Working with the SME: A Conversation with Jennifer Sutherland

CommLab Podcast with Jennifer Sutherland

1:09
Hi, everyone. Welcome to the e-learning Champions pod. I'm Shalini, your host for today, and I'm delighted to have with us a distinguished speaker, Jennifer Sutherland. As the global leader of Culture, Learning and Development at Trustwave, she drives employee engagement and dynamic learning initiatives across EMEA, APEC, and North America. As an adjunct professor at Davenport University, she inspires the next generation in HR and L&D. At Sutherland Talent Solutions, she consults on strategic talent development for both organizations and individuals, and we are very privileged to gain her insights today. Once again, a very warm welcome to you, Jennifer.

1:54
Hello. Thank you for that and thank you for that introduction. I plan on going back and taking that word for word and updating my website because that was amazing.

2:02
You're welcome. Today's spotlight is on a subject that is close to every L&D professional's heart, maximizing SME engagement. So Jennifer, let me just dive right into the first question. What is an effective intake process for L&D to work with SMEs on training requests?

2:26
This is something I have definitely learned over time. But in order to work effectively with a subject matter expert, you have to set the expectations. They have to understand what we need from them. Subject matter experts are experts in whatever that functional knowledge is, but they have to rely on us for that learning perspective and translate that knowledge into something for the audience. So an intake process requires that we have good conversations upfront and early on about whatever the training needs are. So understanding what their role is, helping them understand, are they just providing materials? Are they going to need to review the content? Are they going to be expected to be a part of the actual delivery and maybe be in the room so that they can answer questions? So that intake process is so important right upfront to set those expectations. It's just like any other project because when you're working with a subject matter expert, they're a stakeholder in the outcome of the training, but they might not understand what is needed of them. So having a really good process, and I have had very formal processes where it's a very structured intake, where it's a form and we walk through a lot of things, or it might just be a casual phone call just saying here's what we're thinking, here's what we would expect from you, are you comfortable with that?

Because they might not have understood the assignment when they were asked or maybe they were voluntold as we sometimes say they were tapped on the shoulder like, hey, you need help with this, and they might have some anxiety over it themselves. So if we can have a really good intake process, help them understand what we're going to be doing on our end, what we need from them, the time frames and the expectations along the way, it'll be much smoother at the outcome.

4:10
Yes, I think that's key to the success of the project because unless these roles and responsibilities are clarified right at the outset, the subject matter expert probably thinks that we're calling on them to actually develop the materials. And then there's all around pressure and then the reluctance to engage because they are so hard pressed for time. So yes, that's the key. That's the most important starting point.

4:35
So Jennifer, coming to identifying subject matter experts, how can L&D best identify who are the right people to talk to?

4:46
So the first thing has to be, we already have to have really good relationships with the business. So walking in the door and just saying, hey, who should I talk to is not going to be super effective. But if we've built up that relationship along the way, it'll make it a lot easier to have that conversation. So working with the business itself and saying here's the design we're hoping for, here's the outcome.

Who should we tap?

Because depending on the subject matter expert, it might be somebody who really has a lot of great source material, but maybe they aren't the person who can translate that knowledge for even us to understand in order to turn it into training. Or maybe they are somebody who says that they are a trainer. How many people do we, who do we know in the business that says that they're a trainer that isn't actually a trainer, but they love maybe public speaking.

So we have to identify what is the characteristics of the person we're looking for that specific project and then asking the business who is a good person for us to ask to help us with this. So it could be the person who has done it really effectively in the past.

It could be somebody who got promoted out of a role that had been working on something similar.

So it kind of depends on each project.

But as I work with the business, it helps me to understand what direction do I need to go in and then who do I need to ask?

Because I find if I just do a global universal request, I'm going to get a whole bunch of names, and they might not be relevant.

But if I can specifically say I'm looking for somebody who's really familiar with this process, who's going to have time in the next six weeks, who is able to translate this for our customers or whatever, the specific audience, our salespeople, that will help me be able to identify that.

And as L&D, we don't have to just accept whoever is identified as a subject matter expert. We can ask qualifying questions. We can vet that person to make sure they are the right fit. Because I've worked with subject matter experts in the past that have been identified that maybe weren't the right fit. They weren't the ones that were going to help us kind of make this a really successful training. So you can go back to the business and say, well, here's more what I'm looking for. What about somebody that's doing this?

