In today’s fast-changing business landscape, organizations must be agile, responsive, and equipped to tackle adaptive challenges—whether they are opportunities, threats, or crises. The key to thriving in such an environment lies in the ability to quickly learn and effectively apply knowledge and skills at the moment of need. The EnABLE ISD methodology is designed to help Learning & Development (L&D) professionals and departments develop learning and performance solutions that empowers organizations with this capability, ensuring that they can navigate transformation with efficiency and precision.
The Need for a Shift in Learning Paradigms
Traditional learning paradigms and their associated instructional systems design (ISD) methodologies are no longer sufficient to meet the demands of today’s workforce. L&D teams must evolve to maintain their relevance and impact. Organizations that rely on outdated training models risk responding too slowly, potentially falling behind competitors that prioritize adaptive, performance-focused learning.
The EnABLE methodology addresses these challenges by shifting the focus from training to supporting performance. It provides a structured yet flexible approach to designing, developing, and sustaining solutions that integrate seamlessly into the workflow. By embracing this model, L&D leaders can align learning initiatives with business priorities and drive measurable business impact.
The Five Phases of the EnABLE Methodology
EnABLE is a comprehensive framework structured around five key phases:
- Engage to Align
- Analyze to Design
- Build to Implement
- Leverage to Sustain
- Evaluate
Each phase plays a critical role in creating a performance-driven learning solution that enables employees to succeed at the Five Moments of Need: Apply, Solve, Change, New, and More.
Engage to Align: Setting the Foundation for Success
The first step in the EnABLE process involves early collaboration with business stakeholders to align learning objectives with overarching business priorities. This phase ensures that learning initiatives are strategically designed to support real business needs and drive meaningful outcomes. By engaging leadership and defining key success metrics at the outset, organizations lay the groundwork for a solution that delivers measurable impact.
Analyze to Design: Structuring the Learning Solution
This phase involves identifying the critical processes, tasks, steps, and resources needed to provide learners with relevant, timely information in the flow of work. The goal is to create a blueprint for a Digital Coach, an essential tool that enables quick and easy access to performance-supporting information, and Targeted Training.
Through in-depth analysis, organizations can map out the most effective ways to integrate learning into the daily workflow, ensuring that employees receive the right support exactly when they need it. This structure helps L&D teams move beyond traditional course-based learning and towards a more blended approach that includes a dynamic, responsive performance support systems, a Digital Coach.
Build to Implement: Bringing the Solution to Life
In this phase, learning solutions are built and launched based on the blueprint created during the Analyze to Design phase. Traditional Instructor-Led Training (ILT) and Virtual Instructor-Led Training (vILT) are more target, thus the name – Targeted Training, and are seamlessly integrated with Digital Coach solutions to create a comprehensive learning environment, or true Blended Learning.
By leveraging digital tools, organizations can ensure that learning is accessible, engaging, and immediately applicable. This integration enhances the efficiency of training programs and maximizes the impact of both formal instruction and real-time performance support.
Leverage to Sustain: Ensuring Long-Term Success
A successful learning solution requires ongoing maintenance and governance. The Leverage to Sustain phase focuses on curating and updating content to keep it relevant and aligned with evolving business needs.
Sustaining a learning solution means more than just keeping information up to date—it involves actively reinforcing learning, promoting knowledge retention, and continuously optimizing the solution based on user feedback and performance data. This phase ensures that employees always have access to the most relevant and effective learning resources.
Evaluate: Measuring Impact and Driving Continuous Improvement
The final phase of the EnABLE methodology is focused on measuring real improvements in performance first discussed in the Engage to Align phase. Going beyond traditional usability and satisfaction surveys, this phase emphasizes evaluating business impact, productivity gains, return on investment (ROI), and other key performance indicators.
By leveraging robust measurement strategies, organizations can track the effectiveness of their learning initiatives and identify areas for refinement. This data-driven approach ensures that learning solutions continue to evolve and deliver maximum value over time.
The Bottom Line: Learning at the Speed of Change
To remain competitive in today’s business environment, organizations must prioritize learning at the speed of change. The EnABLE methodology provides the structured approach needed to achieve this goal, empowering organizations to design, develop, and sustain learning solutions that drive real performance improvements.
By adopting EnABLE, L&D teams can:
- Align learning initiatives with business priorities
- Deliver just-in-time performance support within the workflow
- Integrate digital coaching with traditional training methods
- Maintain and sustain learning solutions for long-term success
- Measure real business impact and continuously optimize learning strategies
The future of learning and development lies in agile, performance-focused methodologies that support employees precisely when and where they need it. EnABLE provides the framework to make this vision a reality, transforming L&D from a function that simply delivers training to one that drives true organizational performance and transformation.
