Your experts have an hour. Plan for that.
The usual model asks specialists for open-ended input in long workshops and produces something they do not recognise. There is a cheaper way round.
Why do SME sessions usually go badly?
Because they start with open questions. Asked what someone needs to know about a subject, an expert gives you everything, in the order they think about it, which is the order of someone who already understands it.
The session then produces hours of material and no structure, and the expert is asked back to review something they do not recognise.
What works better?
Draft the structure first from whatever already exists. Manuals, decks, recordings, old training. Then use expert time only on the specific things that cannot be resolved without them.
Julia Mattey works this way on every project. It usually reduces expert involvement to a fraction of what the traditional process asks for.
When should experts review?
On a document, before production. Corrections are cheap at that stage and expensive once something has been built, recorded and localised.
Reviewing a half-built course also invites the wrong feedback, because people comment on what they can see rather than on whether the content is right.
Common questions.
What if the expert disagrees with the structure?
That is a good outcome and the reason for reviewing early. Restructuring a document takes an afternoon. Restructuring a produced course takes a project.
How much expert time should a project need?
Less than most processes assume. On a well-prepared project it can be a small number of short, focused sessions plus one document review, rather than recurring workshops.
Where this applies.
Complex medical presentation content under tight timelines, with scientific accuracy and brand compliance to hold. Julia Mattey restructured it into reusable master decks across more than 20 pharmaceutical products.
Read the case study →Training for rapidly evolving HCP-facing software was going out of date faster than the agency model could keep up with.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 →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.