Adapting the Learning Consultation to the Time, Place, and Need

I’ve thinking about how I adapt my approach to learning consultation when the work is already moving.

I’m a longtime fan of Cathy Moore’s Action Mapping. Combine it with the Prosci change methodology and my mandate to reduce barriers, and I’ve got a performance consulting model that has served me well. My preference is to start upstream to align on these questions:

• What’s the business problem?

• What do people need to do differently?

• What’s getting in the way?

• Where is there actually a skill gap?

Embedded consulting doesn’t always start there. Sometimes the request is simply: “Can you look at this high-level workshop agenda and tell me if it’s instructionally sound?”

I’m experimenting with a three-level approach:

1. Artifact review: Does what’s in front of me work on its own terms?

2. Learning strategy validation: Do we have the right audience, target behaviors, performance gap, and learning solution?

3. Performance consultation: Can we trace a credible line from the business need to behavior, barriers, intervention, practice, and performance?

Not everything can be a Level 3. My operating rule is becoming pretty simple:

• Answer the question at the level it was asked.

• Be clear about what can’t be determined at that level.

• Offer the next level of consultation when it would add value.

It lets me meet people where the work is while still bringing the rigor I want from adaptable performance consulting.

#LearningAndDevelopment #InstructionalDesign #PerformanceConsulting #ActionMapping #OrganizationalChange Visit this post on LinkedIn.