Follow for E-Learning Content: Create Engaging Digital Learning Material in Half the Time.

Year 1: SDR at an L&D SaaS.
Year 2: SDR in cybersecurity.

Different logo, same disease -> activity worship.
Spam more. Call more. Measure motion, not outcome.

I watched teams confuse chaos with growth.
Marketing blamed Sales. Sales blamed “bad leads.”
Everyone built walls, then wondered why nothing scaled.

So in Year 3, I did what any sane person would do...I left the asylum.
Joined five builders I met on LinkedIn and started over.
No templates. No outreach quotas. Just systems.
Systems that turn attention → conversations → revenue.

That became Allbound: one GTM engine where inbound, outbound, content, ads and automation operate to achieve the same goal.

At Earleads, that operating model has generated 1,500+ qualified calls and $15M+ in pipeline for early-stage and scaling B2B teams.

Always happy to chat.

Alvaro Gallego Casanova

I don’t create training manuals. I build profit engines.

Most mid to large sized companies are leaking money every single day through broken workflows, clunky handoffs, underused tools, and systems that were patched together instead of designed to scale. CEOs know it, but they often cannot see where the bleeding starts.

That’s my genius. I walk into the mess, diagnose the leaks, and rebuild the system so the company runs leaner, smarter, and more profitably. I don’t patch problems. I re-architect how the business operates so inefficiency cannot creep back in.

I’ve done this in my own companies, scaling multiple ventures into multi-million dollar operations while keeping teams small and systems tight. Now, I bring that same clarity and precision to CEOs who want to protect their margins and free themselves to focus on growth.

If you are an established leader with a serious challenge and the budget to solve it, send me a direct message.

Robin Sargent, Ph.D. Instructional Designer-Online Learning

Instructional design is one of the most misunderstood careers online.

Most people think the job is creating courses.

It isn’t.

Courses are just one tool.

The real job of an instructional designer is diagnosing performance problems inside organizations.

Before designing anything, good instructional designers ask different questions:

Where does work actually break down?

What are employees struggling to do?

Why isn’t the current process producing the right results?

Only after those answers become clear do you decide whether training is even the right solution.

Sometimes the answer is training.

Often it isn’t.

Sometimes the real issue is:

• unclear expectations
• poor systems
• broken workflows
• lack of feedback
• leadership gaps

Courses can’t fix most of those problems.

That’s why strong instructional designers think like analysts first and creators second.

They investigate before they design.

They diagnose before they build.

Because instructional design isn’t about making content.

It’s about improving performance.

And that’s a very different job.

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Talks about #elearning, #onlinelearning, #instructionaldesign, #instructionaldesigner, and #learninganddevelopment

Founder of IDOL Academy | The Career School for Instructional Designers

People think instructional designers spend their day building courses.

That’s only a small part of the job.

A typical day for an instructional designer usually looks more like this:

Analyze requests
 Is this actually a training problem?
Meet with subject matter experts
 What do employees really need to do on the job?
Design learning experiences
 How can people practice those skills?
Review courses
 Does the learning activity actually support performance?
Measure results
 Did the training improve performance?

Course building is part of the job.
But most of the work happens before and after the course exists.

Instructional design is less about producing content and more about solving performance problems.

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People think instructional designers mostly build courses.
That’s only one part of the job.
Inside organizations, the work usually falls into five areas:
Analysis
What performance problem actually exists?
Design
What should people practice doing?
Development
Build the learning materials.
Implementation
Launch the training.
Evaluation
 Did performance improve?
Most people only see the development step.
But experienced instructional designers spend just as much time:
Diagnosing problems.
Designing practice.
Measuring results.
Because the goal isn’t to produce courses.
It’s to improve performance.

Most people treat Robert Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction like a checklist.
Step 1. Do this.
Step 2. Do that.
Add a quiz at the end and call it “instructional design.”

But that’s not what Gagné was actually trying to teach us.

The real insight behind the Nine Events is that learning doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when we intentionally support how people process information.

Gain attention.
Activate prior knowledge.
Provide guidance.
Allow practice.
Give feedback.