So the better we can identify our expectations and our needs, the better we're going to have the ability to identify the right subject matter expert.

So Jennifer, when it comes to identifying the best of people to talk to, how do you go about identifying the ideal subject matter experts?

8:47
That is definitely a key part of the success of the project. And it really comes down to being able to clarify for myself what I'm looking for in a subject matter expert. So am I looking for somebody who knows this knowledge inside and out? Am I looking for somebody who is familiar with the audience that needs this information? Do I need somebody who just has the source material, they have a lot of stuff we can get access to? Or do I need somebody who's going to help me actually deliver it or answer questions that might be comfortable with public speaking? So once I have that framework down, then I can talk to the business and say who would be a really good fit for this? And remember, as L&D professionals, we don't have to just accept if that person maybe isn't the right fit after we do an intake, then we go back to the business and ask. But I think that's why it's critical to have a really good relationship with the business and being able to say who would be a good person for this.

Here's a general idea because if I go and just do a broad request, I'm going to get 10 names. And now I have to figure out who is the right fit and why. Whereas if I can get it really narrowed down and I asked the business and then I can vet those two or three finalists type of thing and then figure out if they're the right fit. That can be much more helpful. But it's up to us. The onus is on us and as L&D to understand what we need from that subject matter expert before we even go out and try to identify who the right person would be.

10:15
Thanks, Jennifer. That's actually a very useful best practice because as an L&D professionals, we tend to just accept whichever name is given to us. That person may not even be very enthusiastic about what you're doing. There may be somebody else who's in the same field who really wants to be a part of this initiative. So that's a great tip, identify a couple of names and then vet them and then narrow it down and you can always go back to the business.

10:46
Exactly. depending on the size of the organization, a lot of times there's things like what we would call stretch assignments and being a subject matter expert for a training could be considered a stretch assignment for somebody. So maybe there's somebody who wants to move into a leadership role and this could be a great fit, or it might be somebody who wants to get into HR or L&D that that might be a good fit. So, relying on what our expectations are for that person is important, but also it wasn't somebody who was tapped on the shoulder and voluntold that they need to help. Maybe they're reluctant, so if we can identify really what we're looking for and the time frame expected that they need to commit to that, it'll, it'll be a much better outcome to work with that subject matter expert. And in my history, when you find a good subject matter expert, that relationship is phenomenal. So once that's done really well, it can be like a a lifesaver in the future.

11:46
So Jennifer, you mentioned something about having a relationship with the business, not at your point of need, because you need to have strong relationships established and ongoing. So can you share some ways in which you can actually build relationships with the subject matter experts to ensure that the best training source material is given, and the best outcomes are achieved?

12:15
Absolutely. In my career, the most successful L&D programs that I've ran have been because I've tied in and really built a relationship with the business. So one of the first things that I do when I start working at a new organization or in a new role is starting to build that relationship. Now the best way to do that is to start to identify who are the influencers, who are the ones who have the voice of the organization, who are the ones that can become your learning champion and who are the ones that are really looked to as the leaders in the organization officially or unofficially. And start scheduling time with them. The worst thing you can do is wait until you need somebody to reach out to them. Reach out first, build a relationship, start to ask questions. How can I help you? What is it that I can do? What can my team do? I'm looking for potential projects for us in the next 20, 24 months. What are the quick wins I can help you with? What are the long-term strategies?

So having those normal regular conversations might seem very tactical at first, like a list of questions.

But if you can start doing those repetitively and have those ongoing ones, that goes really, really well.

So that's really to help build one-on-one relationships with the business.

But I also think it's absolutely critical to communicate as much as possible what the learning team is doing into the business.

So some of the things I've done in the past, we called it a training governance meeting. So once a month I would have a meeting where I invite all of our operations leaders and our other key strategic leaders. And I would spend 45 minutes and would take about half an hour of that and walk through accomplishments, projects, initiatives that we worked on, key metrics from the previous month and then ask a bunch of questions:

How does this translate to your business unit?

How does this translate to what you're looking for?

Could this be a leadership development initiative that I could help with your team?

So we would do that on a regular basis. I would record it and send it out afterwards with notes. We would create an infographic.

So once a month I would send out an infographic with a lot of key metrics of what we've done to help the business understand that I am not meant to be a silo. L&D does not live for itself, right. We are not a self-sustaining organization. We are literally here to help the business. So when they see what we're doing to help them, the successes that we've had, how other teams have used our services, like proactive and reactive training that we've come up with, they start to get really excited and start to get bought into that.
There's at least three people at my organization that I have a regular one-on-one with that I'm checking in with because I hear those hotspots, the things that might come down the line later, I can start to hear those triggers like, oh, they're going to need training for that in about 6 months.

