The eLearn Podcast

How To Do Ecosystem & Journey Mapping For Effective Learning With Sam DeGeus

October 03, 2023 Stephen Ladek, Principal eLearning Advocacy, Open LMS Season 3

Info

The eLearn Podcast

Oct 03, 2023 Season 3

Stephen Ladek, Principal eLearning Advocacy, Open LMS

Hello everyone! My name is Ladek and my guest for this episode is learning designer and journey mapper Sam DeGeus. She has developed a learning design methodology that is adaptable, scalable, and gets everyone engaged in the design process. Her strong facilitation skills and ability to wrangle and synthesize large amounts of information are critical components to delivering effective journey mapping and alignment workshops for clients around the world.

In this ‘conversational journey’, Sam and I talk about

00:00 › Start

4:00 › Going on a Journey—What exactly is journey mapping and what is its purpose… and how might it speed up the process of getting to important conversations about learning?

6:32 › First Step—Why isn’t everyone using Journey Maps for every learning opportunity and does it work as well in the K-12 space or HigherEd as it does in the corporate space?

18:36 › Discovery—How might journey mapping uncover non-training needs, what those look like… and how you can make sure this process doesn’t go off the rails with complexity

27:37 › Muddle—Sam explains how to overcome common objections to journey mapping and how to create parameters for success, and she provides examples of “ah ha” moments and success in her past work

37:56 › Bookend—What happens after a map is created, or the process reaches a stopping point, and actions need to be taken.

Subscribe for the latest news, practice and thought leadership at eLearnMagazine.com

Listen on

Apple Podcasts Spotify Amazon Music Overcast iHeartRadio Castro +

Share Episode

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on LinkedIn

In this ‘conversational journey’, Sam and I talk about

00:00 › Start

4:00 › Going on a Journey—What exactly is journey mapping and what is its purpose… and how might it speed up the process of getting to important conversations about learning?

6:32 › First Step—Why isn’t everyone using Journey Maps for every learning opportunity and does it work as well in the K-12 space or HigherEd as it does in the corporate space?

18:36 › Discovery—How might journey mapping uncover non-training needs, what those look like… and how you can make sure this process doesn’t go off the rails with complexity

37:56 › Bookend—What happens after a map is created, or the process reaches a stopping point, and actions need to be taken.

Subscribe for the latest news, practice and thought leadership at eLearnMagazine.com

