Last week, during our monthly online gathering of instructional designers (IDs), someone posed what felt like the ultimate three-way dilemma:
When designing and delivering training, who should be your top priority?
- The Learner
- The Stakeholder (SME)
- The Leader
It’s the kind of question that can generate very different answers depending on your perspective, so there’s no right or wrong answer.
Who would you choose?
If you’re not sure, try thinking about it this way: “If all three groups made different requests at the same time, who would you listen to?” (Assuming, of course, that all of their requests are reasonable.)
As for me, from an instructional design perspective, I chose the Learner.
Whose confidence do you want to build first?
When I think about training, one word is always at the center of my thinking: Confidence.
Whose confidence needs to increase first in order to improve the situation?
For me, the answer is the learner.
No matter how brilliant a leader’s strategy may be, it won’t produce results if the people doing the actual work lack the confidence to execute it. Likewise, even if SMEs possess a wealth of knowledge, that knowledge has little value if it never gets applied on the job.
That’s why I believe everything starts with helping learners feel:
“I can do this.”
Should IDs only consider the learner?
Of course, corporate training is not a charity project.
Organizations need to generate profits, and training programs cost money. Metrics such as ROI and KPIs matter.
That’s precisely why learner-centred design is so important.
The logic is fairly simple:
Deliver learner-centred training → Improve performance → Increase customer satisfaction → Achieve better business results
In other words, even if your ultimate goal is business performance, the first audience you need to focus on is still the learner.
Balancing profit and the front line
That said, when I look at many training programs today, I’m often surprised by how many seem to be designed primarily to satisfy stakeholders or leaders.
One example is the growing trend of in-house training development.
To reduce costs and speed up production, organizations often ask their top performers and subject matter experts to create training materials and videos themselves.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach. In fact, it offers a major advantage: valuable knowledge can be captured and turned into learning content quickly.
However, one important question can sometimes get overlooked:
Is the content being designed in a way that learners actually need?
SMEs are experts in their field. They bring valuable knowledge and insights to the table. But knowing something and knowing how others learn it are two different things.
For example, an SME may want to teach fifty product details during a new-hire training program. What the new employee may actually need for tomorrow is the confidence to handle their very first customer inquiry successfully.
Lastly…
I believe an instructional designer’s role is to take the complex and extensive knowledge that exists in an expert’s mind and organize it into manageable steps that help learners think:
“I can do this.”
Of course, from the perspective of overall business optimization, there are perfectly valid arguments for putting leaders first. Likewise, without SMEs, there would be no expert knowledge to share in the first place.
Both leaders and stakeholders play essential roles.
Even so, if I had to choose only one priority as an instructional designer, I would still choose the learner. From an instructional design perspective, there is simply no path to achieving business goals if the people on the front lines lack the confidence to do their jobs.
Who do you think about first when you create training materials?
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