Dave Derington: [00:00:00] Ooh, did they any issue me a gun? 

Adam Avramescu: [00:00:03] they don’t do that for customer educators anymore. Unfortunately, federal laws.

Dave Derington: [00:00:17] Hi, everyone Dave here from CELab podcast. If you’re finding value in this podcast, we’d really like to get to know who you are. So we’re going to ask you to click on our site and had yourself to our mailing list. We’re going to agree not to spam you, but at some point in the future, we may have special events, certain podcasts we want you to join on, or we might even throw in a class or two.

So sign up today. It’s not going to cost you anything. And again, we promise not to bug you. Thanks everybody.

Adam Avramescu: [00:00:47] It’s January 9th, 2019, and welcome to episode 10 of CELab. That’s right. We’re in the double digits of the customer education lab, where we explore how to build customer education programs, experiment with new approaches and exterminate the myths and bad advice that stop growth dead in its tracks. I’m Adam Avramescu 

Dave Derington: [00:01:06] and I’m Dave Derington 

Adam Avramescu: [00:01:07] and it’s national apricot day.

So I hope you are enjoying a delicious. Apricots with a friend or family 

Dave Derington: [00:01:15] then under trader Joe’s and get us some dried apricots or some nice juicy ones from the farmer’s market. Okay. 

Adam Avramescu: [00:01:20] If it’s seasonal where you live. 

Dave Derington: [00:01:22] Okay. All right. So let’s get into this, let’s frame this one up by saying you listener.

Dear listener have found your way into a customer education role. Congrats. We’re super excited for you. Now, if you’re in a smaller organization or you’re working on a brand new product, chances are. and I know I’ve experienced this. You have nothing, you have zip zero diddly-squat to work with.

There’s no documentation, scant, sparse notes, and very likely you have an overwork product manager or other subject matter experts. That’s way too busy to deal with. 

Adam Avramescu: [00:01:56] I’ve been there many a time, if you think about this in terms of development and project management, there’s nothing worse than finding out that content is a major blocker to project completion.

what do we do to get over this, Dave? 

Dave Derington: [00:02:08] Glad you ask Adam. let’s go ahead and dive in and crush this topic. 

Adam Avramescu: [00:02:12] All right. Hulk smash as always. Hi, hold smash. As always, we begin with our hypothesis. Dave, what are you thinking? How do we as customer educators tackle the source of the river of knowledge through discovery and knowledge 

Dave Derington: [00:02:26] gathering?

Yeah, this is a great topic. So here’s the hypothesis that we should test today. Again, we are scientists here in lab that is developing great customer education material depends upon subject matter experts and even more on leadership to support discovery and knowledge gathering efforts. So again, we want our get SMEEs get in front of them, get their mind share, but we need leadership to help us out.

So what do you think 

Adam Avramescu: [00:02:53] about that? It sounds like we’re going to walk through a process today. So where do we 

Dave Derington: [00:02:56] start? All right. let’s start off with, the, what you think to the obvious point, which is finding your experts, your subject matter experts. You think that’s obvious, right?

who do, who are we going to find to talk 

Adam Avramescu: [00:03:07] to. God. I don’t know. Sometimes that’s a struggle 

Dave Derington: [00:03:10] too. Yeah. And I’d say, Adam, that from experience, the opposite is true. you’d think it’d be really easy. You jump in a role. You’re going to go start talking to people and. I’ve experienced, at least it’s a lot harder than you think.

one thing I would like to do first is let’s differentiate ourselves again. We are talking customer education. Typically we’re in an organization like a SaaS company, commonly a startup. and I think we deviate a little bit from conventional training programs and larger organizations. So what that means, time moves faster almost literally.

And you’re going to be working with some really. Busy people. 

Adam Avramescu: [00:03:51] Yeah. It’s dog years and startups. A lot of the time, right? Just one year at a startup can be like seven years for another company. And a lot of the times that also means that the source of truth moves really quickly. So even if someone is an expert at what they do, it doesn’t necessarily mean that even they have the most accurate and up-to-date info.