This is the eLearn Podcast. If you're passionate about the future of learning, you're in the right place. The expert guests on this show provide insights into the latest strategies, practices, 
and technologies for creating killer online learning outcomes. My name's Ladek, and I'm your host from Open LMS. The eLearn Podcast is sponsored by eLearn Magazine, 
your go -to resource for all things online learning. Click -by -click how -to articles, the latest in edTech, spotlight on successful outcomes, and trends in the marketplace. Subscribe today and never miss a post at eLearnMagazine .com and Open LMS, 
a company leveraging open -source software to deliver effective, customized, and engaging learning experiences for schools, universities, companies, and governments around the world since 2005. 
Learn more at Open LMS .net Hello, my name's Ladek, and my guest for this episode is Sam DeGeus. Who is a learning designer and journeymapper. She has developed a learning design methodology that is adaptable, 
scalable, and gets everyone engaged in the design process. Her strong facilitation skills and ability to wrangle and synthesize large amounts of information are critical components to delivering effective journey mapping and alignment workshops for clients around the world. 
In this conversational journey, Sam and I talk about what exactly is journey mapping and what's its purpose? And how might it speed up the process of getting to important conversations about the learning that you're about to create? 
Next, we talk about why isn't everyone using journey maps for every learning opportunity out there? And does it work as well in the K -12 space and the higher education space as it does for corporate training and learning? 
Next, Sam talks about how might journey mapping uncover non -training needs needs, and what exactly those look like, and then how you can make sure this process doesn't go off the rail with complexity as you identify those other needs and those things outside the training sphere. 
Next, Sam explains how to overcome common objections to journey mapping and how to create parameters for success. And she actually provides several examples of like aha moments and success in her past work. 
And then we tie up our conversation with discussing what happens after a map is created or the process reaches sort of a critical stopping point, and then, you know, 
taking ownership and what actions need to be taken. And remember, we record this podcast live so that we can interact with you, our audience in real time. And actually, in this episode, you can hear me use three questions from the live audience as we do it. 
So if you'd like to join the fun every week on LinkedIn, on Facebook or YouTube, just come over to elearnmagazine .com and subscribe. Now I give you Sam Degus. Hello, 
everyone. Welcome to the Elearn podcast. My name is Ladik. I'm coming to you from Open LMS. And my guest for today is Sam. Sam Degus, who I-- That was very close. 
Say it again. Degus. It is said not how it's spelled in the old Dutch way. It is Degus, but in the U .S. we say Degus. I think you should say Degus. 
I think that's much better. Fantastic. Degus. You know, and you told me this in the green room, like 30 seconds before, and then as soon as you told it to me, it went straight out of my brain. Yeah, 
it's going to be interesting. Anyway, wonderful to have you here. Thank you. As I do for everyone on the podcast, tell us about-- give us the 30, 60, 
90 seconds on who you are, what you do, what your focus is. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, you know, there was a big bang, and the earth was created, and then the dinosaurs died out, 
but I was born. And what I do is primarily art and music are the things that I love. I started as a graphic designer, got into an e -learning development role, 
building screens and animating graphics in an old, articulate studio. studio. And from that, really got turned on to instructional design and understanding like how is this thing that I'm contributing my art to actually influencing someone's behavior or performance on the other end. 
So throughout the years, built a lot of experience in instructional design through a variety of companies, a variety of use cases, big and small, mature, immature, 
different types of businesses. And really just saw this need to align people to what these learning products and learning programs are that we're creating, 
why we're creating them, what our expectations are as the owners of these learning programs, and how we can get the other people that are asking for these programs and who are really interested in the outputs of these programs, 
they want to know exactly how we're delivering success, how are we evaluating it, and you just get so many requests and you understand that people are asking for something that might be related but they're not talking to each other. 
There was a need for visual alignment because you can't just type out everything in a Word document and expect somebody to read a thousand words into what your learning program is and what it does. 
So as an artist, I was really excited that I was able to find journey mapping and integrate it into this career that I love. Super cool. I really appreciate you taking us on that journey as well. 
So how did we get to journey mapping? And so give it to me and sort of, I'm a new client and you need to do that elevator pitch. 
What is journey mapping? What's the purpose of and why is it important? Yeah, I would say the biggest value and benefit that you're going to get out of conducting either a journey mapping workshop, 