I see what's going on the line.

And then those regular meetings, like I said, I called them training, governance meetings, sending out the infographics, making sure we're a part of company town halls that we can spend 5-10 minutes talking about what we've done.

So those are key things that can help us get those business relationships and understand the partnerships that we can have in the business itself, right?

15:49
Those are terrific ideas, to demonstrate the value of L&D, the tangible value that L&D provides to the business. I really love the idea of having those trading governance meetings. How often do you recommend these?

16:03
So I was doing them once a month. I would tell people it was optional. I didn't want people to feel like, Oh my gosh, here's another meeting.

16:13
But there were certain Ops leaders that came every single month. There were some that afterwards would say, hey, I heard that you said such and such, I'm interested in that. And there's some that never came, and that's fine.

I also did this once and I haven't done this again, but I'm looking at this idea is putting together a learning council. So asking and identifying for people throughout the organization that are representative of the demographics of the organization. So the specific regions and teams. And typically these are going to be people who are more frontline and maybe like first or second level supervisor and getting them together for a quarterly meeting and asking questions about potential learning needs, giving them the chance to preview maybe new technology that's coming down the line or new initiatives, really getting these learning champions excited as well. I found that to be really helpful as well. And it's something that I think is a best practice.

17:10
It's a time consuming initiative from an L&D perspective, but it's worth it.

The outcome is fantastic because you get so many people bought in and really excited about the initiatives coming down the line and they can like go and like tell everybody else about it, right, because they're already in the business. So they get people excited about it as well. So that would be another suggestion.

17:32
That's great because you know, then they're involved in it right from the beginning and there's so much of buy in happening already because they're a part they're co creating in a sense, the need that they're raising the request and it's so much better than just a top down approach, which you're not likely to resist in a lot of cases. So thank you. That's a very useful tip.

17:55
So Jennifer, what type of resources can a subject matter provide that will help us in L&D, design and deliver effective training programs?

18:05
I normally call it source material. So it's like the stuff they're already using. I want to make it very easy for a subject matter expert to work with me. I don't want them to think, Oh my gosh, like I don't have time to put together all this stuff for you. So I tell them I will take whatever you have, whatever raw material you have on this subject, I will take PowerPoints, PDFs, Excel docs, recordings, and if they don't have any recordings, that's something I ask that I can do. Can I come into your meeting where you're going to talk about such and such with somebody else and just record it and take it as our raw material, source material? Or a lot of times, if there is training that maybe doesn't need to be as engaging or interactive, but sometimes you have that reactive approach, something has to get out the door pretty quickly. Maybe I just go on a conversation with them similar to this on a Teams or virtual meeting and I ask questions, and I record it and then I can take snippets of that recording. And that way they don't have to redo anything. They don't have to worry about editing it. They don't have to worry about how they're going to pull that information. But to me, the subject matter expert material is really about the source material, the raw material. The onus is on me and L&D to turn it into something, to turn that into a translation of knowledge for whoever the audience is. And then the next step would be to review it. There's subject matter experts for a reason. I currently work in cybersecurity. I absolutely am not a cybersecurity expert. I cannot be, these people I work with are just super brilliant. So they need to check my work and make sure, did I translate that right? Did that make sense? Is this accurate based on what you understand? So that's the next level of work that I expect from a subject matter expert. So the initial materials and then that fact checking, just making sure, does this make sense? Is this working?

20:14
And this is done far ahead of actually reviewing the design material, right?

20:19
Exactly.

20:20
Oh, right. I think the mistake we often make is we wait for the review, for the entire process to play out. And then at the review milestone, that's when we get back in touch with the subject matter expert. And by then, you could be off on a different tangent.

20:38
Absolutely. I used to work with a vendor, and they had a CEO who wrote a book, and it was fantastic. And one of the key concepts in that book said share before you're ready. And I think that's something in L&D we can get better at, and it helps us. The end process is always better if you share before you're ready, meaning help me along the way so that the outcome is going to be that much easier. The review process should be fairly quick and simple if you've done the work along the way.

