Custom Course Development

How I Build Any Class, Course, or Workshop (and how you can too) People often ask me how I design my courses. The answer isn’t magic. It’s a process. One you can steal. Step 1: Start at the End Before slides, stories, or exercises, I define the outcome. • How should they feel when it’s over? • What should they know that they didn’t before? • What should they do next (concretely, not vaguely)? If you can’t answer those three, you’re not ready to design. Step 2: Build from Your Inventory I keep a library of: • Stories (personal + case studies) • Research and data points • Frameworks and lessons • Exercises, challenges, and reflections When a company asks me for a “custom” workshop, I don’t start from scratch. I remix from this inventory by plugging in the right stories and lessons that match the outcomes. Customization ≠ Reinventing the wheel. It’s remixing with intent. (This took me a while to do -- building this inventory -- but once I had it, I realized how powerful it has become for me). Step 3: Sequence for Energy I design like a rollercoaster: • Start with something that surprises or makes them lean in. • Mix moments of listening with moments of doing. • End with action (what they’ll do on Monday). The order matters as much as the content. Step 4: Test + Tighten Every class, talk, or program is a draft. I note what stories landed, what exercises flopped, what moments sparked energy. That’s how I grow my inventory, and why each program gets sharper over time. 💡 Save this for later: Next time you need to build a course, a workshop, or even a keynote, use this checklist: 1. Define Feel → Know → Do 2. Pull from your inventory 3. Design the sequence 4. Test and improve It’s not about creating from scratch. It’s about reverse engineering for outcomes. Curious... what’s the one inventory item you lean on most when teaching or presenting?

What if we designed professional master’s courses the way Netflix writes its seasons? There’s growing interest in using story arcs to structure professional master’s programmes—borrowing narrative techniques to make learning more cohesive, engaging, and authentic. I’ve been experimenting with this in BUSDEV 722, our course on product management. Rather than treating each module as a standalone topic, I’ve been exploring ways to cast the student in the role of a decision-maker navigating the messy, ambiguous world of product innovation. Each module becomes a new chapter in that journey. This creates an integrated, experiential learning arc that mimics the real challenges of building and managing products. BUSDEV 722 is being migrated to a new degree platform—one designed to serve a more diverse cohort, including recent graduates and career changers who may have limited or no experience in product roles. In that context, a strong narrative arc helps learners make sense of unfamiliar concepts by placing them in a story where they can inhabit a role, build confidence through practice, and connect the dots between theory and action. What are the benefits? ✔️ Authenticity: Story arcs create vivid scenarios where students face trade-offs, conflicting priorities, and imperfect data—just like real-world product managers. ✔️Cohesion and confidence: For students without industry experience, a well-designed arc provides a clear path through unfamiliar terrain—scaffolded to support progressive skill development. ✔️Assessment with meaning: Instead of bolted-on tasks, assessments can become pivotal moments in the story. They feel like decisions with consequences, not hoops to jump through. ✔️AI-enabled customisation: With generative AI, it’s now possible to scaffold narrative arcs around individual learner contexts, create branching scenarios, or personalise storylines to match different sectors or goals. Of course, there are trade-offs. ✔️Story arc design is resource-intensive and unfamiliar territory for most educators. ✔️Too rigid an arc can crowd out spontaneous, emergent learning moments. ✔️Not all learners respond to narrative structures in the same way—they must feel real, not artificial. Story arcs are a powerful tool in the reinvention of professional education. In BUSDEV 722, I’m learning that when the arc is strong, the decisions matter, and the learner sees themselves in the story, transformation happens. And thanks to AI, we now have the tools to make this kind of learning design scalable and personalised without sacrificing quality. Have you experimented with narrative design in your teaching? What worked—and what didn’t? #LearningDesign #StoryArc #ProfessionalMasters #HighEducation #LearningJourney

I got a text from a client while I was on vacation. Normally, this wouldn't be something I would welcome (I take my vacations seriously) but I was thrilled to get this one. It said "I channeled my inner Alice today and used your reputation management strategies. It was a success!" She was referring to a training I built for her market partnerships team about strategic market development and managing stakeholder relationship challenges. This team doesn't sell explicitly but they're responsible for building a pipeline of referral relationships with healthcare professionals and hospitals. She knew they would benefit from developing some sales-adjacent skills, so she reached out about creating a bespoke training program. We covered straightforward topics like Building Relationships, Communication Strategies, Cold Calling, Objection Handling and Presentation Skills. Then followed up with 1:1 coaching. Through the coaching conversations I could see the team's confidence grow. Later, the leader told me referrals and revenues were up! If you're managing a partnerships team (or any team doing business development without formal sales training), here are three approaches to consider: 1. Reframe it as "Strategic Relationship Development" Call it what it actually is - building the communication and relationship skills that make partnerships successful. Your team will engage instead of internally rolling their eyes at "sales training." 2. Make it bespoke to your industry Generic sales training uses generic examples. Custom training uses scenarios your team faces every day - the difficult partner conversation, the conference where they don't know anyone, the follow-up that's been sitting in drafts for a week. 3. Focus on real situations, not theory The best training happens when your team can immediately apply what they're learning. Use actual challenges they're facing right now. Practice the conversations they're avoiding. Workshop the emails they're stuck on. What's been your experience building these capabilities in non-sales teams? #BusinessDevelopment #PartnershipsTeam #ProfessionalDevelopment