Each step exists because the brain needs a specific condition in order to learn effectively.

Inside organizations, this matters even more.

Employees aren’t sitting in a classroom waiting to be taught. They’re busy. Distracted. Under pressure to perform. If the learning experience doesn’t guide them through these moments deliberately, the training simply becomes another thing they click through.

That’s why strong instructional designers don’t just “build courses.”

They design the conditions that make learning possible.

This is one of the frameworks we spend time unpacking inside IDOL Academy—not as theory to memorize, but as a practical lens for designing learning that actually works in real organizations.

Because understanding why a model works is far more powerful than just knowing the steps.

If you work in instructional design, I’m curious:
Do you use Gagné’s Nine Events as a checklist… or as a thinking framework when designing learning?

Instructional design isn’t one job.

It’s a spectrum of thinking.

The biggest difference between junior and senior designers isn’t tools.

It’s how they approach problems.

Here are the four levels.

Level 1: Content Creator

Focus: building learning materials.

Typical work:

• slide decks
• eLearning modules
• videos and job aids

The goal is producing content.

This is where many new instructional designers start.

Level 2: Learning Designer

Focus: designing effective learning experiences.

Typical work:

• learning objectives
• scenarios and activities
• practice and feedback

Now the designer is thinking about how people learn, not just what to present.

Level 3: Performance Designer

Focus: improving workplace performance.

Typical work:

• performance analysis
• task analysis
• workflow-based learning

The question shifts from:

“Did people learn?”

to

“Did behavior change on the job?”

Level 4: Performance Consultant

Focus: solving business problems.

Typical work:

• diagnosing performance gaps
• advising leaders
• recommending solutions beyond training

At this level, instructional designers become strategic partners, not just course builders.

Most organizations think instructional designers live at Level 1 or 2.

But the real value of the profession happens at Level 3 and 4.

That shift is what turns instructional design into a business discipline.

If you're an instructional designer:

Which level are you currently working at?

4 Levels of IDOL Thinking

Most instructional designers would benefit from reading George Orwell.

Not for politics.

For writing.

Orwell created six simple rules for writing clearly. One of them is especially relevant to instructional design:

“Never use a long word where a short one will do.”

This is where a lot of training goes wrong.

Courses are filled with phrases like:

“Leverage cross-functional collaboration to optimize operational outcomes.”

But employees don’t talk like that.
And they definitely don’t learn well from it.

Clear writing is clear thinking.

If a learner has to decode your sentence, they’re no longer focused on the skill you’re trying to teach. They’re trying to interpret the language.

Inside organizations, clarity matters because time matters.

Employees don’t need elegant prose.

They need to quickly understand what to do, why it matters, and how to do it correctly.

That’s why strong instructional designers are also strong editors.

They cut words.
They simplify explanations.
They remove anything that slows understanding.

We spend a surprising amount of time on this inside IDOL Academy—because instructional design isn’t just about models and theory.

It’s about communicating clearly enough that people can actually perform.

I’m curious:

What’s the most confusing piece of corporate training language you’ve seen lately?

Most instructional design portfolios show tools.

Storyline projects.
Slide decks.
Course screenshots.

But hiring managers are looking for something very different.

They want to see how you think.

The most impressive portfolios show evidence of performance-focused design.

For example:

• Scenario-based training that lets learners practice real decisions
• Task analysis and course blueprints that show design thinking
• Performance support tools like job aids and checklists
• Data-driven training with clear success metrics

Because instructional design isn’t about building courses.

It’s about solving performance problems.

A strong portfolio doesn’t just show what you built.

It shows how you approached the problem.

Curious for hiring managers here:

What portfolio projects actually stand out to you?

When people ask how to break into instructional design, they usually expect a list of tools.

Storyline.
Captivate.
Camtasia.
Rise.

But tools are the easiest part of the profession.

The real challenge is learning how organizations think about performance.

Instructional designers sit at an unusual intersection.

Education.
Business strategy.
Human behavior.

Education helps you understand how people learn.

Business strategy tells you why the training exists in the first place.

