I’ve previously complained about the RFPs that orgs send out. And, having just reviewed one, I have to say that I stopped short. There’s more that a company should do if they want to get a good proposal. It has to do with the actual requirements for learning, not for the proposal. There’s always that stuff (what sections, what deadlines, etc). However, too often what’s given doesn’t give enough to actually propose a solution. I want orgs to give us the right info! What do I mean?
The proposal had the sections that were to be covered. With an objective for each. Which were ‘provide information’ and then a listing of content! Sure, we could say we’ll do a knowledge dump, but you and I both know that won’t lead to any meaningful change. We could do our own inferences, and of course we did. But why?
Why aren’t we getting:
- performance objectives
- misconceptions/ways they go wrong
- models
- stories & examples
- etc?
These are the things that we need to scope a solution: to think of a pedagogical approach, to actually make something that works! It’s much easier to choose a pedagogical approach when you know what people have to do as an outcome. It affects scope, media, and more as well. All things that organizations want in responses, but they don’t give you enough to do with it. They list content, and time (!).
Sure, we’ll ask these questions through the mechanisms they provide, and it shows we know what we’re talking about. It’s not clear they do, however! It’ll help us lift our game as an industry, collectively, if orgs start to give us the right info to make good proposals. Until then, we’ll see orgs request and vendors respond with info dump courses. And we’ll continue to bore our learners and waste everyone’s time and money. Sigh.
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