Comments on: How to avoid putting lipstick on a pig

By: Cathy Moore

Cathy Moore — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 15:09:59 +0000

Karuna, thanks for your comment. While it isn’t the instructional designer’s job to set performance goals for the organization, I strongly feel that it’s their job to know those goals and to uncover them if necessary by asking clients to be more specific.

For example, if a manager goes to an ID and says, “We need a course about widgets for our salespeople,” the ID could do two things.

1. He or she could say, “OK. Give me all the information you have about widgets.” The result: an information dump about all the features of all widgets.

2. OR, the ID could ask, “Why do you need a course about widgets?” The resulting discussion could go something like this:

Manager: My department won’t make its sales goals unless the salespeople sell more widgets.

ID: How many more widgets do they need to sell?

Manager: We need to increase sales by at least 5% in the next six months.

ID: Does the problem affect all types of widgets?

Manager: No, it’s mostly the mega-widgets that aren’t selling. I think the salespeople don’t know how to upsell from micro-widgets to mega-widgets.

The result from this would be a far more focused and activity-based course on how to persuade customers that a mega-widget would be the best solution to their problem.

While it’s not the ID’s job to set strategy for the company, I do think it’s the ID’s job to uncover and clearly state the performance problem before designing a solution for it.

By: karuna

karuna — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 11:03:13 +0000

While I agree with most of what you have suggested, the idea of identifying a specific business goal is very subjective and out of scope. At the most the ID can identify the goal as “Sales staff will become more efficient”.
But to specify it as you have is more of the sales manager’s domain. Increasing sales performance is related to increasing staff effectiveness and efficiency.
However, I do agree that clients dump content and want to make it look better rather than perform any L&D kind of task for their employees.

By: Sergey

Sergey — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:46:18 +0000

> How do you encourage SMEs to collaborate with you as consultants rather than authors?

In my experience, SMEs never have enough time, they are rarely compensated for working on e-learning and nobody cuts them slack on their daily duties, so working on e-learning is mostly unpaid overtime for them. As a result you can easily push them into believing that a quick interview will save them time and effort, and they tell you “Do whatever you want as long as whoever is in charge of elearning is happy”.

By: Making Change » No time for design?

Making Change » No time for design? — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:32:56 +0000

[...] I’m not saying rapid tools are evil. You can use them to create powerful elearning. It’s rapid design that’s the culprit, because it’s not really instructional design. It’s just content presentation. We end up putting lipstick on a pig. [...]

By: Making Change » Elearning ROI: Can we lead the way?

Making Change » Elearning ROI: Can we lead the way? — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:55:26 +0000

[...] of our customers want us to put lipstick on a pig, fast. Let’s say we’ve got one of those customers. They have a PowerPoint presentation [...]

By: Business Challenges: Learning to change

Business Challenges: Learning to change — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:23:56 +0000

[...] to read the blog post “The ten paradoxes of creative people“. Maybe you need to quit putting lipstick on a pig…. maybe you need to focus on creating community… maybe the matter is urgent… and [...]

By: Tom Kuhlmann

Tom Kuhlmann — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:59:21 +0000

That’s a good point Dave. One of my first goals is to get as close to the real experts who are doing the job rather than the person who used to do the job but now manages those people.

By: Dave Ferguson

Dave Ferguson — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:40:27 +0000

We toss around the term “subject-matter expert” freely. My colleague John Howe makes what I think is a very useful distinction between subject-matter expert and exemplar — the latter term meaning an expert practitioner.

What’s the difference? An exemplar is someone who currently does the job in question, and who’s seen by the organization as a expert in producing the results the job calls for.

All too often, the subject-matter expert is someone who used to do the job. And the longer ago that “used to” is, the greater the risk that the subject-matter expert will provide folklore, ritual, or war stories.

Few things will be as anti-lipstick as the experience and input of someone who has to do this job today.

By: Tom Kuhlmann

Tom Kuhlmann — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:22:32 +0000

I’d augment the PowerPoint tip by saying don’t let the SMEs give you formatted PowerPoint slides. I like when they use PowerPoint because they know how to use the tool and they can put placeholders and other content on the screen.

It’s also a great storyboarding tool even if you end up building your course in something other than a PPT to flash tool. The challenge is getting the SME’s to think outside of the PPT box.

I think one of the challenges we have with SMEs is that we don’t come prepared. The SME usually knows elearning from the perspective of the courses they’ve seen or ILT type training. It’s our job to show them a different perspective.

Another reality is that sometimes all you need is a pic. Why not get her dolled up and call it good:)

By: Cathy Moore

Cathy Moore — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 20:09:33 +0000

Thanks, everyone, for your ideas. I like the suggested ways to challenge the “everyone’s a trainer” mindset. Another idea that might need challenging is “an instructional designer is someone who knows Tool X.” So when we show a creative activity to a SME or client, we need to help them understand that it was the creativity, not the tool, that made the activity appealing.

It can be fun to get a client to identify what exactly they’re trying to do, because sometimes their answer really is “Just get the pig out there.” My mission is to save the world from boring elearning, so I’m tempted to get annoying and say, “But WHY?” over and over again like a 7-year-old.