Human behavior explains why employees often don’t do what the training tells them to do.

Most beginners only focus on the first one.

But the most valuable instructional designers understand all three.

Because the real job isn’t building courses.

It’s helping organizations change behavior in ways that improve results.

That’s why instructional design is often misunderstood as a “tools job.”

But it’s actually a thinking job.

The more you understand the intersection of learning, business, and behavior, the more valuable you become.

Everyone thinks instructional designers build courses.

That’s the misconception.

Courses are tools.

Instructional design is about performance.

If a sales team is missing targets, the goal isn’t to deliver a training module.

The goal is to improve sales performance.

That means asking different questions:

• What are employees struggling to do?
• What decisions are they getting wrong?
• What barriers exist in the workflow?

Sometimes the answer is training.

Often it’s not.

It might be:

• better job aids
• improved workflows
• clearer decision support
• more realistic practice

As the IDOL philosophy emphasizes, instructional designers exist to close the gap between current performance and desired performance.

Courses can help.

But they’re rarely the whole solution.

The real work of instructional design is diagnosing problems and designing environments where people learn by doing.

That’s the perspective we teach inside IDOL Academy.

Because great instructional designers aren’t content creators.

They’re performance architects.

Curious to hear from other IDs:

What misconception about instructional design drives you crazy? 👇

Teaching experience does not automatically translate into instructional design.

Many teachers assume it will.

They build a portfolio.

Apply to jobs.

And still hear nothing back.

Why?

Because most teachers make the same transition mistakes when entering instructional design.

The issue isn’t teaching experience.

Teachers bring incredible strengths:

• explaining complex ideas
• structuring learning
• supporting learners

But instructional design in organizations works very differently than teaching in classrooms.

Here are some of the biggest mistakes we see.

Teachers bring enormous value to instructional design.

But the transition requires reframing how learning works in organizations.

That’s one of the biggest shifts we focus on inside IDOL Academy.

If you’re a teacher transitioning into instructional design:

Which of these surprised you most?

The Biggest Mistakes Teachers Make When Transitioning ID

Most people think instructional designers spend their time building courses.

That’s the visible part of the work.

But it’s usually not the most important part.

Experienced instructional designers spend far more time doing something else:

Diagnosing problems.

Before designing any learning solution, strong instructional designers ask questions like:

• What performance problem are we trying to solve?
• Is this actually a knowledge or skill gap?
• What’s preventing people from performing successfully?

Sometimes the answer isn’t training at all.

The problem might be:

• unclear processes
• broken tools
• unrealistic expectations
• missing incentives

If you build a course without diagnosing the real issue, you risk solving the wrong problem.

That’s why experienced instructional designers approach their work more like consultants than content creators.

The process usually looks like this:

Diagnose the performance problem

Identify the root cause

Determine whether learning is needed

Design the appropriate solution

Sometimes that solution is a course.

Often it’s something else entirely.

Because in instructional design, the goal isn’t to produce content.

It’s to improve performance.

 #contentcreators #performing #work #askquestions #architecture #makers #content #skillgap #mostpeople #gap #learningsolution #course #rootcause #solution #unrealisticexpectations #designer #instructionaldesigner #questions #spendtime #learning #knowledge #dosomething #architecture_hunter #neverstoplearning #answer #realissue #contentcreator #process #consultant #timebuilding

Most corporate training fails for one simple reason.

It teaches information instead of performance.

Instructional designers are often asked to build:

modules
slides
knowledge checks
compliance courses

But executives don’t care about learning objectives.

They care about outcomes.

Faster onboarding.
Fewer mistakes.
Higher sales conversions.

This is the gap most new instructional designers miss.

Learning is not the goal.

Performance is.

A training course is only valuable if it changes what people do on the job.

That means the real work of instructional design isn’t content creation.

It’s performance analysis.

You have to ask different questions.

What mistakes are happening?

Where are employees getting stuck?

What behavior actually drives the business result?

When you design for performance instead of information, everything changes:

The activities change.
The practice changes.
The measurement changes.