If we wait until the end, we might have gone in a completely different direction or there might have been enough of a gap from the time we got the source material to when we've gotten it back to them to review, that things have changed. When I was in the United States, we have health insurance and healthcare reform came around in 2012. I worked for a health insurance company, and I remember being in an actual training. I was delivering a training, it was 4 hours long. That was brutal, 4 hours long of product training, instructor led. During one of the breaks, I let everybody leave for a little bit and then I walked out and went to the coffee shop in our building, and I was just looking at the news on TV and I came back in. It was a maybe a 10, 15-minute break. And I said, remember that stuff that I just talked about in the past hour and a half, that's changed. President Barack Obama said that we now need to do this differently than what we expected or understood. So now things have to change. So granted, that wasn't a traditional subject matter expert, but I would say the President of the United States would be a SME. And based on that, the gap between when we created the training and when the training was delivered, there was already a difference. There were already changes to that.

So to your point, the more we can get them involved in reviewing our understanding of the information before we even get to the final drafts for their review, the better. It'll make it all a lot easier, right?

22:40
So that could sound a little alarming to a strapped for time subject matter expert, having them work alongside you. Do you have any tips and tricks on how we can allay their concerns, if any?

22:57
I think that's a great point. I think in the very beginning it's coming up with a contract or an expectation. So what is it that we want to make sure they do and at what time? Letting them know, setting those expectations of how much time we expect them to commit to, and why, along the way so that they really can understand, OK, you’re not going to just, you know, blow up my schedule completely for the next six weeks to work on this project.

In fact, one of the things that I've done in the past, some companies are more amenable to this, some are not as open to it, but when I've worked with subject matter experts, I've actually blocked time in their calendar for the remainder of the project. And it's not meetings they necessarily have to have with me, but it's blocking times for review. Like, hey, this is going to be due on February 28th, so I'm going to block an hour for you on February 26th and an hour for you on February 27th in your calendar that looks free now. So nobody else can put a meeting time on there. That could be time for you to work on that.

And very being very specific about that so that they know what the expectation is and understanding if you've worked with a subject matter expert before, that can be helpful because then they will know what you've done and what to expect. But the first time around, it can be like you said, a little intimidating, little concerning like, what are you going to expect from me?

I have a job. Why am I doing your job by being a subject matter expert? What am I supposed to do? So being very specific and as L&D professionals, we need to be able to understand and quantify that. What is our expectation, what are we going to expect from a time perspective? How much delivery do we need from them? When do we need certain things by? And the better we can get at that, the better the relationship with the subject matter expert. But having that conversation right up front. And if you are recognizing that your subject matter expert is going quiet, you're not hearing from them, then you need to follow up real quick, because there's probably something going on, they're stepping back in some way. And we need to take that relationship and bring it back to those expectations and understanding of what they're going through.

25:08
Right, right. Thank you. This is a fantastic process, to begin working with subject matter experts, but how do you handle a relationship with a difficult subject matter expert?

25:25
I would say it depends on why they're being difficult. I've worked with difficult subject matter experts in the past. One specific archetype of a subject matter expert that's difficult would be somebody who is a perfectionist, who wants everything to be exactly the way they want it to be. And another example of a subject matter expert I've had that's been difficult would be somebody who thinks the audience needs to know everything they need to do, like they're expecting many subject matter experts out of the audience. I've trained a lot of salespeople. That's been a lot of my focus in my career, training salespeople. And sometimes the business, whether it's somebody in product or marketing, they sometimes think that salespeople need to know as much as they do. They really don't. Sales needs to be able to understand what their potential client needs, how to talk about us versus the competitor. They need to understand how it would work in their ecosystem. But a salesperson really needs to be able to get the attention and the audience, their clients’ interest. And then they typically pass it over, especially in software or SAS market, they're going to bring in a solutions engineer or a sales engineer or a product person.

So to go to a subject matter expert who thinks a salesperson needs all of this volume of knowledge is a little bit of a challenge trying to say, OK, but do they, and do they need it all right now? And I think that's a very important part too. Could we do a two-part training? Maybe they need this much now, and they need this much, but not for another three or six months.

So having that ability to have that conversation. Another subject matter expert that can sometimes be difficult is if they just are reluctant or not going to do the work, maybe they are just so overly busy, they're just not getting back to you. And L&D, sometimes we have deadlines that we have to meet, we're not getting that response back from the subject matter expert. So I would say the best way to do that is to let the subject matter expert know how important their relationship is, what their role is, scheduling time with them and doing a working session so that they're not walking away and going, oh, I'll make time for that. Well, no, how about this, we're already on a call. Let's work on it together. Let's get this outcome completed while we're here together. So depending on the challenging part of the subject matter expert, there's different approaches to it.

