Find the gap before you build the training.
Most training projects start with a format decision. A learning needs analysis is what should come first, and it is usually the shortest phase and the one that saves the most money.
What is a learning needs analysis?
It identifies the gap between what people can currently do and what the business needs them to do, and establishes whether training is the right intervention at all.
Julia Mattey starts every engagement here. A significant proportion of requested training turns out to address a process problem, a tooling problem or a communication problem, none of which a course will fix.
What does the process involve?
Establishing the business outcome first, then the behaviour that would produce it, then the capability gap preventing that behaviour. Only after those three is content discussed.
In practice that means talking to the people who own the outcome, the people expected to change, and whoever holds the subject expertise. Usually a handful of short conversations rather than a workshop.
What should the output be?
A short document naming the audience and their constraints, the capability gap, how success will be measured, the recommended formats, and the build order.
It should also name what will not be built. On most projects the useful output is a smaller scope than the one the client arrived with.
How long does it take?
Days rather than weeks on most engagements. The aim is to arrive at your subject matter experts with specific questions rather than open ones, which is what keeps their time commitment low.
Common questions.
Is a learning needs analysis worth it for a small project?
Usually yes, in proportion. Even a half-day version prevents the most expensive mistake available, which is producing well-made training aimed at the wrong problem.
What if the client has already decided what they want?
That is the common case. The analysis then tests the assumption quickly rather than challenging it in the abstract, and often narrows the scope rather than replacing it.
Where this applies.
Training for rapidly evolving HCP-facing software was going out of date faster than the agency model could keep up with. Julia Mattey designed a global blueprint and production process in Articulate Rise, catalogued in Cornerstone.
Read the case study →Curriculum, learning architecture, more than a hundred instructional videos, blended programmes and the university partnerships behind them. Coventry, Bristol, Aberdeen, Nottingham and Manchester.
Read the case study →Other guides.
Tell me what is not working.
If your training is expensive to maintain, slow to update, or not landing with the people it is for, I can usually tell you fairly quickly whether that is a content problem, a platform problem or a process problem.