This blog is generated from the Performance Matters Podcast episode titled Unveiling the Power of Targeted Training. In it, Bob Mosher and Sue Reber, APPLY Synergies Executive Director of Consulting Services, explain why Targeted Training is a key element of 5 MoN solutions and how it invigorates the classroom.
Bob Mosher (BM): Today I am joined once again by my dear friend and colleague of 32 years, the world-famous Sue Reber, who’s a remarkable 5 Moments of Need (5 MoN) designer, strategist, and consultant. She’s been at it from day one and does incredible work. We couldn’t have a better person talking about our topic today. Sue, thanks again for joining us.
Sue Reber (SR): Thanks for inviting me.
BM: This conversation will be a wonderful complement to our last podcast, which was titled, “You Called My Baby Ugly!”. That was a story about the frustration many folks on the 5 MoN journey encounter when they run up against the old mindset of, “Well, training worked for me so don’t you dare touch my class,” plus some of the obstacles we’ve created for ourselves during our years of leading with training. In that conversation, we talked about making the fundamental shift to performance first and we talked holistically and principally about addressing that attitudinal narrative.
Today, I want to go deeper, Sue, because you’re so great at this. The question is, how do I make this shift to doing something different? What does “different” look like? What do we call it? How do I explain it? So, that’s what we’ll discuss today.
Sue, can we start holistically and segue from the “training equals ugly baby” metaphor? How is the classroom today? Are we saying that it’s minimized or dead? From your perspective, is it still critical in a successful 5 MoN workflow solution?
SR: From my perspective, it’s even more critical. The 5 MoN methodology invigorates the classroom, because instead of just having the instructor stand up front and be the “sage on the stage”, incorporating a few little exercises here or there, it’s much more hands on—and it’s targeted to critical skills.
BM: As a trainer back in the days before we started this journey together, on nights before certain classes I would lie in bed dreading them, because I knew that learners would either be overwhelmed and unable to learn everything I had to teach, or that the skill in question was just a really hard one to learn—but darn it, we had to train it, right? Because it was in the outline, and in training, we taught everything.
Let’s go deeper on this term: Targeted Training. Why do we call it that? Why is it the brand we’ve chosen? And can you take us into the “101” of its design?
SR: If you think about how instructional designers have traditionally approached training, we started with the objectives and an overview of a request for a course that the business threw over the wall. The business said, “We want a course on this,” and we started out and wrote objectives. Then we wrote the content to meet the objectives, and we had to cover everything. It was a whole lot of “this is what you need to know” and not so much “this is what you need to do”. We call what we do now Targeted Training because we are really targeting the skills that have a high Critical Impact of Failure (CIF) for the organization. We are leaving the other pieces that are not so critical to be learned by workers on their own in the flow of work through the Digital Coach. That way, workers have support on the job, and they don’t have to go back and look at their training materials or read their notes or ask people questions, because it’s all right there in the Digital Coach. Instead of spending time trying to remember a bunch of stuff that the instructor is telling them, they are spending valuable training time actually working on the skills that are critical for them to be able to do their job.
BM: Let’s go deeper on two things you just said, because you used some important words that I think are often misunderstood. Subject matter experts (SMEs) often juxtapose “important” and “critical”. When I used to sit in front of them doing a needs analysis or task analysis in the old days, every single thing was “important”. And I get it: everything is important. When it comes to a leadership course and its outcomes, everything about leading is important. It’s important that leaders do everything well. So, how is critical different from important? How do we really get finite about what we mean by critical?
SR: Critical is not the same as important. As you mentioned, everything is important (or we wouldn’t need to do it). Why would you do things on the job that are not important? What we mean by critical is that those skills have a high impact of failure: if you don’t do them correctly, they’re going to cause serious repercussions for you, your team, and/or the business. So that’s what we ask: “If I don’t do this correctly, how bad is it going to be?” And we want to target those skills in the Targeted Training, because those are the skills you need to practice in a safe environment. The classroom is the best place to do that, where you have an instructor right there to provide instant feedback.
BM: Absolutely, that’s what the instructor does best. Con always talks about the unfortunate fact that we’ve piled so much on the classroom for so long that we’ve not let it do what it does best. We’ve not let trainers do what they do best.
