One of the fundamental tenets of management says that you must manage your business around your scarcest resource. Over the past year, priority options collapsed to just one item – money. It’s easy, in these desperate times to think that the money constraint will always dominate. However, the current crisis will eventually ease – and I believe that a new problem will become clearer – a permanent adverse supply situation for the SMEs that make ID possible. If you stick with me that far, I will argue that the situation calls for a fundamental review of the accepted instructional design (ID) paradigm – to look for design approaches that use SMEs more efficiently.
The panel shows a reality that every tech writer and ID has experienced. You get that long-awaited approval to start the project and then you have to muster all of your jungle cunning to track down and capture that most shy and retiring of critters: the SME.It’s always been a struggle, but is it getting harder? If so, is there any cogent explanation?
So, what is a SME?
To many in the training community, the answer is probably self-evident. However, I would like to offer the following specification:
A SME is an expert with trusted knowledge that
can be applied by others to create value.
To be a legitimate SME, you have to know stuff. The organization that sponsors the training must believe in your stuff. The stuff you know must be knowledge that others can absorb. Finally, absorbing that knowledge must lead to tangible value gains for the sponsoring organization. It will be hard to justify funding for any commercial training project (internal or contracted) unless all of these statements are provably true.That makes the SME an essential ingredient in effective training, education or development.
The Labor Market for SMEs
So where do SMEs come from? Are their numbers increasing or decreasing? These may seem like strange questions, but if training depends on SMEs, their availability or shortage can influence the macro volumes of training work that is funded and performed.
I doubt that anyone can estimate total numbers for SMEs. They are too many and too diverse. We can, however, look at events in the broader economy and speculate whether the supply is likely to be shrinking or expanding. For that, I start with two assumptions:
We are mainly interested in the status of SMEs in large organizations. There are countless SMEs in small businesses, but they don’t typically engage in commercially significant training or eLearning projects.
While SMEs are scattered throughout enterprises, they are disproportionately concentrated in middle management.
Macro vs. Micro
The terms “macro” and “micro” in economics describe two very different perspectives on economic behavior and events.
The macro view tries to map the economic landscape. It strives to figure out where the rivers of money flow, where the mountains and deserts are located and how the weather might be changing that landscape. If you are standing beside a swollen river of money, things will probably be better than if you are stuck in a desert. In fact, it behooves you to find out where the rivers are so you can relocate (or, if you are a nation, try to divert the river your way).
The micro view tries to understand the economic or value-based decisions of individuals and tries to predict how those decisions will play out when they are assembled into larger groups.
There are intermediate economic theories that try to connect the micro and macro perspectives. They are diverse, interesting and frequently controversial – and beyond the scope of this discussion.
This article takes a macro perspective. I want to write a micro analysis when I can straighten the spaghetti in my head. If you have any suggestions, please add them in the comments.
There is ample evidence that the current economic downturn has hit the middle management layers of large organizations hard. The following graph shows the number of jobs that have been lost due to ‘extended mass layoffs‘ in the US economy. These are layoffs that exceeded 5o persons at a single firm or site and where the laid off workers remain unemployed a month or more.
The spike in late 2008 and 2009 is no surprise. It is also not surprising that many (possibly most) analysts think that the hammer fell hardest on middle management – especially older middle management and IT staff. This is where the SMEs required for training projects are most densely concentrated.
As bad as these numbers are, the loss of 2 million people from US companies won’t fundamentally diminish the corporate stock of SME knowledge. The surviving US labor corporate labor force is still huge by comparison. However, I propose (or perhaps speculate) that there are insidious side-effects to the recent layoffs that will threaten the availability of SMEs. Four specific effects come to mind:
When part of the middle management workforce is laid off, survivors must shoulder additional workload.
The coming recovery will be slow and employers will rehire gingerly. Survivors’ workloads will rise even more.
Any residual fear of future layoffs will cause survivors to concentrate on immediate, ‘value-added’ activities.
The layoffs are often tied to restructurings. Survivors may be doing things differently, or doing different things.
