Our team at work had to change their work tasks because of the change in environment. So they were redeployed to another temporary role.
There was still a need for their original workflow to be actioned, so they in turn were backfilled by another less knowledgable team that had capacity.
What then needed to happen was for that new incoming team be shown how to action some of the tasks.
The best form of learning was to do two things:
- Create a chat channel which the new team members could use to respond to questions on the fly, and
- Create job aids that would support the new learning, urgently.
Many job aids existed – manly in the form of procedural documentation – but what this group needed was explainers, flow charts, and screencasts.
And that’s what we did. Creted short videos explaining a process, one pagers outlining the flow, and brief system walkthroughs showing how to do things.
None of these were terribly professional – but they were brief, to the point and were exactly what was needed.
They were examples of speed over elegance. Some of the examples of this can be found in my online portfolio.
When we have time we often use that time to make the most perfect output that we can. After all, we don’t want our name associated to anything that looks shoddy or incomplete.
But when the deadline is urgent and the need is now, time is a luxury, because the output is needed to provide the learning, immediately.
And the job aids served their purpose.