The first step to success by design (and it costs you nothing)
One of the biggest problems facing organisations today is the complacent (been in the job way too long and seen it all) hyper-specialist. The problem with these people is that they believe they are the all-seeing, all knowing oracle for their domain - pick one, each "domain" can be just as bad: IT, HR, KM, L&D, QA.
These people are dangerous. Why? They short circuit the design process and leave the rest of the organisation vulnerable to the unintended consequence of their hand. How? Far too often they have the answer to your question before you ask - think about that.
The complacent hyper-specialist can convert the most complex of problems into a simple one and, being an all knowing oracle, can predict the end state, the outcomes, without batting an eye. What they are actually doing is rolling dice. Let me explain.
Imagine a Learning and Development benchmarking exercise with project managers in a US organisation. During interview/focus groups it became clear that there was no link between what people needed or how they needed it to be delivered, in terms of L&D, and what was provided during the course of the year. It didn't matter what requests went in to the L&D Manager or what was flagged in mentoring/appraisal meetings, the L&D provision just didn't meet current or, when looking at strategy, future need. Compounding the problem, when training was delivered, the attendees were subjected to 6-8 hours of PowerPoint driven presentations, where over 80% of attendees stated that the learning didn't help solve their current needs.
A system with a broken feedback loop, you might say, but it was more than that; the design of the system hadn't taken into consideration user or community (organisational strategy) needs. The L&D Manager was asked about the L&D design process. His response was typical of silo living hyper-specialists. "I don't need their input to know what to deliver or how to deliver it. I used to be one of them [a project manager] and so I know exactly what they need and how it should be presented."
Kiss the dice. Give a nod to Lady Luck. Close your eyes. Let them roll!
I don't want to get into the mire on design thinking here, but the process employed in the scenario above leaves success to luck - some might say it was bordering on reckless. Complacent hyper-specialists, such as this L&D manager, jump to policy and practice without considering the stakeholders or situational factors at play. Without this perspective their decisions are vulnerable to unintended consequences - more than this, they are putting the wider community at risk (e.g. not providing the best learning environments to keep the company relevant in the marketplace).
To create success by design, you have to move people to think in new ways. It begins with a more powerful question, one that shifts the answer from the "specialist" to, in this case, the learners themselves. For example, taking this scenario with the L&D Manager, the "high performance" question looks something like this: "what does an excellent learning experience look like to our project managers?" Quickly followed up by, "how do you know?"
A better question is the first step to success by design. The best thing, it costs you nothing.
