Category Archives: Subject matter experts

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Validating Your SME’s Information Without Invalidating Your SME

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This post is one in a series that answers questions from viewers of the January 28 KnowledgeVision Google Hangout where we talked about the challenges of working with SMEs.

Question/Comment from Dale: Thank you Peggy for the useful tips on dealing with SMEs. Lots of good stuff here! In your section on the Not Quite Expert SME you recommend to loop in other knowledgeable people, but you don’t spend any time talking about the best way to do that. In my experience, I would never go behind the SME’s back. I would ask the SME who I am working with if there is anyone else they would want to weigh in on this content. I am concerned that inexperienced designers would act independently and undermine trust. On the review front, I would ask the SME who they would recommend to proof the content. And, we ALWAYS do dry runs before any content is put out. 

 

Thank you for this great question, Dale, Without trying to be too self-serving, I cover this in the book Working With SMEs but we couldn’t cover everything in the pre-learning section of the webinar.

If you find that you have a SME that isn’t an expert, you really need to first try to address it with the person themselves if that is possible. Sometimes, if you are lucky, the assigned SME will tell you upfront they aren’t the right person which gives you both a good place to start finding the right person. You are right, you never want to go behind anybody’s back and undercut their trust. These can be very sensitive political situations, too, depending who your SME is, right? So, yes, your instinct to tread carefully is a really good one.

One of the things someone mentioned to me when they were reading a first draft of the book is that sometimes you will get a SME who doesn’t want the task so they’ll tell you they don’t know or they aren’t the right person just to get off the hook. I don’t know how you sort that out if you aren’t on the inside of the department and have a good handle on that. But it is worth mentioning to make sure that if they say they aren’t the right person, that you believe them and then enlist their help to find the right person.

However, if you have a SME and you aren’t getting what you need, and they don’t want to admit it, you should document that. At some point, if you try to fill in information gaps in your training program and you aren’t getting answers from them, you might go to your manager and tell them the problem and show them your documentation. If you aren’t assigned a SME who really can give you what you need for your training program, something probably went wrong when the project manager asked for SMEs to be assigned. Another issue could be that the SME is really afraid for their job if they think that they cannot give you good content. They may be covering up and you really just have to sort that out.

When you are an outside training firm, identifying the SMEs on the project can be part of the Project Charter or Scope at the outset where it is defined who the client company will assign to work with you. Then you have that document to fall back on, where you can say, look, this is what we need to write this program and it looks like this person can’t help us. When it’s an internal training department, the head of training could be involved in helping you solve the problem.

I agree with you, I think you are right about asking for another SME to put an eye on the program. There should be several layers of signoffs anyway because even though your SME may be the most knowledgeable person in the organization about your topic, the SME is very rarely the person who is writing the checks or has responsibility for the final product. The person who has final authority for the project is the person who has the responsibility to approve your training program in a signoff procedure.

 

 

 

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Time is Your SME’s Most Precious Commodity

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This post is one in a series that answers questions from viewers of the January 28 KnowledgeVision Google Hangout where we talked about the challenges of working with SMEs.

Question from Michelle: What do you find to be the most challenging type of SME and why?

The book Working With SMEs identifies eight different types of subject matter experts and gives you a plan for getting the best result with each style. They are:

1. The Speedy SME

2. The Scattered SME

3. The Shortcut SME

4. The Defensive SME

5. The Not-Quite-Expert SME

6. The Overcommitted SME

7. The Interrupted SME

8. The Reckless Reviewer

At the heart of most of these types of subject matter experts is the fact that they are in demand and overworked, so they may appear scattered, unfocused and in a hurry. The tools and tips for handling these issues usually simply requires making sure the SME has ample foreknowledge of what you will cover in your session, and that you confirm they have put aside a block of time that is dedicated to working on a training program with you.

For these reasons, I find the most challenging SME is the one who is too busy to really be doing the job of working on the training program. They are the most difficult not because they don’t care – because they usually care a lot – but it is hard to get an appointment, hard to keep the appointment, hard to keep their attention when you have them, and really tough to get a review of the material when you need it.

I find it most difficult because I think it is the hardest to overcome this limitation both for you and for them. They don’t have enough hours in the day, they may not be able to delegate this particular task to someone – or anything else on their plate for that matter – so sometimes the whole project is on hold waiting for them to become available.