exercise, or building a journey map as a way to kind of onboard people to a new learning program. The main thing that you're going to get is speed to important conversations, 
avoiding having these one -off meetings in silos where people are using different language, different vernacular, they have different expectations. There's ownership that happens when you talk to different people throughout an organization of, 
well, I created this, I designed this, what's wrong? Why are you saying this isn't fitting the bell anymore? When you can invite people around a map, 
which is just basically a visual representation of a system that you can point to physically with your, with your finger. Back in the days when we were all in person and we got to put sticky notes on the wall or draw something out on a whiteboard, 
we were standing there pointing to things, seriously saying, we need to focus here and everybody was, you know, aligned in that one point. When you have this map, 
it is something that's going to speed up the conversations because everybody knows exactly what you're talking about. Everybody has agreed on what they're looking at and they can really jump to, 
okay, what are the interventions? What, what can we do to make this better? Fantastic. We already have a comment here. I just wanted to just shout out to Aya Medhat who said, 
speed to important conversations and she really likes that, that analogy, not analogy, but that reason behind using journey mappings. Thanks for that comment, Aya. Let's start from the, 
here's where I, here's the question I wanted to start with. This just, this is a no brainer, right? Like why, why wouldn't we have a map? Why would you like, why wouldn't we all get in a room and say, 
hey, let's figure out what we want to teach or what we need to learn about, you know, what, what are the gaps? Why doesn't this happen? So So give me the, give me the, like, why do people hire you? 
Because it's, this just seems so obvious like people should be building these maps, right? Like this is, this is an essential skill. So be on the fact that, okay, maybe they need to bring you in because they need that pair of hands. 
What are the challenges that prevent it? What are, you know, what are the gaps? What are the reasons why this doesn't happen so often? - Yeah, yeah. I mean, first of all, is it's a, it's a rare combination of skills, 
I think. It's not undoable, but there are different roles when you're creating the map. And especially when you're having an alignment workshop with leaders and you're creating this map together. 
That's facilitation. That's documentation. There is like an organization and, and also like a setting of expectations that continuously happen throughout the workshop. 
So what I use is a virtual whiteboard called Miro and I get everybody in there and it's hands -on. Everybody can contribute. They can edit each other's notes. It's very collaborative. 
And, and that tool helps, but mature organizations versus newer organizations that might be open to more innovative approaches. I worked for a smaller software company and they loved the journey map. 
They, they used it as a way to continuously evaluate and also just gain, you know, evangelization around what the program was. And it really helped them make some, some big decisions. 
They, they loved that visual format that we were, we were using, but bigger organizations where there is more, it's, 
it's slower moving. You know, they're, they've been using the same approaches for a very long time. You need to find the right champion and you need to use the right words because, 
you know, journey map and ecosystem analysis to a leader leader who's just telling you this performance is poor, go fix it. It's a training problem. It's always a training problem, 
no matter what the problem is in the business. That's the other thing I love about these maps is it helps you identify what is related to formal training, what's related to performance support, 
it really helps you kind of point at the board and say, "This is what you're talking about specifically and it helps people make those decisions." Hi there. I'm sorry to break into the show right now, but if you're enjoying this show, 
if you are challenged, if you're inspired, if you're learning something, if you think that you're going to be able to get something out of this to put into your practice, do me a quick favor. Pause right now and just hit subscribe on your podcast player right now. 
It doesn't matter which one, just hit subscribe because that way it'll make sure that you never miss an episode in the future. Thanks. Now, back to the show. So, it sounds like there's a potential there that someone like yourself comes in and ultimately, 
you may identify a problem and you're like, "Look, we got the knowledge. People know what to do. The problem is actually, after you make a sale, there is no connection to sale support. Does that happen very often? 
Yes, absolutely. Because when you're pitching this to those bigger, more stagnant organizations, you're talking about identifying performance metrics. 
This is a skills map or use language that is very simple for them to understand that doesn't overwhelm them. But on the back end, what we're doing is we're identifying a learner persona. 
We're identifying a measurable objective that they're going to achieve at the end of this journey. We're identifying the scope of the journey that we're going to map. And we're identifying all of the learner interactions along that journey that they complete on their own to become successful. 
