Q1 of 20: What is the problem or change you are trying to address?

Let’s start with an obvious question.

Surely anyone coming to us with a training request knows what the problem is they are facing in their organization. Right? Oddly enough this isn’t as obvious as you might think. There is, or should be, much more behind a request for leadership training, sales training or whatever kind of training. If we are asking the right questions, we can help our clients understand their business needs and help them to look beyond ‘training’ and support them with solutions that might have the impact the organization is looking for.

Part of that solution might be training. If your role truly restricts you to learning solutions, then you know what exactly you can do for your client if it turns out a training component makes sense. If you have some freedom in your role you can see how you can support the wider range of issues that need to be sorted out to ‘solve’ the problem. 

And I confess, I’ve made my share of e-learning modules that had all the content my business stakeholder wanted, looked really good, were really interactive and got the required completions in the learning management system. However, in hindsight, they never really addressed an actual problem. Simply because at that moment in time I thought I was doing the right thing and was not asking the right questions.

Don’t sell yourself short here. Chances are your client doesn’t really know what the problem is.

Ask ‘Why?’ a lot here. If your client keeps talking about the content they want to put out there, help them take a step back from the solution they have in mind. You can do that by simply saying:” Hey, it sounds like we’re talking about a solution here already. We will definitely get to that, but I’d like do understand the problem a little better. Can we take a step back?”.

I wrote a book called 20 Questions L&D should ask before talking about training! It's all about doing a proper needs analysis and building a business case before turning a training request into a project together with your business stakeholder. It's about working on projects that have business impact, not stuff that just keeps you busy. If you haven’t yet, be sure to download your free copy right now.