From Overwhelm to Order: Managing L&D People and Processes

Introduction and Guest Overview

Chris Van Wingerden: Welcome friends. Hey. Instructional Designers in Offices Drinking Coffee. Happy New Year. I think we're just gonna say it the one time. I know it's getting kind of late in the year, but hey, it's our first time getting together since the calendar flipped over. Hope everyone had a good holiday season. Quick reminder. Instructional Designers in Offices Drinking Coffee is brought to you by the team here at dominKnow. Paul and I are both team members here, dominKnow, where we work to empower L&D teams to develop, manage, and deliver impactful learning at scale. Hey gang, we have a first time guest with us here.

Chris Van Wingerden: Guieswende Rouamba is joining us today. Guieswende, you've put out a new book, and so maybe tell us a little bit about the name and the title of the book and then we'll jump into what it's all about.

Guieswende Rouamba: Yes. The new book, that came out is the Instructional Designers Guide to Project Management. And, uh, the reason why I wrote the book, the short version, is because I made so many mistakes as an instructional designer, in the past, and I was like, okay, there should be a better way to do things right.

The Discovery of Project Management for Instructional Designers

The Gap in ID Education

Guieswende Rouamba: And one day, one of my friend, Michael Tingy, a very smart guy, told me, Hey, Guieswende, you need to look into project management. I'm like, nah, I already have the ID model. There's so many theories. I don't need anything else. Right. And I've been doing it and, uh, it is been working. Kind of Well, and one day I'm like, okay, let me double check that, project management thing. And Wow. It was like a, a eye opening for me because I'm like, why I didn't know this before.

Guieswende Rouamba: I had a master's and PhD, right? And my PhD is in instructional design and technology, but I never took a single course on project management. Usually we think that project management is for people in the business sector, right? It's taught in business school, but not in, uh, education in general. I mean, like some school have certificates, some courses on project management, but they're not really tailored to instructional design.

The Mission: Preventing Burnout

Guieswende Rouamba: So that's what, made me think about, okay, I need to write a book, to share my experience. And then, hopefully other people are not gonna make the same mistake I made. And then, grow a community where we can, support each other and, try to design better courses and especially also avoid burnout. If we don't have good project management, principles and we don't have good processes, it can lead to burnout.

Learning from Failure: Real Project Examples

Case Study: The Failed Course Transition Project

Chris Van Wingerden: So you mentioned learning from experience. I think we've all had experiences with projects in the instructional design world that haven't gone too well. Are you willing to share with us, an example of a project that made you think, Hmm, maybe I need to get some better project management. I need some improvement.

Guieswende Rouamba: I mean, there are so many of them. One of them that comes to my mind is, recently I was brought in as a consultant, to work on a, a project. Everyone was invested in the project, right? So the goal of the project was to transition a set of courses from traditional training like face-to-face to online. Money was not a problem. We already had the content. The CEO was really invested because he was the project sponsor.

Guieswende Rouamba: So what I did was like, oh, we have everything. Let's jump in and then start designing. We work around the learning goals, the assessments, you know, all the good things that goes around making a good course. And, uh, we even got a very expensive learning management system, but I quickly realized that it was a lot of work. And, uh, people started to complain. And then the CEO one day told me, Guieswende, we're gonna, shut this project. It's not gonna work out.

The Two Critical Mistakes

Guieswende Rouamba: And after reflection and after looking at project, management principles and those things, I think I made two big mistakes. The first one, I didn't plan. I had no idea what planning was, and especially planning capacity. And I underestimated the amount required to do the project. I'm pretty sure there are some, framework about some speech. Some people are specialized, like, who are really specialized in capacity planning. I'm not gonna go in that route. I'm not an expert, but now when I have a project, I try to plan and then overplan and especially capacity. I don't underestimate my capacity.

