How Does It Look?

What would you do if you ventured into a diner and a maître d’ wearing a tux and cummerbund approached you, bowed, and asked for your reservation? Doesn’t fit, does it? In a diner, as with many other situations, you begin with certain expectations. But when your actual experience does not match your expectations, confusion reigns. And most of the time that confusion sadly, leads to disappointment.

Surf the web. Pages vary greatly from site to site, but one thing is clear: you can tell a lot about a company by the design of their pages. Too many times, the design of documents disappoints as well. A company spends an inordinate amount of time, effort, and money on research and writing, then skimps on the design of that document. The audience responds in kind by not reading. And your reputation suffers.

Read my latest Toward Humanity blog post, “How Does It Look” (or download the PDF), to gain a deeper perspective. Then make sure your document design matches the effort spent on the content.

Is Training Always the Answer?

At Solari, we subscribe to the ADDIE method of instructional design: Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate. Perhaps the least appreciated step in that process is the first one: Analyze. During this step, an instructional designer analyzes performance. In other words, what performance issues have surfaced for training to be considered as the solution?

After identifying these issues, further analyses uncovers: 1. The overall system and the individual tasks that need to be performed; 2. Obstacles that inhibit maximum performance; 3. Measurements that track performance; and 4. The best solution to eliminate the performance issues. Most of the time, training is the answer.

With training dollars at a premium, a thorough analysis that clearly identifies issues and the best solution gives you the greatest return on your training investment.