Chapter 9

Applying the MLE Framework

Solve Familiar L&D Problems in New Ways

We’ve talked about the idea of implementing a systematic approach to workplace learning. We’ve detailed the six layers of the MLE Framework. Now let’s talk about applying the framework to solve the kinds of problems L&D pros face every day.

It Starts With the Audience

Before jumping into problem-solving mode, you must understand your audience. It’s easy to lose sight of what people do day to day when you’re dealing with stakeholder requests and lists of skills requirements. When this critical step is overlooked, skills development becomes just another to-do that’s easily pushed aside, opportunity gaps emerge, and people fall behind. To provide right-fit solutions, L&D must acknowledge a basic tenant of workplace learning:

You may already have a solid understanding of your audience’s workplace experience. Many L&D pros come from the operational side of the business. They worked in the roles they now support. I was a frontline employee and operational manager before I went into L&D with a frontline focus. However, some L&D people are hired in from the outside for their domain expertise but have never worked within the specific industry before. Plus, even those who have done the jobs themselves may be several years removed from the day-to-day reality. With the pace of change in today’s workplace, industries go through dramatic transformations in just a few years.

Get to know your audience by immersing yourself in their workflows. Engage employees in regular conversations about their roles. Conduct focus groups, site visits, and surveys to better understand how work gets done. After I moved into L&D with Disney, I regularly picked up shifts within the operation to keep myself grounded. It was always fun to put the costumes back on and interact with guests at The Great Movie Ride or Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. It also helped me understand the challenges cast members faced and how I could potentially help.

This collective insight will help you shape the personas you need to design right-fit solutions using the MLE Framework. Personas are not the same as roles or titles. A large company may have thousands of job codes, making it impossible to consider every individual role when designing your learning ecosystem. The goal is to provide an equitable learning and support experience for every employee, but your ecosystem must also function at scale despite your resource and time constraints. Therefore, it’s critical that you focus on personas rather than job titles when applying your framework.

A persona is a set of shared characteristics that help you better understand and support a group of people. It’s a powerful way to keep operational realities top of mind and focus on the person (not the employee) you’re supporting. When building personas to represent your audiences, consider the following attributes:

•  Function: Does this person work independently or directly with your company’s customers and products?

•  Foundation: Was this person hired for a specific skill set or do they need to learn the basics of how to do their job?

•  Scale: Does this person have a unique role or do they share their workload?

•  Time: Does this person have autonomy or is their workload heavily managed?

•  Location: Where does this person do their work?

•  Access: How does this person access learning and support resources within the workflow?

•  Motivation: Is this person focused on meeting foundational job requirements or long-term career goals?

•  Measurement: Are this person’s performance outcomes determined by subjective or objective measures?

As you shape your personas, you will quickly realize that many roles share attributes. For example, delivery drivers, contact center agents, and manufacturing workers do very different jobs. However, they are all heavily scheduled, leverage workflow-based technology, and are held accountable to objective metrics. Your company may have thousands of job codes but only a few dozen unique personas. Focusing on how work is done instead of the work itself makes building an enterprise ecosystem to meet everyone’s needs infinitely more manageable.

Map Your Ecosystem

Now that you understand your audience, you must align each persona to the MLE Framework. This is how you will ensure each persona has access to the right tools and resources within your learning ecosystem.

Many learning ecosystems are currently out of balance. Certain layers of the framework are strong while others are weak. The organization may have robust formal training programs but limited tools for knowledge sharing and performance support. Furthermore, these resources may not apply equitably to every persona within the workplace. Corporate employees may use Microsoft Teams to get questions answered by subject matter experts in real time while frontline retail associates are forced to rely on the person next to them, who may or may not be an actual SME.

Use Table 9-1 to list the tactics available to each persona within each layer of your existing learning ecosystem. Note any overlaps where the same tactics apply equitably to different personas. Highlight any clear gaps that exist.

Table 9-1. Example of Availability Gaps Between Personas

Persona	Frontline Employee	Corporate Employee
Shared Knowledge	Wiki	Wiki
Performance Support	—	MS Teams
Reinforcement	Microlearning App	—
Coaching	—	Chat Bot
Pull Training	—	LXP Content Library
Push Training	LMS	LMS

In some cases, you can immediately close the gaps you identify. In the frontline vs. corporate persona example, you could use your LXP-based content library to provide on-demand development opportunities to frontline workers by building mobile-friendly learning paths focused on relevant skills. In other cases, you may need to build up parts of your ecosystem for specific personas over time. For instance, it may take time to identify right-fit tactics that will close your performance support gap within the frontline workforce.

Once you’ve identified the available tactics within each layer of your framework, it’s time to start solving problems.

Identify Your Solution Requirements

The MLE Framework is built to address any workplace performance challenge, regardless of industry, use case, or persona. The same steps apply regardless of the tools or technologies available within your ecosystem. The solutioning process always starts in the same place: the end (Figure 9-1).

Identify the Measurable Result

You must know where you’re going before you map the road to get there. Work with your stakeholders to determine the desired outcome of your learning solution. Start by asking how they determined there was a problem in the first place. This will help identify the clear, measurable result you must agree upon before progressing any further.