And then we're also identifying under each touch point, what are all the people, the processes, and the technology that enable those touch points? What are the metrics that we can report on? That's the most beautiful journey map is one that has a measurable metric attached to each of these interactions. 
So we can have some sort of lever or some sort of red flag that we can go back and repeatably capture this data and look at this interaction on the map and say this is not performing well or that we need more metrics. 
We need different types of evaluations to define success because a lot of times these programs were created just kind of slapped together by non -learning professionals and learning professionals are asked to come in and inherit this. 
I love working with engineers, but if you ask them to write a training course on something, they're going to write you the dictionary, 
the book of everything. And then somebody finishes that formal learning experience and they have 900 pages of a guide to go through and you're like, good luck on the job. It's in the book. 
It's you'll be fine. So we actually have two questions that are coming from our audience right now, but before I ask them, I just want to ask one more thing to wrap this, 
like what is it spaced up in does this, what we've been talking about right now is very much centered on sort of the corporate experience, the adult learning experience. 
I've graduated from college and a corporate space thing. Does this also work and is it important in, let's just say the K -through, you know, the K -through gray space, as they say, you know, the K -through 20 space, 
does it also work in higher ed? Is this important for those situations as well? Yeah, I think so. I mean, classic curriculum design where you're looking at learning objectives and what you want to cover in a course. 
Now that we're delivering a lot of these things illes nuts appreciation uckle press łą Wanna Wanna Solo illes łą press Adding Add Wanna uckle Wanna Wanna press łą Adding Wanna Add uckles illes łą UA uckles suited Add Wanna Wanna Wanna illes Wanna marketplace uckles press illes uckles compression press its press unu аки press uckles Wanna press łą uckles idea Wanna тогда Wanna press depress Wanna illes press Wanna press press Add illes uckles Wanna uckles 
事 uckles Wanna Wanna full Wanna Add Wanna uckle uckles Wanna uckles press illes isel uckles łą Wanna łą uckles press press coins izer uckles łą łą łą Add uckles med press press wearing Wanna Add Wanna press appreciation bru its uckle UA łą uckle idea uckles pin Wanna łą uckles 合 Would Wanna �� Wanna uckles addressing uts den press ium Wanna uckles lik uckles Wanna dissemin łą shape illes łą press its Wanna press press Wanna other ium uckles Applause illes 
addressing Wanna łą illes press uckle ós press UA press Add UA press Wanna Wanna uckles uckle prix Wanna 合 uckles Wanna uckles press press being press łą press press then press uckles press � Wanna press uckles Wanna Fantastic. 
So going to the questions I have, and I apologize to the individual if I'm completely destroying your name, Eagle or Egle Celestini, she says, 
"Would it be possible to see an example of how this map looks like?" So you've just described it in a couple of different ways. We're doing a podcast right now, as we're recording this, we do have video, 
but for those people who will be listening to it in audio, could we just describe what maybe a couple variations about what a journey map looks like. Is it a float chart, like a standard float chart? As you said earlier, 
post -it notes on a wall, what are the outputs that you've had in the past? Yeah, absolutely. There are different types of maps that you can create. 
One of the books that I refer to is Mapping Experiences by James Calbach, and that does a really good job of describing the different types of maps that you can create, 
but I like to use sticky notes, even in my virtual whiteboard in the room, because there's an impermanence to it. It's informal. 
You can write something on a sticky note, and then 15 minutes later in the workshop or the conversation you learn a new piece of information, you're like, "I'm going to edit that sticky note," or, 
"You know that sticky note shouldn't be up there because we just got a new context, and we're really focusing in on what this journey is and what it isn't." Something that's agile when you're first creating this journey map, 
when you're first doing your research and you're moving into illustration, it's nice to have something that's very flexible. Literally, you have a timeline, 
you have a learner persona, and that is so important, the identification of a learner persona. You have a start point to that timeline and an end point, and you have an overall goal. 
Those could be a single color sticky note, all of the learner touch points. I, Sam, as this learner persona, do X, Y, or Z. These are my touch points throughout the learning journey. 
Then under that, I use color coding. You can use iconography to think about color blindness and things like that. It can be a very rich colorful diagram by the time you're done because there's many different ecosystem elements that you would identify under each of these touch points. 
One would be technology. So in your green sticky notes, if it was launch course, your technology would be your LMS system. You know, it may be an email system. 
If there was, if there was something that was generated, those would all be your green technology sticky notes. If you needed a human resource for the interaction to be successful, 
