Does Categorization Run the World?

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. A huge part of my content development process focuses on creating categories. If you can divide a topic into categories, you can usually build a framework that will allow another person to learn how to do the thing you're trying to get them to learn.

Earlier in my career, I had been obsessively watching home organizing shows in my evenings (think the Kondo method) and got hooked. I enjoyed them so much that I wrote a random email to a local home organization firm and told them I'd like to try my hand at organizing. I ended up getting an interview and sealed the deal by pointing out that the folder I brought my resume in matched the owner's blazer. "OMG, we match!"

One client was particularly memorable. I'm pretty sure this well-to-do surgeon would just buy new shirts, belts, pants, and shoes instead of doing any maintenance or washing. His closet was a bursting belly, post-Thanksgiving-dinner type of affair.

My boss would start with the giant pile and put things into categories: accessories, dress shirts, casual shirts, dress pants. Then we would pare down: donate, keep, store, give away. From there even more categories would surface: waterproof boxes, temperature controlled items, hanging items, folded items and so on.

After a few months I would walk into a new organizing scenario and feel like one of those sci-fi movies where a spy camera zooms into a scene and analytics pop up around the edges of the frame. "Computer....analyze." The categories would surface and I could quickly make sense of a whole pile of gobblydeeguhk.

When I later transitioned into learning and development, this categorization process only deepened. Subject matter experts are often overwhelmed by the amount of content they know. They get lost like Alice, in the skyscraper weeds of their own brain.

So, categories:

"What problems are you seeing that made you want training in the first place?"

"Why aren't folks doing what you want them to do?"

"If you had to pick ONE thing you'd want folks to do differently, what would it be?"

"What can we measure to know if it actually worked?"

(This process pulls deeply from the work of "Map It" creator Cathy Moore, who I deeply respect as a practitioner.)

Once you have these frameworks built around Everest levels of knowledge, tackling them from an L&D perspective becomes a lot less overwhelming.

Also proof that watching TV can be productive!