Guieswende Rouamba: Secondly, the biggest mistake was that I didn't see his vision with the CEO's vision for the course because at the end he told me actually what he wanted was him teaching live to everyone and people joining and asking questions. But for me, afford the bot like, a synchronous learning something on the LMS. That will live there, and then people will go self-paced and take the course. So for that reason, I think that is the main reason why he closed the project because he didn't align with his vision.

The Stakeholder Alignment Problem

Paul Schneider: And the, the vision you talked about reminded me of a case when I was managing a team and, the instructional designer was assigned to create training about our product, our learning management system to get people on board. She had a very clear vision, of what she thought they needed and, and what was involved in, and some humor and some other things there. The, the stakeholder, the VP who was responsible for this. Made the mistake of not really interviewing them, or I think she did interview 'em once, but not really perhaps listening them or, sussing out exactly what was needed. Sometimes people say, well, I trust your vision, but you shouldn't trust that. You need to understand what their vision is, or present them examples.

Guieswende Rouamba: Yeah, I like your point. The first one is stakeholders. I made a lot of mistake with stakeholders, like I design one one day, design a course with a subject matter expert. And the subject matter expert was reporting to a chair for department. Right. And then we didn't double check with the chair, like throughout the design. So we just went, worked for like four or five months on the course. And then at the end we send the course to the chair, here's the course it's done. And then the chair was like, no, that's not what I wanted. Because what she wanted was to use a publisher. On the course, but what we did, we did everything in house recording, all the videos, and it was tedious and we spent a lot of time and money doing that. So it was like, Nope, this is not gonna work.

Paul Schneider: Yeah, we forget there's multiple stakeholders involved, not just the obvious one. The SE is another one. Sometimes people ignore that stakeholder, or you talked about the resources and you don't plan for the resources. And those SMEs, their time, we always hear, oh, their times valuable, but literally they have, so maybe they have interest in it. Maybe you're lucky that they're interested in working with you, but they're so busy and called on so many different areas.

Project Management IS People Management

Chris Van Wingerden: So the stories that we've been sharing here, something that occurs to me is that, I mean, we're talking project management, but ultimately, all of these conversations so far have been about people management really. Um, you know,

Paul Schneider: tell us a little bit of where people management, project management, I know from my experience, they, they do overlap quite a bit, but that's not as obvious necessarily.

Guieswende Rouamba: A hundred percent.

Chris Van Wingerden: Mean, like, and we're people too, those of us trying to run a project. We're in the people management too, so we're under that umbrella. So yes. I'm not blaming others, is what I'm saying.

The Human Side: Three Ego States Framework

Understanding Transactional Analysis

Guieswende Rouamba: Yes, yes. Yeah. I was in a meeting recently and one of the senior project manager told me. It is not project management, it is people management. I'm like, wow, this is true. Because most of the time, we kind of working with people, I don't want to use the term managing people, but we working with other people and, human relationship. I mean, if we don't, we're not able to build that. Sometimes the project is not gonna really, fly. I mean, in my book I talked about.

Guieswende Rouamba: The human side of project management, that is the 50% of my book is about that, right? Because I realize that for instructional designers, we can have the best tools, but if we don't work on the human element, the project is not gonna work. And, uh, in my book, I talk about three ego states, right? I'm gonna talk a little bit about that. I'm gonna go quickly, but if you read the book, you will get, everything. And this was, eye opening for me.

Guieswende Rouamba: The three ego state was created by a guy called Eric Bernie in 1964, and he called it the transactional framework analysis. And the transactional framework analysis says that we navigate between the parent ego state, the child ego state, and the adult ego state.

The Three Ego States Explained

Guieswende Rouamba: When we're working with others and the parent ego state is when we are acting as a parent, like authority, rule guidance. Like we're talking to a child, go clean up your room. So this is the parent ego state. The other one is the child ego state. It's when we are communicating as a child, right? We are not controlling our emotions like we can be rebellious, like throwing tantrums, right? Let's picture a child saying like, oh, today I'm not gonna clean up my room. So this is the child ego state. And then the last one is the adult ego state where we kind of controlling our emotions, we are being rational and trying to solve a problem.