Finally, on top of these pressures, there is the well-documented exodus of the baby boomers. A generation with 70-80 million workers is being replaced by a generation with only 40-50 million members. Does this mean that even more potential SMEs are becoming unavailable, or will they have more free time? One factor is the limited shelf life for a lot of SME knowledge. Business, operational and technological changes can rapidly diminish SME relevance unless the SME is constantly being refreshed by the broader organizational context. On balance, the emergence of so many obvious negative forces, offset only by a few arguable positive forces, argues for greater SME scarcity overall.
I am not suggesting that SMEs will be scarce on every project. There will be lots of projects where SMEs are plentiful and highly engaged. What I am saying is that, at an industry (i.e., macro) level, funding sources will tend to pressure ID and training suppliers to work for less money at the same time that project hosts will be stingier with SME time. That is a potential double whammy for ID and training implementers. The reduced access to SMEs will make the provider exert extra effort (i.e., more cost) just as revenues succumb to downward pressures. To some degree, I expect that this will also impact internal development projects as well as externally contracted projects.
SME Scarcity and ISD
If you buy my speculations that economic forces will reduce the supply of SMEs even as they will squeeze project budgets, what should the ID and training communities do about it?
Now here’s where I’m likely to get myself into really bad trouble
Take a few minutes and scan the wonderful summaries of Instructional System Design (ISD) methods and models at Big Dog & Little Dog. Read a few of the process step descriptions in ADDIE and ask yourself: how many SME hours would this require? Can I get what I need from one SME, or do I need to enlist a team of SMEs? My instinctive answer is that you will need a lot of SME engagement to do it right. If SMEs are scarce, you will either cut corners or the project will drag out longer. That can hurt your reputation, your wallet, or both.
To me, it seems evident that many ISD theorists implicitly assume a SME-rich environment. Activate the ‘Click’ button on this blog (or use this direct link) to see how one author visualizes SME/ID interaction. In light of the probable macro landscape, this seems a bit problematic. Advocates for rapid authoring methodologies expect to co-opt SMEs to act as instructional designers. To me, this seems even worse. Someone please tell me how the following picture makes sense if SMEs are increasingly busy and scarce?
I think it is time to revisit ISD design philosophies and look for ways to make them more SMEfficient. I liken it to the situation with rising gasoline prices. If ISD models are the vehicles that carry you to your destination, SMEs are the gas that gets you there.
I look at the ISD ‘fleet’ and, in terms of their demand for SMEs, I see a whole lot of big SUVs, a few Lamborghinis and the odd original Hummer for off-road work. In other words, I see a whole bunch of ‘SME-guzzlers’. Where are the ISD counterparts to the Chevy Volt, the Toyota Prius, or the VW Jetta Diesel? Where are the methods and models with greater SMEfficiency?
Strategies for SMEfficiency
Since I asked the question, it is only fair that I offer some ideas for coping with a world where it is harder to get quality time from the organization’s SME’s. My company, iPOV (www.ipov.net), has been invested in the concept of SME scarcity for nearly a decade. That idea didn’t get huge traction when SMEs were seen as plentiful, but we made a lot of investments to find SMEfficient ways to develop eLearning. Here are three ideas that emerged from our experience:
I’ll Know it When I See It
This is a crude solution, but one that is all too common. You get the project, the SMEs don’t materialize, and your choices are a) to delay the project and wait for the SMEs, or b) to forge ahead and hope you can assemble something that isn’t too embarrassing. Unfortunately, b) is often the choice that a project manager (internal or contract) must make. They scrounge up whatever information they can find, beg a few scraps of SME input and cobble together a design. Then they solicit SME and user reactions to identify their mistakes and they pray that they won’t have to redesign everything.
This process violates every model of good practice in the ISD arsenal, but it happens anyway and, if my guesses about about macro level funding and SME pressures are correct, it will happen more often. What should the ID community do? Should they persevere in evangelizing for better approaches or should they resign themselves and seek ways to make their fate a little less ugly?
At iPOV, we decided that the only way to survive in this situation is to invest in tools and methods for rapid authoring. Since we seldom guess right, we need to recognize our mistakes quickly and scurry back to find another path. It’s messy, but it beats the alternatives: losing the work or hemorrhaging money.