Dave Derington: [00:04:09] that is more than true. that’s just cannon. let me add a little bit more reality to this, smaller organizations. Often have knowledge locked in the heads of the people. So you know, which people specifically know the thing that you need to get out and to answer this question, and I’m sure you’ve experienced this too, Adam, you got to walk the organization.

You’re got to walk around. You’ve got to talk to people. when I was at various companies, Gainsight and other things before, I would walk the floor, meet people, talk to people, tell them my role and. and you also need to talk with leadership in different areas because nobody’s going to have the right answer.

Quite often, I tend to find people more in a services role that are the ones like solutions, architects and such that man, these folks know their stuff, or they could be a project manager. they might even be a project manager and onboarding specialist. So overall, I would say like finding your expert, isn’t always easy and that, just like you diversified investment portfolio and you need to get multiple perspectives.

Adam Avramescu: [00:05:12] Yeah. I also like using the, the one plus two or one plus three effect where when you find that person that project manager or that solution architect or the product manager, you ask them for the names of two or three other people where they get their information from. 

Dave Derington: [00:05:28] Yeah, you 

Adam Avramescu: [00:05:29] could also do that.

If you walk in who’s delivering training today. Okay. where did that person get their content from? So you whittle your way back to who, who actually has the knowledge. 

Dave Derington: [00:05:38] Yeah. It’s harder than you think because you start peeling away layers and finding, Oh, this person knows this, but, and then we’ll get into this more as we start talking about how the techniques work.

Anyway, bottom line is you need to talk to a number of people to get a full perspective. 

Adam Avramescu: [00:05:55] All right. So what next? 

Dave Derington: [00:05:58] So this is where I like to say become an investigative journalist. It sounds crazy, huh? 

Adam Avramescu: [00:06:05] Oh, man, that’s hard. We’re living in a post-truth society. How can you be an investigative journalist? 

Dave Derington: [00:06:11] hear me out.

So I’m going to go back to my Alma mater university of Missouri Columbia. and ironically, they have one of the leading schools of journalism square in the United States in the middle of the United States in Missouri. Really cool school. Now this, I found this on Wikipedia and it comes from university of Missouri journalism, professor Steve Weinberg, where he defined investigative journalism as reporting through one’s own initiative.

No, hang on to that word and work product matters of importance to readers viewers or the listeners. And I can give you a link to that. There’s a book on that. The reporter’s handbook now. It seems crazy a little bit to talk about that investigative journalism role. But I think for me, I always put myself in that frame of reference, I’m walking into, to an organization.

I don’t know anything about the product. How am I going to get information from people? So I put my hat on, and think I’m like a reporter. And I realized like a reporter thinks of their readers or viewers or whatever. I’m thinking about our customers. Yeah. And how can I’m like they’re dependent on me to get the truth.

What’s the material, organize it, get it to them all in the sense of a way. And to do that, we have to be just doggedly pursuing it. That’s our job. What do you think 

Adam Avramescu: [00:07:31] it’s hard to doggedly pursue the truth in a post-truth society and especially with our startups that move so quickly and knowledge changes really quickly.

But I agree with you. I think that’s really important. And I also think that it’s equally important to be thinking about how do you, craft a compelling narrative because, even though an investigative journalist is often, Reporting on facts. They still have to frame up those facts and those stories in a way that creates a compelling narrative and delivers information to their audience in a way that’s really clear and concise.

when I was at the university of Texas, I took a really good course on advanced expository writing by. a professor named John Trimble and he wrote this book writing with style. And, for me that’s my equivalent of Bible in terms of journalistic writing. Speaking of reading and writing, I was actually just reading an article today by Melissa Millaway.

She’s a learning experience designer at Amazon. She writes a column on LinkedIn. I totally recommend that you follow her. we’ll put her information in the show notes, but she writes a lot on L&D and content development, best practices. And even though. A lot of it’s from an internal company perspective because she does internal L&D at Amazon.

The lessons about content development, I think are directly translatable in a lot of cases because, even though the audience is different, content development is still content development in a lot of ways. And she shared an article called here’s how an organization loses trust in its own L&D team.

