In my last blog, I began describing how organizations can better
support current business initiatives, increase organizational responsiveness,
and reduce curriculum acquisition and development costs by alining their
business needs with their instructional assets. The first of the six steps of
this process in Documenting your Business Needs. Following are the activities
that are typically performed during this step.
1. Define your
Audience
Specify the prerequisites and motivational factors of the
audiences you support. Prerequisites should include both basic educational
prerequisites such as reading level, as well as more specific prerequisites
such as sales skills and previous experience with the product or technology.
For the most part, these prerequisites should be identified in existing
instructional materials. Document if members of the audience have been
rewarded, punished, or ignored for performing the behaviors. This information is difficult to gather, and, in most
cases, you will have to gather it in collaboration with the business unit or
line organization. As performance improvement professionals, we
recognize that training is not the solution to every performance problem. For example, it is
not the best solution if participants are not performing because of lack of
motivation and incentive, or an environmental deficiency. If a performance
problem is due to a lack of motivation or incentives or a poor attitude,
consider establishing a feedback system, or institute positive incentives for
members of the audience. If there is an environmental deficiency, it is best to
remove or remedy the portion of the environment (for example, management or the
organizational structure) that is deficient. This treatment of
motivation, incentive, or attitude problems is just the tip of the iceberg.
(See Harless, 1970, for a more comprehensive coverage of this subject.)
2. Create a road
map for each audience
Include the major groups of tasks they perform on the job and
organize them into task groups. Since these task groups
may change as employees increase their tenure in a position, you may wish to
document this as well.
3. Build task lists to support the roadmap
Identify the specific tasks included in each major task group.
4. Create
performance objectives.
Identify the performance objectives
that support each task. Since a house is only as good as its foundation, make
sure that you are working with clear performance objectives that identify
desired behaviors. To ensure that you are working with specific, clear objectives,
decode the objectives against the elements below.
-
Be
sure that the “who” is as specific as you can make it. It should identify
participants’ education and reading levels, as well as their skills and
knowledge related to the objective.
- Determine
if the behavior is the main intent or an indicator. If it is the main intent,
be sure that it is observable. If the behavior is an indicator, identify the
main intent. If the behavior is an indicator and you cannot identify the main
intent, request help from the person who wrote the objective. Also be sure that
the indicator is simple and direct and does not require prerequisites that
participants may not have.
- Be
sure that result is observable.
- Ensure
that the conditions specify the range of situations in which participants are
expected to perform.
- Verify
that the standards are reasonable, taking the consequences of making a mistake
and time in a time- critical environment into consideration.
- For
a more detailed presentation of what makes an objective effective, see Mager
(1984).
5. Determine constraints
Review descriptions of the audiences
and tasks to determine the following types of constraints:
Time: When does the task need to get done? Resources: Who is
available to help?
Budget: How much time and outside dollars can the organization
spend in performing the task?
Equipment: What equipment, tools, and supporting documentation
are available in the job environment?
6. Document all the above.
For those of you that are interested, here is a link to a more
detailed description of the total process.
I would enjoy hearing from you. Please contact me using the
“Contact Us” tab on my website http://www.fttraining.com/