And suddenly leadership starts paying attention.

Because now L&D is solving business problems.

At IDOL Academy we teach instructional designers to translate learning language into business language.

That’s the shift that separates course builders from strategic learning professionals.

So here’s the question most training teams never ask:

What business metric does your training actually influence?

Most instructional designers are taught to “deliver information.”

But Jean Piaget’s work suggests something very different.

People don’t simply receive knowledge.

They construct it.

According to Piaget, learning happens when people actively organize new information into mental structures called schemas. When new information doesn’t fit those structures, the brain has to adjust—either by modifying the schema or creating a new one.

That process is where learning actually happens.

Which raises an uncomfortable question for a lot of corporate training.

If learning requires active construction, why do so many courses rely on long explanations and slide-based content?

Information alone rarely changes understanding.

What changes understanding is interaction with ideas.

Scenarios.
Problems to solve.
Opportunities to apply concepts.
Moments where learners have to think.

Good instructional design creates those moments intentionally.

It doesn’t just tell learners what they should know.
It gives them experiences that force them to reorganize what they know.

This is a shift many people make when they begin studying instructional design more deeply inside IDOL Academy.

You stop thinking about content delivery.

And you start thinking about how people build knowledge in the first place.

I’m curious how other designers approach this:

How do you create opportunities for learners to actively construct understanding in your training?

Many aspiring instructional designers believe the hardest part of the job is learning authoring tools.

Storyline.
Captivate.
Rise.

Those tools matter.

But they’re not the hardest part of instructional design.

The hardest part is something much less visible.

Identifying the real performance problem inside an organization.

When a stakeholder says:

“We need training.”

An experienced instructional designer starts asking questions:

• What problem are employees actually facing?
• Is this really a knowledge gap?
• What’s preventing people from performing correctly?

Because sometimes the issue isn’t training at all.

It might be:

• unclear processes
• broken systems
• poor management expectations
• lack of incentives

If you jump straight to building a course, you might solve the wrong problem.

That’s why experienced instructional designers spend a large portion of their time analyzing performance issues before designing anything.

The process usually looks like this:

Diagnose the performance problem

Identify the root cause

Determine whether learning is needed

Design the appropriate solution

Sometimes that solution is a course.

Often it’s something else entirely.

Because instructional design isn’t about building content.

It’s about improving performance.

And that’s why tools are the easy part.

Diagnosis is the hard part.

Most instructional designers obsess over content.

Slides.
Graphics.
Interactions.
More information.

But content isn’t what drives behavior.

Attention does.

Psychologist William James said it plainly:

“What holds attention determines action.”

If your learning experience doesn’t capture and direct attention, nothing else you design matters.

Not the objectives.
Not the scenario.
Not the beautiful course you spent three weeks building.

Inside organizations, employees are surrounded by distractions—email, meetings, deadlines, Slack messages. Your course is competing with all of it.

That’s why strong instructional design starts with a different question:

What will capture and hold attention long enough for learning to happen?
This is exactly why models like Gagné’s Nine Events begin with gaining attention. It’s not a gimmick. It’s a recognition of how learning actually works.

Attention opens the door.

Everything else follows.

This is also one of the biggest mindset shifts we focus on inside IDOL Academy. Instructional designers aren’t just organizing information—they’re intentionally guiding attention so people can learn and perform.

And that changes how you design everything.

Curious to hear from other designers:

What’s the most effective way you’ve found to capture learner attention in corporate training?

Completion rates are one of the most celebrated metrics in corporate learning.

They are also one of the least useful.

Imagine a company spends $2 million on leadership training.

Ninety-five percent of employees complete the program.

But leadership behavior does not change.

Did the training succeed?

Traditional reporting says yes.

Strategic instructional design says no.

Because completion only tells you that someone finished a course.

It tells you nothing about whether performance improved.

The metric that actually matters is application.

What employees do differently after training.

Do managers give better feedback?

Do teams make better decisions?

Do performance conversations improve?

If behavior doesn’t change, the training didn’t work.

No matter how good the completion rate looks on a dashboard.