Take me a little bit deeper into the elements of a Targeted Training course. If you’re an instructional designer, what kinds of things are you designing? Are they always lecture based? When I had 1000 PowerPoints to cover, my style was lecture based just to get through everything. Occasionally I would ask questions, but content won the day because there was just so much of it. So, tell me about the actual design components of this model.
SR: This is where I would say that Targeted Training invigorates the classroom, because it is not lecture based. It’s not the instructor standing in the front of the room, reading you content from the slides. Instead, the instructor is introducing something using the Digital Coach as part of the training. People in the class are actually doing hands-on work, rather than sitting through lecture-based learning and just answering knowledge checks. It’s hands-on practice for whatever tasks they need to do in their jobs.
BM: In the past, we’ve talked about something called ramp up/ramp down, which is an important design principle that really shines in this model. A spectacular kind of learning occurs because of it, so can you take us through ramp up/ramp down and explain what it means?
SR: At the beginning of the training, the trainer obviously plays an extremely important role in guiding the students (ramp up). But the trainer is also introducing the Digital Coach and the resources that people will have available to them when they go back to work. Throughout the training day, the instructor guides and teaches the students to “fish” (aka find how-to information they need). Instead of giving them the fish, the trainer teaches them to fish for themselves (ramp down). I think it’s more of an apprenticeship model, Bob, where I’m going to start out as the instructor, and I’m going to be demonstrating and guiding you. I’m also going to show you where you can find the on-the-job support that you need. so by the end of the training, you will know what resources are available to you. You won’t have to try to remember everything like in the old days, sitting at your desk leafing through a 300-page training manual to try to find something when you need it in the real world. That’s how I see ramp up/ramp down and how Targeted Training is different.
BM: And that’s intentional, right? It’s not just happenstance. You design this hand-off through guided and unguided practices. Even in old fashioned instructor guides, we tell the instructor, “Don’t talk here because this activity is designed to be a little less guiding with more opportunities for failure.” We’ve done surveys and students say that these are the times they learn best—through trial and error and practice. This model allows that.
SR: And I think it’s more rewarding for the trainer, too, because they really see students’ progression instead of just being the sage on the stage, performing all day long. Instead, the instructor actually digs in with the students, which is much more rewarding and less exhausting.
BM: I remember teaching this model with you long ago and finding out two key things. One was that I needed to shut up. Every ounce of my being remembered the old “teach everything” type of class, so it was hard not to do that. Plus, we’re the kind of people that don’t want folks to fail; we don’t want them to struggle. But secondly, to your point, the thing that amazed me was that by the end of the day, I knew how each of my students were doing, and so did they. In the old days, whoever raised their hand the most during class won the day, right? But in this model, the instructor knows things like “Mary still struggles a bit” and “Bill is so self-reliant”. By four o’clock in the afternoon, students are just cranking in the Digital Coach. It’s a very different approach.
Let’s go deeper into the Digital Coach, which we’ve promised to talk more about. We’ve talked about it in other podcasts, but it’s really important in the context of Targeted Training. What is a Digital Coach and why is it such a critical part of the 5 MoN approach?
SR: The Digital Coach is your on-the-job support to meet all 5 Moments of Need. We talk about moments New and More being mostly in the classroom, but that content is all in the Digital Coach as well. So, it’s also available when you are at work, when you really need support in the moments of Apply, Solve, or Change. That support is something the traditional classroom cannot do. The Digital Coach contains everything that you do on the job: the tasks and the associated steps, supporting knowledge, and resources, so you can get to them on the job as needed.
BM: Back to the concept of “teach to fish”, moments New and More are in the Digital Coach, because we’re not going to train everything. By the definition of CIF, there are things for which we’re going to say, “You have the guardrails. You’re wearing a life jacket. You’re not going to kill yourself or others.” I think it was hard for me to accept the fact that life is the best teacher. It really is. As an instructor, I’m there to teach the really critical elements—that’s just being responsible—but being responsible also means (and this was a mental shift for me) letting students fail, knowing they would fail sometimes when they went back to work. They would even fail at things I might not have taught them, but my goal was to equip them, and that’s when the Digital Coach made sense to me as a facilitator.
