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Sam Reese is CEO of Miller Heiman and has led the company to its position as the foremost thought leader and innovator in the strategy, process, and skills that drive sales performance.

Sam Reese

Sales Management Isn’t Second Nature

June 2012 - TD Magazine

Turn Sales Leadership Strategies Into Training Actions

Sam Need is a Research Manager on Root’s Insights team. He has 4 years of experience on the team and has partnered with clients in a variety of industries (construction, retail, hospitality, healthcare, telecom, airline, financial services). He holds an MA from the University of Chicago in social science methodology, focusing in Anthropology, and he is an expert ethnographer.

Sam Neet

You’ve all been there. You have created some content here then looked over there, and you’ve seen the same flavor of content designed in a bit of a different way and for a somewhat different audience. Maintaining consistency in the learning and development world can be challenging. That is why content reuse can be such a valuable strategy to have in your pocket. When paired with an agile design approach, consistency makes building learning programs much more approachable and streamlined.What Is Content Reuse?Content reuse differs depending on the individual’s experience and background. This tactic is when you take content (oftentimes small chunks of it) that has already been created for one use case and leverage it for another use case or deliverable. This can be taking knowledge base articles and reusing that content to build out courses or taking presentations created by a hiring manager to onboard their new hires and turning that into an onboarding course to be distributed across the company. It can be reusing the same steps or snippets in one article in other outputs like a job aid, manual, course, or webpage. It can even be taking a full program created for an internal persona and using a majority of the content for an external audience that needs to be able to master the same skills.The important distinction is that content reuse is not copying and pasting.Agile Development’s Relationship With Content ReuseThis type of reuse and recycling of content is one of the pillars of developing learning programs in an agile way. If you are looking to start building content in an agile environment, then content reuse is going to get you there. The ability to quickly take content in a modular way and piece it together in different outputs depending on your audience is how you go from a drawn-out ADDIE driven design to a quick, targeted and streamlined SAM-driven design (the successive approximation model, which is a simplified and more agile version of ADDIE). In this approach, you have already performed the analysis and the design of the snippets of content. Now you have to match them up with the correct personas, tweaking to make sure the tone and viewpoint is correct for the intended persona and then running it through evaluation and launch. You are getting from point A to point Z much quicker, thus being more agile. And when you have these pieces in smaller blocks of modular content, you can iterate in bite-sized pieces.Challenges of Content Reuse and Ways to Overcome ThemBut wait, this sounds so easy! There have to be challenges, right? Well, yes. The challenges here are real. Content reuse, while it is a fantastic way to get to the end point quicker, is a bear to maintain. Think about it. You have this content that you are reusing from several different outputs: PowerPoint, Word, Google Docs, loose-leaf paper, Captivate files, videos, webinar recordings. And these might be used in several different places. Content pulled from here and added to there. So, when it comes time for the company to release its sparkly new feature set, you need to go and find every single place in your training, knowledge base, and resources that need to be updated. Inevitably, something gets missed and now you have a maintenance and versioning nightmare. You also may need some of this content you are reusing to say and portray different bits of information based on the audience or persona. So, how do we make sure that our step to becoming more efficient and agile does not cause 1,000 other problems down the line?It’s all in the technology stack you choose. Finding the perfect blend of tools that help you streamline these processes coupled with the agile processes using content reuse will have you at hero status in no time. Bringing on board a single-source authoring solution like MadCap Flare is your way to master the content reuse space. Flare allows you to create content in these snippets of information and customize what is displayed based on audience need and output into different formats, all while maintaining that single source of truth. Now this is a truly simplified explanation of the power of Flare because it does so much more, but content reuse is Flare’s superpower. Content reuse paired with agile learning design and development has never been easier.About the AuthorAndrea Maliska is an award-winning learning and development leader, eLearning strategist and speaker with over fifteen years of experience across multiple industries. She thrives in startup cultures and excels at building out holistic programs that center around the learner experience. She currently owns her own eLearning consulting company, Rebel Learn and is located near the gorgeous Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado.