But knowing that they're our end audience, sometimes they're our internal customers, they are sometimes the person that is going to help us promote the training, deliver the training at times, and really build that credibility on the content. So, those are very, very, very important relationships.

We need to make sure we are working with them in a really effective way that they see the value.

Those are excellent suggestions, Jennifer. I'm very fond of this working session with subject matter experts because it's the quickest way to close, to get a final seal of approval on whatever you're doing.

28:48
Exactly, exactly.

28:50
Especially this contradictory feedback coming in from multiple subject matter experts, just get on to a working session call and iron it out, thrash it out then and there, and close it.

29:02
My, you are so right. I didn't even come up with that example, but you're so right. I've had that so many times where we have two different subject matter experts that want two different things or say it's supposed to be two different things and it's conflicting. That is absolutely a challenge. I'm so glad you mentioned that.

30:17
So thanks for all those suggestions, Jennifer. I think our listeners are now going to be better equipped with really getting to the root of why a subject matter expert is not being as cooperative as or as involved, before laying on some pressure or being a nuisance in some cases. When you have these urgent deadlines coming up, the sense of panic makes you just reach out and bombard a subject matter expert with demands on their time. But all these best practices and suggestions you shared really are very helpful. So, Jennifer, coming to the next question, can you share an example of a challenging training program related to working with the subject matter expert?

31:09
So the first example that comes to mind is related to a product training and it was for a health insurance company. We had at least 15 people in the review process. And that was very challenging for a lot of the reasons that we talked about. We had people that were representing product, compliance, marketing. We had external partners that we worked with from a health insurance perspective. So we had people in there and we also had the trainers in there. We had representatives from the sales team in there, because that was the audience we were training. And because the topic itself was consistently changing and was a brand new topic for everybody. It wasn't already an established topic. It was product knowledge around healthcare reform here in the United States. There were a lot of unknowns. And I talk often, I've written articles and I've spoken on the topic of VUCA, which is one of my favorite topics, which is volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. And that was absolutely the framework for what we were living within. So it was a very challenging circumstance because we had a certain amount of time that we could use to design the training and then we had to have it delivered by a certain time because the way that our products were in the sales timelines, we had to have it out by a certain time so that sales could talk about things. Again, in the United States, we have open enrollment for benefits, and those medical benefits normally open enrollment around October.

In order to do that from a sales perspective, we had to back that up several months so that their customers understood it. And yet we were still submitting to individual states.

We had to submit what would our products look like, what our product design was, and it had to be approved by the state because it was all around this whole health care reform.

So we were like kind of crunched in between this timeline and that timeline. And we had all of these subject experts who had their own perspective on what needed to be taught to salespeople. And then we'd have the sales leaders or representatives in there saying, I don't need to know that. I don't want my people to worry about that, that's not the audience. And we really had to take everybody's perspective and find a common ground, a happy middle, and then figure out a way to make it fun and engaging and interesting.

And when you have that many voices in the room, it can be really quite a challenge to get everybody on board, especially when you're doing reviews. We would block out time. We'd have everybody physically in a room and pull up the slides and the presentation and the materials one by one, page by page. And people would supposedly have their notes ready to go because that would be the request before we meet, review the content. So everybody would come in and inevitably there would be one or two people that would not have read it ahead of time. We would then have to explain why certain things were in there and why we were organizing it that way and trying to basically educate them before they could give their opinion on what they would recommend to be changed. So it was a really stressful time, but it was exciting at the same time because it was so new and unknown that it was really fun to deliver and get all these voices and get everybody excited in it.

But it was probably one of the most challenging learning and development initiatives I've ever been a part of.

35:09
Right, right. I hear you. Educating subject matter experts is actually a very key part of this whole process. And I think just getting them together and giving them the big picture and the broader learning mission and the goal and what role each person would play, so you gain consensus on what should be in there.

35:47
So absolutely, it's very much a consensus decision making process. Everybody has to have some comfort with the end result so that you can get that ownership and that buy in and that support when you're delivering it out there.

Because otherwise people will be like, well, you don't have to go to that because they're not teaching the stuff that I think you need to know.

So you don't need to go to that if you don't get that buy in.

