It was the early 2010s, and I was climbing up the side of a house, holding a length of cable over my shoulder. The cable ran along my customer’s yard, extended across the street, and connected to a hook that was roughly 25 feet in the air on the nearest power pole. I was helping a fellow tech rewire a house for power and my job was to hang the drop. The other technician was watching for traffic coming down the road while carrying on a conversation with the customer who had come outside to see what we were doing. Any current or past cable technicians may already see what is wrong with this picture.
The customer was distracting my partner enough that he did not see the car as it suddenly came down the road and snagged the cable I was holding. I was halfway up a ladder that was propped against the house with my back facing the road. Physics took over and suddenly I was lying flat on my back. For a moment, I had trouble breathing. But I was lucky. I was able to get up and walk it off. My partner and the customer were worried and apologetic, but I told them I was fine, and we went back to work. Did it hurt? Yes. Was I more injured than I thought at the time? Yes. If I knew that, would I have stopped working? I’m not sure. And I’m not the only one who makes that choice.
I share this story with you for two reasons:
- To give you an example of what SMEs, especially people with physically demanding jobs, go through daily.
- To provide a glimpse into my mindset as an SME and how I apply my experience to my work as an Instructional Designer.
I spent another 4 years as a technician before I retrained for a new career in Learning & Development (L&D). I worked in the snow, ice, under houses, 30 feet in the air, and in some of the nastiest crawl spaces in the rural area where I lived at the time.
The life of a production-focused SME is all about one thing: metrics. Your metrics determine your salary, how many hours you will work, how your coworkers view you, and whether they are willing to help you. Your entire working life boils down to 4 or 5 numbers that you may not even have full control over. As technicians, we used anywhere from 4 to 7 metrics every year, depending on what the management wanted to measure that year. Although there were some constants, I want to focus on one metric: Production.
Production measures how many jobs you can finish in a single day. This is determined by “points.” For example, we were expected to average 8 points per hour. Depending on the complexity, each job could be worth 4 to 150 points. The standard Trouble Call (when a customer was having trouble with their service) was 8 points, which means we were expected to complete one call per hour. The sequence went like this:
- Call the customer to let them know I am on my way.
- Drive to the customer’s house.
- Talk to the customer to find out about their experience.
- Measure signal at the cable plant. This could be up a pole or in an underground enclosure.
- Visually inspect the cable plant and identify where the customer’s cable connects to the plant.
- Measure signal at the side of the customer’s house where the cable is connected to the home’s lines.
- Visually inspect all connections in the home’s electrical panel.
- Measure signal at the location the customer identified as the problem spot.
- Using all these measurements, identify the most likely cause of the issue.
- Fix the most likely cause of the issue.
- Take all measurements again to see if the signal is flowing correctly.
- If the problem is not fixed, move on to the second most likely fix and repeat until the customer’s issue is resolved.
- Clean up and pack up all equipment.
- Talk to the customer and inform them of the repairs you made and confirm they have no other issues or questions.
- Use the software system to document all work you performed and mark the call as complete.
- Repeat the steps for the next customer.
Management expected us to complete this list every hour for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. The next job is a 30-minute drive away? Too bad. You have 30 minutes now, do it anyway. You think you need hours to complete the work? Call your supervisor. They may be able to help you, but no promises. Fell off a ladder and have a pain in your back? Take your time, but you only made 15 points today so your metrics will decrease, and you may get a poor rating on your next review.
I did this dance, sometimes well–other times not so well–for 7 years. When I moved into the L&D world, my primary responsibility was to help people in the corporate training world understand how techs and other field personnel live and how we can help them respond more positively to training. I was ecstatic about this opportunity, not only because it meant I no longer had to put my body on the line every day, but because I knew that most people in the L&D world did not understand how we lived. Why were these technicians so reluctant to learn new things? Why was it so frustrating to teach them? And most importantly: How can we change that?
My first thought was to begin by teaching my new coworkers about the life of my former coworkers. Explain their day-to-day tasks and what management expected of them. My technician job was my first full-time job out of college, and to this day it still shapes the way I view things. It gave me problem-solving skills, a certain physical confidence when working with my hands, and a ton of great stories to tell. It also gave me lower back issues, a surgically repaired shoulder, and what I consider to be a healthy skepticism of workplace positivity.
This is the mindset I adopt when I create training. Most of the training for these groups introduces new products or a change in policy that they will have to integrate into their already full day. What we must determine is how each new process or policy will impact their already strained schedule, and if the new policy or procedure will impact their metrics. These are usually the top two questions on their minds.
If we ask them to add a new process to their already full schedule, how do we teach them to perform the new tasks as quickly and efficiently as possible? Maybe even integrate it into the steps they already have to perform, so no additional time is required?
If this new process does not adjust their metrics to reflect the additional required work, we must tell them why they should care about the process. If this new policy or procedure will not change how their scores are tallied, there is a good chance they will immediately forget anything they learn. Time must be dedicated to the “why,” not just the “how.” If it does impact their metrics, it is our responsibility to make sure they know how and why the changes will affect them and their money.
The mindset of production-focused workers is fundamentally different from the mindset of most “corporate” employees. We as learning professionals should, as part of our audience analysis, identify how our learners think and how they view new learning through the lens of their current work responsibilities. Most of us in the learning space, if not all of us, enjoy learning new things and will usually jump at the chance to attend a class or learn a new skill. Yes, even terrible students seek additional opportunities to learn. This may not be the case for some of our learners. We must remember that our job, first and foremost, is to produce learning that will benefit our audiences and produce positive change. If we forget how our audience thinks and works, the quality and effectiveness of the training we are developing will crash and burn.
I try to remember this as I develop training for any audience. I always walk through your course with the audience’s views and experiences in mind. This will ensure your audience receives your training as well as possible, and that they do not completely dismiss it when they return to the field. Finally, if you ever want to hear more stories about how the other half lives, reach out to your SMEs and ask. I guarantee it will shock you. Just make sure the time you spend listening to them doesn’t impact their metrics.
