Twelve weeks with the training team.
Josh already carries much of the system PDW’s training function needs. The trouble is that too much of it has to pass through him by hand.
Between now and the end of December the team has three week-long trainings to deliver. The first multi-mission payload arrives at the end of October, with more to follow, and the new variant needs its own Fort Bliss materials.
The answer isn’t more people doing what Josh does. It’s systems around him that have caught up with what he already knows how to do.
One training requirement
Today
- A new training requirement arrives.
- Josh finds the prior materials and works out what’s being asked.
- He rebuilds the templates, writes the syllabus, builds or directs the slides.
- He decides the assessments, manages the files, coordinates the instructors.
- Students, critiques and trends get tracked however they can.
- Records get updated by hand, in Salesforce or wherever they live.
After the pilot
- Josh opens a course workspace and drops in the source material.
- The system knows PDW’s structure, templates and terminology.
- It proposes the course package. Josh directs instead of assembling.
- Everything stays editable; access and assessments come with it.
- Feedback comes back structured, so patterns show.
- Records flow on to where they belong.
How the twelve weeks run
See the system
I work alongside Josh in the real flow of training development: templates, source documents, course builds, reviews, student materials, assessments, reporting and follow-up. I look for repeated work, judgment trapped in one head, things rebuilt from scratch and tasks a machine can now do. Small fixes ship as we find them.
Build leverage
The patterns are clear enough to build on. We build the tools that take the most weight off the team, test them on real courses and keep what works.
Hand it over
The useful tools get hardened, documented and made editable, and Josh learns to change them himself. We sort out what can go PDW-wide and what needs IT and cyber first, and write the roadmap for what comes next.
What’s certain, and what we’ll find
The way we work, the kind of improvement we’re after and what PDW owns at the end are fixed. The specific tools are found along the way: we pick the first target together in week one and ship working improvements throughout. The pilot isn’t locked to one piece of software, because the most valuable thing may not be the obvious one.
Likely, though not the contract: a course workspace; first-pass syllabus, guides and slide outlines from source material; assessments; review and versioning; course portals with roster and critique capture; the start of an LMS layer; Salesforce prototypes; a private, local AI setup where it’s needed.
Boundaries
- Nothing goes into production in a sensitive environment without approval.
- No data goes into an outside AI model unless PDW has approved it.
- Anything persistent is designed with PDW’s IT and cyber teams.
- PDW owns everything built for the engagement.
- Anything beyond the pilot gets scoped separately.
The founding pilot
I work alongside the training lead, embedded with the training function, to find, prototype and hand over a new training-operations capability.
At the end
PDW has a more capable training lead, a documented set of systems that hold the work that now has to go through Josh, and a model for spreading that capability across the company.
Then I leave. The point is that Josh can change the tools himself, without me.
Next
- Josh shares this with whoever signs off.
- A twenty-minute call to walk through it.
- Week one: we pick the first workflow together and start.
mike@signalformstudio.com · 703-431-9026