36:09
So I think you've already shared some effective rules of engagement when collaborating with subject matter experts and trainings. But if there's anything else you know further that you would like to share, please do go ahead.

36:24
I think one of the things that I haven't mentioned yet that I do think is important is for any subject matter expert to understand the true role of learning and development and what our process looks like, so that they know where they fit in this larger, broader scope of things that we do.

So helping them understand that, sometimes learning is going to be more basic, it's more informative, maybe it's more communicating, or maybe this initiative is more about truly changing behaviors and performance.

Maybe it's about an outcome that's really tied to a business initiative, but also just making sure the subject matter expert understands the steps we go through.

They don't have to be an expert on say ADDIE method. They don't have to be an expert on adult learning theory, but they need to understand why we want to ask knowledge checks, right? Why we might need to do a role play or a simulation, why there needs to be a pre or a post test. Helping them understand what our world looks like so that they know where they fit into that and why it's so important what we do. And ultimately that's just going to help put more people in the business that understand our world, which cannot be a bad thing. So I would say from a rules of engagement, besides some of the other things I mentioned, I think helping a subject matter expert understand what we do and how we do it and why we do it, it can be really, really impactful.

37:51
Right, right. I think you, you touched on a very key point. If they don't know why you're asking for something, they’re not likely to just give it to you. So I think explaining the rationale behind your ask is as important as making sure that the rest of the process goes smoothly.

Which is a great example of adult learning theory, right? You can't just be like, you have to learn this. They have to understand the why, the relevance of it. So if we can say, hey, this is why, oh, guess what? That's also part of adult learning theory. We need to do that in our training too.

38:31
So once you've finished working with them, they've given you the required sign offs, inputs, everything that we need from them. How do you recognize their contribution in the L&D effort? Do you have any best practices?

38:54
I love that question because everybody loves to be appreciated, and everybody likes to be appreciated a little bit differently. Some people are very comfortable with public appreciation, some people not so much. But there is a lot of things that we can do in L&D to recognize the effort, the time that they put into it.

It could be as basic as thanking them at the beginning and the end of the training, whether it's an in person training. If it's an e-learning, putting a little a note in there, like hey, thank you to so and so for your time and effort so that they see that. Because every person appreciates that, that feels good, and they can use it in things like their performance reviews. They can use that on their resumes or LinkedIn or what have you. So that's a really easy one, actually saying it explicitly or writing it in the training itself. I like to make sure people get acknowledged in any sort of companywide meetings, whether it's their own business unit meeting where we can maybe do a quick shout out or ask their leader to do a shout out like hey, thanks to so and so and so and so for this. When we do the infographics or metric sharing after the training, making sure that they're included in that, this was also because of their effort. And then if there's any recognition program within the company, like we have one that you can give people points, but you also can just acknowledge, and it goes on a companywide platform. So doing things like that. And then of course, a very personal thank you to them, whether it's an instant message or an e-mail and just letting them know how much you appreciate their time and effort and that you loved working with them or how much the outcome is going to be impacted because of their efforts. Those are some of the simplified ones.

But that can really go a long way to make somebody feel appreciated and make them more willing to raise their hand next time when we need another subject matter expert.

40:47
Right, right. Thank you, Jennifer, I had never thought about adding a note to the subject matter expert within the training itself. So that's a new one for me. Thank you. Now, we did discuss strategies, but how to ensure that the subject matter experts are involved, even very late in the process, not just during reviews necessarily. Because in reviews they are anyway involved, but right towards the later stages, especially when you're probably doing a pilot test. How do you get them engaged?

41:39
I think making sure that after their main role of providing the source material and the review and they step back, giving them regular updates, recurring updates. And it could be something as basic as just an e-mail with a couple of bullets like, hey, here's where we're at in the process, just wanted you to be in the loop. We'll be circulating back to you once we get to such and such stage.

If you have a more formal process identified like an intake form or a training charter, being able to say, OK, highlighted, we're here, here and here. We've gotten through all of this timeline. Here's where we're at and here's where we still need your effort. So having those ongoing reminders so that they know what to expect and making sure that they know the successes. So along the way, hey, we're super excited. We've put this training out and we have filled each training with people, up to 95% and that's because of your effort. We're so excited. It really comes back to the communication part and not forgetting where they're at in the stage. I think it's really possible. And I won't say this just for L&D, but I would say any organization, any team within an organization, it's easy to get head down. And just be like, OK, I've got you. Thank you so much. Appreciate that.