Guieswende Rouamba: I kind of overcharacterizing it it, but in reality, that's what we see in our work environment. So, or when we work on project, we can sometimes act as a parent trying to guide with authority, or we can act as a child. I'm not going, we say like, I'm not gonna do this project. This is for someone else. I don't care. Right. Like rebellious or we can act like as an adult, right? Staying in that zone of responsibility, respecting others, trying to solve the problem. So when we able to see those three ego states, and then when we in meetings, we need to check our egos because when we don't do that, it can easily derail, the project.

The Planning Framework: Eight Essential Elements

The Missing P in ADDIE: Introducing PADDIE

Paul Schneider: And the, the vision you talked about reminded me of a case when I was managing a team and, the instructional designer was assigned to create training about our product, our learning management system to get people on board.

Guieswende Rouamba: Yeah. So in my book, one of the most important thing I talk about is the planning document. So, going back to our early discussion, we instructional designers usually don't take time to plan. Like we love design. And then, the CEO or leadership says here is an issue, right? Instructional designers develop a training and then we just like jump into it and then start, designing the training. But actually we need to spend a lot of time in the planning stage.

Guieswende Rouamba: And the, that's the reason why the military created the PADDIE model. They added a P to the ADDIE model to be PADDIE because we are missing the planning stage in the ADDIE. And the planning stage involve for me, eight elements. I'm gonna go through them really quickly.

The Eight Planning Elements

Guieswende Rouamba: The first one is we need to identify the goal of the project, the vision. We need to identify the stakeholders. We already talked about that. Deliverables. What are the elements of the end product? Acceptance criteria - what does success look like?

Guieswende Rouamba: Exclusions, this one is very important because what are the things we are not going to do? Sometimes we don't think about that and we just go to the meetings and everyone brings ideas left and right, and then we're trying to accomplish all these ideas, but no, we can't do everything. So exclusion. What are the things we're not gonna do? For example, we're not gonna hire a contractor. It has to be clear for everyone. Timeline. This is easy. Everyone knows what timeline is.

Chris Van Wingerden: It's easy to have a date in the timeline. It's not easy to get there.

Guieswende Rouamba: A hundred percent. I said it easy, right? But, uh, it's one of the most, difficult one because there are a lot of biases that goes into timeline, right? We have the group thinking, for example, bias in timeline, where we are part of a group and everyone say like, oh, we can get it done by January, end of January. And you're like, okay. That's group thinking, right? Or there are other biases like we can over commit, right? So it'd be like, I know I can get it done by that time. Right over commiting. So there are so many biases that makes that, the timeline is very difficult to estimate anyway. So the other element is budget. How much money are we allocating to the, the project and is there any wiggle room? Lastly, constraints. This is very important. What are the constraints in terms of resources, in terms of time, in terms of money, in terms of technology? These are the eight elements. When we have those, we spend time planning those eight elements. Usually the project can succeed.

Building Relationships and Managing Capacity

The Power of Regular Check-ins

Guieswende Rouamba: So, to reiterate what I was saying, I spend a lot of time now in the planning and also in, trying to know my, subject matter expert and the people I'm working with, and build that relationship. I noticed, for example, last time I was working on a course, with a faculty because I build that relationship with the faculty, the faculty was okay telling me that, Hey, Guiswende, actually this timeline is not gonna work for me.

Guieswende Rouamba: I'm gonna be honest with you, when people say, I'm gonna be honest with you, means like, okay, they're really opening their heart, right? I'm gonna be honest with you. I'm like, oh yeah, okay, let me, it's like, okay, I got this, I've got a conference coming. I got this and this and my teaching load. So really, I mean, we have to renegotiate the timeline. I'm like, that's great. Thank you for letting me know. And then we kind of rearrange that. But if we don't really build that relationship and try to understand people and work with them, it can be difficult down the road.

Chris Van Wingerden: It's funny how folks are never say, never, almost, never use the phrase, I'm gonna be honest with you. I'm gonna work all the time on this. Right. Like, it's always a, hold on a moment.

