Design Thinking with a side of Design

This the fourth article of the series about ADDIE's use in organizational performance improvement (articles 1, 2, & 3). In my last article I was asked to build scalable training plans for each role but... I hit a few roadblocks on that journey. However, I was able using Lean Value Stream to lay out all the possibilities of what could be done to build role continuous training and performance improvement plans.

The story within my story. What started as 30 plus scalable role training plans turned into over 200 projects with L&D leading the effort on not just training solutions, but workflow performance improvement processes with continuous learning, performance metrics, cross training and career development paths, new marketing efforts and updated recruiting initiatives.

Time to get busy. My friend Cheryl Lasse over at Skill Director was kind enough to share some competency templates and guides to help get me started, but I cheated a little with those because of something I kept hearing when I conducted my Lean Value Stream analysis; "what each role does in the process impacts other roles later in the process all the way to the customer."

Time for a little Design Thinking with a side of Design. For clarity, when I use Design Thinking my process stops after Test. I've seen some explanations/graphics where there's an Implement stage, but for me that's where Lean Startup begins.

I frame the question as, "what does the next person in the process, this employee's team and this employee's boss need this employee to do?" Now be honest, how many of you have thought about Design or Design Thinking this way?

Often the first step in Design Thinking is Empathy for the customer and I've seen some in L&D imply the customer is the person you are training. In some cases that is true, but the concern I have with this practice is where does the employee fit within the workflow and how does their work impact it? In other words your customer, the employee, needs to perform not only for their team and boss, but also the customer of their work.

So when I bring that team together for a little Design Thinking about Competency, I need to bring in the customers of that employees work. I won't bore you with the rest of the Design Thinking process, but what's important to remember is that after the Generating Ideas, your solution Design (Tangible Ideas) meets the following...

You'd be surprised how small the solution options become once you apply the framework above. In my case, as is the case with most manufacturing operations training, that sweet spot in the middle is often On-The-Job training.

A quick side note, as I was writing this someone asked me about Capability based on some Capability Academy webinar he saw advertised. Capability is defined as the condition of having the capacity to do something. Within this condition there is a potential for improvement. On the other hand, Competence is the improved version of “capability,” and means the degree of skill in the task's performance.

So I guess my answer is Capabilities lead to Competency. Please tune in next week for the rest of this story. Thanks for reading, until next time...