mentors or coaches for everybody, not just new hires, but everybody.  They can be the go-to person when a new process needs to be created or a process runs into a problem; this person can be the one who figures it out and then trains everyone else in the “new way.”

Another idea would be to make training the responsibility of everybody in the organization.  Require everyone to take on new learning and then share it with others.  What we often do, as individuals, is figure something out on our own and say, “Oh cool, now I know how to do that,”  and we don't ever share it with anybody else.  I remember reading about a software company that made it everybody's responsibility to take on new learning to the point where it was in their performance review every year.  What did you learn this year and how did you disseminate it to the rest of the organization?  So, the employee might run a lunch and learn or they might write something up in the company newsletter.The point is that everyone is learning all the time, and we should formalize a way to share that learning.

T/D: Thank you Dr. Miner, those are great tips in making it everyone's responsibility and sharing the knowledge.  Next month we will finalize this interview by focusing on Accessing Employee Training through your local College or University.

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Dr Nanette Miner has been an instructional designer for over two decades. She is President and Managing Consultant for The Training Doctor which specializes in working with subject matter experts to take the knowledge from their heads and design learning in such a way that others can adopt and implement the training immediately.   She is also the author of The Accidental Trainer and co-author of Tailored Learning: Designing a Blend that Fits.

Incentivize your training - a great model

On September 29 a concert was held in New York City's Central Park to bring awareness to worldwide issues such as disease, poverty and lack of drinking water. 

The concert was free and 60,000 people attended BUT they had to earn the right to attend. First, they had to register at a website. Then, they had to earn points to get in to a lottery to be awarded the free tickets. They earned points by watching various videos on the issues above and / or then forwarding those important messages to their friends via Facebook or Twitter.

What a GREAT model for making your training viral! Especially when you are constrained by having to disseminate your learning through asynchronous methods (in other words, people will engage in the learning on their own time and schedule).  Why not have prizes or awards for completing the training and certain tasks along the way?

If you'd like to read more about the concert, click here

Graphic tools for instructional designers

Here's a great blog posting with a collection of graphic tools we should possess as instructional designers.  Remember the addage: a picture is worth 1,000 words. We'll add a caveat: only if it's a good picture. <grin>

When does the learning occur?

Let’s preface this article with two assumptions:

1. Most people who design training are not schooled in how to design training, these days. They are more typically subject matter experts.

2. Most people who ARE schooled in training still are not schooled in adult learning theory.

Over the years, we have noticed a recurring fault: designers (and facilitators) of training often equate participating in an activity with actually learning from it.  Not so.  Here are two examples:

• A course in sales training, that we designed  for a client, required a breakout group activity. At the end of the activity, each group was to present back their outcomes.  As each group finished their presentation the facilitator replied with “good dialogue, good dialogue” and then moved on to the next group.  The facilitator spent NO time asking for further interpretation of their decisions or outcomes, he spent NO time comparing one group’s response to another, he never asked any other group to respond to or ask questions of the presenting group.

• A training design that we reviewed for a client included a 10-minute, independent, web browsing activity in which learners were to research the “key selling features” of a particular product. Once the activity was over, the course moved on to the next topic. There was no discussion of what people had found. There was no compare and contrast. There was no knowing if you did the activity right or not!

So the question we pose is this: When does the learning occur?

Lucky for you, we’ll give you the answer as well: It occurs in the debrief. The debrief happens after the activity. Rarely, if EVER, do participants get the ah-ha moment from simply participating in an activity. Ninety-nine percent of the time it occurs during the debrief when they are asked to process, sort and supply their findings. When they hear what others, or other groups, have come up with and compare it to their own. When they are asked “so what does this mean for you, on the job?”

Simply designing or facilitating an activity is not sufficient.  The REAL learning comes after the activity.  Discussions with peers, working collaboratively or competitively, all help to ensure that learners actually process what has just occurred and gain meaning from it.

Ensure that you think that far ahead when you design for your learners.