Guieswende Rouamba: Yeah. I usually try to have weekly meetings with the people I'm working with, the team and then the subject matter expert. Sometimes we'll cancel it because there's nothing to talk about. But having that recurrent meeting kind of create a rhythm and then it checking. If not, if we don't check, people get busy and then they have a project, that they're working on. But when we meet, it can be like, okay, what are the roadblocks or what can we do to keep on moving and, is everything going well? So three simple items, and then we check in, and then we try to collaborate with each other and help each other, and keep on going.

The Neuroscience of Project Management

The Threat Response in Meetings

Guieswende Rouamba: Another thing in my book and researching, is, neuroscience, linked to, instructional design. Right. This is, was eyeopening also for me because, there is a book where the person forgot the name, but the person is talking about how our brain reacts to threat, and she said the brainstem is responsible for survival. If we see a lion, our brainstem will tell us, you gotta run, or you can freeze, or you gotta fight.

Guieswende Rouamba: But that same like environmental threat is also the same in offices. When people feel threatened, they're going to either fight, flight, or freeze. So when sometimes in meetings we notice that some people will kind of like shut down. Or I always will ask myself why the person, change, like from the beginning, like beginning was exciting and now I don't hear that person anymore. What happened? Right? Maybe it was like kind of some studies, like the person lost or the person is overwhelmed. There is a threat that happened somewhere to trigger that person to change behavior. So it's important that we look at that psychological aspect, right? Of human, when we're working on project.

Avoiding Surprises Through Observation

Paul Schneider: When you talked about having the regular meeting and then of course sometimes canceling of it that rhythm, as you said, it also starts to foster the getting to know the team, the team being comfortable to maybe go ahead and say things or comfortable enough to, recognize that, oh, this is not them being quiet 'cause it's a slow morning. This is them a different quiet. Or this is not them being upset at me. This is them being upset because all of a sudden they realized, meeting those goals are going to be very hard 'cause something else was dumped on 'em or, or something. And, um.

Paul Schneider: If you're not having those meetings, I think you have a lot less people that would be sharing that. And then you get the worst thing that happens, I think with project management are surprises.

Guieswende Rouamba: Ooh. Yep, yep, yep. We gotta avoid, surprises. And especially when someone, like two days before the end of the project come and say like, I couldn't do my part. That breaks my heart, and that means like me, if I'm leading the project, I didn't do a good job because I should be able to know, and anticipate, surprises. Right? Means like to your point, again, we are not having those regular meetings or unless, I wouldn't say you're lying, but I normally, I should be able to see what you're producing, to see, like if we're going on the right track. But, if we someone comes at the end and say that we can do that means like we didn't manage the project, or the human aspect, really well.

Scoping Documents and Scope Management

Living Documents vs. Perfect Documents

Paul Schneider: Now I know that uh, some of these people coming into this, surprise that they're having to manage a project or they're realizing that there should have been someone managing the project afterwards. This may be very new to 'em. And, of course we have our friend AI out there that can help generate some things and help us out there. But in your book, do you provide some examples of like what goes into a scoping document or into meeting minutes?

Guieswende Rouamba: and I tend also to think the scoping document is kind of a leaving document, something that evolve. Because sometimes we try to make it as perfect at the beginning, but it will never be perfect right. When we start the project. It's kind of like a, a guardrail right, to help us. But as we move along, there may be, uh, some discussion that will make us revisit the scoping document, and it's even, it's important for us when those discussion happen, that we take time to update the scoping document too.

Guieswende Rouamba: Because if not, what happened? So and so said this, and then we're trying to figure out what happened and what we need to do. But if we update the scoping document regularly. If we do a scope discovery, for example, we realize that, instead of four module, we need six module because, we need more content. We need to go back and update the scoping document, right? That's a scope discovery, which is not bad, right? What we need to avoid is scope creep, and that sense is when we add things that doesn't really have value.