The biggest breakthrough in speed came from our embrace of video, not only as a presentation device, but as a knowledge capture tool. When SME access is limited, you want to record every second of speech, every nuance of action, and every scrap of body language. Regardless how short the recording or how crudely it is made, it may contain gold. We never know where we will find that casual SME comment that keeps us from going off on a wild goose chase.
Note: If this approach were a vehicle, I would probably label it a ‘Rickshaw‘. It is crude, cheap, and labor intensive – but it doesn’t use any SMEs.
Catch and Release
The idea of maximizing the audio/video record of SME knowledge can be expanded and formalized. The idea is to stage and video-record a congenial debriefing session with the SME(s). The goal is to make it as unthreatening and enjoyable as possible, so they will open up and you can suck them dry. We have implemented this approach in a number of ways because the method must fit the SME’s preferences. For example:
Debrief in a hotel room – To get a near-retirement engineer (SME) to open up, we rented a nearby hotel room (a Courtyard at Marriott equivalent) and brought in small product samples, some equipment parts and a flipchart. We added a cameraperson/facilitator and one of the SME’s younger colleagues who was in line to inherit part of the engineer’s job. The SME was accustomed to giving whiteboard and flipchart presentations and courses, so he just launched into his usual explanation. However, we encouraged him to draw as many diagrams as possible (even crude ones) and to use the products and equipment as props. The protege was tasked to ask followup questions anytime he felt that he was getting lost – and to keep asking the SME until he ‘got it’. The video-recording session lasted nearly 10 hours. As the day wore on, we kept asking the SME if he wanted to stop – and he replied that he was enjoying it and wanted to keep going until it was done.
We mined 5 hours of Flash-based eLearning from the recording of the session and only had to phone the SME once or twice for a clarification. We phoned his protege several more times. It is our understanding that the resulting CD is still in regular use 5 years later.
Train the SME and turn him loose – Another SME loved PowerPoint slides. Over the years, he had taught a series of classes and seminars and had put pretty much everything he knew on his slides. He had several hundred on his hard drive. Rather than make him give a stand-up presentation and answer questions, we taught him to use the BB Flashback screen movie tool. We showed him how to start recording, open PowerPoint, and just talk through and point at his slides with the mouse while BB Flashback recorded everything. Over the next few weeks, he made recordings whenever he had some down time. He made a few recordings at home, a lot in hotels, and more back in his office. He uploaded the files as he made them. Ultimately, we received about 12 hours of his recorded explanation.
We took that offline and developed 6 hours of courseware. As we got drafts made, this SME was a bit more involved in the editing than in the previous example, but it still only took a few extra hours effort on this SME’s part.
Arrange a structured ‘Walk and Talk’ - We have recently made the interview process just a bit more formal. The application is remedial training on a large ERP software system for a global multinational. There are numerous SMEs due to the variety of business processes involved. We worked with the client’s internal training group to establish a standard questioning protocol – a very loose and open-ended set of questions, but a protocol nonetheless. The goal of the questions is simply to trigger the SME’s reactions and recollections. The client’s training staff use the protocol as they debrief each process SME. Every session is recorded in its entirety (with audio), using BB Flashback, Adobe Captivate’s “full motion recording”, Camtasia, or equivalent.We, in conjunction with our client, have developed a semi-standardized framework for organizing the information from these sessions. We transcribe the sessions, break the transcript into coherent fragments, and sort the fragments into three categories: contextual meta-information for the introduction, procedural mechanics, and “gotchas.” The fragments are reordered, reassembled, edited, and voiced-over to generate a draft of the eLearning deliverable.
This is the point where we re-engage with the SMEs. We ask them to review the eLearning online and run BB Flashback in the background to capture their screen mouse and comments. They return the resulting video as their official review. The SME almost never has to commit anything to writing.
These are just a few examples of what is fundamentally a very simple idea.
Create a congenial debriefing session for each individual SME. Note: To date, clients haven’t let me ply the SME with alcohol – but I remain hopeful.
Encourage the SME to talk and talk and talk and record everything visual, audible and written.
Go back to the office and replay it as needed as you develop the learning deliverable.