And the reasons that she gave him that article. I think what sounded really familiar to most of us. Have you ever had an organization lose trust in your, in a customer education team 

Dave Derington: [00:09:06] and our customer education team? I’ve seen the L&D team, but not necessarily the customer education didn’t have you had that experience?

Adam Avramescu: [00:09:12] I’ve definitely had some risky moments where I wasn’t listening enough to my stakeholders and I felt, maybe in danger of losing some trust. So some of the reasons she gave and maybe this will sound familiar to some people listening is that, first of all, it just leaving stakeholders hanging. So one of the examples she gave was, a lot of the time we get asked for something that really isn’t training.

So when we’re about to do our discovery and our investigative journalist, we’re thinking about the end product. but the person who’s asking us for it doesn’t necessarily know what the story is, so to speak. they ask for something that isn’t training. So maybe the, the example she gave was, we want everyone to learn about the company, social media policy and in their minds, that’s learning, That’s something that someone should learn. from a customer education standpoint, we hear this all the time, too, right? Like I need our customers to learn about feature X, but a lot of cases, that’s not training. That’s a communications plan. And instead of doing our due diligence and letting them know, Hey, I thought about this.

I thought about the instructional, objective. I think at the end of the day training, isn’t going to be the most effective route to go. We just say, see you later. And we never follow up with them. 

Dave Derington: [00:10:20] Yeah. And actually I’ve seen something like this, Adam, where one of the last organizations I worked in, I was asked, Hey, we need to do just that.

We need to teach people how to do this thing. And, I gathered in requirements, what do you want to do? What do you want the outcome to be delivered it? And then people complained, this was internal. Mind you not customers? this is a little too technical or this isn’t what I was expecting when I still had what I thought were clear requirements and yeah.

Adam Avramescu: [00:10:47] and I think, the other one that she brought up is almost the opposite of that, which is just saying yes to everything without doing our investigative journalism and our consulting. So this is the scenario where the VP comes and says, this is the example Melissa gave, we need to, for our face-to-face classes on how to use an expense reporting tool.

And, what are we going to do for new hires who start later? Oh, we’ll record it. Of course. we’ll just record those sessions. I even had this happen recently to be at Checkr where one of our subject matter experts, was hosting basically a two day info dump for new people on his team and they were going to record it, so that other internal people could benefit from it.

And, it’s good to get the knowledge out of that person’s head, but there’s a, still a lot of work that’s gonna need to go into crafting that into something that’s. That’s usable. And a lot of the time, instead of saying, Hey, we really need to craft all of this raw information into something that is learnable.

We just get intimidated. And we say, yes, VP, of course I will do that. 

Dave Derington: [00:11:43] Yeah. that’s a really great perspective. Like we, we can’t always say yes. we, again, bringing it back to the goal. We’re an investigative journalists. We’re trying to fit in an investigative journalist, thinks about the audience and thinks about what we need to get and then pursues that.

And sometimes that involves. I have to say no to you on this one thing, because that doesn’t align with our customers, our audience needs. 

Adam Avramescu: [00:12:03] Yeah. And so then, you mentioned earlier that often in fast moving companies getting SMEEs and just getting their time is one of the hardest things to do.

So how do you approach that Dave? 

Dave Derington: [00:12:13] Yeah, this was a big topic and I feel pretty strongly about this. And if you that are listening to this today, again, particularly if you’re brand new, if you’ve been around a little bit, you’re going to get what we’re going to share here. One of the number, one thing that I experienced in all my roles, now, this actually, it goes outside of customer education, into consulting, even where.

I was doing some big knowledge transfer projects. The people you’re gonna be talking to are really overworked and they’re extremely stressed. Why? Because again, you’re in a startup, you’re in SaaS, we’re moving in dog years. Like Adam, you just said, so you might not even be well staffed. So everybody is running around like chicken with a head.

and that’s a problem. So you’re going to ask them for their time and they’re going to go, Time is money. My friend I’m in services, or maybe they’re in product and go, we’ve got the next iteration coming out. I’ve got to finish the sprint. So where are you at? 