Paul Schneider: it's almost like you said, the scope creep is almost like the undocumented and not necessarily everyone bought in to that change to where you're saying, Hey, this is a change. Let's, what are the factors coming into this? Let's document it.

Project Closure and Retrospectives

Celebration, Not Blame

Guieswende Rouamba: Yes, a hundred percent. Two things about the closing of the process. I was talking to one of my friend and, he was dreading going to, the course close out debrief meeting because, and I was like, what's going on? He is like, it's gonna be a blame game. I'm like, oh no.

Guieswende Rouamba: So that when we closing, like to your point, it should be a celebration, right? To some extent, that we accomplish something even if we didn't finish, what did we learn from that? In terms of process, in terms of ourself working on the project? In terms of collaborating with others. There's always a silver lining. There's something that we learned that can make us better. And on the other side, it's just great to go and then be like, okay, whew. Take a deep breath, right? Everything is done. Let's, pop the champagne a little bit, if it was successful.

Documentation and Knowledge Management

Guieswende Rouamba: And then, one of, the other element is, closing the documents, right? 'cause sometimes at the end we are tired that all, like the documents are everywhere. Like the media team has the assets Somewhere. I have my instructional designer assets somewhere. So how do we put all of this together, right? If there's an issue down the road, people know where to find things. And, it's not always easy to put all these things together. Maybe we need to collaborate and come with a system, allowing us to do that. But, it's so important, to your point, to close the project, really well and learn, from what went well and what didn't go well.

Paul Schneider: On that summary, I bringing it in and as a project manager, setting the stage, this is not a blame game. This is a, Hey, we accomplished this, goal and, how can we improve later so it's even smoother and better for us. Because, I don't know, projects are, courses are never updated. Right. And they're always by the same people if they are. Right.

AI and Project Management

AI as Accelerator (For Good and Bad)

Chris Van Wingerden: Paul mentioned the AI word earlier, and we are certainly in a world where lots of things are shifting and and changing. Are there things about project management, that we need to consider, around AI specifically and or are there things that we can use, where AI can play a role in the process differently for us than we might have in the past.

Guieswende Rouamba: Yeah. I mean, it's a game change in every sector and project management is part of it. People use AI now to have better scoping document, and also speed up the process like the scoping doc, because what used to take like two days for scoping document can be done like in a few minutes. And then we can reiterate on that.

Guieswende Rouamba: I saw people also putting all their timelines from somewhere to be able to estimate how much it takes, to design a course. So they have a repository where they put all the timelines and asking AI to kind of go and then, predict and do those things. I mean, there are so many cool things. I see some people in the media team also, when they record the faculty, and then there is a mistake that the faculty made on the world. Instead of bringing the faculty back into the studio, what they do, they just clone the faculty with AI and then change that little part. It helps speed up the whole process, in terms of design.

The Amplification Effect

Guieswende Rouamba: But, what I find is that, ai, amplifies everything. When I said everything means the good and the bad. So if we have good processes, like the goals the workflow, the deliverables are well done. The output will be nice, will be fast, and then will be efficient. But on the other side, if we have unclear goal and unclear processes and we put that into ai. It's gonna speed up the chaos. And everything will be misaligned and then faster. So there's that saying that garbage in, garbage out. Right. But in this time it will be 10 times garbage out because of,

Chris Van Wingerden: and even faster than before

Paul Schneider: Really pretty garbage and it sounds good.

Guieswende Rouamba: Yes. That's the problem.

Paul Schneider: And that is one of the biggest problems I find, is that somebody reads it and they don't know better. And, it sounds really good. So it has to be good. It uses bigger words than I use and complex sentences.

Real-World Application: Navigating Team Conflict

Case Study: The Design Philosophy Clash

Guieswende Rouamba: I'm gonna share another example about frustration and egos and blame. So I was, working on a project. We have another instructional, designer. We couldn't work together with the other instructional designer for some reasons. I mean, I tried everything. And one thing I noticed is that, she was kind of in the parent, ego state because she was senior, instructional designer. I mean, she had more experienced than me and she wanted to detect everything. And I'm a new instructional designer, so I wanna prove myself. So I noticed that while she was in that parent state, I was also in the child ego state, right?

