Over the Decades I Have Observed This

Where else could your client go to create a Communications piece or an Educational piece?

And anyway – depending on the Target Audience’s prior knowledge – and skill – those types of interventions might be just the ticket – so to speak.

And that communications or education experience will help them achieve Performance Competence without taking the content full-bore to training.

Sometime the Target Audience already has the skill – but need some awareness or knowledge in order to modify how they use that skill.

Sometimes they really do need something less than skills-building training.

Back in 1997

My client wanted every client of theirs to jump through all of the hoops of the ADDIE-like process – so to speak – to get their services.

When I heard that they had stated this to their governing board I knew I had to disagree and speak truth to power. They were proposing Overkill-in-the-Extreme. And I knew that could hurt my efforts with them to help better serve their internal clients.

They resisted. But then so did I. And I wrote the following for them to publish in their internal newsletter. And they refused to publish it. So I rewrote it and published it in my quarterly newsletter a few years later.

MCD-lite

MCD-lite PP – 2002 – 10 page PDF – of when and how to shorten the “standard process” for my version of ADDIE (MCD – Modular Curriculum Development) – when the client isn’t attempting training for skills – but communications for awareness. Written to convince a client to not force every effort to go through the same rigorous approach when the desired outcome wasn’t skills-building. I was unsuccessful in convincing them. Originally written in 1997.

MCD is my version of ADDIE

In the end, me and my methods were tossed out for being too rigid. I had been converting my methods in basically a word-smithing/re-branding effort (an unnecessary effort costing hundreds of thousands of dollars IMO – that I had also suggested to them as unnecessary we began) between 1995 until 2001. But – the Customer is always right – so to speak.

And after training and certifying almost 400 people from internal T&D functions and from their external vendor community – the 4th Executive to run their University in 4 years – was brought in from the outside – and he replaced all of the current vendors (there were dozens) with his favorite cast of consultants. It happens.

I always felt that it was my clients rigidity that was the cause underlying their top executives experiencing the revolving door. I only wish that those executives had read this article.

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