Let’s use safety training as an example.

A stakeholder comes to L&D with a request to “improve the company’s safety culture.” L&D immediately recognizes this goal as neither clear nor measurable. They engage the stakeholder in a detailed conversation about the origins of their request, probing for metrics that reveal a proven safety problem. The stakeholder identifies a high lost time incident rate (LTIR, along with data showing the most common workplace injuries over the past three years. L&D narrows the conversation to these proof points, specifically the most common source of lost time injuries: back strains. The stakeholder agrees to focus on reducing back injuries as the first step toward improving their workplace safety program.

“Improving safety culture” is a huge objective with lots of potential points of failure. “Reducing back injuries” is a specific, measurable goal that can be solutioned quickly and accurately. Once L&D proves their ability to solve this initial problem, they can work with the stakeholder to apply the same process to other priority safety topics. If resources permit, this may even happen simultaneously as a parallel workstream to accelerate the project.

Determine the Audience Persona

You know the desired result. Now, you must determine the people involved in making that result a reality. Identify the audience that will take part in your learning solution and outline their persona attributes (Table 9-2).

Table 9-2. Defining the Persona

The back injuries are occurring within the company’s distribution warehouses. Therefore, the audience for this solution must include warehouse workers as well as their managers.

Function	Employees work in teams to organize product shipments.
Foundation	Employees have limited experience and are trained to execute required job responsibilities in a safety-critical environment.
Scale	This role is held by 5,000 employees across a network of 18 distribution centers.
Time	Employees are heavily managed with minimal open time during their shifts and have no opportunity to complete work tasks while off-shift.
Location	Employees spend most of their time on the warehouse floor. Breaks are taken in a central break room.
Access	Employees have limited access to technology while working, including kiosks in the break room.
Motivation	Employees are focused on hitting operational metrics, specifically productivity goals, during each shift.
Measurement	Employees are measured based on productivity as well as reduction in safety incidents.

Define the Observable Behavior

You know who will play a key role in achieving the desired business result. Now you must determine how they will make this happen. Defining the on-the-job behaviors required to achieve your result is the most critical part of the solutioning process. It requires you to dig in with your stakeholder and determine if changing employee behavior will actually solve the problem.

L&D discusses the common causes of back injuries within the logistics operation with their stakeholders. They also review incident reports and conduct observations to identify behavior gaps within real-world job performance. L&D finds the majority of back injuries occur when employees improperly lift heavy objects within the workflow. They note that necessary safety equipment is available and point to specific lifting behaviors, such as bending at the knees and keeping arms close to the body, as the primary behavior changes required to achieve the desired result.

In this example, L&D found specific behaviors that must be addressed. However, before making this conclusion, a deep assessment of the job experience will help you make sure that the problem is actually a performance issue that could be addressed with a learning solution. If you had found important safety equipment was unavailable when injuries occurred, this information would have allowed you to push back on stakeholders to close this gap before progressing any further with a learning solution.

Once the observable behaviors are defined, L&D must ask one more question before moving to the next step: Why aren’t employees executing these behaviors on the job right now? The answer will determine if a learning solution has the potential to solve this performance problem. For example, if you find out that poor behavior is the result of factors like misaligned expectations, lack of accountability, or limited motivation, you should suggest an alternative solution and not attempt to address the issue with training.

Define the Required Knowledge

You know what employees have to do to achieve the desired result. Now you must determine what they have to know to execute the right behaviors. Your stakeholders and SMEs likely came prepared for this conversation, and they fully believe employees must memorize every word included in their 300-slide PowerPoint presentation. You know otherwise, but you need your stakeholder to agree.

Start with the behaviors you need employees to execute to achieve your desired result. Then, list the specific information points employees need to know to do those things on the job. Qualify each point by repeatedly asking your stakeholder the same question: Could an employee execute the required behavior without knowing this information? If they say no, then the information should be included in your learning solution. If the answer is yes, then the information should be set aside as an extra detail (but not necessarily discarded).

L&D identified safe lifting as a critical behavior for reducing back injuries. Working with their SMEs, they listed the required knowledge points related to safe lifting, including:

•  How to execute the steps of a safe lift

•  How to properly use safety equipment while executing a lift

•  How to identify potential strain or injury

•  How to prepare for physically strenuous job activities

•  How and when to report a workplace injury

This step focuses your learning solution on just the knowledge needed to solve the problem. However, your stakeholders and SMEs may not agree with the idea of cutting out big chunks of their beloved source information. Don’t worry! The MLE Framework includes options like shared knowledge for making sure all 300 slides get covered if absolutely necessary.

Architect Your Solution

You now have all the information you’ll need to design a right-fit learning solution. Plus, by connecting the dots between your solution and the desired business result, you’ve identified the data needed to measure the impact of your solution. Results-first design also provides the foundation for measuring the impact of learning solutions (Figure 9-2).