We are constantly amazed at how fast, thorough and effective these sessions can be. We have successfully completed several large eLearning projects with less than an hour’s post-session input from the SME. This also means that traditional ID practitioners may be able to use these session capture techniques and then apply their favorite methodology. I admit it’s a bit odd to think of doing ADDIE from a movie, but it might work a lot better than you think. Rapid authoring practitioners can also mine the session movie to build teaching materials in their favorite tool. They won’t get a SME to do it for them, but they also won’t have to hunt the SME down. It’s probably a wash.
Note: If this approach were a vehicle, I would probably label it a ‘Chevy Volt‘. You charge the battery and drive. A small gas motor (aka SME) occasionally ‘tops up’ the battery to extend the range. For most trips, SME consumption is minimal.
Start a Farm
This is the idea that excites me the most. It is also the closest I will come to making a direct advertisement for my company’s services. The reason isn’t so much to generate sales (not that we’ll refuse them). Rather, iPOV has invested the past two years constructing the software environment necessary to implement this idea. We would dearly love to find places where we can try it out.
The previous examples involved techniques to extract SME knowledge after the fact, where we are implicitly asking the SME to work from memory. It would be better if we could extract SME knowledge on an ongoing basis, while the issues are fresh and the supporting forensic evidence is still intact. Put another way, it would be great if ID practitioners could cease being hunter-gatherers and be able to farm for a change. I am not suggesting that we try to turn SMEs into bloggers or diarists. I have always had the sense (right or wrong) that most experts enjoy using their chosen expertise too much to ‘waste time’ writing about it to others. To be sure, some have taken to social media and blogging, but they still seem to be exceptions.
Instead, I am proposing that we should build value-added business systems that have a solid, functional business utility but, oh by the way, can also collect living libraries of SME knowledge. Where would we find such a wonderful beast? Funny you should ask. I recently wrote a blog article about our ideas for ‘work networking’ (as opposed to social networking) that can be implemented with iPOV’s CoSolvent Community Server (CCS).
The idea behind CCS is to make it easy to share informal, industrial video (as well as other media) among trusted stakeholders in a business ‘extranet.’ Our CCS demo site has lots of examples of ways in which this type of capability can be used to improve b2b communications.
However, our sales rationales for CCS are unimportant for the purposes of this discussion. What matters is the fact that, if a system like CCS (or something similar from someone else) were deployed, it would automatically collect a treasure trove of valuable SME stuff. The role of the ID would then more closely resemble that of a farmer. The sponsoring organization could monitor issues as they appeared in the repository. When an issue arose that merited broader training, the ID would begin with a rich crop of SME knowledge. Based on our experience with the ‘catch and release’ strategy, I suspect that SMEs would see surprisingly little action in many course development projects.
Once again, the key idea is to hide the knowledge collection system inside an operational business tool. To the system users (i.e., the SMEs), the system should be a pragmatic tool to do immediate, value-added work. The training sponsors and IDs would simply piggyback on that mainline capability.
Note: If this approach were a vehicle, I would probably label it a ‘Toyota Prius‘. You charge a battery and drive. A medium sized motor (aka SME) kicks in and out continuously as you drive. The battery and the motor complement each other. For most trips, SME consumption is minimal. For longer trips, the SME is pretty active but the effort is spread out over time.
Bottom Line
I want to be clear that I am presenting ideas at a macro industry level.
There will be lots of aggressive training organizations and high-profile projects where these adverse forces are barely felt. Lots and lots of individual projects will prosper in an environment that little different from that of their predecessors. The broad effects that I am predicting will mainly be felt by those moderately worthy projects with adequate financial justifications and the type of middling profile that allows a busy SME to say no. There are a lot more of these projects and, for them, the adverse macro forces will create measurably stronger headwinds. Big, powerful projects will barrel though unfazed. A lot of fit, but less powerful, projects will tire and potentially give up. For the many training professionals that will be tied to those smaller, more vulnerable projects, achieving greater SMEfficiency could mean the difference between success and failure.
As I stated at the beginning, good executives manage their business around their scarcest resource. If SMEs become scarcer, the training industry will have to put them closer to the center of its decision-making process.
