We have all faced the “SME Avalanche.”

A Subject Matter Expert (SME) drops a 200-page PDF on your desk and says, “The team needs to know all of this.” You spend weeks converting it into a slide-heavy eLearning course. The learners click “Next” as fast as they can. They pass the quiz. And three weeks later?

Nothing has changed. The business problem still exists.

This is the failure of “Information-First” design. The solution? Flip the script. Enter Action Mapping.

Created by Cathy Moore, Action Mapping is not just a design model; it is a rebellion against the content dump. It forces us to stop asking, “What do they need to know?” and start asking, “What do they need to DO?”

Here is how to use Action Mapping to turn your training from a knowledge repository into a performance tool.

The Philosophy: Behaviour Over Knowledge

Traditional design often looks like this:

• Gather Content -> Organise Content -> Add Quiz -> Hope for the Best.

Action Mapping works backward:

• Identify Business Goal -> Identify Necessary Actions -> Design Practice -> Add Minimum Essential Information.

It sounds simple, but it is radical because it ruthlessly cuts out “nice-to-know” information. If a piece of information doesn’t directly support a specific action that solves the business problem, it gets cut.

The 4 Steps to a Streamlined Course

1. The Business Goal (The “Why”)

Before you write a single storyboard, you must identify a measurable business metric.

• Bad Goal: “Understand the new sales software.” (This is a learning objective, not a business goal).
• Action Mapping Goal: “Increase sales of Product X by 15% in Q3.”

2. The Actions (The “What”)

Now, ask: “What does the employee need to do to achieve that increase?” We are looking for observable behaviours, not internal mental states.

• Examples: “Ask the client about their current pain points,” “Select the correct dropdown in the CRM,” “Cross-reference the pricing sheet.”

3. The Practice Activities (The “How”)

This is the heart of your course. Instead of slides, design activities that mimic the real world. If the action is “Handle an angry customer,” don’t write a slide defining anger. Build a branching scenario where the learner faces an angry customer and must choose the right response. Result: The learner practices the decision, not just the memorisation.

4. The Essential Information (The “Help”)

This is the final step. Only now do you add information. What is the bare minimum amount of data the learner needs to complete the practice activity?

• Do they need the history of the company? No.
• Do they need a cheat sheet on how to de-escalate tension? Yes.

Why It Works

Action Mapping respects your learners’ time and your stakeholders’ budget.

• It reduces bloat: You stop building 60-minute courses for problems that only need a 5-minute job aid.
• It focuses on ROI: You can draw a straight line from the training to the business result.
• It engages: Learners solve interesting problems rather than reading static text.

Case Study: The “CRM Disaster” That Never Happened

The Client: “FinTech Global” (A mid-sized financial services firm).

The Request: “We are rolling out Salesforce next month. We need an eLearning course that teaches our 200 account managers how to use every feature of the new software. Here is the 300-page technical manual.”

The Trap: The default Instructional Design approach here is the “Click-and-Watch” method: A 45-minute screen recording series showing where every menu item lives.

The result? Bored learners, zero retention, and a support desk flooded with tickets on Day 1.

The Action Mapping Intervention: Instead of asking, “What do they need to know about Salesforce?”, we asked, “What do they need to do to make the company money?”

Here is how we built the solution using Cathy Moore’s 4-step framework.

Step 1: Define the Business Goal

We interrogated the stakeholders. Why are we doing this?

• Stakeholder: “To teach them Salesforce.”
• ID: “Why?”
• Stakeholder: “So they can log deals.”
• ID: “Why does that matter right now?”
• Stakeholder: “Because our current data is messy, and we’re losing 15% of renewals due to bad data entry.”

The Goal: Improve renewal data accuracy by 15% in Q3.

Step 2: Identify the Actions

We looked at the “messy data.” What were people actually doing wrong?

We didn’t need to teach them how to change their password or customise their dashboard colours (waste of time). We identified the critical failures:

1. Selecting the wrong “Deal Stage.”
2. Failing to attach the signed PDF to the record.
3. Entering net revenue instead of gross revenue.

Step 3: Design the Practice (The Activities)

Instead of a “Software Simulation” where the learner watches a mouse move, we built scenarios.

The Activity:

• Scenario: “You just closed the Anderson account for $50k. Here is the contract. Put it in the system.”
• The Challenge: The learner is dropped into a mock version of Salesforce. They must enter the data.
• The Catch: The contract says “$50k inclusive of tax.” If the learner enters $50k into the “Revenue” field without doing the math, the system simulates an error message from Finance: “Rejecting deal. Revenue figures incorrect.”

Step 4: Identify Essential Information (The “Help”)

What did they need to solve that problem?

• Did they need the history of Salesforce? No.
• Did they need to know how to export reports? No.
• Did they need a calculator and a definition of “Net Revenue”? Yes.

We provided a simple “Revenue Cheat Sheet” downloadable PDF next to the activity.

The Comparison

The Result

FinTech Global launched the module.

1. Time Saved: Training time was reduced by 75%, saving the company thousands of dollars in billable hours.
2. Performance: Data error rates dropped by 22% in the first month.
3. Engagement: Learners praised the course for “respecting their intelligence” and not forcing them to watch boring tutorials.

The Lesson

We didn’t build a course about software. We built a simulator for business success. By stripping away the “nice-to-know” info, we created space for deep practice on the things that actually impacted the bottom line.

Stop Being an Order Taker

The next time a stakeholder asks for a course on “Awareness,” push back. Use Action Mapping to dig for the root cause.

If you are tired of the “Content Dump,” it’s time to change your approach. Book a coaching session with me, and let’s master the art of Action Mapping to create training that actually works.