Speedy Delivery
Real urgency is relatively rare, but deserves special attention and an altered workflow. Learning teams should be able to deliver a provisional solution in two weeks in rare situations.
As you move along with your transformation, you will probably see fewer projects marked urgent at the intake stage.
The idea is to get an effective deliverable to your learners as soon as possible, then follow it up with a Gold Standard version that integrates with other content.
Big Idea
Treat urgent projects like they are.
I hope you think this goes without saying. My experience is that teams often lose valuable time getting started. Later on, the project waits for folks to be available for meetings and sign-offs.
The big idea becomes a lens for deciding: faced with a choice, which option will get the project to an early launch date while still putting learners first?
Key Concepts
If it really is urgent, we need to talk to learners ASAP.
Sorry if you think this goes without saying. My experience is that teams often lose valuable time getting started. Later on, the project waits for folks to be available for meetings and sign-offs.
The big idea becomes a lens for deciding: faced with a choice, which option will get the project to an early launch date while still putting learners first?
Most urgent projects aren't. They're like everything else except someone is in a hurry.
With an urgent project, What is the problem we’re trying to solve, expands to include the reason for the rush. There may be no rush.*
While I wouldn’t announce this to stakeholders or leadership, my first step would be to establish:
a) that it’s crucial to get something out quick.
b) there is a real learning need here.
*Duh.
Effective matters most, but fast beats pretty.
The idea that an urgent deliverable requires polish, full sign-off, etc. comes from an old mindset.
Take a prototype to the field for testing. If the permanent version is e-learning, show them a PowerPoint or Keynote. If the permanent deliverable is a quick video, make it with your phone.
By the way, the more urgent it is, the more you may want to slide it down the ladder from something ornate with multiple deliverables to something spare like a job aid or microlearning.
If the audience really needs it, why make it required?
The disadvantage of making content required is that you risk shifting the focus from learning to certification. When people need to show their compliance, they frequently care more about completing the learning experience than learning from it.
If the urgency is real, and the deliverable delivers, your audience will want to take it.
Just because it's urgent doesn't mean you don't need to focus on the level above.
Commit 51% of your effort to the level above your audience.
Managers communicate urgency in tangible and intangible ways. Her reports will hear it in her voice, in the ways she ties it to team performance, and in the repetition of her follow up.
You still have to get to the "Gold Standard."
Deploy with minimal time spent on editing graphics, etc.*
Once it’s launched, continue to measure effectiveness and ensure it meets your content standards for style, uniformity, text, etc.
*Yes, Evan, you can clean it up the night before if you want.
Getting Started
1. Ask two team members to spend no more than two hours on how to cut the time required to release a low-res learning intervention. Their MVP should be no more than two pages long.
2. Ask two managers to spend no more than 2 hours on how to position “this isn’t actually that urgent with stakeholders or executives. Their guidance shouldn’t exceed one page.
3. Review their work and add a clause at the bottom of each that asks the people who use them first to schedule a post-mortem. Add the documents to the process database as an MVP.