This one situation comes particularly to mind. I wrote educational materials for administrators of a state program, and we wrote brochures on how to assemble a non-profit board, things like that. It was very difficult to get reviews, approvals and signoffs from people in the state capital in Harrisburg who had lots of other things tugging at them, and we were in Philadelphia – out of sight, out of mind.

As you know, these projects have timelines, resources lined up, and schedules to be met. The training requirements are usually already scheduled around a certain week or perhaps something needs to be put up on the learning system to meet a deadline for regulatory compliance. That “something” means you are under pressure, the clock is running, money is being spent while you are waiting and other resources – maybe graphic designers or printers – are all waiting for approvals so they can do their jobs.

For all these reasons, I think availability is the most important thing. If you can get your SME and get their attention, you can usually overcome all these other issues. You are, after all, working with a pro!

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More Input on Incentivizng your Subject Matter Expert

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This post is one in a series that answers questions from viewers of the January 28 KnowledgeVision Google Hangout where we talked about the challenges of working with SMEs.

Question from Denise:

Other than the great feeling of “I’ve helped my company out…” are there standard incentives you suggest to offer a SME who you are taking away from their job – where they may be losing money?

We received several questions about incentivizing SMEs, so I thought the topic deserved more attention.

It’s hard to pull people away from jobs where they are paid for performance to do something that doesn’t overtly result in monetary rewards. Recently, one client pulled district sales managers away from their sales duties to help with training, and they got a lot of resistance to participate for that reason.

We kicked around offering a bonus for being part of the program and giving them some kind of recognition, certificate or award. Another option is to require training as part of the job responsibilities that will be reflected in their reviews and job performance. In the case of the above-mentioned situation, there was resistance and part of the program had to be severely cut back due to a lack of participation.

In the book Working with SMEs I talk a little about resistance  from people who, for any number of reasons, don’t want to take time out of their regular responsibilities to be a subject matter expert for your training program. One of the recommendations is to fall back on “you are helping the company out” and remind them that their coworkers and colleagues who are trained on these materials are going to be working with them.

It is a tough issue because you need to incent people somehow. If you require an employee to participate in developing or delivering training, you have to make it worth their while. If you require it and they perceive that they are losing money, or losing time on a pet project by being involved as a SME in your training program, you may encounter some attitude and pushback. It isn’t fun for you, and quite honestly, you are probably not getting everything you need from your SME, either.

I am interested in hearing more ideas from people who have successfully negotiated this problem.

 

 

 

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Should You Handhold Your SME Through Their Review of Your Content?

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This post is one in a series that answers questions from viewers of the January 28 KnowledgeVision Google Hangout where we talked about the challenges of working with SMEs.

Question from Amy:

When having SMEs review material for content, what is your approach? Do you prefer a facilitated session to walk through the material or allow them to review the material independently to provide feedback? Or does it depend on the type of SME you are dealing with?

I think it depends more on the material than the SME. If the material is very involved, or requires many steps for example, you would want to review it with them. For example, if you are reviewing documentation for a new software program, everyone is still learning what was in each field and drop down menu, so it is good to be with your SMEs for reviews. You will want to ask questions to clarify the content of fields, review drop downs menus and steps for accessing the program such as new password protocols.

 

Sometimes the material is straightforward, especially if your SME gave you a lot of great information to work at the outset. You may have detailed slides or journal articles that they’ve authored in which case their review of the content is probably going to be rather perfunctory. In that case, you can probably write most of your training from their content with pretty much confidence. During the review, they can independently check your word choices, context, how you’ve framed things, review questions and answers if you’ve written those, and check case studies to make sure they feel authentic. But, no, in the case where you have a lot of good content to write the project, I don’t think you would need to be with them for that review. In fact, I personally would rather let them have time on their own to review it and think about it.

I cover this topic in the book in more detail including review sign off sheets and a flow chart for documenting processes.

If readers have  experience handling complex reviews with subject matter experts, I’d like to hear how you’ve handled it. Contact me at workingwithsmes@gmail.com with questions, or leave a message in the comment section.

 

 

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Dueling SMEs! Resolving Information Discrepencies

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This post is one in a series that answers questions from viewers of the January 28 KnowledgeVision Google Hangout where we talked about the challenges of working with SMEs.