you could use a pink sticky note and say instructor, producer, scheduler, you know, whoever, whoever the people are that are needed. And, 
you know, you have your timeline of the learner actions, you have these things identified of what's needed to enable each action. And then you can kind of take a step back and say, 
wow, we have a lot of red sticky notes underneath these touch points. Like let's say you need to cut your cost on the, you know, the amount of people resources that you're using. 
You want more automation. You want to leverage more technology and e -learning in your system. You know, you can map that out and see where you're depending on humans for manual intervention. 
And that it gives you some sort of like high level story to tell other leaders in your organization if you need buy in to make things more automated or you need more investment for a technology, 
you can show this map and say we have in a lot of, you know, I've done maps where a lot of those human resources are some of the most expensive people in the company. And, you know, think of a new product launch and those product managers who are like, 
I'm just going to teach the course and I'm just going to help them with support and I'm going to find out their use cases. And then you have this really high paid person just popping up all over the journey map and you can use that to say, 
you know, what's the longterm strategy? How are we going to support this in the longterm? Because this isn't being scalable right now. - Fantastic, thanks for those descriptions. I really appreciate that. I, 
who asked a question earlier, also asked, how would you frame non -training needs? And you've given a couple of examples, but I just wanted to call out this question and also have you circle back to, it's like the example you just gave, 
where it's like, you know what, this person, the subject matter expert, they're kind of flexing, they want to own this process, but you may say like, that's not sustainable over the longterm, 
so let's get some other things. Like what other non -training needs might you identify? - Yeah, it's always best to relate those to a specific outcome or metric that the business is looking for. 
'Cause nobody likes to get to the end of this current state analysis. You have this journey and then you're saying, this is all these red flags everywhere and they're gonna be like, you're just training. Why are you telling me how to like run this? 
But for that, I've definitely referenced the innovative performance support book. And that really has specific frameworks for what are all the different types of resources, 
tools, guidance that learners need past formal training into competency and performance. Because we know that our formal trainings are just a piece of that journey. 
They also need to go and apply that information directly to their job. And a really good company that has really good training is going to deliver that information in a way that is applicable for somebody to perform a task. 
I can Google things, I can read on my off time, but when I'm sitting down at the table taking training, I want to understand how I'm gonna complete my first task, 
how I can measure success. And that is really how formal training should be designed. But that's not always the case. What happens is we have people leave these learning experiences, they forget a lot of what they were learned 'cause it wasn't important to their job. 
And then they enter like a coaching or mentorship and they learn what they're actually doing, and then they're using these performance support tools, other articles that are written by support teams or ancillary teams that aren't related to training. 
So the journey really lets you see where is all the information being consumed? 'Cause as a owner of a learning product, there's this icky feeling you get when you've spent all this time and money developing this course, 
and then you learn that another team has created something or another entity has created something that's nearly the same, but there's a lack of conflicts, like people are getting the same types of information in different ways, 
and it's actually confusing them 'cause it's not consistent enough. So I always want to see what else is out there, like who else is creating something about this topic that's supporting this learner, 
and add that into my maps, and then I can use that as a conversation to talk with those teams, because me and the learning and development team, I'm not gonna be responsible for the performance of the support team, 
for the performance of the coaches and mentors, but I wanna make sure that my learning products align into the journey that the learner is going through, and that they're easily accessible, 
diving into a four hour e -learning course when I'm on the job and I have that problem, and I'm like, oh, there was an exercise on that, I'm gonna be logged into my LMS, and I was like, oh, my password doesn't work. 
- Yeah, the friction can be intense, yeah. You just, yeah. - And we're all virtual, so we're kind of in this black box, and some people, that's the other thing you can add into these, talking about things that aren't training related, 
motivation and environment. As you do these workshops, and you have a learner representative, somebody who represents the person that's going through this thing today, 
or if you're interviewing that person as part of your research, you might learn that they're terrified to ask a question about what's next in their job, or they don't have, 