OK. Now I throw myself on the tender mercies of the comments.
Macro SMEconomics 101
This article was inspired by Learning Circuits’ Big Question for September 2009.
One of the fundamental tenets of management says that you must manage your business around your scarcest resource. Over the past year, priority options collapsed to just one item – money. It’s easy, in these desperate times to think that the money constraint will always dominate. However, the current crisis will eventually ease – and I believe that a new problem will become clearer – a permanent adverse supply situation for the SMEs that make ID possible. If you stick with me that far, I will argue that the situation calls for a fundamental review of the accepted instructional design (ID) paradigm – to look for design approaches that use SMEs more efficiently.
So, what is a SME?
To many in the training community, the answer is probably self-evident. However, I would like to offer the following specification:
A SME is an expert with trusted knowledge that
can be applied by others to create value.
The Labor Market for SMEs
So where do SMEs come from? Are their numbers increasing or decreasing? These may seem like strange questions, but if training depends on SMEs, their availability or shortage can influence the macro volumes of training work that is funded and performed.
I doubt that anyone can estimate total numbers for SMEs. They are too many and too diverse. We can, however, look at events in the broader economy and speculate whether the supply is likely to be shrinking or expanding. For that, I start with two assumptions:
Macro vs. Micro
The terms “macro” and “micro” in economics describe two very different perspectives on economic behavior and events.
The macro view tries to map the economic landscape. It strives to figure out where the rivers of money flow, where the mountains and deserts are located and how the weather might be changing that landscape. If you are standing beside a swollen river of money, things will probably be better than if you are stuck in a desert. In fact, it behooves you to find out where the rivers are so you can relocate (or, if you are a nation, try to divert the river your way).
The micro view tries to understand the economic or value-based decisions of individuals and tries to predict how those decisions will play out when they are assembled into larger groups.
There are intermediate economic theories that try to connect the micro and macro perspectives. They are diverse, interesting and frequently controversial – and beyond the scope of this discussion.
This article takes a macro perspective. I want to write a micro analysis when I can straighten the spaghetti in my head. If you have any suggestions, please add them in the comments.
There is ample evidence that the current economic downturn has hit the middle management layers of large organizations hard. The following graph shows the number of jobs that have been lost due to ‘extended mass layoffs‘ in the US economy. These are layoffs that exceeded 5o persons at a single firm or site and where the laid off workers remain unemployed a month or more.
The spike in late 2008 and 2009 is no surprise. It is also not surprising that many (possibly most) analysts think that the hammer fell hardest on middle management – especially older middle management and IT staff. This is where the SMEs required for training projects are most densely concentrated.
As bad as these numbers are, the loss of 2 million people from US companies won’t fundamentally diminish the corporate stock of SME knowledge. The surviving US labor corporate labor force is still huge by comparison. However, I propose (or perhaps speculate) that there are insidious side-effects to the recent layoffs that will threaten the availability of SMEs. Four specific effects come to mind:
Finally, on top of these pressures, there is the well-documented exodus of the baby boomers. A generation with 70-80 million workers is being replaced by a generation with only 40-50 million members. Does this mean that even more potential SMEs are becoming unavailable, or will they have more free time? One factor is the limited shelf life for a lot of SME knowledge. Business, operational and technological changes can rapidly diminish SME relevance unless the SME is constantly being refreshed by the broader organizational context. On balance, the emergence of so many obvious negative forces, offset only by a few arguable positive forces, argues for greater SME scarcity overall.
I am not suggesting that SMEs will be scarce on every project. There will be lots of projects where SMEs are plentiful and highly engaged. What I am saying is that, at an industry (i.e., macro) level, funding sources will tend to pressure ID and training suppliers to work for less money at the same time that project hosts will be stingier with SME time. That is a potential double whammy for ID and training implementers. The reduced access to SMEs will make the provider exert extra effort (i.e., more cost) just as revenues succumb to downward pressures. To some degree, I expect that this will also impact internal development projects as well as externally contracted projects.
SME Scarcity and ISD
If you buy my speculations that economic forces will reduce the supply of SMEs even as they will squeeze project budgets, what should the ID and training communities do about it?
