This is the third entry in our Interviews with Learning Leaders series.
Marcus Potter is a senior training consultant for curriculum design with CVS Health's Specialty Pharmacy Division. Marcus has been involved with designing, developing, and facilitating instructor-led and virtual learning solutions for eight years with CVS. Marcus received his Bachelor of Business Administration in accounting from the University of Texas at San Antonio and completed his Master of Arts in Educating Adults from DePaul University this year.
How did you get into the learning and development field?
I was always drawn to it. As a kid, I always loved to go to the library; I loved the books and reading. In the third and fourth grade, I started reading to kids at the library. My mom was surprised when I came home with a certificate of appreciation for reading to the younger kids. In college, I found a sense of purpose helping others and was a tutor for other students. My bachelor's is in accounting, but tutoring others was more rewarding than the actual accounting work. I am a people person and have a passion for helping. The same thing happened in my work life. I was a supervisor who was responsible for training my own employees. My best friend used to be the trainer in the division I’m in now. My best friend was asked to recommend someone for the position and she talked me into applying because I was a “natural.” I interviewed and they took a chance on hiring me. It was first day of my professional life, in my opinion.
You recently got a master's degree. What was the motivation for that?
I was always involved in training, but did not have the educational background or base knowledge for the field. In 2001, I was training technical support in India. My manager saw me facilitate and thought I was great, a natural in front of people. I didn’t really know adult learning or needs assessment or anything like that. She suggested I should pursue the CPLP. As I explored it, I realized I didn’t have background for the topics on the knowledge exam. So I decided to get a degree to get the foundation. I got DePaul University’s Masters of Arts in Educating Adults, and it is a very practical curriculum. It helped me to get into my current position.
What do you see as the value to a master's degree for learning professionals?
Walking into the job and saying, "I have experience." It is a credential. It shows you used the knowledge to create a good product. People will assume you have what you need to do the job or project well. For someone who wants a career in L&D, I think having either a CPLP or a degree is helpful. It is also a confidence-builder. I think personal development is very personal in nature.
How have you evolved in your roles?
In the past, I designed curriculum and facilitated it myself, but now I need to make sure it is designed so other facilitators can give it well. So, scripting in a course comes across as heartfelt. Making facilitator guides easy to understand and implement. My internal customers are facilitators and participants in the workshops.
And developing eLearning has evolved. Making it participatory and engaging is a passion. We have to keep our learners involved. I prefer to build an interactive activity that must be completed before moving on. I’m not a fan of the “Next” button. I also include short one- or two-question knowledge checks in a course that pop up after a few slides, referencing an important concept that was more than a couple of slides ago. Doing so requires that a course be somewhat unlocked so that the end user can reference those slides again when they need to. A mentor of mine would say, “Is the goal to test frustration or knowledge?” A locked course tests only one of those consistently.
How do you see L&D evolving over the next 10–20 years?
Businesses will rely more on academic and outside sources to get employees to a base level—for computer skills, for example. In recruiting, sometimes you would love to hire someone, except for one lacking skill. It will be easier to send them to a college class or other provider outside of the organization, than to try and provide training on so many one-off topics. This way, the first six weeks in a new role can be spent teaching the basics of the job.
Also, trying to make training more like what it will be in real life for our learners. Some training is designed as a corporate training lecture series: we show how and then you try it. With the mantra of informal learning, I’m trying to bring that real life into the development cycle, trying to recreate as close as possible to what life will be like and incorporating the informal learning aspect. Instead of practicing on the floor (the work environment) and making mistakes with real customers, how can we make them learn in an environment that resembles their work environment?
For example, we had a one-week training that included a sage on the stage and incorporated hands on training but with little real-world practice. It had little flow and felt really disjointed and haphazard. We redesigned the course so that each module built on the previous one. For example, we trained on the phone system, and the next module used the phone. The new training is two weeks long; we redesigned the training room to resemble the work environment, and they practiced answering questions, role played, and worked scenario-based activities. The last day of the training was spent working in the classroom, but doing live work and talking to real customers. They answered calls, made calls, talked to customers, and showed they were able to do the role. From the first pilot they were at same skill level proficiency and quality as people doing the job for six weeks. We got buy-in to try it and it was a huge win.
Any lessons learned that you can pass along to others?
Do not work in a vacuum. Seek others out when designing new solutions. Build relationships and work across silos.
Being able to perform research is a good skill to have. A year ago, someone gave me a bunch of words on a slide, no interactivity, and they wanted it narrated. I found a Ruth Colvin Clark resource, Evidence Based Training Methods. There was a section on using super-busy slides and using narration. Research shows a bunch of words on a slide along with narration doesn’t really help retention—it creates overload. Instead, it recommends to show an image and narrate, not to have both the words on screen and narration. I showed the client and was able to prove that limiting words on screen and narrating worked better. They looked at me as a knowledgeable resource. They asked what I thought was the right way to do it. Having research and showing value puts us in more of a consultant role than just doing the development.
Topics: Interviews with Learning Leaders