you know, they didn't have the proper onboarding to feel like they have that, that freedom to make a mistake and have it be as Bob Ross said, a happy mistake or talk to somebody about it. 
Those are other things that you could identify. So it's not just training, it's, it's the motivation, it's the tools, it's the consistency of how we receive information throughout, 
throughout a journey. I love that you just channeled Bob Ross, that's fantastic. So as you describe this as someone who is the facilitating professional behind creating something like this, 
the first thing that's coming in, not the first thing, but one thing that's, that's coming up for me a lot is this can get overwhelming and out of control pretty quickly. How do you, you know, you say, hey, look, we just had, 
we just needed to teach people how to turn the screw and you've turned this into, you know, oh my God, you didn't realize that level three support never actually gets the met, you know, like, how do you go into a conversation like this with a client or with a leadership team and make sure that it's very encapsulated or has a real boundary to it? 
Absolutely. Um, cause I've, I've done both. That's how you learn by, by going in because it's, it's a fascinating thing and it's, and it's hard to stay objective and distance from it and understand that you are just there to facilitate a map, 
to, to focus on the facts, make it as accurate as possible. And when you're creating a map, there's, there's ugly things that you'll put on it, especially if it's your own company, 
um, you know, you, you talk to enough of your learners and you understand What's going on and you see that they're doing these workarounds and these things that you're just like oh But that's not your job is to not feel like you have ownership over all of these little things that you're putting on the map You are doing research You are using data and feedback that has been collected in interviews and in -person 
workshops to lay this out and get consensus amongst the company or the You know, whoever the stakeholder is for your map that yes, this is the current state But you want to be very Clear with your stakeholder who you're creating this map for What is the business need that they you know, 
why are they creating this map? What is the focus area of the map? because if it's a technology issue then you know to focus on those parts of the The ecosystem elements you don't have to list 20 different types of you like it becomes overwhelming It becomes too much and the whole reason you're creating this is because it's a clear Visual representation of a system that you can align other people to you You don't 
want to make it overwhelming with information that is not important to the to the direct focus area. So There's a design methodology called the SAM method It's not after me. 
It's gonna say that's really convenient substantial Substance of approximation method. I think is what it stands for but there's a book on there It's kind of a rapid e -learning development methodology and there's a really good set of backgrounding questions in there that go over You know, 
who is the learner persona that's impacted who? Who is supporting this mapping project who has skin in the game? What are the top and bottom lines that they're hoping to impact and you have a What I do is I have a learner persona workshop so they can can filter through what learner persona we're actually going to map, 
'cause that's something that a lot of requesters like to throw in there is, oh, this is the person. And then you dive in and you realize that it's actually four different groups of people and you have proficient and non -proficient and senior and junior, 
and they're all going through different experiences. So you really use that learner persona practice to get the business to focus on, 
okay, we are going to get new consultants in this group. We're gonna have 500 coming on. Like this is the specific person and this is what they're going to have to do. 
So you start by making sure that the person is clearly identified and then you clearly identify the scope. Where do you want the journey map to start and end? Is there more of an issue with what happens with people outside of training or is there a ton of negative feedback of what's happening during training? 
And then that focus area of is this a people problem? Is it a technology problem? Is it a motivation and environment problem? And you can focus on the types of interviews and the questions that you asked, 
but absolutely you want to have good solid backgrounding. You want to set clear expectations about who this map is for and what the scope of it is. And then you really just want to focus on the metrics that matter to the business. 
- Fantastic. So tell me about overcoming common objections to creating something like this, right? Again, even the best professional like yourself can come in and understand how to create a boundary, 
how to keep it on scope and have parameters like this. But I can see a number of managers or leaders, even your CLO and your learning professionals come back and say, 
we just don't have time for this. We need to get this out the door next week. What other kinds of common objections do you usually hear around creating a map? And then if you would, 
how do you then come in and say, look, here's the type of result you're going to get if we do this first? Or how does this change the process if we do this first? Yeah, absolutely. You have to be, 
I mean, if this is just something you're coming in and consulting with a company for, you have to be very specific about how long it's going to take and exactly what the output of it is. 