When it comes to trainers, the days of having instructional faculty are essentially gone. Back in the day, Sue, we had 19 classrooms (so that’s at least 19 trainers) and I think Bank of America had about 100 trainers or some crazy amount back when we first met them. But a lot of today’s organizations use SMEs, especially in the current economy. We talked to one such organization the other day that said they put SMEs right on the floor where they coach/train others, which is another version of training, right? But those SMEs have no instructional background at all. How do Targeted Training and Digital Coaches help them? What are the elements of effective training in this model?
SR: As SMEs, they know everything. They are almost unconsciously competent, so they might skip something that is really critical. Having the Digital Coach and Targeted Training can really help them make sure they don’t skip things for that new person. This approach also gives them guardrails, so they don’t have to cover everything, and allows them to be more focused while doing what they do best, which is being an expert. I think it’s brilliant to have a SME be the trainer in this instance, because when people encounter things that don’t work or they don’t understand something, that SME can really help them figure out where they’re going wrong.
BM: We had a SME once tell us that when the burden was on him to be a trainer, all his SME knowledge and experience went out the window, because he was so terrified of drifting from the training script. In this Targeted Training/Digital Coach model, he brought his rich years of experience, including storytelling, examples, advice about pitfalls, etc. because it’s a safe space and there is time for all of it. Many instructional designers have not yet made this journey. They’re using what they know now about design, the time it takes to design, and how much goes into their design. They’re hearing us say all this, but they don’t yet know it for themselves, because they haven’t really done it. A common objection is, “My gosh, I can’t help but feel overwhelmed. Now, designing training takes me forever, so how am I going to have time to do this Digital Coach thing you’re talking about?” What’s your advice to them, Sue? What are they not understanding?
SR: What I see instructional designers struggling with the most is changing their mindset. Using our approach, you have in front of you the results of your Rapid Workflow Analysis (RWA), and everything has been assigned a CIF rating, so you only need to focus on those things that have a high CIF rating. That frees you up to be more creative about what you’re designing instead of trying to cover everything. You’re able to spend time thinking about the most critical pieces and the best ways for people to practice those in a safe environment.
BM: As an instructional designer, I’m also probably thinking that I will build my class first, because that’s what I’ve always done. But what’s the order of operation?
SR: The order of operation is to create the Digital Coach first because that covers everything. Then, then you build your Targeted Training, which will incorporate the Digital Coach in the classroom, so that people leave class knowing what’s in the Digital Coach and how to use it.
BM: That’s such a big “aha” for me. I think it was easier for me to let go of my old mindset once I saw the Digital Coach. For those who haven’t really seen that yet, when you build that Digital Coach first, and you understand its robustness, rigor, and elegant design, you understand that you really don’t need to teach everything in training, because every detail is available for them in this tool. They can look up whatever they need. It really is a remarkable thing.
Let’s put a bow around this. You’ve been on this journey for 30 years and I’ve watched you mature and help us evolve the model in remarkable ways. What advice do you give to instructional designers to help them embrace and start this journey? Let’s start with them and then broaden out to L&D leaders and teams.
SR: Have an open mind. A lot of times what I see is closed body language and a closed mind. So, have an open mind. This approach really does work, and it makes a lot of sense. If you open your mind and walk through it once, you’ll see that it really does work.
BM: And there is a methodology; there is rigor. As instructional designers, we need to fall back on design.
How about L&D leaders out there leading this charge? They get sandwiched both ways. They have to lead the charge up and/or out (sometimes fighting the enterprise) and they also have to lead their team. What’s your advice to them when it comes to this work?
SR: Start small. Prove that it works. Then, you can start to tell that story and show that it works—and the business will listen, because it wants results.
BM: Our colleague Frank Nguyen once said, “When they asked me for eLearning, I said, ‘Sure’. Then, I gave them a Digital Coach, and they accepted it as what eLearning looks like now.” To your point, he realized that the proof literally is in the pudding. When learners see this, they want so much more.
This conversation was spectacular as always, Sue. You’re wonderful. Thanks for your thought leadership, your rigor, and your passion around the 5 MoN. If anybody wants to hear more from Sue, reach out to [email protected].
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