Adam Avramescu: [00:13:09] Yeah, I always used to struggle with that at Optimizely too, because a lot of the time, our subject matter experts were on the services team and they had billable hours.

So how were we going to carve out time for them to transfer their subject matter expertise? And at the same time still hit their targets. I’m also thinking about a little bit about, that article that I mentioned earlier by Melissa Millaway, one other reason that she gave that L&D teams, his credibility was just not getting included upfront.

So if we’re not actually showing up where our product teams are showing up, if we’re not showing up where our services teams are showing up, we end up missing requirements for major projects. So if we don’t identify the right stakeholders early and actually show up to their meetings, Be part of their requirements gathering.

Then oftentimes we’re not going to be able to ask the right questions so that we’re actually included appropriately downstream. And then they come to us last minute and they say, Hey, where were you? why don’t you have learning on this already? 

Dave Derington: [00:14:05] So this goes along with some of the thinking and the things that I’ve liked to do is to go embedded and just to be engaged and to listen, to understand.

And the more that I get in with product and services, the more that I personally can understand what they’re dealing with and actually subsume that information, is that where you’re going with that? 

Adam Avramescu: [00:14:22] So we’ve moved from an investigative journalism to embedded journalism. Now we’re on the front lines.

Dave Derington: [00:14:28] Ooh. Are they going to issue me a gun? 

Adam Avramescu: [00:14:31] they don’t do that for customer educators anymore. Unfortunately, some federal laws 

Dave Derington: [00:14:37] any more. Hey, let’s go on to another topic here with us again. We’re talking about the. Getting SMI time. the other thing that I’ve experienced and I’m sure you have as well is I’ve run across individuals who just don’t get it.

They don’t see the value of my role or your role as a customer educator. And they go, look, I’m busy. We already established that. And some of the times you might be, and this goes on to one of our earlier podcasts where we were talking about, you might be a customer success manager and you’re doing training.

You might like that. You might also be a co a solution architect or somebody in services and you do training and it’s ad hoc attracts there’s that word again? part of your job though, is to convince people that this is going to make their life easier. It’s going to take that load away, that, what is, what do we call that?

I’m I lost the term, basically. It’s going to pull off that, all that mental time that they have to focus on shifting gears and teaching somebody how to use something over and over again. 

Adam Avramescu: [00:15:36] Oh, like switching costs. Yeah, totally. 

Dave Derington: [00:15:39] Yeah. now this comes with problems because one of the things that I’ve seen is that sometimes people really like to do training and they might be in a customer success manager role or a solution architect role.

They also might feel threatened. And this is one where, I’m sure you’ve had this feeling and I know I’ve done this before and I’m chagrined. I know everything about some topic and I want to hold it closely guarded. And not really share that with anybody on my team, because then I feel like I’m devalued and that doesn’t help anybody.

Adam Avramescu: [00:16:08] Yeah. th there’s a broader organizational problem there. if your organization promotes or encourages people to hoard their knowledge and not share it with others people. 

Dave Derington: [00:16:19] But you’re right. 

Adam Avramescu: [00:16:20] It can create a problem on the less, I think one thing though, when you’re talking about convincing people that there’s benefit in there from, for them.

and that it can take away some of that load and can take away some of those, cognitive switching costs. You’re right. There’s a term for that. And I’m not remembering it either. part of it is you can’t just do that by telling them you have to do it by showing them. And if you can get a couple of really high quality projects out, and you can see that reaction from customers then that also I’ve found at least can start to turn the tide for.

Internal subject matter experts as well, as your credibility grows, that can become easier. 

Dave Derington: [00:16:54] Oh, that’s fabulous. So basically, through NPS or no likes or whatever it is, then you can demonstrate that your body of work has really helped the customer. And that might be, a data thing where you’re showing the value of it and you’re getting them to feed back.

That’s a really good point. Okay. 

Adam Avramescu: [00:17:10] sometimes it’s data and sometimes, honestly, it’s just hearing that customer feedback. Like I think that. In the early days, sometimes as you start to put projects out there and you just hear that great customer feedback, like every once in a while, you might just have one of those money quotes that shows up, or we’re just starts to go get through the grapevine where, the CSM or the services person just starts hearing back from the customer.