And that's setting a lot of expectation around this tool is to start the conversations. So you all can identify the interventions that you want to pursue. You know, 
if you have all these teams together, laying out this learning journey of somebody coming through to onboarding and then performing competently within 60 days, let's say, each of those business owners, 
like they own different processes and different bodies of knowledge that the person's going to, to consume. But you want to make sure that all those people know that this, 
you can choose your intervention that you want to, that you want to test first, this is a way for everybody to see where there might be gaps or rooms for improvement in the experience. 
And some of these problems might need a combination of teams to tackle. But you, you definitely want to report out on what was identified. And if somebody wants to hire you to help with those learning solutions, 
that's a, that's a, you know, a different project, right? You're then going in and saying, Okay, we understand this is the learner. We understand this is how you measure success or the lack of success measurement that exists today. 
And now we're going to help with that specific intervention. But when you're having this alignment experience for all of the leaders, the magic really is in them making eye contact with each other and really understanding across the table, 
like, oh, I thought this was implemented. I thought we were using this down here. And everybody's like, no, we never did that. And it's like, oh, so, you know, it's a lot of the aha moments. 
I bet they can be both profound and embarrassing. You know, as a facilitator and as a trainer, to motivate people to learn, 
it has to be intrinsic. It has to come from inside. You have to make people feel open and able to share their vulnerabilities and have fun. 
So I definitely, you know, all of the icebreakers, all of the bringing people together and just kind of like shedding things, getting them to do things physically, you know, just kind of getting out of your own head because at the end of the day, 
everybody wants to support the learner, or at least we hope they do. You know, we want the customer to be successful. We want the learner to be successful, whatever it is. But we get so caught up in our own metrics and the own performance standards that we have for ourselves that sometimes people hold on to information because they're like, 
well, if I tell everybody this, then, you know, I'm not my value is going. Yeah. There's a gatekeeper to that information because that's their perceived value in the company or whatever. 
Yeah. So when you create these maps together and a collaborative atmosphere where you get the juices flowing, and people can have a sense of all, everybody has a sense of ownership over the journey when it's done, 
because they all helped build it. That's when you can really get good information in exchange. And people will look at the interventions that were identified and really understand like why we would pursue this because that's, 
you know, having that measurable objective of how you would evaluate the success of this thing. That is the really strong conversation that you can have quickly with these maps. 
I love it. Kind of round us out here, as you know, we've already, we're already kind of half hour in, which is fantastic. I love how fast these conversations go. It's always crazy. Some of the use cases that you've had in the past, 
some of the successes, like some of the aha moments, like are there stories that you could tell us, I don't know if you can name names or not, where the tangibility of the outcome was just profound, or an entire process was changed, 
or something, like what are the kinds of things that you continue to keep you excited because of the results that you get? - Yeah, I think from just a micro, 
to a smaller map about a specific learning product, really being able to understand how a learner navigates through a user experience, 
and understanding how the visuals, the audio, like the written resources, everything kind of works together, and really helps you hone in how you can make big impacts. 
I've redesigned a lot of specific learning experiences by laying out the journey, and seeing that we have a lot of reading, but no interaction, or we can't afford to have voiceover anymore, 
because that's too much of an expense for the business. So how can we convert this into something that has other types of ways to deliver information? That's always exciting to me, 
but on the larger scale, when you can clearly say what the, this is why the performance isn't happening, and you can avoid creating learning experiences that aren't going to actually impact the outcome of what the business wants. 
Like those are, that's where I feel like you're giving so much value to the business, able to really understand what the formal learning is for, 
what the performance support is for, and who the learner is, who's the person that's going through this? One is a new software that was being developed, and they said that people were having a hard time with the outputs of the software and understanding what to do. 
And the end result of that is they realized that the software was being marketed to the wrong audience. So, you know, that's, and this is an early adopter program. So, to learn that upfront, like, 
saves a company a ton of money. And then another company with an onboarding program that was completely in person, had all of these amazing physical interactions that you would get a map and a scavenger hunt, 
