TRAINING DESIGNERS GUIDE TO

SAVING THE WORLD

6 STEPS TO RELEVANT, POWERFUL TRAINING

Watch the cartoon

(c) 2013 by Cathy Moore
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Cartoon images from PowToon

Contents
1. Ask the right questions __________________________ 1
2. Set a measurable goal ___________________________ 4
3. Identify what people need to DO ____________________ 7
4. Identify why they arent doing it ___________________ 11
5. Design experiences, not information ________________ 15
6. Evaluate it in the real world ______________________ 21

1
Do you want to create training that has a real impact on the world? If so, youre in the right ebook.
Youre six steps away from creating lean, lively instruction, and this first step is the most crucial.
Step 1 could be called disobey. Thats because many of us are expected to work like this:
A client (internal or external) comes to us and says, My team needs training. We say,
Okay! and we obediently create the kind of training they want.
However, unless your job title is Faceless Worker on the Course Production Line, your job is
not to create training on demand. Your job is to improve peoples performance so the

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organization meets its goals. Training is just one way to improve peoples performance, and if its
mis-applied, it wont work.
There are a bajillion problems that training cant solve. So while your job is to create training,
your job is also to not create training if it wont work. Instead, youll help the client find solutions
that really will work, such as new job aids, improvements to procedures, changes to the work
environment....
The client who just came through your door has a problem that at least in part cant be solved
through training. They just dont know it yet. So your goal in step 1 is to distract them a bit from
trainingtrainingtraining and get them talking about the problem. You want to win the chance to
analyze the problem so you can identify the bits that really can be solved with training and save
everyone from a huge waste of time.
The client came in thinking, Ill get an online course with narration based on the 187 slides
we used at the conference last year. You need to change their thinking to, Ill get a solution to this
problem thats been dragging down the whole department.
Lets practice. Your client says, I need an online course on widget wiggling for my customer
support people. Which of the following responses will give you the chance to grab the steering
wheel and prevent a training Titanic?
a. When do you need it?
b. Do you have content for it?
c. Have you considered face-to-face training?
d. Why do you need the course?
The magic word for step 1 is why. Use it in all its forms, and take full advantage of your role
as a clueless outsider who earnestly wants to understand the clients pain. Your job is to get the
client talking about the problem so that in future steps you can pull more specific information out of
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them. Dont let the client say, Online course, please, dump a stack of PowerPoints on your desk,
and walk out.
Here are some questions that can get the client to stick around and talk with you:

What problems are you seeing?

How long has it been going on?

What have you tried in the past?

Again, your goal is to get the client talking and to position yourself as someone who wants to solve
their problem. Youre moving yourself from training developer to performance consultant.
To practice this first conversation, try this interaction on my blog. And for a dose of the
gumption you might need to question your client, check out the L&D manifesto.

Dealing with challenges

Challenge

Try this

Your job title really is Faceless

If you were hired as a course developer but want to improve

Worker on the Course

the quality of your projects, your best remedy really is to gently

Production Line or close to it.

take the reins of a project and educate your client as Im

describing here. This might include educating your boss as
well. Sometimes you just need one good win, and then future
clients will come wanting what you did for the previous one.

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Now that your client is actually talking with you, your next challenge is to get them to identify a
measurable goal for the project. This goal should be an observable change in the performance
of the organization that your project will help bring about.
You need to do this for two reasons:
1. It helps your project actually have an impact.
2. It makes analysis and design much easier once you have a clearly focused goal, it guides
every other decision.
For the goal to work, it needs to be specific, measurable, and time-bound.
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Some examples:

"Technical support calls about the database will decrease 10% by 4th quarter."

"New payroll staff will correctly process payroll within two weeks of their hire."

"Ethics violations will decrease X% by YYYY."

Chances are, your client has only a vague goal that isnt tied to a performance metric. Theyre
probably thinking something like, My goal is to train everyone in how to use the database by
September. How do you get them to identify a measure that shows how youll improve the
organizations performance?
These questions can help:

What are you currently measuring thats related to the problem? (support calls, error
reports, rejected records, customer dissatisfaction, turnaround time...)

How will this measure change if our project is successful?

If youre not measuring anything now, what could we conceivably measure?