Man. I love that training. All of that helps. 

Dave Derington: [00:17:36] Yeah, no, that’s totally cool then that, having people tell us that we’re doing a great job, super beneficial. 

Adam Avramescu: [00:17:43] Yeah, for sure. 

Dave Derington: [00:17:44] So let me ask you a question. What do you think, or what do you do when somebody just says, Nope, not gonna do it. What’s your strategy, 

Adam Avramescu: [00:17:56] Adam?

Oh, man. No, I’m just not going to give you any of this information. 

Dave Derington: [00:18:00] Yeah. Have you had that before? 

Adam Avramescu: [00:18:02] Yeah, I definitely had. I haven’t had a straight up. No I’ve had, I don’t have time. I’ve had, is this important. And I think those are valid questions to entertain. You’ve got you got to go back to the business case here.

If the information that subject matter experts supposed to give you is related to, let’s say a major product release. And if you don’t get that information from them, the customers aren’t going to be educated on that product. then I start to ask the question, what are the trade-offs if we don’t do this, what’s the impact of the customer going to be, or who else in the organization might be as disappointed as I am.

If that training is not going to go out and. That’s probably where I’d start to have conversations, not just with the person who said no to me and help them understand that perspective. but also maybe start talking to the other people who are going to be equally affected by that decision. 

Dave Derington: [00:18:51] Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Avramescu: [00:18:53] what do you do? 

Dave Derington: [00:18:54] one of the things I like to do first is start to compel them. number one, no is unacceptable answer. Ever. If I go to one of my leadership, they’re going to go, why didn’t you do this? And that’s on me. I’m pretty compelled to get this information out. I’m going to figure it out.

However I can. 

Adam Avramescu: [00:19:08] Hour of Dave compels you.

Dave Derington: [00:19:12] So number one, we’ve already talked about this. We can’t have information locked in people’s heads. We’ve got to get it out, get it on paper or pixels. And we come back to that customer pain. It’s palpable. It affects our NPS. It affects all kinds of things up to and leading to potentially churn.

And we’re again, I assert that customer education is the pillar of customer success. So getting data information in the hands of our customers is one of our core initiatives that has to be, now when it doesn’t work, here’s some things that I do. Number one, I encourage. And I’m using air quotes.

Can you see them? Nope. Yeah. my head cause the air quotes in your head, Initially, you really need to get on good terms with people. it’s, w what is that book, how to make friends and influence people five? I can’t remember the title of the book. 

Adam Avramescu: [00:20:00] but anyway, when friends 

Dave Derington: [00:20:02] win friends and influence people, you need to get on good terms with everybody, and they need to understand what you’re doing.

And it sounds funny, maybe you sit down to lunch with somebody at work that you need to talk to, or maybe you just go out and buy. Favorite snack or a beer, and we’re not talking ridiculous bribery here, but just a, an acknowledgement that this person is particularly important to you, to the company and the customers.

Adam Avramescu: [00:20:23] Yeah, I think it’s really about the bribe per se. It’s about having some meaningful one-on-one time with them outside of the formal meeting. 

Dave Derington: [00:20:30] Exactly. And then and I spent, pretty long time in my career as a consultant in project management. And here’s the word, escalation, if all else fails, I’m going to have to go to their boss, but I like to do it this way.

And you may have had a similar experience. I’m not going to be a jerk. I will just say to the person, okay. I acknowledge you don’t have time. And a lot of times what they’ll say to me, Dave, I really want to help you. I really do, but here’s, I’ve got 70 hours a week. on my backlog, I’ve got to get all these things done.

what can you go to my manager and say, Hey, I’ve told you, this is really important. I want to do this. I don’t have time. Can you get some time for me? And that’s probably one of the best ways to do it because usually I have their acceptance. I have their understanding. And then instead of getting all defensive, I go back to their manager and say, Hey, I need some time.

