Have you been tasked with the design, development or update of an internal training solution for your organization? You can improve the chances of a successful outcome and streamline the work of design by going through the performance mapping process, either as a learning and development (L&D) team or in collaboration with a performance consultant.

Getting started, you will likely have direction from leadership and have gathered input from management on what they are looking for. Perhaps you have also already gathered other data points, including user information from your information technology (IT) department, utilization rates and/or from financial data. Ideally, you will also have already prepared and document a needs analysis or have completed a similar step.

At this point, you may want to loop in a performance consultant to help you gather and interpret the data at hand. This is the point at which your team will want to begin the performance mapping process. In essence, what you will be doing is interpreting the data to create a map for the design and development of your learning solution.

What is the Value of Performance Mapping?

It might be tempting to skip the performance mapping step of the L&D design and delivery process. However, performance mapping will ultimately save time and money by improving the possibility of a successful training outcome.

Performance mapping will help you forecast your results by determining the steps needed to get there. For example, common questions answered and addressed by the performance mapping process include:

• What motivates our learners?
• Which behaviors are most important to reach desired outcomes?
• How can we engage our learners to improve training’s success?
• How can we measure the business impact of training?

The performance mapping process adds value to your learning initiatives (and business) by providing the tools you need to determine, meet and measure desired training outcomes. It also allows you to consider and account for factors such as learner preferences, accessibility issues, time constraints and more.

For example, you can determine whether to use formalized or experiential training; remote or in-person learning, or a hybrid model; whether you need to train from the ground floor, or if you’d be better served to assume your audience is more experienced; how to account for learner preferences to ensure engagement and effectiveness; and how to personalize the subject matter if needed to increase buy-in.

You can do this internally as an L&D team. Sometimes, however, it’s useful to bring in a performance consultant to help with this step.

What is Performance Consulting?

Most simply put, a performance consultant will help you perform the needs analysis and create a performance map from which to design and develop your learning solution.

A qualified performance consultant should have expertise in educational theory, and experience with instructional design, teaching or other learning practices. They should be ready and qualified to collaborate with your L&D team and organization to work across disciplines and coordinate your solution. They should be ready to make assessments and provide recommendations for behavioral modifications and strategies needed to reach your organizational goals.

You may have someone on your team already capable of performing this role, or you may need to bring in a consultant. Either way, both performance mapping and performance consulting are critical in helping you develop and deliver impactful training solutions at scale.

At AllenComm, our multidisciplinary learning developing teams use performance mapping as part of our holistic approach to customize award-winning learning solutions across multiple industries. Our collaborative teams include performance consultants with the expertise to work within an organization and provide expertise to help direct the development of your training through our instructional designers. If you could use more information on how performance mapping may be useful to your organization, or are searching for customized turnkey learning solutions, please reach out and contact us.