Now here’s where I’m likely to get myself into really bad trouble
Take a few minutes and scan the wonderful summaries of Instructional System Design (ISD) methods and models at Big Dog & Little Dog. Read a few of the process step descriptions in ADDIE and ask yourself: how many SME hours would this require? Can I get what I need from one SME, or do I need to enlist a team of SMEs? My instinctive answer is that you will need a lot of SME engagement to do it right. If SMEs are scarce, you will either cut corners or the project will drag out longer. That can hurt your reputation, your wallet, or both.
To me, it seems evident that many ISD theorists implicitly assume a SME-rich environment. Activate the ‘Click’ button on this blog (or use this direct link) to see how one author visualizes SME/ID interaction. In light of the probable macro landscape, this seems a bit problematic. Advocates for rapid authoring methodologies expect to co-opt SMEs to act as instructional designers. To me, this seems even worse. Someone please tell me how the following picture makes sense if SMEs are increasingly busy and scarce?
I think it is time to revisit ISD design philosophies and look for ways to make them more SMEfficient. I liken it to the situation with rising gasoline prices. If ISD models are the vehicles that carry you to your destination, SMEs are the gas that gets you there.
I look at the ISD ‘fleet’ and, in terms of their demand for SMEs, I see a whole lot of big SUVs, a few Lamborghinis and the odd original Hummer for off-road work. In other words, I see a whole bunch of ‘SME-guzzlers’. Where are the ISD counterparts to the Chevy Volt, the Toyota Prius, or the VW Jetta Diesel? Where are the methods and models with greater SMEfficiency?
Strategies for SMEfficiency
Since I asked the question, it is only fair that I offer some ideas for coping with a world where it is harder to get quality time from the organization’s SME’s. My company, iPOV (www.ipov.net), has been invested in the concept of SME scarcity for nearly a decade. That idea didn’t get huge traction when SMEs were seen as plentiful, but we made a lot of investments to find SMEfficient ways to develop eLearning. Here are three ideas that emerged from our experience:
I’ll Know it When I See It
This is a crude solution, but one that is all too common. You get the project, the SMEs don’t materialize, and your choices are a) to delay the project and wait for the SMEs, or b) to forge ahead and hope you can assemble something that isn’t too embarrassing. Unfortunately, b) is often the choice that a project manager (internal or contract) must make. They scrounge up whatever information they can find, beg a few scraps of SME input and cobble together a design. Then they solicit SME and user reactions to identify their mistakes and they pray that they won’t have to redesign everything.
This process violates every model of good practice in the ISD arsenal, but it happens anyway and, if my guesses about about macro level funding and SME pressures are correct, it will happen more often. What should the ID community do? Should they persevere in evangelizing for better approaches or should they resign themselves and seek ways to make their fate a little less ugly?
At iPOV, we decided that the only way to survive in this situation is to invest in tools and methods for rapid authoring. Since we seldom guess right, we need to recognize our mistakes quickly and scurry back to find another path. It’s messy, but it beats the alternatives: losing the work or hemorrhaging money.
The biggest breakthrough in speed came from our embrace of video, not only as a presentation device, but as a knowledge capture tool. When SME access is limited, you want to record every second of speech, every nuance of action, and every scrap of body language. Regardless how short the recording or how crudely it is made, it may contain gold. We never know where we will find that casual SME comment that keeps us from going off on a wild goose chase.
Note: If this approach were a vehicle, I would probably label it a ‘Rickshaw‘. It is crude, cheap, and labor intensive – but it doesn’t use any SMEs.
Catch and Release
The idea of maximizing the audio/video record of SME knowledge can be expanded and formalized. The idea is to stage and video-record a congenial debriefing session with the SME(s). The goal is to make it as unthreatening and enjoyable as possible, so they will open up and you can suck them dry. We have implemented this approach in a number of ways because the method must fit the SME’s preferences. For example:
These are just a few examples of what is fundamentally a very simple idea.
