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.

Three Predictions for Workplace Training - Post Corona Virus

Across the world, the universe of the “workplace” has suffered a stunning blow in the last few months and many industries and companies will come back as a contracted version of their former selves. One department that is likely to take a hit is training and professional development. Here are my predictions for what T+D will look like in the coming few years.

Note: This article was originally published by Training Industry Magazine.

Prediction #1 virtual training will really take off – for 2 reasons 

As a consultant who specialized in designing and delivering virtual training for about 15 years, it always amazed me when I encountered a client to whom it was all new; but I had one or two clients such as this each year.  There are two important reasons why I predict virtual training will become more in demand than ever going forward. (Note: Virtual training is conducted live, with other participants and a facilitator, as opposed to distance learning or e-learning, which is really self-study,)

First, now that many companies have made the switch to work-from-home (WFH) they realize it’s not as impossible as they feared. One of our clients is a call center who finally started work-from-home options due to the virus. A call center customer service rep is definitely not a role that requires sitting with others in a central location – but the client was simply resistant to the idea of WFH. Now that they realize people can work from home, it’s not such a hard sell to get them to accept people learning from home as well.

The second reason virtual training will take off is because it is so affordable. Post-corona virus, those companies that are still in business are going to have to use their resources wisely. During the Great Recession I managed a new-hire on-boarding process for a client for five years. We onboarded approximately 300 people, in 10-12 groups, throughout the year, all virtually.  Virtual training is convenient, affordable, and logistically a lot simpler.

There are also a number of reasons why virtual learning is a preferable methodology for adult learners, such as spaced learning and built-in time for reflection – but that is fodder for another article.

Prediction #2 companies will realize the value and necessity of cross-training

When I first became a consultant in the early 1990’s, one of the first projects I worked on was a cross-training project for a manufacturing firm in which everyone on the manufacturing floor was “upskilled” (to upskill means to teach a current employee additional skills) to be able to backfill at least two other positions.

The curriculum was designed to require them to learn five new topics in total, but the remaining three topics were allowed to be knowledge-based (such as understanding more about procurement or finance) as opposed to skill-based. The objective of the training was to have each employee paying the company back in multiple ways.  For example, a machinist who had additional training in finance was more likely to complete routine maintenance knowing that the cost of maintenance vs. repair was enormous. 

I thought the “multiple skills” idea was quite brilliant and have been amazed, over the course of my career, by how few companies do it.  What is more prevalent in training – especially in the last twenty years – is training for depth, not breadth. If someone enters a company in a finance role, more than likely all their company sponsored training will be focused solely on finance. They will never be exposed to marketing or HR or operations. Through training, companies have kept employees in silos and by doing so they have hobbled their agility. Companies will be forced to lay off their over-abundance of marketers (for example) while simultaneously hiring salespeople because not one of those marketers was cross trained in sales.

This shuffling of people like pieces on a chess board has all sorts of negative ramifications, such as recruiting costs and a loss of company history / knowledge; but again, that is fodder for a different article.

Prediction #3 – subject-matter-experts will be more in demand as trainers than ever before

Having been a consultant for nearly thirty years, I have seen this pendulum swing back and forth a few times. First there are fully staffed, centralized training departments who run training like its own business with marketing and sales, delivery of a product / service, and requests for feedback. Then an economic shakeup swings the pendulum to focus on what is truly needed for individuals to learn and that is the transfer of business-critical knowledge from those who have it to those who do not. This often means direct contact between subject matter experts (SMEs) and newbies, eliminating the “middle-man” of the training department.

Training and development has always been seen as a cost-center (which it is not) and is always one of the last functions to be brought back online after an economic downturn.  But a lack of a training department doesn’t stop the need for training such as new-hire onboarding or skill-specific training. In the coming years, companies will redeploy resources and the training will more than likely be done by individuals who are subject matter experts.

While using SMEs as trainers is a great cost-saving tactic, it doesn’t result in the best training outcomes. SMEs aren’t knowledgeable about the best ways to transmit content to learners (hint: lectures are not the way), and they tend to start at a much higher-level of capability than their audience because they forget what it was like to be new and unskilled. They have the “curse of knowledge,” as this 2017 TICE article explains. The best way to utilize SMEs as trainers could be an article - or a book - all its own.

As business returns to “normal,” companies will be altered in many ways. Underlying those changes will be the need for cost-savings and efficiencies which can be achieved, in the realm of training and development, through virtual training, cross-training, and using subject-matter-experts as the deliverers of training. The next decade will see a “bold new future” for training and professional development; will your organization be ready to adapt?

Taking the ME out of SME

In the design work that we do at The Training Doctor, we are more often than not working with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs).Subject Matter Experts are crucial for us to design technically accurate training processes as well as understanding what an expert in a role must be able to do.

Very often these same Subject Matter Experts then become the facilitators of the training because the content is so technical or proprietary. One of the consistent struggles of the SME is recognizing the right perspective. We once heard a SME described as a person who is captivated by "the cool" and the "unique." So, in other words, when training a class of newbies, they might talk about a situation that happened in 2007 that was a real anomaly, but would never happen again. The problem is - a newbie doesn't know that this is non-essential information.

So, one of the practices we have to teach and enforce with Subject Matter Expert facilitators is that the course is not about them. It's not about showing off their expertise or focusing on the topics that are stimulating to them.

What's important is to get a Subject Matter Expert to recognize that when they are acting in the role of facilitator or trainer, the learning is not "all about SME," their focus should be on the learner and what the learner needs to know to be successful on the job.