and you would do, you know, walk around the office, and there's all these awesome things that somebody would do throughout their onboarding. And then to have that workshop and have everybody see what was left in the virtual atmosphere, 
and realize that they didn't replace any of those social experiences with a virtual experience. So, it was like, oh my gosh, we never really reacted to the pandemic. We were just trying to deliver onboarding the same way we were. 
So, big aha moments, and also, you know, contained within your learning and development team, just being able to really visualize and have empathy with the learner experience and what they're going through. 
And then you get a beautiful image at the end. And that's an onboarding tool. Somebody joins your team, somebody comes into the business says, hey, I want to know what it takes for a person to get from here to there. 
Like, just think of how much time you save by having that mapped out. It's something that you can use down the road when you need to explain what the program is, how we're measuring things in the future. 
Speaking of that, what's your process and how does it work when you've brought the mapping process to an end, right? And you said, okay, 
look, we're at a point now where we feel we have either a complete map or we've gotten to a point where we have sufficient information to take a next step. 
How do you hand that over to, is it to an instructional design team? Is it to a learning leader? Who do you hand over to? And then what is that immediate next step?" Yeah, 
it's when you're doing it as kind of an alignment exercise and trying to intervene, like getting everybody to come together and understand what a specific problem is or where success is lacking, 
especially amongst C -level leaders. They're going to use this as a way to identify those interventions, and then they want to know when, 
how much do you need? Like, you know, do this. Where's the project plan? That's what the leaders want to know, is what's the project plan? It's like, this is great. We identified all of these things, 
but the leaders want to know what's next. So your responsibility for those one -off events is to make sure that you have very clear documentation of what occurred, 
who said what, what were the interventions, give them a copy of the map. And they may or may not look at it again, but the value that you provided is they were able to come to a consensus and look at a unified experience and decide what interventions they want to pursue. 
When you're using it more closer to home in the L &D field, you can use it as an ongoing tool to evaluate the success of your programs. So you want to use something that they're going to have access to, 
you know, create the map in a tool that they will be able to edit and update on their own, but especially at learning experience designers, managers, and directors, 
customer success, customer experience, those types of teams, marketing teams, they love these maps. That's where they live. I can see you like, I can see somebody printing something out and putting it on a wall and saying like, 
look, this is what we know. And like, now we know what our plan is for the next six months, 12 months, whatever. You can really follow it along and use that as literally as a map. It's a guide marker. 
Yeah, walking around the in -person office and seeing the whiteboard that said, "Do not erase or stick on it." That's what you're using. It's easier with these teams that want to visualize the experience and they want to have that empathy with the person going through it. 
Leadership, you have that happen in the room, but after that meeting is done, they want to get back to what are the projects we're going to pursue? When is it going to be delivered? 
Sam, this has been a fantastic conversation. Again, amazing how quickly 40 minutes goes by or whatever here. I can't thank you enough for taking time out of your busy day to do this and also to the people who sent us some questions today. 
Really fantastic. I love those were really on point and gave us some nice areas to talk around. How do people get a hold of you if they want to talk more about journey mapping? Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. 
Sam DeGeus at LinkedIn. I'm also delivering a workshop for learning professionals on how to start to design journey maps for your organization. 
That's going to be at DevLearn this October. If you're going to DevLearn, you can go to my pre -conference workshop. Also, this is something that I do per request, 
whether people want to learn how to do the journey map or if they want to have one of those alignment workshops with their company. Just contact me on LinkedIn. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day and thank you so much again for your time. 
Thank you. Thank you again for listening to the E -Learn podcast here from Open LMS. I just wanted to ask one more time. If you enjoyed this show, if you learned something, if you were inspired, 
if you were challenged, if you feel like this is something you can take into your practice, please do me a favor. Right now, on your podcast player, hit subscribe. That way, you're never going to miss a future episode. 
Also, come over to elearnmagazine .com and subscribe there as well because we have tons of great information about how to create killer online learning outcomes. Thanks.

The eLearn Podcast

How To Do Ecosystem & Journey Mapping For Effective Learning With Sam DeGeus

Listen to this podcast on