And then am I get into a conversation of, time is money. And with this customer is really important and I can’t do it in which case. And I think this is a bold assertion, Adam, maybe we’ll say so. In which case, if you’re just blocked, then it may actually be time to start thinking about your alternatives because your company needs to make sure that they enable you to get the information you need.

And if you can’t get it, are you going to get really good customer education? 

Adam Avramescu: [00:21:45] If you’re not set up for success in your role, whatever that role is, then it’s time to either figure out how to change that at your company or. Figure out, whether there’s another company that’s going to not have that problem, th that’s always a gamble either way.

Dave Derington: [00:21:58] It is. It is. It totally is. 

Adam Avramescu: [00:22:01] All right. So now that we’ve talked about working with our subject matter experts, and let’s say that we’ve gotten their time, we actually have to get the material in place. Yes. So this is actually, now I think these next few episodes will be a little bit of a mini series on content development and we’ll explore.

A few different topics related to how to produce great content, but I think it is worth covering here. So let’s say Dave, you have a Smee. You have their time. How do you get what you need? instructional design has the answer for us now. Typically there’s a process called ADDIE. And if there’s any instructional designers listening right now, they know exactly what I’m talking about.

They probably have strong opinions about it because there are ADDIE people and  there are nonADDIEy people. And so what does ADDIE stand for? It stands for analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. And so that’s a process that instruction, designers go through to go from the inception of a project, to the release of a project.

But what 

Dave Derington: [00:23:03] other, what other techniques though, are there? Cause I’ve heard of a few more. I think I’m reading about one. I’ll let you speak to them, but so if you’re a non ADDIE, what do you do? 

Adam Avramescu: [00:23:11] Yeah. you were just reading the Michael Allen book recently, right? Yep. 

Dave Derington: [00:23:15] I am at, and I’m inhaling.

It is great. 

Adam Avramescu: [00:23:17] Yeah. So he does, I think he has another book out called, leaving ADDIE for Sam. And what he’s addressing there is, there are some inherent problems with ADDIE in. This day and age, because ADDIE was designed in a world where information works a little bit differently, and we didn’t necessarily have access to the same resources.

And frankly, a lot of content that we developed didn’t move as fast and didn’t have as quick of a sunset date. So what he proposed was a different system and it was called SAM which is the successive approximation model. So whereas ADDIE is very much, if you think about software development, ADDIE is a waterfall process.

You do analysis. And then when analysis is over, you do design. when design is over, you have a design doc that gets approved and you do development and you spend all this time developing it. And frankly, by the time that you implement whatever you’re trying to implement the subject matter around, it might have changed, or maybe you’re evaluating the success of it.

And it’s been months or even sometimes years for you to put together this project. So how do you do a more rapid development or agile? Cycle. And that’s what SAMis all about. So how it works is instead of doing this full analysis upfront, you do what he calls a savvy start. And then you start going through a few iterations of analysis and design and development, and you iterate your way progressively.

So you analyze you design, you develop, you analyze you design, you develop, you analyze you, design, you develop based on the feedback that you’re getting. So you’re always putting something in front of your customer and it lets you test learn and iterate. And Oh, go ahead. No, 

Dave Derington: [00:24:54] I think that’s really fun.

And the irony, when I learned about SAM is that I feel like I naturally fell into this. That I’ve always been an agile kind of person. And I’ve, I in customer education, my big thing is I want to get information to a customer quickly. And for me, I’m okay with it being. Maybe not the top quality, maybe not everything, but it’s out there, particularly when I have squat and that agile, it makes sense because okay, get some information to get it out, get some information, get it out, make it better.

And that just flows really well. 

Adam Avramescu: [00:25:25] Yeah. and, when you think about the difference between something like ADDIE, which is very traditional and very waterfall and something like, which is a little more iterative. You can remove one of those base assumptions that all the information that you need for this course, or for this learning content exists because it might not right.

You have, sometimes it’s going to change. Yeah. 

Dave Derington: [00:25:46] It certainly might exist. And he know though, I want to ask you this question, because this is something that I feel in ADDIE and maybe even SAM maybe not so much. But I feel that both of these techniques presume that you have information to work with Andy and that one of the big things we need to bring, I, at least I want to bring awareness to if it’s not immediately obvious is that the cycle of interviewing and reviewing content.