Leadership development has fundamentally changed. I remember sitting in leadership courses and listening to someone talk for hours. Mind-numbing and ineffective, but that is how we used to do it. Now, we know better. Adults learn from one another and through interactive experiences. It's why we design custom, interactive learning experiences where your team doesn't just sit and listen—they interact, collaborate, and learn together. My sessions typically receive 95%-100% satisfaction ratings, and I'm proud of my work, but I also know that it is not about me. It's about how participants in the sessions interact and apply what they learn, in person or virtually. These are not passive participants checking their phones between slides. They are engaged leaders solving real problems, giving each other feedback, and building solutions they could apply Monday morning. Here's what shifted:  ❌ Generic curriculum → ✅ Custom-designed for your team's actual challenges ❌ One-way lectures → ✅ Group coaching and peer learning ❌ Individual workbooks → ✅ Collaborative experiences ❌ Theory-focused → ✅ Applied, interactive assessments When leaders learn together, they build more than skills. They build a shared language, collective problem-solving capacity, relationships, and momentum that carries beyond the session. That's the difference between training that gets forgotten by Tuesday and development that transforms how your team leads. In today's ever-changing organizations, we need leaders who can collaborate, communicate, and adapt. How are you preparing your leaders? Do you have a leadership playbook designed for your organization?

Global Leader Group has served nearly 200 organizations so far, but if there’s one thing that I am proud of, it's this: Our customizable learning programs that fit your organization's real needs and budget. Let me explain. We have a learning program called The Leadership Code that includes several modules focused on helping leaders develop their people. ↳Module 1 is about Leading Yourself: This is all about how you bring your own style and mindset into leadership. ↳Modules 2 and 3 are about Leading the One:  This is useful if you’re managing individuals or a small team. ↳Module 4 is about Leading the Many: This comes into play when you’re leading other leaders or managing at an enterprise level. The full experience is typically a two-day program, but we understand that not everyone has that kind of time or budget. So, we adapt. We give you a list of capabilities and tools we can teach, and based on that, we customize the session depending on your needs. Our approach is modular and flexible, so we can tailor the experience to fit what you need most. But what if you're not sure where to start? That’s exactly why we use a simple 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘻𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘦𝘹𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘦 to guide customization. We use this for our larger leadership programs as well as individual executive or cohort coaching. We don't guess what’s important, we ask. We have a learning library of around 45 topics. Of course, it’s not possible to cover all of them in one program, so we work with individuals and teams to prioritize. Here’s how: Step 1: We ask each organization: What’s going to make the biggest impact for your leaders? For each topic, they rate it as high, medium, or low impact.  Step 2: Then we assign a score: ▪️High impact: 8–10  ▪️Medium: 5–7  ▪️Low: 1–4 (we typically skip these) Step 3: Once scored, we focus on the highest-impact areas first, starting with 10s and moving downward based on the time we have. We also take input from the participant’s line managers. This ensures we’re designing something that supports both personal growth and team outcomes. This helps us design a coaching or learning plan that’s highly tailored, whether for an individual or for a group of leaders within the organization. That’s how we ensure the Leadership Code program stays flexible, relevant, and impactful. In today’s fast-paced world, leadership development can’t be one-size-fits-all. It has to be practical, focused, and built around what really matters to your people and to the organization. That’s what we aim to deliver with The Leadership Code—a learning experience that meets leaders where they are and helps them grow in the areas that count. -------------------------------------------- 📌If you're looking to invest in leadership development that actually sticks, let’s talk. We’ll help you build a program that fits your people, your priorities, and your pace.

In dozens of conversations with L&D leaders this month, I kept hearing the same challenge surface again and again: Upskilling (beginning with self-awareness around one’s skills and competencies) is essential for growth, but without a clear line of sight to personal benefit even the best learning programs struggle to inspire engagement. Too often, training feels like a top-down mandate that employees 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 to complete rather than something they 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 to pursue. But when learning becomes a bridge between where someone is today and where they want to go next professionally, the entire dynamic changes. That’s why skills and competencies visibility and the custom learning paths it can inspire are so powerful. Here’s how we’ve enabled that at Absorb Software: employees begin with an assessment of their current skills and competencies. From there, they can explore job titles across the organization and identify the roles that inspire them, whether as a next step or an ultimate destination. They can immediately see the gap between where they are today and what’s required for that future role, and from there can pursue a personalized learning path to close the gap. That last part is critical because learning can’t be effective if it’s only top-down. Employees need agency. They need the ability to chart their own course, to choose development opportunities that align with their aspirations as well as business needs. When learning is both guided and self-directed, outcomes improve dramatically. This kind of custom pathing is possible because every course in our content library is pre-tagged with the specific skills and competencies it helps a learner build, and learning teams can tag their own internal courses the same way. The result is a seamless experience where development plans are both personalized and aligned to organizational needs. It also brings a level of honesty to career conversations. Without this kind of visibility, employees sometimes believe they’re ready for the next level but lack the perspective to see what’s still missing. With clear data in front of them, those discussions become easier for everyone involved and the focus shifts from opinion to opportunity. For L&D teams, this means programs that directly support business needs while giving employees a clear “why.” For employees, it means taking ownership of their development and career direction. And for the organization, it means stronger engagement, better retention, and greater internal talent mobility. When people can visualize their growth and see the connection between today’s learning and tomorrow’s opportunity, learning stops being an obligation and becomes a motivator.