How will we know weve succeeded? For example, what will change on our quarterly
report?

If your client wants training on soft skills, like collaborative management techniques, they
might assume that theres no way to measure it. However, if the company uses a performance
appraisal system, there could easily be a relevant score already in use. And here are other
measurements that could be useful, depending on the soft skill being targeted:

Employee engagement survey results

Employee retention rates

Customer satisfaction ratings

Absenteeism

Legal complaints

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How long does this take? Usually, it doesnt take long. Ive helped clients not only
establish a solid goal but also complete the next step in one two-hour call.

Dealing with challenges

Challenge

Try this

The client just wants people to

Ask,

"be aware" of something.

What will change when people are aware of it?

What will go wrong if they're not aware of it?

How can we tell looking at the performance of the unit that

people are aware of it?

If Bob is aware of the thing and Jane isn't, how can we tell
by watching them do their jobs? How does that affect the
performance of the organization?

See some more ideas here.

The client is reluctant to say that

Emphasize that your project isnt going to create the change all

the project will improve

on its own. Its part of a larger business strategy (or it should

business performance.

be!). If necessary, word the goal as "Contribute to [business

goal]."

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Now that youve established a goal, your client might say, Great, now we know where were going.
Heres the information that will get us there. Please turn it into training.
However, stuffing information into peoples brains probably wont achieve your performance
goal. Even if people know something useful, that doesnt mean theyll do something useful. Action,
not knowledge, changes business performance. So we first need to identify what people need
to do to reach our goal, before we talk about what information they might need.
This step has these extremely useful side effects:

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It keeps everyone focused on performance change, not information. This weakens your
clients obsession with their existing content and reduces the likelihood that theyll insist
on an information dump.

It will help you identify useful practice activities, if training really is needed.

This seems like a good time to bring in action mapping. Its a visual way to keep track of your
goal, necessary actions, and training materials or other solutions. At this point, weve identified a
goal, and now were identifying the real-world actions (on-the-job-behaviors) that people need to
take to reach that goal. A simple map could look like this:

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Examples of actions
Actions are specific, observable behaviors, such as:

Choose the correct category for each new client in the database.

Replace the dortlong when its parametizer turns blue.

Respond within 24 hours to complaints about site performance.

Encourage the team member to describe their career goals on their own, without telling
them what would be best.

All of the above are behaviors that an observer could see and record. The following arent actions
and dont go on your map:

Appreciate the different perspectives brought by diverse employees.

Understand the importance of protecting data privacy.

Be aware of the legal risks of plagiarism.

Feel more comfortable using the database.

While appreciation and understanding can motivate people, the only thing that affects business
performance is action. Thats our focus right now.
If youre used to writing performance objectives, this step probably looks familiar. However,
were ruthlessly focusing on observable behaviors that occur on the job. Were not including test
behaviors like Define empathic facilitation unless the person actually needs to stand up on the job
and recite the definition. Instead, were looking for something like, When leading a meeting,
encourage participants to share their emotions as well as their ideas.

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Dealing with challenges

Challenge
You have a huge number of

Try this

actions.

Have your client or subject matter expert identify the most

common mistakes or highest-impact behaviors and focus
on those.

Is your audience too diverse, covering too many different

jobs? Consider breaking your analysis and project into
different modules for different jobs.

Are your actions super-specific, where one training activity

could easily cover several actions? Consider grouping them.

You have only 3 or 4 actions.

Have you broken them down enough? Consider limiting

each action to what someone can do in 20 minutes on the
job.

Is one of your actions follow the procedure? Break it

down into the major steps of the procedure, so you can
identify which steps need which type of help.

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4
So far, you and the client have identified a measurable goal and listed what people need to do to
reach that goal. This might have taken a couple of hours if the project was decently focused to start
with. Now, your client is deep into analyzing their problem, and its the perfect time to help them
find the best solution to each aspect.
The easiest way to break it down is to focus on one action at a time and ask, Why arent
people doing it? You might consider whether the problem falls into one of these four categories:

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Environment: Buggy software, unsupportive management, disorganized manuals,

inefficient procedures, a stressful company culture the environment is everything that
creates the world in which the employee works. Training is unlikely to fix environmental
problems unless the problems are created by trainable behaviors, such as heavy-handed
management.