Question from Sarah:

Can you talk about ways to resolve information discrepancies between SMEs. Example: the SMEs have very different methods of performing the work and have strong opinions that “their way is right”.

 

I love this question because it happens! First, I am assuming you have presented this material to both of them and they have both dug in their heels. Without the two – or more! – coming to an agreement, here are a few ways to handle it:

 

  1. If you have two subject matter experts who are at very different levels in the organization or different levels of experience, the more experienced one can trump the junior SME simply because a. there is a higher probability they are correct (although not always!) and b. 9 times out of 10 it will politically be the wiser move.

 

  1. If you have two highly regarded subject matter experts of relatively equal weight, you have a sticky wicket, for sure. In that case, the stakeholder in charge of the project who is usually also the person writing the checks or providing the resources, gets to make the call. They may choose one over the other for any number of reasons having to do with personal preference, political considerations in the organization, seniority, favoritism, or any other factors that you may not know or care about. It is just your job to make sure you satisfy your client and that the information is correct to the best of your ability. That sometimes means deferring to the project owner, not the SME. The project owner will have to deal with the SMEs. That’s outside the scope of your job, although don’t be surprised if you end up taking the heat on something like that. Consider it all in a day’s work.

 

  1. A third option is calling in an outside expert to referee the information.  If everyone respects that person, it could be a solution. I’ve actually been in that situation, although in my experience the outside SME can really muddy the waters further. Not because they aren’t knowledgeable but because now the client is faced with more alternatives!  If your client is already confused, yikes! If you can, try to get the existing SMEs and the clients to come to an agreement using 1 or 2. I actually address this option in the book Working with SMEs in more detail because this situation was going on while I was writing it, so it was on my mind.

 

If readers have any more ideas about how to handle this situation, I’d be interested to hear them.

 

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Tips for Choosing the Best Subject Matter Expert

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This post is one in a series that answers questions from viewers of the January 28 KnowledgeVision Google Hangout where we talked about the challenges of working with SMEs.

Question from Andrea:

What are tips for figuring out in advance what type of SME you will be working with i.e. before you sit down to interview them – so that we are better prepared (incl. equipment) to employ the right tactics?

 

I partially cover this in the book  but you bring in the idea about preparing to have the right equipment as well, which is a good aspect to think about.

When you are designing a training program with the stakeholders, they usually have an idea of the type of person or, even more commonly, the exact person they would like you to work with. It is a good idea to get that in writing when you are doing a project charter, project scope document or putting together your project plan. That way you and your stakeholders know in advance the resources they are committing to the training.

If the customer asks your for suggestions, I would ask them for the person most familiar with the process, knowledge, information, skill AND who has the time to spend with you. Sometimes the person who is the most knowledgeable is also the person who is in most demand and so it really isn’t helpful if you can’t get their time!

It is good to define or name your SME in your project charter for any number of reasons, one of which is that if the SME cannot fulfill their obligation you have a description of the kind of person you need and can refer back to it.

Also, yes, you really bring up a good point about knowing the person so you can be prepared with the right equipment and tactics. I recommend to almost always capture your interview with an audio recording. If you have a particularly iconic SME who you might want to capture for posterity, try to get the video.

Use whatever tools are most comfortable for you when you are note taking.  Personally, I am comfortable taking handwritten notes, but some people are more comfortable typing. I have read that handwriting actually imprints the information on your brain in a way that typing does not, which is one reason I will often have learners physically write out parts of some exercises.

In any event, in my opinion, note taking and equipment are a matter of personal preference.

 

 

 

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Incentivizing Your Subject Matter Experts

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This post is one in a series that answers questions from viewers of the January 28 KnowledgeVision Google Hangout where we talked about the challenges of Working with SMEs.

We got this question from Nicole:

Any tips for incentivizing and rewarding busy SMEs to deliver part of the training in the classroom? Internal SMEs maybe would like to teach others, but they are working on BHAGs, for which there are greater career and financial rewards?

First, I was not familiar with the term “BHAG”. Now I know! It means “big, hairy, audacious goals”.

As for the question, when you have a subject matter expert who is being reluctantly pulled away from their job, the first approach is to remind them how important their role as a SME is to the organization. They will be training people who are their colleagues and working along side them. It is an opportunity for the subject matter expert to have a lasting impact on the company.