Guieswende Rouamba: Because I went and told my boss like, oh, there's no way I'm gonna work with her. I'm gonna quit that project, like a child flowing a tantrum. I'm gonna quit. And then my boss was like, no, you gotta do your best to try to finish this project. We don't have anyone else. You guys have to work it out.

Guieswende Rouamba: So I'm like, okay, let me see what I can do. So I kind of like, okay, I'm gonna focus on the design. I'm gonna focus on, and then we're gonna get it done. And when I was in that zone of focusing on the problem and trying to get it done, I kind of switched to adult without knowing adult ego state. And in that ego state, I realized that actually our differences like working, was based on design. I like mini minimalistic design, like short. If you look at my book, it's really short, simple, right? She likes lengthy designs, there's nothing wrong with them, right? So some people like to read a lot, so that was the difference between, me and, and her.

Guieswende Rouamba: So what I did is like, okay. Let's have a conversation about that. I like things simple, right? It looks like you like things that are a little lengthy, so how can we work it out and then we are able to collaborate and then get the project done. If I stayed in that child ego state, I don't think we would've got the project done.

Paul Schneider: Well, and made me think, as you're talking about that, was there a project manager involved into that project or somebody in that role, and was there a scope set? Because I think some of those things would've been teased out. Yeah, no, done that and they still would've been issues, but they would've been front and center and, it wouldn't have taken somebody to go. Your boss would go, you're doing it and figure it out. But you deciding that you were going to figure it out?

Guieswende Rouamba: Yes. That's a very good point because now I'm thinking about it. We didn't have a planning document. We're like, okay, this is what we're trying to do. Just go do it. And we like jump to design. Like, okay, let's put the information together. Let's jump in on the LMS and do those things and no planning. It's a recipe for disaster.

Key Takeaway: Bringing Your Heart to Every Project

Paul Schneider: You've mentioned you've got a lot of focus on that and we've talked about, the people. If you could leave people, like what's your number one thing? Like, Hey, this is the thing, and it could even be something we've already talked about a bit, but, what's the first or the most important thing you want people to understand coming out of our time here today?

Guieswende Rouamba: I would say that bring your heart in every project you work on. That's it.

Guieswende Rouamba: I mean, like if we are working on a project and if you wanna work on it, say yes. And when you say yes, just bring your heart, be open. It's not gonna be perfect, but if you bring your energy, your heart, your commitment, you will enjoy it. And if you don't wanna work on project, just say, I don't feel like I like this project.

Paul Schneider: add after you bring your heart in, make sure you read that book and provide a framework so your heart's not destroyed by the end of the project.

Guieswende Rouamba: that's true. Yes. Yes. A hundred percent yes. So yeah, bring your heart and then just connect with people. Yeah. Connection is so important. Not superficial. Trying to know people, trying to be positive. I mean, we need all of that right now.

Paul Schneider: That's so true. I think about the best projects that I worked on. Mm-hmm. The people. The people really liked each other. They hung out. They sometimes went to karaoke afterwards or other things like that because they enjoyed each other. As they say, laughter heart is infectious.

Guieswende Rouamba: Yes. Yeah. And especially in instructional design when we work with, contractors, like someone, hires us to do a work. We wanna provide them with the best experience so that later on they be like, oh yes, I wanna work with those people again because it was such a great experience. People don't remember mistakes, but they remember experiences more than anything.

Conclusion

Chris Van Wingerden: Bring your heart sounds very much like a different way of also thinking about that adult ego, in the project we might think of bring your heart as something emotional, et cetera, but it does help us remind ourselves that it's about authenticity and it's about being, you know, working, connected, working like adults and, and connecting with each other.

Chris Van Wingerden: Guieswende, thank you so much for joining us here this week.