Knowledge: If the employee simply doesnt know some fact that they need to know in
order to perform the action, congratulations, youve got yourself a knowledge problem,
one of the easiest problems to fix. However, dont assume that the fix is training. Often, a
better solution is a quick reference or other job aid thats on hand when the employee
needs it.

Skills: For example, the clients team members tell you that its hard to optimize ledfars,
but once you have some practice at it and know some tricks, youll be optimizing like a
whiz. This is another relatively simple problem, and it could be well-suited to some type of
training.

Motivation: Be careful with this. Its common for clients to complain that team members
simply arent motivated, but often their lack of motivation is a side effect of one of the
three preceding types of problems. If you harangue me to work quickly but make me use
slow, buggy software, I guarantee I will be unmotivated, and no amount of training will fix
me. In the rare instance that the problem appears to be purely a motivational one, its
possible that some type of messaging could help, but theres zero guarantee that training is
the best way to deliver that message.

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Your goal: Target the solutions

Youre taking the time to find the why not? of each action because you want to create powerful,
targeted solutions. By finding the best solution to each individual problem, youll create the most
lean and effective solution overall.
For example, lets say that your client is a huge law firm. One action they need is for people to
enter the correct code in a database to record a new clients situation. For example, a client who is
suing a doctor is a code XG. There are a lot of codes, and the only time people need them is when
theyre sitting at the computer entering a new client in the database.
The traditional training approach would be to walk through each code in an online course
or face-to-face session and then practice applying them as if they needed to be memorized. But they
dont need to be memorized. Why not just have them pop up in an easy-to-read reference on the
data entry screen and skip the training altogether?
These are the kinds of quick wins youre looking for. You want solutions that remove the need
for training youre solving problems with job
aids, improvements to procedures, changes to
how software works.... Then, finally, what
remains are problems that really are best
approached through training, plus a few
problems that no one involved in the project can
solve.
This is easier than it sounds. Theres an 8minute walkthrough of an example on my blog,
complete with a handy flowchart.
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Dealing with challenges

Challenge
Youre not sure if a knowledge

Try this

If the people performing the action should memorize the

gap should be addressed

information, provide it through an activity that helps them

through training or a job aid.

practice recalling it (in other words, training). If they dont

need to memorize it, a job aid or other performance
support is a better solution.

To decide if they need to memorize it, consider: Do the

people performing the action need to do it quickly and
often? If they have to stop and look something up, will their
workflow or credibility be affected? If you answer yes, you
should help the workers memorize and recall the
information in realistic simulations.

Your analysis reveals that

Try to identify some behaviors that could have an effect,

training isnt likely to solve any

however small, on the problem, and focus your

part of the problem, but youre

intervention on those.

still required to deliver a course

For example, if the problem is cultural, such as high-

due to an intractable political

pressure management, identify some behaviors that could

situation.

improve that culture, and target those.

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5
Youve identified what people need to do to reach your goal, and youve found several ways to help
them do it without training. Now, finally, youre down to a few on-the-job behaviors that will
probably benefit from some type of training. What will that training look like?
Your client might be expecting it to look like this:

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Thats the classic information presentation followed by a knowledge check that tests whether
learners can recognize a factoid they were exposed to 30 seconds ago. But you havent come this far
just to create a passive presentation.
Knowledge alone wont reach your goal. People have to take action. Your goal now is to help
them practice that action. To do that, youre going to design experiences, not information.
Instead of presenting a bunch of information, youll plunge learners into a realistic activity
that contains the information they might need. For example, if in the real world the necessary
information is in a job aid, dont put the information in your course. Leave it in the job aid and
design an activity that has learners practice using the real-world job aid.
Heres an
example. This course
on needle safety
doesnt start with You
should always rinse a
needle injury with blah
blah blah. Instead, it
immediately puts
learners into a realistic
situation. The information is optional and
includes the realworld job aid (the
sharps poster).

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This sort of activity obviously doesnt require high-end technology, and it works in face-toface training, too. The main differences from traditional training design are:

We dont present the information first.

Instead, we throw learners into a realistic simulation of the kind of decision they have to
make on the job.

We make the information an optional part of the activity, ideally in the format the learner
will use on the job.

