Working With SMEs

Sally, Karl, Tracy -- appreciate your responses and for openly sharing your expertise. The move to ID has been a massive learning curve, but one I am enjoying immensely. The experiences you guys have shared will help me avoid projecting unfair expectations onto my SMEs. With clearer parameters I  will also be able to communicate more clearly what I need from them.

Karl, you are right about SMEs learning as they move through a project. I was fortunate to have a really positive initial experience with an open-minded SME.  My second experience was completely different (harder rather than negative, but we got there in the end).

Tracy, I totally hear you on SMEs being focussed on including everything but kinda forgetting that the outcome is about behavioural change. Thanks for this reminder for me!

Sally, the key takeaway in what you said is SME validation -- rather than SME creation. This gave me a powerful shift. And while to some extent I've been doing this, I was not standing in it firmly.