The Importance of Content Reuse in Agile Learning Development

Learning methodologies are cheat sheets. The ADDIE methodology (analyze, design, development, implement, evaluate) was developed by Florida State University for the U.S. Army as a repeatable and standard set of tasks to create training. At the time of its creation, similar methodologies emerged in other areas. For example Tom DeMarco, Ed Yourdon, and Larry Constantine were developing SSADM (structured systems analysis and design methodology) for data processing's growing complexity. In all cases, methodologies allow teams to follow a repeatable series of steps, adjusted for the context of their project, to drive speed and quality. These methodologies were called Top Down and later Waterfall, and that's where the problems began to emerge. David Parnas (U.S. Naval research), in “A Rational Design Process: How and Why to Fake It,” writes: "Many of the \[system's\] details only become known to us as we progress in the \[system's\] implementation. Some of the things that we learn invalidate our design and we must backtrack." Top Down doesn't backtrack easily. It's more start over than backtrack, and no one wanted to do that. Imagine painting a family portrait and then having to add another person to it. The IT industry tried to mitigate Parnas' reality by creating RAD (rapid application development). Requirements were gathered and upfront focus groups with critical stakeholders and iterative prototyping were used to drive design and development. This solved most of the backtrack problem, but many IT teams struggled with prototyping that would never end. They called this death spirals.  SAM (Successive Approximation Model), created by Allen Interactions, has emerged as an alternative to ADDIE, especially when doing e-learning solutions to drive performance improvement. The kickoff focus group is called Savvy Start, and the risk of death spirals has been mitigated through three design and three development iterations. Allen Interactions's philosophy maps the purpose of this methodology toward driving performance. The current iteration of methodology is “Agile.” This approach challenges not only the accountability of roles and ownership of deliverables, but also flies in the face of current multitasking project work. The primary difference in this approach is that smaller chunks are completely finished through locked-down teams in a fixed period of time (sprints). This is not prototyping—the deliverables are complete, useable components. In my opinion, true Agile is difficult to implement in typical corporate organizations and cultures without creating a new and independent organization. The chief energy officer of Torrance Learning, Megan Torrance, has been successful in using Agile approaches to deliver e-learning to their customers through LLAMA (lot like Agile methods approach), their unique approach to agile. So, there you have it: a brief breakdown of the methodology wars. It’s up to you to decide which works best for your design plans. For a deeper dive into the various learning methodologies, join me for the next online workshop, Essentials of Learning Design Methodologies: ADDIE, SAM, Agile, and More.

Methodology Wars: ADDIE vs. SAM vs. AGILE

Dr. Sam Shriver is the executive vice president of research and development at The Center for Leadership Studies (CLS). In that capacity, he serves as a senior thought leader, subject matter expert and author. Sam has over 35 years of direct experience with Situational Leadership®, organizational behavior and leadership development.He holds a B.S. from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, an M.B.A. from Pepperdine University and earned his Ed.D. in training and development from North Carolina State University. Sam has designed and developed over 200 custom leadership and coaching programs and has been formally recognized by Bersin, Brandon Hall and the Association for Talent Development (ATD), in that regard. He has also authored numerous training and development white papers, journal articles, blogs in addition to the book and audio series, “From Coach to Coach.” He has also co-authored a best-selling service quality improvement program, “Frontline Service.”

Sam Shriver

Sam Caballero is a seasoned talent development professional and pivot coach who is passionate about helping people help themselves. This is accentuated by his purpose of how he can be of service.Co-founder of Pivotn and senior advisor to the Air Force Reserve Command’s Professional Development Center at Robins Air Force Base, he lives out his passion and purpose by providing coaching services from emerging leaders to C-level executives. He designs, develops, and facilitates various inspiring workshops that leave the participants engaged, enthused, and empowered. Additionally, he assists and supports organizations by analyzing their talent development initiatives then provides and implements solutions for how they can enhance overall workplace performance.He has worked with military and civilian audiences, both English and Spanish, about topics in the areas of emotional intelligence, leadership and management development, diversity and inclusion of teams, personal branding, change management, and agile thinking.

His career began as a military training instructor for the US Air Force at Lackland Air Force Base. Since then, he has served in learning and organization development positions for the City of San Antonio, Burger King, Chevron, Heartland National TB Center, and CCC Group. Additionally, he volunteers as the vice president of finance for the Association of Talent Development’s San Antonio Chapter and director of strategy for iEmpower, a Texas-based organization with the purpose of promoting, elevating, and inspiring women.Sam’s education includes an Associate of Science in training methodologies and another in human resources management from the Community College of the Air Force. He has a Bachelor of Arts in urban planning and a minor in economics from Texas State University and a Master of Arts in management from Webster University.He holds a variety of credentials including the Certified Professional in Talent Development from the Association of Talent Development, Associate Certified Coach from the International Coaching Federation, Myer & Briggs Indicator Type (MBTI) Practitioner Certification from the MBTI Foundation, and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Workplace Certificate from the University of South Florida.Sam lives with his wife, Yorka, and their two kids, Samuel and Isabella, in San Antonio, Texas. He is an avid reader of self-development books, likes long-distance running, and loves traveling with his family.

Sam Caballero MA, CPTD

Sam Herring is co-founder and CEO of Intrepid Learning and leads the company’s strategic direction. With partners, he started the company in 1999 with a focus on learning research and best practices, and grew the business to become a market leader in learning consulting, outsourcing and technology. Today the company works with leading global companies to help them improve performance, and achieve their most promising business opportunities through innovative learning solutions.Sam is immediate past chairman of the ATD Board of Directors, and is recognized as a “Who’s Who” training industry thought leader by TrainingIndustry.com. Sam regularly speaks and consults with clients on topics such as innovation, business agility, learning trends and best practices, enterprise learning strategy, and more. He is published on BigThink.com, and in Fast Company and TD magazine, and is a frequent keynote speaker at leading industry conferences, seminars, universities, and global corporations.Sam holds a master’s degree from Harvard University, where he studied ethics, religion, and public policy, and a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University. In 2008, he was recognized as a top business leader through the Puget Sound Business Journal’s “40 Under 40” awards. He is a past director of New Futures, a Seattle area children and family services agency. Sam lives in Seattle with his wife Lynn and children Anneka and Malcolm.

Sam Herring

New research from Ambient Insight takes a closer look at revenue projections for the self-paced e-learning market.

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