Please! Don't force me to learn what I don't need to know.

I'm in the learning and development business, and ideally I'm called in to evaluate a situation and recommend an intervention that will provide significant improvements for my client. Unfortunately, most of the time it doesn't work that way.

In practice I find that many times clients have made up their mind about training needs before they seek assistance from training providers (internal or external). The decision on what should and should not be covered in a course, the delivery methodology, and course length is often based on the client’s personal experiences, everyday observations, intuition, rumor, and gut feelings.

My favorite response to why a topic should be included in training is; "because they need to know it." This usually means that the topic is very important to the client's job, not necessarily what the student needs to know to do their job.

How can we as learning and development professionals influence the client to back up and do a more through job of evaluating training needs? It’s my experience that you have to show the client that there are gaps in understanding the target student’s needs by asking targeted questions. Place yourself in the learner’s position, and based on what you know about the project ask questions:

• How does this product/process/etc. impact my other job responsibilities?
• How will I be measured during and after the training?
• What support resources are available once I complete the training?
• Can I take the training online? I learn better that way.
• Etc., etc.

Have I ever accepted a project from a client without the opportunity to do an up-front analysis to ensure that the client’s assumptions were correct? Of course I have. I’ve got to make a living, and if the client is dead set on developing a course based on their gut intuition vs. research, I’ll do my best to make it successful in spite of the situation.

If we are given the chance, there are many tools and techniques we can use research the needs of the target population and management before making recommendations about training needs.

One method is the use of paper-based or online surveys. I recently used Zoomerang to conduct an online survey of senior management opinions regarding the addition of new products to a company’s sales catalog. It was fast and easy to set up and administer, and the comments from the managers was overwhelmingly positive. Since the response data was ready immediately, I was able to very quickly develop a comprehensive report that included recommendations.