We are constantly amazed at how fast, thorough and effective these sessions can be. We have successfully completed several large eLearning projects with less than an hour’s post-session input from the SME. This also means that traditional ID practitioners may be able to use these session capture techniques and then apply their favorite methodology. I admit it’s a bit odd to think of doing ADDIE from a movie, but it might work a lot better than you think. Rapid authoring practitioners can also mine the session movie to build teaching materials in their favorite tool. They won’t get a SME to do it for them, but they also won’t have to hunt the SME down. It’s probably a wash.
Note: If this approach were a vehicle, I would probably label it a ‘Chevy Volt‘. You charge the battery and drive. A small gas motor (aka SME) occasionally ‘tops up’ the battery to extend the range. For most trips, SME consumption is minimal.
Start a Farm
This is the idea that excites me the most. It is also the closest I will come to making a direct advertisement for my company’s services. The reason isn’t so much to generate sales (not that we’ll refuse them). Rather, iPOV has invested the past two years constructing the software environment necessary to implement this idea. We would dearly love to find places where we can try it out.
The previous examples involved techniques to extract SME knowledge after the fact, where we are implicitly asking the SME to work from memory. It would be better if we could extract SME knowledge on an ongoing basis, while the issues are fresh and the supporting forensic evidence is still intact. Put another way, it would be great if ID practitioners could cease being hunter-gatherers and be able to farm for a change. I am not suggesting that we try to turn SMEs into bloggers or diarists. I have always had the sense (right or wrong) that most experts enjoy using their chosen expertise too much to ‘waste time’ writing about it to others. To be sure, some have taken to social media and blogging, but they still seem to be exceptions.
Instead, I am proposing that we should build value-added business systems that have a solid, functional business utility but, oh by the way, can also collect living libraries of SME knowledge. Where would we find such a wonderful beast? Funny you should ask. I recently wrote a blog article about our ideas for ‘work networking’ (as opposed to social networking) that can be implemented with iPOV’s CoSolvent Community Server (CCS).
The idea behind CCS is to make it easy to share informal, industrial video (as well as other media) among trusted stakeholders in a business ‘extranet.’ Our CCS demo site has lots of examples of ways in which this type of capability can be used to improve b2b communications.
We have mapped potential applications in supply chains, franchise networks, food safety monitoring, and support for mobile healthcare professionals – among many other potential applications.
However, our sales rationales for CCS are unimportant for the purposes of this discussion. What matters is the fact that, if a system like CCS (or something similar from someone else) were deployed, it would automatically collect a treasure trove of valuable SME stuff. The role of the ID would then more closely resemble that of a farmer. The sponsoring organization could monitor issues as they appeared in the repository. When an issue arose that merited broader training, the ID would begin with a rich crop of SME knowledge. Based on our experience with the ‘catch and release’ strategy, I suspect that SMEs would see surprisingly little action in many course development projects.
Once again, the key idea is to hide the knowledge collection system inside an operational business tool. To the system users (i.e., the SMEs), the system should be a pragmatic tool to do immediate, value-added work. The training sponsors and IDs would simply piggyback on that mainline capability.
Note: If this approach were a vehicle, I would probably label it a ‘Toyota Prius‘. You charge a battery and drive. A medium sized motor (aka SME) kicks in and out continuously as you drive. The battery and the motor complement each other. For most trips, SME consumption is minimal. For longer trips, the SME is pretty active but the effort is spread out over time.
Bottom Line
I want to be clear that I am presenting ideas at a macro industry level.
There will be lots of aggressive training organizations and high-profile projects where these adverse forces are barely felt. Lots and lots of individual projects will prosper in an environment that little different from that of their predecessors. The broad effects that I am predicting will mainly be felt by those moderately worthy projects with adequate financial justifications and the type of middling profile that allows a busy SME to say no. There are a lot more of these projects and, for them, the adverse macro forces will create measurably stronger headwinds. Big, powerful projects will barrel though unfazed. A lot of fit, but less powerful, projects will tire and potentially give up. For the many training professionals that will be tied to those smaller, more vulnerable projects, achieving greater SMEfficiency could mean the difference between success and failure.
As I stated at the beginning, good executives manage their business around their scarcest resource. If SMEs become scarcer, the training industry will have to put them closer to the center of its decision-making process.
OK. Now I throw myself on the tender mercies of the comments.
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