And I’ve got an example I could share with you in a second. But that interview process where that investigator, where we are, that investigative journalists and the review process is where I go back and I get this material and I put in front of that person, I interviewed is a big part. It’s pre analysis, right?

it’s pre post where, you know what, when you know what I need now I go after it. So I think it’s implicit. What do you think about that? 

Adam Avramescu: [00:26:34] I think what SAM would probably have to say is that interviewing happens during that analysis and design loop. So as you design and develop something, then you put it out for review.

Then you go back to analyzing the feedback from that. You do a little more design, a little more development, and then you put something else out there to review. So those are probably happening in those little internal loops. But I think you’re right to say that in ADDIE, it’s really only happening at the beginning of the end.

So I think. adding those in and really thinking consciously about who you’re interviewing, how you’re interviewing, how you’re getting all that subject matter, and then how you’re reviewing it. And putting that out frequently in front of customers is crucial. 

Dave Derington: [00:27:12] Absolutely. and I think we can breathe V8 this a little bit.

The one thing I’d like to tell is a personal story. So I had this amazing opportunity at them where I was a business analyst, project manager, and I worked for a company called dirty business solutions. So I was a consultant traveling, whole bit. We had this really cool process. It was called four 42.

And what it was is we would sit down and this was great for knowledge transfer. And I did some crazy knowledge hands for projects, like really deep technical stuff. The cool thing about this, and you can adapt and I think the Sam. A methodology is actually pretty similar where you sit down and you gather information usually with a person and then you go back and you read and you write it up and you get it into a con context.

That makes sense. And then you go present it to them and then they review it and they give you feedback and you’ll loop. So the concept of the agile, the loop, if you’re in SaaS more than anything, I think it could work theoretically. But I think I lean more towards these agile methodologies because I’m constantly quick looping and getting stuff out.

Adam Avramescu: [00:28:12] Hey, we work with software a lot of the time that’s agile. So why shouldn’t our processes be agile as well? 

Dave Derington: [00:28:18] Totally. and bill , I think he has a book coming out on this very thing, the agile project or the agile marketer where, you know, we’re using those terminologies and all kinds of parts of our industry.

Adam Avramescu: [00:28:29] Yeah. So Dave, why don’t you boil it down for us? what’s the core process we should be using to do great discovery. 

Dave Derington: [00:28:35] Certainly. And I think in future podcasts, we’re going to go down deeper into this, but let’s just say you’re working with a subject matter expert, the real basic of this. And if you’re the basis of this, and if you’re just starting out, here’s what I would recommend.

Maybe we would recommend for you to do is number one, get your SMEEs, get your subject matter. Experts know where they are, get their time. And then once you’ve got that time with each subject matter expert, you’re going to find a room. and I joke about this, but I’m actually dead serious.

Get them in a room, lock the door, or maybe put them in creepy at all, not creepy at all. But I like to say that because it emphasized the fact that you’re not going to get out until I get some information. it means put the phone away, sit down, let’s talk seriously about the product and, and really get to understand it.

And what I really love to do is sit down with folks and tell me the backstory, how did we get here? What do you know, how did this work? what are the things that excite you? What, it’s a really good interview section. 

Adam Avramescu: [00:29:29] at the same time, I think being sensitive to maybe what they have out there already.

So if they’ve done a tech talk or if they’ve done a training, watch that first, or be familiar with that first so that the questions you’re asking are more intelligent and you’re not refusing to engage with the existing material they put out there. 

Dave Derington: [00:29:47] Absolutely. And if you do have that as glorious and usual, I say, Hey, I’ve done all this and this, then I’d say, can I follow up with you?

And then we push the boundaries. We ask harder questions. we uncover, turn over every rock. draw pictures, do all that stuff. And then sit back, let them go back to work, write it up, take the time and then review it. Rinse, wash, repeat. It’s pretty easy. Again. It complies with, what the standard agile methodology.

Adam Avramescu: [00:30:15] And, at the end, don’t forget to thank your SMEEs, right? 

