If I had a top tenet of #InstructionalDesign, it would be this:
The SME is NOT the audience.
This is something I establish at the outset of every project, and it helps to stave off a lot of issues.
Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) have spent years—often decades—becoming masters of their fields. They have completely forgotten what it is like to be new at a thing, and it causes them to add a lot of superfluous details that only serve to confuse learners.
Chances are very good that you've seen the outcome of this. It's click-through online training with walls of text. #InstructionalDesign
@kel Knowing the audience, the real audience, and what their learner level is, is the key to all things.
@Camerondotca ...and communal knowing. We have a great bead on this as IDs, but if we don't establish it as a touchstone very early on, it'll crater the entire project.
@kel totally. The other thing I feel like people don't establish early enough is .. how to describe it? Change phases/opportunities. I give you a thing to review, I mean for you to review it. Not glance and say "yep". Your review period is not a bottleneck, it's part of the process. Review the stuff during it.
The number of times I got something back super fast from a SME who was like "YAY WE'RE AHEAD" and then a week later they're like "so I read it again and I noticed X and Y"...
@kel ... I also need people to be reminded that there is a difference, depending on the phase/stage, between "I don't like X" and "X is wrong". For a long time I specialized in the fucked up projects where there were bad bad clients and ill defined outcomes. I had a client who we tried to fire. An hour long client meeting would be 45 minutes of her shitting on us and 15 minutes of nitpicking bullshit. "rotate the logo 15 degrees"...
@kel ... or Me: so we're going to do X. Client: Yes, Z. Me: No, X as agreed. Client: Oh totally, Z. Me: X. Then: Yep, I agree. Z. I'm not always calm, but if you're paying me to be calm, I will be calm. She was the only client I yelled at. I told her off, raised my voice and left the meeting. I calmed down and messaged my boss, who was still in the meeting and said "Look, I will of course apologize if you as me to" The meeting, which was on a speaker phone...
@kel ... was about 4 feet from my desk. I could hear it from my chair. He said "no, fuck that" by messenger and the unloaded on her "Look so and so, you put one of my guys in the hospital with heart problems, you're starting to kill Cameron and his production team. I get crying phone calls from my PMs, the only reason we're still working with you is because your boss begged us to keep doing the project". It was glorious.
@kel I often wish I could have continued to work for him. He offered me a job, but it was in Toronto and I would have needed him to pay me about 20K more or let me work remotely to have been able to afford it.
@Camerondotca I can count the number of truly awesome bosses I've had on one hand. They're a type of compensation unto themselves.
@kel Yeah Pat was a lot, but he was a good guy. My favorite boss was in NZ. Lindsey was just awesome. Had your back, got you resources, helped out whenever she could. She died a few years ago and no one told me (I lost contact with some ex coworkers). It gutted me.
@Camerondotca That was Carolyn for me. Absolute rockstar of a boss. Kept me through a dozen layoffs and always had my back.
Perhaps someday they'll put us in charge and we'll get a chance to come close?
@kel my worst job (which, oddly, was where Pat was my boss) I was team lead for.. erm. like 15 people. I worked with another .. 5? 6? in sort of parallel/our deliverables relied on them sort of arrangement. Part of what made it horrible was that I spent all my time trying to shield all of them from the horrorshow of the company president and making sure they had everything they needed.
@Camerondotca There's always an element of that, I imagine.
Truth be told, the bad days are what stop me from considering any kind of leadership position.
@kel Oh, wait, it was more than that.. I forgot Morocco and Toronto.. So closer to 20. Honestly, that job nearly killed me.
@kel The best bit of that job was having meetings with the team from Morocco. I have no Arabic, most of them had no English, So we spoke French. The funny thing is that Moroccan French, in a business context, tends to be formal and closer to what folks would identify as FRENCH. But many of them had worked with us for years. So one day we were having a video meeting and the camera fell over. Bang crash and through it all I hear..
@kel ... in a very loud voice "TABERNAC!" which is the very pinnacle of Quebecois swearing. It I had to sit down I was laughing so hard.
@kel .. the closest analog would be if you were in a meeting with someone with a very posh, upper crust British accent and he suddenly yelled "motherfucker" in a totally different accent.
@Camerondotca I won't admit to having deliberately cratered relationships with those types, but... well... you know... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