In the past year, I had two experiences that stayed with me. In the first case, I was asked to deliver a full-day course for an organization. There were no written learning objectives. There was content and a slide deck — but no clear alignment between what was being taught and what was being assessed.
I spent roughly 16 hours preparing for an 8-hour delivery, trying to reverse-engineer structure into something that hadn’t been designed that way. In the second case, I was invited to attend and participate in a facilitator training program. Different organization. Similar pattern. Again, there were structural gaps in alignment and assessment logic.
In both cases, after the experience, I did something that probably says more about me than about them. I created detailed reports. Not just critiques — but structured suggestions. Templates. Sample objective rewrites. Assessment alignment outlines. Hours of work. In neither case had anyone formally asked for that level of feedback.
One organization acknowledged it with a brief thank you, and that was the end of it. The other asked to receive the report — and never acknowledged it after I sent it. I’ve had to sit with that. It’s not fair for me to be frustrated when feedback wasn’t formally requested. But here’s the part that’s harder to let go of:
The programs still exist in that format. And when courses aren’t aligned — when objectives aren’t clear, when assessments don’t measure what’s taught — the people who absorb that cost aren’t the designers. They’re the learners.
- This isn’t about ego.
- It isn’t about being right.
- It isn’t about whether my version would be better.
It’s about a simple principle: If your job is to design training, alignment isn’t optional. It’s foundational. If we’re going to call something “training,” we owe learners at least that much.