Dave Derington: [00:30:18] Oh my God. Yes. Like you got to realize their time is super valuable. and I know you’ve had the similar experience in your working with subject matter expert and they’re working ridiculous hours and they’re tired. Thank them. take them out for dinner.

send them a little gift, buy some chocolates, their favorite beer, whatever you want to do, but just understand yet ultimately your job. And I think this is a hard thing to understand. And I’ve seen people struggle with us where they think they can work in a box. Hey, I’ve got documentation. I’m just going to build this yet.

This is a team effort. You can’t work in isolation and you need your suburb. You need your subject matter experts until you become one. 

Adam Avramescu: [00:30:56] Totally. I agree. you have a, you made a comment to me earlier about. Really poor content often coming from people who, might know instructional design per se, but they don’t touch the product and they don’t talk to an actual 

Dave Derington: [00:31:11] yeah, that’s scary.

Isn’t it? 

Adam Avramescu: [00:31:13] Yeah. It’s pretty scary. yeah, you’re right. Thank you. SMEEs show them that you care and you appreciate them personally. you also said. The leaders who support them too. That might be important too. 

Dave Derington: [00:31:24] Absolutely. Oh yeah. And if you’ve gotten some extra time and a leader has said, look, I’m going to take time out when they could be making money with a client.

That’s huge. Definitely. Thank you. Thank everybody for that. 

Adam Avramescu: [00:31:36] And even if you don’t end up taking them out to dinner or buying them whiskey or whatever appreciation is free and it’s meaningful, right. It is meaningful to be recognized for helping. 

Dave Derington: [00:31:45] Totally. 

Adam Avramescu: [00:31:46] All right. So to summarize this week’s lesson, let’s wrap up with a clear call to action.

Get out your, a Kindle, Paperwhite, your iPad, your piece of paper, and answer a few questions, particularly if you’re just starting out, or if you’re struggling with getting the information you need, consider the steps we talked about. So Dave, you want to run through some action items? 

Dave Derington: [00:32:07] Yeah. Let’s make it real quick here.

So number one, find your SMEEs your subject cataracts. Your subject matter experts, who are they get a list, go talk to them, become that investigative journalists. we have to learn. I would argue that we as customer education professionals need to understand the material. If we don’t understand it, how can we help other people to do Organize it, present it in a good way and doggedly pursue. The truth, like you said, we’re in a post-truth economy, whatever in SaaS, we got to get the truth on paper, 

Adam Avramescu: [00:32:38] get your snap, the alternative facts 

Dave Derington: [00:32:41] indeed, or fake news. Get just me it’s time, beg, plead bribe. If you have to say that jokingly, and then get the material and, a good, like we talked about SAM we talked about ADDIE your choice, but make sure to spend a lot of time.

Interviewing people be courteous to their, to your subject matters experts time. Thank them. Profusely, turn over every stone review material, ask questions and get it right. And then make sure you review at the end of the process. 

Adam Avramescu: [00:33:09] very cool. So if you listener wants to learn more. We have a podcast website as customer.education.

Just put a little HTTP S in there and maybe like a colon and a couple of forward slashes and then type customer period education, no.com, no.net, no.edu. And there you can find our show notes and other material. And please, if you found value in this podcast, share with your friends, share with your peers.

Write us a nice, concise, but constructive review on your, your iTunes or your Apple podcasts or wherever you consume podcasts. It will really help us find the others. So I am @avramescu on Twitter 

Dave Derington: [00:33:54] and I’m @davederington also on Twitter and to our audience. Thanks for joining us. Go out there and educate experiment.

Adam Avramescu: [00:34:04] Thanks for 

Dave Derington: [00:34:05] listening.

Adam Avramescu: [00:34:10] Hey everyone, Adam, here from the C-level podcast, I am proud to announce that I just released a new book. It’s called customer education. Why smart companies profit by making customers smarter. You can actually find it now on amazon.com in ebook or in print format. you could also do blt.ly slash customer education made you a easy little Bitly link.

So I’d really appreciate it. If you pick a copy up and let me know what you think.