This is a question that you might hear in a fast food restaurant.

However, when a request for training comes to the L&D team and we provide it – we’re effectively asking the same thing.

Do we want to be thought of as the people who create training or design content? Or do we want to be known as the people who solve problems in our organisations?

If it’s the second question, then we need to really determine the problem we are trying to solve. This means starting with curiosity and not content.

Here’s some ideas about how that can happen and questions you can ask.

Look at the current state.

What’s happening now? How has the need been identified? What data is available to validate the ‘problem’?

Determine the desired future state.

What should be happening? What do people need to be able to do? What are the business goals?

The gap between the current and future states is the problem to be solved. If you define the gap now, it will help you to evaluate the effectiveness of the solution later on.

But you also need to ask some more questions.

What are the consequences of poor performance in this area? What barriers prevent the desired performance? Do any policies and/or procedures impact on performance? If so, how? What feedback or data do we have from users?

Define success.

How will you measure successful outcome(s)?

Hint: consumption of content or having knowledge isn’t success. It needs to be a measurable behavioural change or performance improvement.

The next thing is to find out who the end users are and learn about them.

What are their characteristics, context, role? Does anyone do this well? If so, what do they do?

Create a problem statement/design challenge.

How might we help (end users) to (required behaviour/performance change) given that we know (user and gap insights).

From here, you’ll figure out the solution that will solve your problem statement. Create it. Measure and evaluate it. Make changes/improvements based on evaluation.

Obviously, this is a simplified process and not one that I’ve invented. I stand on the shoulders of giants when I say that I’ve drawn on the work of the following people in this post (click on the bold text for more):

Arun Pradhan and in particular, his Performance Canvas.

Cathy Moore and her Action Mapping technique.

Andy Lancaster and his Driving Performance Through Learning book.

There is much more to discover in each of these resources that can transform us from order takers to problem solvers and ultimately value creators.