Beyond that, when their time spent working on the training program interferes with their ability to generate commission-based income or pulls them away from some other activity they value, then the company needs to think about incentivizing the SME to offset their loss.

We recently had this come up with a sales training team. We had written a coaching and mentoring program that required a fairly significant amount of classroom time with ongoing commitments to training new hires. The mentoring program would get the new hires up to speed much faster and the organization stood to benefit. But the individual mentors? Not so much. Their perceived return was just not worth their time.

Solutions? The company can structure a bonus or incentive program for sales people or anyone who stands to lose income if they participate as mentors. SMEs need to be recognized for their efforts in a way that it puts a finger on the scale during their review process or in some other way is related to a measurement of their job performance.

The upshot is that when you invite or require a subject matter expert to be involved in taking time away from other activities that they value – such as generating sales or working on a research project – you need to reward them in some way to recognize their  contribution and offset their loss. Otherwise, you may end up with a SME that doesn’t want to spend the time working on developing or delivering the training program. That’s just lose-lose-lose. No good for the SME, no good for the training, and no good for the company.

 

 

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Deep Time: Preserving and Storing Knowledge for the Long Haul

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If you are working in a corporate environment, and especially if you are writing training programs, your focus of knowledge capture and transfer is immediate. You have a procedure or a technique or a leadership program that you are instituting now, and it is relevant for the immediate future.

Sometimes, however, you are writing training or capturing knowledge for the long haul. You might be preserving the words of a founding CEO. Or one of your R&D people has made a groundbreaking discovery that changes the way things are done in your industry. That kind of knowledge capture requires the guarantee that it is preserved in a way that it can be recovered later.

We really like physical documents for that reason. Nothing like a stone tablet to preserve some good ideas, right? Monks have dedicated their lives to rewriting valuable works because paper products disintegrated over time, and it was the only medium they had at their disposal. Not all valuable knowledge is codified in writing. After all, there is good old on-the-job (OTJ) training. Through apprenticeships and mentoring, processes are demonstrated and passed on in the working environment and preserved as a matter of common practice. Recent wisdom tells us that training is a 70-20-10 split – 70% OJT, 20% elearning and 10% classroom learning.

Our age, though, the information age, holds so much more possibility for what we can capture, preserve and pass on to future generations. Wouldn’t you like to watch a craftsman from 1860 build a window? Imagine the little tricks of the trade that have been lost to the ages.

Those things don’t have to be lost anymore. The trick is to find the right medium for capture, and that medium has to be one that can be accessed in the future. So, those early elearning programs I wrote that landed on VHS that people watched on a big old cathode ray tube in the conference room, or those audio cassettes they listened to in the car? Gone. Nothing on there is of much relevance anymore, so nobody will lose sleep over that.

But what of the precious words of your founding President who set the tone for your company, and maybe an industry, a la Steve Jobs?

Today, the technology of knowledge capture makes possible watching someone assemble a window and see all the little tricks that might not make it into the assembly manual.

Which leads us to the issue of preservation.

A Very Cool Book on Preserving Knowledge

Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia by Gregory Benford is a curious little book written in 1999 by a University of California physics professor whose work includes experiments in the fields of astrophysics and plasma physics. He is best known for his award-winning science fiction including the Galactic Center Saga series. In his non-fiction work, Deep Time, he describes how humanity interprets former civilizations by studying architecture, tombs, layers of the earth and time capsules. For example, he explains, we leave behind clues relevant to our time and culture, like placing a Buns of Steel video in a time capsule to tell future generations…what? (I will leave it for you to interpret the value of this human legacy.)

In one particularly striking example that leads me to discuss this book, however, Dr. Benford was part of an Expert Judgment study group hired by the Department of Energy to leave a “Warning: Do Not Enter” message on a nuclear waste site in New Mexico to be interpreted by future inhabitants/visitors/species for up to 24,000 years. So it begged the question not only of how messages are sent and delivered across time, species, and cultures, and what kind of messages are sent, but also the methods by which those messages are preserved.

