Nationwide / Learning delivery leadership
Giving a learning team a better way to deliver.
I brought earlier stakeholder review, an intake process, and a tiered build menu into e-learning delivery. We reduced build time from six to eight weeks to about three and gave leaders clearer expectations.
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Start with the brief or explore the work and decisions.
Executive brief
How could we deliver useful learning with fewer late surprises?
- My contribution
- I formed an expert council, introduced SAM, and created intake and a three-tier build menu. I developed the team’s design practice and set shared review standards.
- What changed
- The team brought stakeholder feedback into the work earlier and gave leaders a clearer choice about the scope and timing of a learning build.
- Outcome and evidence
- Build time dropped from six to eight weeks to about three. In a separate LMS migration effort, we reviewed and fixed roughly 100 courses in about two weeks.
Follow the evidence
How the evidence fits.
Select a step to inspect its source and what it supports.
Delivery problem
Late feedback and unclear scope made learning builds harder to predict.
- Source basis
- My account of the team’s delivery work at Nationwide.
- What to inspect
- Read the starting conditions and the decisions I owned.
01 / The question
How could we deliver useful learning with fewer late surprises?
E-learning builds took six to eight weeks. Stakeholder feedback arrived late, which meant rework and made estimates harder to trust. The team needed a clearer way to agree on the work, review it early, and choose the right level of production.
Leadership & practice
I built the process with the people doing the work.
I brought in the Successive Approximation Model, formed a council of e-learning experts, and designed the delivery framework with them. I created the team’s first intake process and a three-tier build menu. I also invested in shared learning so designers could develop their skills in design thinking, research, and e-learning.
Set clear expectations
The low-, medium-, and high-fidelity tiers described the interactions, media, assessments, and gamification in a build. Leaders could make a more informed choice about scope and timing.
Bring stakeholders in earlier
SAM gave us a way to review a direction before the team had invested in a complete build. Earlier feedback helped reduce late changes.
Develop shared judgment
We used rubrics, shared courses, and discussion of innovative learning examples to strengthen the team’s design practice.
What changed
A clearer commitment to the business.
Delivery
More useful estimates
Build time dropped from six to eight weeks to about three. Leaders gained more confidence in what the team would deliver and when.
Migration leadership
A shared way to review every course
During the SkillPort-to-Meridian migration, I wrote a QA guide and led five direct reports alongside colleagues from delivery and instructional design. About seven to eight people contributed as consultants joined. We reviewed and fixed roughly 100 courses in about two weeks.
Leading without authority
Make the effort visible
I recruited volunteers from the wider design group, recognized their contributions publicly, and supported the team during the deadline. The work depended on colleagues who did not all report to me.
Broader adoption
Standards other teams could use
I presented the Academy evaluation approach to the Learning Leaders Council, which adopted it across the enterprise. I also partnered with an executive on a tagged content-curation database and led its change communications.
The approach
How we put it into practice.
- 01
Clarify the request
Use intake to identify the performance need, audience, constraints, and decision makers.
- 02
Choose the build
Agree on a fidelity tier and make the expected interactions and production effort visible.
- 03
Review early
Use successive approximations to give stakeholders something concrete to respond to while changes are still practical.
- 04
Review the learning
Use common quality criteria and bring the team’s judgment into the review.
Have a question about this work?
Email Dennis