Completion measures attendance.

Application measures impact.

This shift—from measuring participation to measuring performance—is one of the core mindset changes we teach inside IDOL Academy.

Because instructional designers who want a seat at the strategy table have to measure what the business actually cares about.

Results.

The biggest mistake people make when transitioning into instructional design is building unrealistic portfolio projects.

They build perfect courses for imaginary companies.

Polished slides.
Beautiful interactions.
A clean learning objective.

But no real problem.

No real constraints.

No real business context.

And that’s exactly the problem.

Because hiring managers aren’t trying to evaluate whether you can make a course.

They’re trying to see whether you can solve a workplace problem.

Real instructional design work looks very different from portfolio projects most people build.

In the real world:

Stakeholders disagree.
Information is incomplete.
Time is limited.
The problem might not even be training.

Strong portfolios show how you think through messy problems, not just how you design polished content.

That’s why the best portfolios include things like:

• performance analysis
• stakeholder questions
• decision reasoning
• alternative solutions considered

Not just a finished course.

Because instructional designers aren’t hired to create slides.

They’re hired to improve performance.

This is one of the biggest mindset shifts we teach inside IDOL Academy.

The portfolio isn’t proof that you can build training.

It’s proof that you can diagnose problems and design solutions.

Are you ready to show the world what great learning design looks like?

The iSpring Course Creation Contest is open for registration — and it’s your chance to put your skills to work on a real course project, get expert feedback, and shine in front of the global L&D community. 

This isn’t just another event. It’s a platform to:
 • Build a complete course from scratch
 • Expand your portfolio with something tangible
 • Learn practical design and authoring skills
 • Connect with peers and mentors

And yes, I’m honored to be one of the judges this year. If you’ve ever wondered where your work fits in the bigger L&D world, THIS is the moment to step forward.
👉 Sign up now: https://lnkd.in/eCSjJftU

Open article: Prizes for contestants in both categories by ispringsolutions.com

Prizes for contestants in both categories

Most hiring managers don’t deeply review instructional design portfolios.

They scan them quickly.

Usually in under five minutes.

They’re trying to answer a few critical questions.

1. Is this person solving real problems?

Hiring managers want to see:

• a performance problem
• the context of the organization
• why training was needed

If the portfolio only shows a course or slide deck, they can’t see the thinking.

2. Do they understand workplace performance?

Good portfolios explain:

• the business challenge
• the learner audience
• the workplace constraints

Instructional design isn’t just course building.

It’s solving performance problems inside organizations.

3. Can they design practical solutions?

Hiring managers look for:

• scenarios
• decision-based learning
• real workplace tasks

Not just information slides.

4. Can they communicate their thinking?

A strong portfolio shows the design process, not just the final product.

Things like:

• problem analysis
• design decisions
• expected performance outcomes

Most portfolios focus on showing the artifact.

The strongest portfolios show how the designer thinks.

That’s what hiring managers are actually evaluating.

How Hiring Managers Evaluate Portfolios

Most training fails because it asks working memory to do too much.

Working memory is the mental space where we hold and process information in the moment.

And it’s incredibly limited.

When a course throws dense slides, complex diagrams, narration, and new terminology at a learner all at once, something predictable happens.

The brain starts dropping information.

Not because the learner isn’t capable.

Because the design overloaded the system.

This is why good instructional design often looks deceptively simple.

Clear structure.
Short explanations.
Focused practice.
Information introduced in manageable pieces.

These aren’t aesthetic choices.

They’re decisions based on how the brain actually processes information.

Inside organizations, this matters even more.

Employees are learning while juggling real work, real deadlines, and constant interruptions. Their working memory is already under pressure before the training even begins.

Strong instructional designers respect that constraint.

They don’t try to impress learners with how much information they can include.

They design so the learner can actually think.

This is one of the biggest mindset shifts we emphasize inside IDOL Academy. Instructional design isn’t about packing content into a course.

It’s about managing cognitive load so learning can happen.

I’m curious how others approach this:

What’s one design decision you make specifically to reduce cognitive overload for learners?

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