Heres another difference: We dont preach at people in the feedback. Instead, we just show
them the result of their decision, and they figure out like the adults that they are whether their
decision was a good one.
For example, lets say that a learner in the needle safety course has been working at the
hospital for awhile.
Everyone knows you should
pour Betadine on a wound,
she thinks, without looking at
the sharps poster or SOP. So
she says that Magda should
pour Betadine on the wound.
Heres the feedback
she gets. It describes what
happened as a result of her
decision and shows where on
the job aid she should have
looked.
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Traditional training would say, Incorrect. You should do X instead. But how memorable is
that? Its more memorable and realistic to infect Magda with Hepatitis C.
This sort of design helps people learn from experience in a safe but realistic setting. It also
makes the material feel like a stream of activities, rather than an information presentation.

Scenarios
You could call the needlestick activity a mini-scenario: It has a realistic setting, a character with a
name, and a decision that has consequences, but its limited to one or maybe two scenes. Miniscenarios are great for the vast majority of activities in which you want people to practice making
decisions.
For more complex situations, you might want a branching scenario, in which different
decisions lead down different paths, each with multiple scenes. Branching scenarios are useful if
your learners need to:

Change attitudes or assumptions that affect how they behave in complex situations

Recover from mistakes in a long or complex process

Make decisions in extended, ambiguous situations

Decide when to stop gathering information and act

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For example, in this branching scenario for the US Army, we wanted to help soldiers develop
their ability to see from the perspective of another culture and to practice recovering from mistakes
made in an important conversation. One-scene mini-scenarios wouldnt have let us do that.
Finally, scenarios dont have to be slickly produced to do the job. Heres an example of a textonly scenario produced using a simple HTML tool. For more ideas, see the activity design category of
my blog.
Heres how a simple action map could look at this point. In this example, weve brainstormed
an activity idea for the on-the-job behavior Identify the widget that best meets the customers
needs.
The activity will include two
types of information. Well
offer optional information
listing the basic widget
features. Well help people
memorize it by making it
available in the first few
scenarios but not in later
ones. Well also include
detailed specs by linking to
the spec sheet that all sales
people have on the job. This
will always be available.

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Dealing with challenges

Challenge
You have limited tools or time.

Try this

Try a text-based mini-scenario or branching scenario.

Novels have used it for centuries.

Show stakeholders a working prototype of a challenging

but bling-free activity to get them to see that cognitive
challenge is more interesting than bling.

Your scenarios are too easy.

Focus on the grey areas; add realistic complications if

necessary.

Focus on the mistakes that subject matter experts have

identified as the most common ones and tempt learners to
make those mistakes.

Theres no clear right or wrong

answer; it depends.

Create a model that will help learners make good decisions

and have them apply the model correctly in the scenario.

Write realistic, specific scenarios in which some decisions

will bring results that are clearly better than others.

Use multiple mini-scenarios to cover different situations or

different shades of grey.

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6
Youve found quick, in-the-workflow solutions for several problems, youve designed training for a
few others, and I hope youve delivered everything by enlisting the support of managers. And by
starting with a measurable goal, youve baked evaluation into the project from the start.
Use that goal to check how well your solutions seem to be working. In addition to looking at
the change you and your client wanted to create, also consider more qualitative reports. For
example, what do managers say about the change in performance?
Also, take a tip from Robert Brinkerhoffs Success Case Method and run a broad survey to
find two groups: people whose performance has improved markedly, and people whose performance
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hasnt improved. Talk in depth to representatives of both groups to figure out what worked and what
didnt.
Since many of your solutions are actually new job aids, tweaks to procedures, or other
changes in the workflow, you can improve them on the fly. For example, if your interviews reveal
that one of the new job aids is hard to use, within hours you can put a better version in use. For this
reason, dont wait until your goal date to start your evaluation. Start talking to people soon after the
solutions are in place so you can improve them as soon as possible.
Finally, once youve gotten your results, share them. Write up a brief report summarizing the
problem, the solutions, and the resulting improvement in business performance. Share what you
learned so future projects can be more successful and so future clients come to you looking for
performance improvement, not just training.

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Theres more!

Ideas & workshops for training designers: cathy-moore.com

Hands-on guide to designing lean, lively elearning

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