A typical eLearning project for us is something like 10 to 12 weeks, outlined below. Keep in mind that this can go up or down depending upon things like state of the content, necessary length and activity level needed to meet the learning objective, reviewer participation, etc. We're developing a module a month on a cadence for one client now. It's a little stressful, but we're getting it done because our primary contact is very involved and the content is short and targeted. They also give us leeway to have fun with activities; we experiment with relevant exercises and move on. Here's the more typical timeline though for full instructional design and development of an eLearning course built in a tool like Articulate Storyline within those 10 to 12 weeks. 𝐁𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐞 𝐤𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐨𝐟𝐟: The client has done the necessary analysis and generally knows what's needed. Most content has been gathered. (We're happy to help with analysis and content gathering too, but that means the eLearning ID clock hasn't started yet.) 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤 𝟏: We get the content, have a kickoff meeting, and are going back and forth with the SMEs and project sponsor getting answers to our questions. 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐬 𝟐 - 𝟒: We write a storyboard, and the client reviews and provides feedback. Sometimes, we're doing this iteratively with the client. For straightforward projects, we can often gain back a lot of time here. 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐬 𝟓 - 𝟔: We develop an alpha version. An alpha for us is fully-developed with AI text-to-speech narration for the review cycles. Maybe it's Storyline. Maybe it's Storyline and Vyond. Maybe it's in another tool. We'll share a short prototype early on to get agreement on the course look and feel. Sometimes, we'll cheat the prototype up into the storyboard phase. 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐬 𝟕 - 𝟖: We're doing client reviews and update cycles. We typically ask the client if they want one or two-week review windows and go with what works best for their schedules. If the client reviews quickly, and there aren't many edits, then we can gain back a lot of time here too. 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐬 𝟗 - 𝟏𝟎: We develop the beta which typically includes recording time with a professional human narrator(s). All the alpha edits are incorporated. We should be on the home stretch here. 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤 𝟏𝟏: The client reviews the beta for small items. 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤 𝟏𝟐: We get sign-off (our gold version) and deliver published files to the client. We'll then stick around for any troubleshooting that might pop up as the client tests the course on their systems. So, that's our typical project timeline that we start with and then subtract or add weeks accordingly. Honestly, timelines can end up all over the place based on many moving factors, including client urgency. It's helpful though to start with one framework and adjust from there. How do you start off with your eLearning project timelines?

Are you designing courses to educate or to create impact? When an Instructional Designer starts working on a course, they may receive a task from a client (internal or external) in one of two ways: 1.    "Here’s the material, it needs to be delivered in an engaging, fast, and effective way." 2.    "Here’s the target audience, we need to achieve a change in their behavior." These two approaches can be referred to as the "Content-Centered Approach" and the "Learner-Centered Approach." Key Differences: 🔹 Content-Centered Approach This approach is built around content. We already have all the necessary materials, and the task is to present them in a structured and accessible format. Main question: "What should be included in this course?" ➡ Suitable when completeness of information is crucial, such as in regulatory and technical training. 🔹 Challenge: Making extensive content understandable and easy to study. This requires clear explanations, intuitive navigation, and quick access to key information. 🔹 Example: A company has a standardized sales process that needs to be communicated to new employees so they know how to apply it. ✅ Pros: Expertise is presented in a structured format; course development requires less time if content is already prepared. ❌ Cons: If the content is not well-designed, training effectiveness will be low. Its impact on business results is often formal. 🔹 Learner-Centered Approach. This approach focuses on the end result—changing learners’ behavior. To achieve this, various approaches, materials, concepts, and delivery formats can be used. Main question: "What is the best way to achieve the desired behavior change?" ➡ Suitable when: • There is no existing knowledge base, • Innovative solutions are required, • Business impact is a key priority. 🔹 Challenge: Identifying what knowledge and practices will drive change and selecting the right tools. 🔹 Example: Employees need to improve their ability to handle objections in sales. This requires analyzing current behaviors, studying best practices, and developing new strategies using various learning methods: role-playing, simulations, and case studies. ✅ Pros: Can significantly impact business results.  ❌ Cons: Requires more effort: analysis, testing, and refining methodologies. 💡 Conclusion: At first glance, the choice seems simple: if there is ready-made content, use the first approach; if not, the second. However, in practice, the most effective approach is a combination of both. Always start with the question: What behavioral change do we want to achieve through training? If materials exist, adapt them. If not, analyze the audience and choose the optimal training method. Which of these approaches do you encounter more often in your practice?👇