Bob Mosher (BM): Today is one of my favorite topics that we
have been having more and more lately because it also one of your favorite
topics. It’s one of our highest rated podcast series, and that is Experience
Matters. And today we are fortunate to have two wonderful colleagues, dear
friends, and frankly, real experts at this: Diana Gallant and Mary Ruth Bell,
both from Volvo Trucks North America.
Why don’t we start with each of you sharing a bit about your backgrounds, organization,
and the makeup of your team.
Mary Ruth Bell (MRB): Thank you, Bob. I have been with Volvo for 32
years, with the last twelve of those years being spent with what’s called our
Trucks Academy. When you typically hear the word “Volvo,” people think of cars,
but we support the truck side of the Volvo family. Specifically, we support our
dealer organizations, so we are not training or responsible for training the
internal employees, we have dealer groups throughout the US, Canada, and Mexico.
Diana and I got paired up several years back on a couple of projects and she
started encouraging me to think around The 5 Moments of Need. So with that,
Diana, I’ll toss it over to you to give your background.
Diana Gallant (DG): Thanks, Mary Ruth. I have been a practitioner
of Instructional Design for about 20 years now, and in 2017 I discovered The 5
Moments of Need Certificate Program. And as Mary Ruth said, I immediately went
to her as not only her as a subject matter expert but to her as an instructor
delivering a lot of the instruction for the Academy, and I said, “Mary Ruth, we
need to do this together. This is what we’ve been looking for.” So, in my 20
years of instructional design, I just felt like we’d hit the jackpot. So that
is what jumped us into the journey. It started with the Certificate Program.
BM: Brilliant! So, let’s jump in, what have been
the business drivers for causing you to use The 5 Moments and how has it helped
in your design?
MRB: It was during The 5 Moments of Need
Certificate Program that Diana and I both were in at the same time, and we had
a project on tap that we felt would be an excellent opportunity for the
methodology. We were working with our Service Advisor Group and it was a
strange business dynamic because we saw that need and we struggled to find a
business owner for that process.
So, Diana and I just kind of took the reins and said, “Okay, we’re going to
go about this a tad bit differently and we’re going to go ahead and create The
5 Moment of Need structure for this instructor-led event.” It has been extremely
well received within our organization and so by that success story we have been
able to move forward, and we now have business partners that are asking for us
to use the same methodology to create new courses.
BM: Please tell me a little bit about your own
change in thinking. You are both wonderfully steeped—obviously from your
pedigrees, resumes, the training. Will you both share how this has changed your
thinking and what that journey was like to shift and go in this direction?
MRB: So, here’s the most profound change that
happened to me. Being an instructor/facilitator and the subject matter expert,
I obviously wanted to teach everything I knew to every student that walked
through the door. And honestly, it was like a fire hose.
The biggest “Aha!” moment for me during the Certificate Program that I have
been able to use going forward and still today use, is the criticality—what is
the criticality of what you are trying to get across. It just made so much
sense and it helped to simplify the experience both from the facilitator side
as well as, I believe, from the learner’s perspective.
BM: You know, I love that perspective because
it still complements the classroom,
doesn’t it? And as trainers—I don’t know about you—but I know for years, I
stood up there knowing in my heart and staring at those faces that I was
probably at times over-teaching. I probably a lot of times was going into way
too much content, but we’ve got them for that rare moment, and we’ve got an
outline to follow.
I think so often that 5 Moments is looked at as an anti-classroom model—or
against ILT. But we’ve found that when you do 5 Moments in the right way—to
your perfect example—it really does take a lot of burden off the instructor, and
lets the classroom be more of what it probably should be.
So, Diana, give us a little bit about your journey. What’s your mindset
been like in going through this with all your experience and background?
DG: I’ve always had a performance-based
mindset, so it’s like I’ve been chasing models that sort of focus on that. I
think the piece that struck me so much about the methodology for 5 Moments is it
goes right straight to the heart of what does it take to perform in a role, of
the supports around, with the knowledge, et cetera, that need to support that
performance. And I think one of the most powerful aspects that we’ve really
grabbed onto is the visual component of making invisible things visible in
terms of workflow.
BM: I love that!
DG: Not only do the visual maps and these
cognitive maps that are such an important part of the methodology—not only does
that help me as a designer understand the job from a holistic perspective—but
it also builds this bridge of understanding with performers who, when they see
the visual maps of what we put in front of them and ask them to validate,
suddenly there’s this effortless connection of, “We’re partners in this and, oh
my! You really understand our world!”
And it shows that we’ve really made that attempt to understand their world,
which helps in building the trust and collaboration right from the get-go. To
me, it just gets right to the core of performance.
BM: We’ve had more SMEs, like you guys, tell us
over the years that after going through an RWA they have truly been able to see
the nature of the work that’s performed every day. So, Diana, I love your point
about the fact that this really makes the work transparent to both those of us
who are designing it to meet the need—but also to the organization at large.
So, friends, tell us where you are today. Give me an update where you are
in the journey as of now.
MRB: Well, we are in a really good place right
now. We have a new director that came on board about six months ago and
completely understands performance support and the underlying methodology. He
is supporting Diana and I in a big way. In the past we had a bit of a challenge
getting traction for the software requirements, so we did kind of a homegrown,
interactive PDF type activity for one of our projects. It’s good, but it’s not
excellent.
But this new director is giving us—not exactly free rein—but certainly more
opportunities to research the technology. Though in Diana’s words, “it’s not necessarily
the technology, it’s the methodology that’s important.” And I think we’ve had
to keep that flag ahead of us just to keep going as we’ve met the ups and downs
of pitfalls, maybe, is the way to say it.
BM: Sure! And there are some! There’s no doubt.
It’s growing for all of us, for the L&D team as well as for the organization. And I applaud the fact
that you have a director in there that gets it.
So, what has it been like to bring change of this nature to Volvo? You were
steeped in training, a lot of Instructor-led Training. So, this is really a
dramatic culture change, if you will, for Volvo. How did that go? What was it
like to go through that part of bringing the organization on board?
MRB: The biggest challenge for me was that
people still want to test, they want to prove. They want this hundred-question
test to prove that somebody can do something. And Diana and I have met quite a
bit of resistance from the fact that the performance support is more in the
moment. And testing is not appropriate.
BM: Yeah. As we all know, those kinds of tests or
even that kind of overt performance, particularly maybe, right after a class or
a lab—might show a moment of time but it really doesn’t show the application of
things going forward with the use of the EPSS. How has the EPSS been addressed
or accepted within Volvo? Is that a new term for your folks? Did you have to
kind of bring that whole thing on for them to understand?
DG: We’ve always led in educating our stake
holders, whether they are the business, or our own team, or the performers
themselves. We always lead with the methodology before we even talk technology.
Because if we don’t get the methodology in place then you’re just throwing a
tool at it and it’s not going to accomplish anything.
But I would like to say the proof is in the performance, just hearkening to
Mary Ruth’s statement about testing and how people are constantly asking for
it. You know, we kind of redirect the conversation to help them understand how
they can really get more targeted to business outcomes by looking at the proof in
the performance.
To hear Diana’s proof in the performance example and Mary Ruth’s advice for
getting started on shifting to a performance-first organizational strategy, download
and listen
to the full episode.
Don’t forget to subscribe to The Performance Matters Podcast to stay up-to-date on all the latest conversations and guests in The 5 Moments space.
Don’t forget to subscribe to The Performance Matters Podcast to stay up-to-date on all the latest conversations and guests in The 5 Moments space.
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