At our present level of technology, we deem that we can preserve what is valuable – or we perceive to be valuable (see Buns of Steel video) – using digital language preserved in the cloud.
Professor Benford writes: “Strikingly, no libraries survived antiquity, though some were quite grand. A Christian mob burned the greatest trove of ancient writings, the Library of Alexandria, taking from us hundreds of thousands of papyrus and vellum scrolls. Writing on organic sheets is vulnerable to fire, whether from fanatics or accident. Acid-free paper withers in a few centuries.” (Deep Time, p. 15)
He goes on a bit later in the book to describe the vulnerabilities of what, in 1999, was state-of-the-art technology.

“Worse, nothing dates more quickly than computer equipment. Already, historians cannot easily decipher the punch card and tape technology of 1960s computers, and the output of early machines such as Univac are unintelligible.” (Deep Time, p. 61)

“…I imagined my own works, stored in some library vault for future scholars (if there are any) who care about such ephemera of the Late TwenCen. A rumpled professor drags a cardboard box out of a dusty basement and uncovers my collective works: hundreds of 3.5 inch floppy disks, ready to run on a DOS machine using Word Perfect 6.0,” he wrote(Deep Time, p. 60)

If you are a trainer, you probably have very little concern for this type of long-term preservation. After all, you aren’t capturing and passing on knowledge that needs to be preserved for a thousand years. Or are you?

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“MONEY Master the Game” Masters the Art of Interviewing Subject Matter Experts

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If you don’t know Tony Robbins, you are among a rapidly dwindling group.

The leadership heavyweight and inspirational guru to the powerful and famous just published the second book of his dynamic and storied career. Money Master the Game contains lots of great investment principles but, more than that, it contains lots of advice for living life and being a great leader as well as a gracious human being. And for our purposes here, as I poured over it during a long holiday weekend, I found that the book lives as a stellar example of how to interview and get the most out of subject matter experts.

In this 600+-page tome, Robbins interviewed “more than 50 self-made billionaires, Nobel Prize winners, investment titans, bestselling authors, professors and financial experts” including 12 of the top investors in the world to learn the strategies employed by them to manage the portfolios of high-net-worth individuals and share those strategies with us – the hoi polloi.

Although I read the book to better understand investing, it became clear to me that this book stood as a testament to great gathering and organizing complex content from subject matter experts. MONEY Master the Game demonstrates some of the most important strategies for working with subject matter experts, and as a result, Robbins wrote what is truly a must-read book for investors, leaders and just about anybody else who wants to know how the financial world works.

Robbins described his interviewing process within the pages of the book, which makes it a wealth of information for people who work with subject matter experts.

1. He prepared thoroughly before meeting with each expert. He learned about their background and studied what was already written about them and by them. He didn’t waste their time.

To be able to sit with yet another of the great investment legends of our time was truly a gift. I spent close to 15 hours studying and preparing for my time with Ray [Dalio], combing over every resource I could get my hands on (which was tough, because he typically avoids media and publicity). I dug up some rare speeches he gave to world leaders at Davos and the Council on Foreign Relations. I watched his interview with Charlie Rose of 60 Minutes (one of his only major media appearances). I watched his instructional animated video How the Economic Machine Works – in Thirty Minutes (www.economicprinciples.org). It’s a brilliant video I highly encourage you to watch to really understand how the world economy works. I combed through every white paper and article I could find. I read and highlighted virtually every page of his famous text Principles, which covers both his life and management guiding principles. This was an opportunity of a lifetime, and I wasn’t going to walk in without being completely prepared.

2. He had a prepared set of questions that he asked each expert so he had a baseline of information as a springboard to ask more specific questions tailored to each SME.

[I asked] them some of the same questions you’d ask if you were in the room with me. Here’s a sampling…

…If you couldn’t leave any of your money to your children, but only a portfolio or set of financial principles to pass on to help them thrive, what would it be?

3. He set up short interviews (an hour) and then, by asking great questions and engaging his subjects, he managed to get three to four hours of their time after the interview began.

Most of the interviews were scheduled for an hour or less but turned into three- and four-hour sessions. Why? Because each of these financial giants was interested in going deep when he or she saw that I wasn’t there just for some shallow questions.

4. He recorded and transcribed the interviews.

…you’ll see only five to ten pages for each interview as opposed to the average 75-page transcript.

5. He curated complex information to make it valuable and accessible to the reader.

To keep this section under 9,000 pages, I’m including highlights from just 11 of the interviews. Well, 11 plus one bonus.