And then all of a sudden, oops, I need you again, right? So trying to keep our head back in the game and keep them informed along the way, essentially. And that could be a really good question. Actually, I'm going to push that back and say that would be a really good question to ask in the beginning, in the intake process.

How do you want me to keep you informed along the way and to make sure that we're meeting all of our deliverables?

What can I do to help you plan around these things that we're going to be expecting from you later on? Because we know there's a flurry of activity in the beginning of design with a subject matter expert, but then what? So asking them what is it that I can do to help you stay connected to all of this, so that when it comes back around, it's not a surprise that we need you again.

43:48
Right, right. I think that's really an excellent best practice in deepening our engagement with the subject matter expert and keeping it ongoing, not just landing up when there was a need or when something goes wrong. So this is a great suggestion.

So coming to their involvement not in an ongoing initiative, but when you do these content training audits, you come across some trainings which are not very relevant anymore. These are not necessarily very big initiatives, but the fact remains that this content does need to be updated and there's probably plenty of such content sitting out there. So during for such initiatives, how do you ensure that you can work with your subject matter experts to make sure that your content is relevant and up to date?

44:49
That's something that I have struggled with in the past that some of the best practices I've been implementing over the past few years, I think has been helpful.

One, I rely on my learning management system to help me make sure that I am keeping things in the LMS fresh, keeping the content fresh, keeping it relevant. So understanding what my own expectations are, am I going to refresh the content every six months, every quarter, every year? That can be helpful.

First of all, it's having that reporting process and the expectations in place of what is my process for that. And one of the things we've done is every single month we look at things that are going to be hitting that mark the next month. We basically identify that, and we send that to subject matter experts and say, just so you know, we're going to be looking at this material next month. If you have any initial ideas about this, great. Otherwise, I'm probably going to be tapping on your shoulder if I have questions or if this doesn't seem like this is still the ideal content that we need, if there's any changes or whatever that we might need. So we give them a heads up a month in advance so that they have the opportunity. Sometimes they can, sometimes they can't. Sometimes we'll hear from them and be like, oh yeah, no, we don't use that anymore. That's not necessary anymore. And it's just an easy, quick win, we're like, OK, archive, good. We don't have to worry about that one anymore.

Or if they're like, oh yeah, there's been huge changes to that, and we absolutely are going to need a huge overhaul of that content. Now we know we're going to have to put some time aside to completely refresh this entire thing, but giving them a little bit of that heads up basically a month in advance. And then when it comes to that time, we do reach out to each one of those subject matter experts separately and say here's some of the things that we worked with you on, how does this make sense?

What we typically would do is put some time on your calendar and we'll go through each one of those things together, again, a working session.

And at the end of that, if we still identify there's things that we still need your help with, then maybe we decide on a Part 2, or you let us know what's going to work best. But I will say that in the e-mail and say this is my plan. And if they come back and say, oh no, no, no, I'll just do this on my own, I'll do it on my own time or what have you and I'll get back to you. OK, great. I'll need it by such and such date and then we'll go through there.

But I normally let them know ahead of time, that would be my plan. If I don't hear from them otherwise, I'll schedule a working session so that we can get through the content together.

47:21
Right. So this is slightly tangential question, Jennifer, but how often do you recommend an audit of existing training materials?

47:29
I'd say product training should be every six months and for anything else, process, compliance type of training, I'd say once a year, minimally. If you do it too frequently, then it just becomes so burdensome because there can be some small changes to anything that we put out there. And it can feel like a burden and just overwhelming if we do that. So I say six months to product content and one year to anything else.

Right, makes sense. Thank you. Coming to the next question, how do you balance the expertise of subject matter experts with instructional design principles and adult learning theory to create effective training?

48:13
This is so tough. I think part of it comes down to educating them about what those policies are and what those theories are, helping them understand the examples of things that have worked in the past and why they've worked in the past. So you can have a benefit if you've been in an organization for a while and say, remember such and such training, remember how well that went. Remember why we like that. Here's some of the key elements of why that worked.

