If clients have ever asked you or your teams to create or re-design an e-Learning solution, chances are you’ve had conversations with those clients about success and quality. You know the ones. The conversations where you attempt to understand what exactly your clients mean when they say: “We want a Lexus; something with a big wow-factor that doesn’t necessarily have to have all the bells and whistles.” Or: “We just want something simple — something that will get the point across.” Or: “We want our PowerPoint deck spruced up a bit so that users will become more aware of XYZ.”
If you’re like me, you’ve emptied plenty of Tylenol bottles over the years dealing with the headaches of trying to successfully navigate the consulting challenges within this potentially “highly-ambiguous-no-real-insight-in-sight” conversation.
Could This Be You? (Episode 1)
Let’s consider the conversation within a slightly larger lens. Here’s a clip of a typical discussion I’ve seen played out many, many times. (Names have been changed, but these are the actual words.) The scene: Tom, a designer, has 10 minutes with Sheila, a very busy executive, in order to understand her expectations for a new e-Learning solution she wants Tom to create for the employees working within her division. Tom, a veteran, knows the challenges of this meeting. He only has those few minutes to get her view of the success and quality levels she’d like the solution to meet. We enter the scene just as he begins asking his key questions…
Tom: From your view, what does success look like for this solution?
Sheila: We want everyone to complete this course and learn all there is to know about X. It’s tremendously important to our business. People really need to know the details of how X works and how it drives our business. The more they know, the more it will help all of us.
Tom: Great. Describe the kind of impact you see this having on our organization.
Sheila: We want this to be revolutionary. We want it to create a ton of excitement and buzz about X so that people will join the bandwagon.
Tom: What do you mean by revolutionary?
Sheila: Something engaging, experiential, entertaining, and fun — never before seen in this organization. We want it to motivate employees to do X every day.
Tom: Say more about this. What’s your blue-sky vision of how you see the learner learning?
Sheila: Oh, I don’t know — something that allows them to practice X in a situation. You know who you could talk to about this? Joan and Akrim over in XYZ division. They’re closer to this than I am. And it might be useful to speak to some of their reports as well, you know, people who will actually take this training.
Tom: Ok, I’ll follow-up with them. I think I have everything I need at this point. Thanks for your time.
How did Tom do? Did he clarify the ambiguity so he can quickly convert his client’s conceptual thoughts into a learning design strategy that this executive can support and evangelize within her own division? What does engaging really mean for the design and the impact this executive desires? Now that the meeting is over, how does Tom meet the executive’s “design” expectations AND the extremely tight timeline and low-cost expectations?
In simple terms Tom’s consulting success path looks like this: how does Tom meet the fuzzy proverbial “bar” this executive has described? How can Tom “unfuzz” the bar now, and should he? How does Tom meet seemingly lofty design expectations AND time and cost expectations? And finally, if Tom guided the conversation in a way that helped the executive quickly clarify the bar in the first place, how would it matter?
I’ve found it matters greatly.
When the designer can clearly guide and define the success and quality conversation with clients upfront when determining the solution, it's possible to reduce the time needed to scope the project by 20-30%. It’s also possible to cut the time needed to ideate a learning strategy and design plan by as much as 20%.
When done effectively, this conversation sets the learning design on a steeper success trajectory for learner acceptance and performance impact, for stakeholder support, and for positive, trust-filled client-designer relationships. In this business environment, where the desire is for the highest learning impact for the lowest cost in the shortest amount of time, the two key skills for anyone who creates learning solutions are to quickly clarify and calibrate ambiguities about success and learning strategy direction.
The following is an overview of consulting strategies and techniques that learning designers can use to clarify and calibrate. These are proven strategies and techniques that increase the impact of e-Learning solutions. They help learning strategists and designers quickly and flexibly manage and meet fast-paced, ever-growing stakeholder and client expectations. Although these strategies can be used throughout a design and development cycle, they are best used early on, at the point of solution determination.