6. He cared about his subject and his subject matter experts.

Their answers excited me, shocked me, sometimes made me laugh. Other times they moved me to tears.

7. After he collected and digested four years’ worth of work, he boiled it down and made it useable for the reader.

My mission has been to synthesize the best of all they’ve shared into an integrated, simple 7-step financial blueprint.

Only one of his interview targets, Warren Buffet, declined a formal interview. He told Robbins, “Tony, I’d love to help you, but I’m afraid I’ve already said everything a person can say on the subject.” In a brief biographical sketch, Robbins shared the highlights of Buffet’s career and toplined Buffet’s investment strategies drawing on public information. He added color by describing his personal interactions with The Oracle of Omaha.

Most importantly, Robbins treated his subject matter experts with respect. He delivered their content with the same care that you would use shipping your grandmother’s china across the country – it’s packaged very carefully. For any number of reasons, not least among them as a great example of working with subject matter experts, it is well worth picking through the bubble wrap to unpack the immense value of this book.

How well prepared are you to speak with your subject matter expert?

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Working with SMEs: Lessons Learned from Ella Fitzgerald

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My passion for working with subject matter experts is an outgrowth from my early career as a daily journalist. I had the opportunity to interview famous, talented, brilliant people…and some big-time politicians, too. 

Of all the greats I have had the great fortune to meet, Ella Fitzgerald stands out among the crowd. I was in my mid-20s, and she was in her mid-70s. Go ahead, do that math. We were both in our prime. Preparing for that interview taught me one of the foundational lessons that I carried forward into other work with subject matter experts – do your homework!

Ella Fitzgerald is nothing if not the ultimate female vocalist. Her talent went beyond jazz – although it can be stated with some confidence she helped define the genre. She also delivered popular music with a melodic flair and clear voice. I am still in awe over her delivery of A Tisket A Tasket at 70-something in a crystalline, little girl voice.

Know Your Subject Matter Expert

When I was given the opportunity to be alone in a room (seriously) with possibly the greatest female vocalist of all time, I was – let’s just say – nervous. Excited and nervous. What does one ask Ella Fitzgerald?

My father was a jazz pianist. I grew up on Satin Doll. So I told Dad, who was flabbergasted by this opportunity. I needed some help here. What should I ask her? What would you want to know, as someone who has played her book for 30 years?

Boy, am I glad I asked him. He gave me wisdom that has served me well in my career as a journalist, writer and trainer. Get familiar with your subject matter expert before you meet with them.

If you get only one shot at speaking with someone of that caliber, and trust me, you get only one very limited window, make sure you find out something important. Use your time with them wisely. His first advice? “Whatever you do, don’t ask her how she got started. Everybody knows about the Apollo in Harlem. She’ll blow you off as a stupid kid and you won’t get another question. Go read about her background then ask her something about music.”

I didn’t have his background in music, so I downloaded some info from Pop.

“What should I ask her?”

He thought about her material, her records, what he played, and asked why she did certain things on certain songs. I had some meaty questions that had some knowledge behind them.

A Blur

I got in to see her with my little reporter’s notebook, no doubt damp from sweat. I asked her dad’s questions. She was interested, really interested. She liked the questions. We had a little singer’s talk. And to this day, it was a blur.

In fact, I recently found the program from the show and now I need to find my article. Somehow, as I look back, that was such a defining moment I need to make sure I’ve preserved it for my dotage.

For you, as a trainer and instructional designer, what are the takeaways?

Two Lessons from The Ella Experience

Do your homework. That means know enough not to ask such a stupid question that your SME disregards you. You won’t get what you need because you don’t really understand the background and context, and you won’t get what you need because the SME won’t waste his or her time bothering to tell you.

Record and document. An interview with a world-class subject matter expert is a once in a lifetime shot to get some valuable information and perhaps even record that person for posterity. No, I wasn’t allowed to record my interview with Ella. But make sure you try to record the incredibly intelligent and experienced people you will meet so you don’t miss anything in the blur of the moment. Ask permission as necessary.

Not all subject matter experts are in the class of Ella Fitzgerald. But there are people of her caliber in all areas of endeavor and all walks of life, yes, even politics. As someone who designs, writes and delivers training, you are sure to encounter people who have risen to the top of their organization or their field all the time.

Respect them all. Honor their greatness. And get to know them before they get to know you.