But if you haven't or you haven't worked for the subject matter expert, they're new or you're new, you might not have that luxury. So in that situation, I would say your role as a subject matter expert is to give me the content, make sure it's accurate, and make sure it's hitting the mark. My job is to make sure I'm translating that to knowledge. And I'm probably going to do some things that you might think seem extraneous. You might not think we need knowledge checks, but I will share with you as my expertise, we need the knowledge checks because it does this, this and this. And so I think it's a conversation more than anything of what we do and why we do it so that they see the tie in because subject matter experts that I've worked with in the past, some of them, not all of that, but some of them are just like, well, here I just gave you a PowerPoint deck. Just make that pretty, put your logo on that and then just send that out. Well, that's not training, we know that.

So it really comes back to that intake process of what is our intention. Is the intention of communication? If it's communication, then maybe it might be just an animated video or if it's performance related and maybe specific steps I need to take in a system, then maybe it's a step action table or a quick reference guide.

So that intake process in the very beginning, everything hinges on that, including the conversations with the subject matter experts.

Now, instructional designers are so good at what they do that I sometimes find that they sometimes get very attached to their design concepts. And so sometimes that is really just a balance of helping them understand what the business is trying to get accomplished and what we're trying to get accomplished.

And it is sometimes just personality traits, trying to balance those things when it comes to the two.

And I think with an instructional designer, it's making sure that they aren't taking constructive criticism personally. And that's really hard to do, especially if you've been working on a project for months.

It's their baby, it's something that they've focused on. So helping them understand that any subject matter expert feedback is not about them personally, it's not about their design, it's not that they don't like the design, it's that they are coming at it from a different perspective. And we have to translate that into what we're looking for and the outcome that we're trying to do. But it really is a little bit of a challenge to balance those two different perceptions and perspectives that they might have.

And sometimes we tend to step on each other's toes. The subject matter expert might be tempted to step into the instructional designer's shoes and vice versa. So I think drawing clear expectations and clear roles and responsibilities and clearly highlighting the value each team brings to the entire design and development process will go a long way.

So thank you so much, Jennifer. Those are very interesting insights. Now coming to our last question for today, a lot of subject matter experts also double up as facilitators. But subject matter expertise is one thing and training and facilitating is a different ball game altogether. So how do you support subject matter experts who are expected to help in the facilitation or in training? How do you help in their skill development?

52:25
Love that question. So early on in my career, I had a different answer. I would actually just be like, well, we'll just do like a speaker prep or facilitator prep call, talk about what the run of show will look like, help them understand what to expect, where they're going to jump in, etcetera. And I would think that that was enough. Over time I realized, nope, probably need a little bit more. So I really started becoming a huge, huge advocate for Train the Trainers. And we would bring the SMEs into those Train the Trainers, whether it was in person or virtual, but doing sample prep sessions where they're actually doing mini deliveries and getting feedback on that delivery. Now, it doesn't feel very comfortable initially for a subject matter expert to do that because that's not their job title. It's a separate thing from what they do. But the way I position it is normally, this is going to be really good for your career. This can be translated to executive summary conversation. This could be translated to standing up in a town hall and offering your opinion. These are skills that will drive other parts of your development. And you're going to be able to learn from skilled expert facilitators how to do some of these things. Because I expect the facilitators that are in a facilitator role to be doing the same things. So you're going to be sitting side by side with somebody that is doing the same thing but also getting feedback and getting input on how they can improve. So those are two of the things, a speaker prep call, which I think is necessary anytime and then a facilitator train the trainer process. And I've worked in companies where I've had a very, very specific structured Train the Trainer where we actually had a feedback form we went through and we would then go back and give feedback in the group setting and things like that, where they actually had to facilitate a small portion of the training, each one of them, and then they'd give feedback to each other. It was a very structured process. And in other times it's been very informal, like, hey, here's one part of this content. We expect it's probably going to be a little bit tricky. Maybe that's the one we should all practice together and talk through how we might deliver this, whether we have very structured facilitator notes or whether it's going to be a little bit more open-ended, like an activity. What are some of the things that you can do to debrief the activity? What are some of the challenging questions we might expect to get? I found that subject matter experts found that helpful, especially when they are grouped together with the traditional facilitator. I think that they feel they're not at a disadvantage, that they are learning from other experts, which I think has been really helpful.

55:24
I think this whole conversation has been absolutely great Jennifer, thank you for your insights and the very practical tips and techniques and tricks that you've shared. I'm sure that all of us, our listeners, we're all waiting to just apply some of these and see our engagement with our subject matter experts going much smoother than they have probably gone in the past. So thank you so much once again, Jennifer, for all your insights and your expertise. It's been a pleasure having you.

55:59
Thank you.