Award-Winning Projects

I recently returned from Santa Clara where I accepted on behalf of the Allen team an award for our work with AHRQ on courseware for their healthcare database. This is the eighth time we have won a Brandon Hall Excellence in Learning Award for Custom Courseware. The obvious question winning brings to mind is, “What we can do better to make all our courses award winners?”

Then again, maybe the obvious is dead wrong! Completing over 100 projects each year and with an average employee tenure of ten years, most of Allen’s team has touched an award winner sometime during their stay here. While awards and industry recognition give the market a window to our dedication to instructional design, high quality is a benchmark first and foremost applied internally at our organization. In fact, internal benchmarking and measurement are crucial for anyone involved in training at any level. So what are some awards we as training organizations could use to measure ourselves? Here are some recommendations:

The On Time, On Budget Award
Training projects have many moving parts. Design, content creation, reviews and large companies can create bureaucratic processes. Very often, the art of good design must overcome the uncertainty of training development by injecting project management and processes that make sure the project is brought home on time and on budget. Give yourself an award star if you are able to overcome the nature of the beast and consistently make your projects come in on time and on budget.

The Optimal Design Award
How often are we asked to do things we know from experience are wrong or will be ineffective? As a vendor or as an internal training group, you serve groups who may not be as sensitive to the impact quality design has on training. You get an award star if you are able to inject the appropriate amount of instructional design while maximizing its impact on any given project based on its budget, timeline, and learning or training challenge. After all, your creativity and professionalism is measured as much as by what you produce as by your ability to find the optimal solution for any given training situation.

The Trust Award
While I often will laud the process of good training development, we must recognize that what we do for a living has many intangibles. Much like our favorite teacher in high school, a certain level of trust must develop between teacher and student to raise the quality of learning and transfer. In the training development process, trust is a crucial component that must be nurtured—it doesn’t rely on a hierarchy of the classroom but is build on relationships. Have you been there for your customers? Were recommendations from each side to the other addressed and discussed? Did the trust you have given and taken lead to a better quality project and experience? Give yourself an award star if the project you have undertaken has helped your customer build a trusting relationship with your group.

The Designer Growth Award
Lastly is the most overlooked award in our business, The Designer Growth Award. How often do we find ourselves doing the same old thing over and over again? Have we boxed in or templated our design and creativity? I firmly believe that not all projects are created equally from the perspective of the demands they make on creative people. You get an award star if your project was able to challenge and move you forward as a better designer or project manager.

Since 2000 alone, we have been fortunate to win 27 awards for our work with our clients. While each award stands on its own, taken together they make a bold statement to the industry about our philosophy:

> Never abandon good design
> Always remember that “optimal” can be synonymous with “great”
> Trust is the fuel that good projects run on
> Never stop perfecting the art and science of good instructional design