Do you have a road map?

I’ve been working for the past several weeks with one of our clients in direct selling. We’ve collaborated with them to produce a robust curriculum for their U.S. representatives (in both English and Spanish) over the past four years. Now, we’re in the planning stages for a redesign and alignment of the global curriculum. One of the planning tools that has been especially useful is a curriculum map.

Of course, the idea here is nothing new; it’s the training equivalent to innovating on a cocktail napkin or on the back of an envelope. Creating a picture of the solution, however primitive, inevitably leads to a more structured analysis. I’ve been in many sessions where we start with putting ideas on post-it notes so that we can quickly move around the various components of the curriculum and class them into categories. I think that this sort of approach works well, especially if you’re in brainstorming mode.

At some point, however, someone needs to take the notes and ideas back to the cave to try to find the tree, web, flow, hierarchy, phases, or tracks that will best represent the collection of post-it notes or flip charts. This is where a little creative magic is needed to figure out how to create symmetry out of chaos. Sometimes the process highlights relevant gaps and other times it can create the impression of gaps that are really not that relevant. The lesson that I learn again and again is that this is one of those times where your mistakes are going to be very valuable. You take your best guess and then take it back to the group. You’ll then arrive at a level of analysis that you probably wouldn’t have achieved in your brainstorming session, regardless of how long you drag it out.

I try to encourage my team to map things out visually, not just curricula but course content, navigation schemes, wireframes, facilitator guides, etc. We have one wall of our office dedicated to poster-size versions of some of the best of these diagrams. To me, it’s a hall of fame for projects where our thought work was world-class, where we had a plan and were clearly targeting specific objectives. One of the best testaments to the value of these maps is that the ones on the wall are nearly all outdated. As we learn more and as our client partners learn more, we revise, edit, and improve our plans.

Well, it’s back to my pretty picture of the global curriculum I’ve been working on. My three phases are now four and I’ve consolidated four tracks into three.

Pointers for Pre-Training

Over the past few months, we’ve been brainstorming with several of our clients on those parts of the training experience that prepare learners, build enthusiasm, and “sell” forthcoming or existing training solutions. We sometimes refer to such pre-training efforts as “internal marketing,” making sure that your audience is not only aware of the available training but that they are also willing to invest their time and effort. Truth be told, this is actually the fun part of instructional design. We’ve been talking with AVON about the possibility of introducing a viral-style video to show how not to sell their products. If we can make it relevant and funny, the representatives will distribute the video clip peer-to-peer—simultaneously distributing our message that if you take the training, you can avoid similar disasters yourself. So-called “non-examples” are often the most obvious choice for this type of pre-training because they can use extreme cases and humor to emphasize the importance of doing something the right way.

There are often some very practical reasons for pre-training. One of our clients is developing a series of courses where the content is not readily available and where the review process necessitates time-consuming legal reviews. To ensure that learners feel more immediate support and the assurance that training is on its way, we developed brief web-based previews to highlight the types of topics and courses that are being developed. These previews take less than five minutes each and help learners “gear up” for the forthcoming training. These previews have helped shape attitudes and perceptions—learners see that the company is eager to meet their needs. It helps to create productive anticipation rather than negative grumblings.

If your training initiative is concurrent with a significant change in workflow or tools, it is important to align your pre-training with a more comprehensive plan for change management. Another of our clients is working on a global rollout of a system to track healthcare data. The new system is changing the daily work of existing team members, and it will be important to help learners overcome their resistance not just to the training itself but to the change in their roles and responsibilities. This one is still in its infancy. We’ve just completed our needs assessment and we’re in the process of coming up with our design ideas right now. So far, we’ve come up with ideas such as sharing endorsements from early adopters or executives, creating 5-minute tours of the new system environment, depicting a day in the life of a new user, creating a news-style update to dispel rumors, and sharing stories to highlight the potential benefits to patients. If you have any ideas, let us know. We’d love to hear them, and we’ll post the best here on this blog.