Audience Analysis for Workshop Performance Enhancement: Change Management

While I have been worrying about the effects of the change curve on my client, I realized that their workshop attendees are subject to the same cycle of contentment being left for doubt, eventually transforming into hope, confidence, and satisfaction.  The workshops are not merely a source of information, but they are trying to elicit change from the learners, too.

The learners at the workshops are in their doubt stage as nearly all are expressing fear of failure in their endeavor to start their own business.  The workshops and mentorship opportunities are already in a position to foster hope from the learners, so I switched my thought pattern to the ADKAR® change management model.

ADKAR stands for Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement.  Initially identified through Prosci® research, ADKAR is meant to be used as a measurement tool in goal-oriented change management, with each letter representing a milestone in the journey towards a successful change.  From the data I have gathered thus far, I am noticing the workshop participants all have an awareness that a change is needed, either because they have heard about something being necessary in operating a successful business from a trusted source or because they are experiencing a pain in owning their own business.  What appears to be missing is the desire.  They come to the workshop seeking knowledge because they think it is what they need to do and isn’t what they want to do.  I suspect that those who are aware of the need to change from a source rather than an experienced pain are the culprits of this result, but it will take more time for me to review the information I have been collecting.

My determination that people are attending because of a need comes from asking workshop attendees “What motivated you to attend today?” to which 77% responded, “I know the subject is necessary to my success.”    Other options available would have demonstrated a desire to attend whereas this answer demonstrates they are attending as a requirement to be successful.

The other significant statistic from that same question is that 46% of the workshop attendees simply enjoy learning.  They came to acquire new knowledge and/or skills but not with a direct goal in mind, which I interpret to mean they are not looking for a significant change.  Personally, if I am taking a class simply because I enjoy learning and it is in the right place at the right time on a topic I might be mildly interested in, I am soaking up the information with little, if any, intention of applying it later.  For those who opted for “I need a step-by-step tutorial on the subject,” the workshops are not currently structured that way so they may have the desire to change, but the workshop would not get them sufficiently through the next milestone of ADKAR – knowledge – far enough to have the abilities necessary for the change.

I have reached out to my client with this synthesis of the early information to see if there is some way they might like to address the question of desire in another way.  I am going to do one final survey push and could add a question to it before the last sendoff if they feel it is valuable.  Addressing attitudes and motivation in instructional design is never easy, but from what I am seeing in my surveys, it is not something my client will be able to ignore if they wish to produce more success stories with their learners.