The process for creating a modern learning solution always begins in the same place: the bottom of the framework. Your first move is to determine the shared knowledge component of your solution. How will people access information on-demand for this topic moving forward? Then, move up the framework and apply right-fit tactics from each layer. The framework is designed so that each layer makes the layers above it stronger in application. However, only go up as far as you need to solve the problem. Many of your solutions will therefore not include tactics from the uppermost layers, such as pull and push training, while every solution will include the foundational layers, including shared knowledge and performance support.

There’s no exact formula for determining how far up the framework you should go to solve any given performance problem. That said, here are four factors you should consider when creating a modern learning solution:

•  Context. When and where does your audience need help? Some tactics are better suited for specific workplace environments. For example, a job aid (shared knowledge) is easier to consume in the flow of work on a manufacturing line than an e-learning module (push or pull training).

•  Criticality. How problematic is failure as related to this topic? If someone can learn through experience and solve their own problems without adding considerable risk to the business, then you may be able to focus on the lower layers of the framework. However, if someone will get hurt or create major workplace problems as the result of poor performance, you should consider applying the upper layers as well.

•  Complexity. How challenging is this topic to master? Are we talking about basic customer service skills or flying an Airbus 350? There are plenty of checklists in an airplane cockpit, but there’s still a lot of structured training required to become a pilot.

•  Timeliness. How quickly is a solution needed? Your stakeholder probably wants it yesterday. The lower layers are by nature faster to deploy compared with the upper layers, which require more instructional design and content development effort.

Weigh each of these factors against the performance problem you’re trying to solve.

For example, a customer service challenge may have high timeliness (solution desired immediately), low complexity (simple behavior changes), and low criticality (limited risk to the business). Therefore, a solution that includes tactics from only the shared knowledge and performance support layers of your framework may be sufficient to address the issue (Figure 9-3). Context will then help you determine how to provide this solution in a way that best fits your target audience.

On the other hand, a problem related to workplace safety, like the example in this chapter, may have high timeliness (solution required immediately), low complexity (simple processes to be executed), and high criticality (high risk to people and the business). Therefore, your solution may include tactics from every layer of the framework (Figure 9-4). However, you should still begin the process at the foundation and determine how shared knowledge and performance support tactics will work alongside more structured elements, such as push and pull training, coaching, and reinforcement. This holistic approach transforms learning from a one-and-done experience to an ongoing support strategy focused on enabling real-world performance.

A modern learning ecosystem also enables L&D to build and deploy iterative solutions rather than relying on campaign or project-based approaches. You can deploy right-fit tactics within each framework layer independently when it makes sense based on the needs of your audience. For example, you can publish shared knowledge resources, such as wiki articles, explainer videos, and job aids, to get foundational information into people’s hands quickly while still taking the time needed to build a formal training program. Furthermore, when people have a clear understanding regarding how tactics are systematically used within the workflow, you can pulse information to your audience instead of always waiting for every last detail to be finalized. You can publish part of a wiki article along with a note regarding upcoming information to give people the opportunity to participate in the change process as opposed to being impacted by it all at once.

We’ll apply the MLE Framework in detail to solve a collection of familiar workplace learning and performance challenges in the next chapter, including returning to the safety example we just explored. For now, remember that the goal is to deliver the simplest, fastest, most accessible and impactful solution possible.

Transform the Learning Experience

Traditional workplace learning is programmatic (Figure 9-5). L&D pushes content and activities at employees in hopes they’ll take advantage of these resources to improve their skills and achieve organizational goals.

The MLE Framework restores balance to the workplace learning experience by enabling support tactics within the workflow (Figure 9-6). Employees can easily pull the resources needed to solve timely problems or explore additional development opportunities. They also have learning and support activities pushed to them based on proven performance gaps and organizational priorities. Programmatic learning doesn’t go away. It just becomes the exception as opposed to the rule. Plus, continuous learning tactics like shared knowledge and reinforcement improve the impact of programmatic solutions by allowing designers to focus on what matters most rather than attempting to pack every possible piece of information into a single piece of content.

The strategic combination of programmatic and systematic learning tactics fosters sustained knowledge growth, targeted business results, and a collaborative learning culture in which the rising tide of capability raises all boats. Employees receive a balanced learning and support experience so they can solve today’s problems while building the skills needed to be successful in the future (Figure 9-7).

As Clark Quinn Once Said

Clark Quinn inspired me to think differently about my work when he said “JD, you’re funnier on Twitter than you are in person.”

Wait . . . that’s the wrong Clark Quinn quote. Although I still don’t know if that was a compliment or not.

During another equally enlightening conversation, Clark said to me: “Our job is to do the least work possible to accomplish our goal.” That sounds lazy on the surface, but it’s really a strategic way to think about architecting modern learning solutions. Every L&D function has limited resources. Therefore, these resources must be focused on the issues that matter most to the people and organizations we support so L&D can have the biggest possible impact. When we don’t have the right systems in place, it’s easy to get distracted by low value training requests that consume a huge chunk of our resources. The MLE Framework and its results-first design principles keep L&D pros focused on the behaviors, knowledge, and tactics that help people do their best work, regardless of the challenge they’re currently facing.