Eliminate the Root Causes Behind Slow Product Development
Drive Key Decisions
That Stick
Make Your Organization's
Most Important Decisions at the Right Time
with the Right People and the Best Available Knowledge
The Benefits of Driving Key Decisions that Stick
Make decisions that won't be revisited later.
Focus your team's attention on the most important decisions.
Build leaders' confidence in the project team.
Turn today's Key Decisions into tomorrow's Known Solutions.
Eliminate long, slow loopbacks at their source.
The Lifecycle of a Key Decision
Clarify the decision to be made to ensure that you have the right decision makers and the right Knowledge Gaps.
Focus your team's attention on closing the Knowledge Gaps that will have the biggest impact on the final decision.
Integrate the Knowledge Gaps into a recommendation that incorporates feedback from the team, experts and stakeholders.
Report your results using visual models and tools that help your decision maker understand the data and weigh the alternatives, resulting in better decisions that lead to a stronger product.
Confirm the decision in an Integration Event, then document the decision in real-time to avoid misunderstandings within the current team, and provide future teams with a Known Solution.
Past Participants Say . . .
"I have used Rapid Learning Training since 2017 and felt very comfortable with the knowledge and how to apply it. Through Advanced Certification classes, I have found deeper understanding of the principles behind the framework and how it could be tailored to fit my organization to use my
teams more efficiently."
Konstantin Derman, Engineering System Manager Group Leader II, Werfen North America
"Through the years, I gained quite some experience driving the quality of project teams. But with the Advanced Certification Classes, I got even more insight into the advice I often give. This will help me coach better"
Ingvar Hendriks, Freelance Project Manager
HIM | Hendriks Interim Management
Coach your teams to make Key Decisions at the right time, with the right people and the best available knowledge.
This series, consisting of four one-hour online classes will help your teams consolidate the knowledge they've gained into recommendations that your decision makers are more likely to accept.
This online class will give you the skills you need to drive more effective Key Decisions:
- How to focus a Key Decision to align everyone on the decision to be made. Key Decision owners sometimes don't know who should make a decision, or what knowledge they need to present to the decision makers to support a good decision. The first step is to write a clear Key Decision question that brings everyone into alignment on the decision to be made and the knowledge required to make a confident decision that sticks.
- Why Key Decisions play a central role in the Rapid Learning Cycles framework, and how to choose the right decisions as Key Decisions. Key Decisions are the heart of the framework for a reason: these are the decisions most likely to be revisited at the end of a project, when change is expensive. You'll learn more about how to find the right Key Decisions to eliminate these long, slow loopbacks.
- How to build a plan to close multiple Knowledge Gaps in time to make a Key Decision. Not all Knowledge Gaps can be closed or should be closed, and Key Decision Owners are probably not the best person to own every single Knowledge Gap for their Key Decisions. Learn how to set priorities and work with Knowledge Gap owners to get the knowledge you need.
- How to identify and work with decision makers to shape data-driven decisions. Decision makers should arrive at Integration Events ready to decide. This means that you've already shared your recommendations with them and with other stakeholders. We'll share how this preliminary feedback strengthens your recommendation.
- How to present recommendations so that they are likely to be accepted. The Key Decision Report summarizes the work you've done to develop the recommendation — but it also needs to do more than that. It needs to model your thinking as you developed the recommendation so that it is more likely to be accepted.
Video Lessons Supplemented with
Group Coaching and Discussion
Video Lessons with Unlimited Viewing
This course uses a "flipped classroom" model — the most effective teaching method for online adult learners. All core content is delivered via professional videos, with each lesson broken up into short modules that can be viewed when it is convenient for you, and reviewed as often as you like.
You will have the opportunity to get live coaching on a Key Decision of your choosing, either from a current program or from a case study. Your peers will use the exclusive Key Decision Reviewers checklist to provide useful feedback. When you know how to write a great Key Decision report, you know how to help others.
Group Coaching
and Discussion
Networking with Advanced Peers
Through the classes, you'll connect with a select group of peers who are working towards similar goals with Rapid Learning Cycles in their organizations. The exercises will provide ample opportunities to share experiences with others and ask for feedback to the extent that you are comfortable. Focused discussions will provide opportunities to share experiences and build connections that persist after the class.
Live Session Dates and Times
Our next series for Region A – Europe & Eastern Americas
will be scheduled in the fall of 2023.
We are compiling a waiting list of people from other regions who would like a public class.
Please contact us to let us know you're interested.
Who Should Attend This Online Class?
In a Rapid Learning Cycles program, anyone can be the owner of a Key Decision. This class would be especially valuable for:
- Technical Leaders who own Key Decisions, especially those who rely upon other subject matter experts to close the Knowledge Gaps within their areas of expertise.
- Project Leaders who will need to manage the flow of Key Decisions through their projects and run effective Integration Events, especially those whose projects have complicated decision models.
- Product Managers and Designers who need to own Key Decisions around customer needs and business value creation.
This class will be especially valuable for anyone who mentors other team members around how to own Key Decisions, gather input from stakeholders and write Key Decision Reports. The coaching methods used in the class can be leveraged to the situations where you need to coach others.
Drive Key Decisions
that Stick
The Role of Key Decisions in Driving PD Performance
The first lesson explains the central role that Key Decisions have within the Rapid Learning Cycles framework. We'll share why it's important to identify Key Decisions and how to focus the team on closing the right Key Decisions by treating Known Solutions and low impact decisions differently.
Good Key Decisions Lead to Focused Knowledge Gaps
Once you have a Key Decision, then you need to identify the Knowledge Gaps you need to close. It's easier to do this if the Key Decision is focused, clear and aligned with decision makers' expectations.
Integrated Knowledge Gaps for Solid Recommendations
When it's time to make the Key Decision, the owner will integrate the best available knowledge into a recommendation — whether or not all possible Knowledge Gaps have been closed. We'll show you how to compare and contrast the different options to develop the best recommendation.
Prepared Decision Makers Lead to Decisions that Stick
The decision that gets made at an Integration Event is the final outcome. In the last module, we'll show how to get decision makers ready to make the Key Decisions that are theirs to make at an Integration Event, and what happens next.
Class Options
Course Only:
Drive Key Decisions
- Permanent access to all course videos for unlimited playback
- Four live group coaching and discussion sessions
- Exclusive detailed checklist for reviewing a
Key Decision Report - Advanced templates for Key Decision Reports that capture outcomes
Recommended
Certification Package
- Course package discount vs. purchasing certification components individually
- Includes all course benefits, plus:
- Immediate access to RLC Project Evaluation
- Accelerated access to materials that can be adapted, upon completion of the RLC Project Evaluation
- Guaranteed registration in all courses in this series
Enterprise-Wide Certification Package
- Includes all Certification Package benefits, plus:
- Company-wide license with editable RLC Materials
- Examples taken from the challenges faced by your own company
- Customized case study taken from your industry
Your Co-Instructors:
Katherine Radeka
CEO and Founder
Rapid Learning Cycles Institute
Kathy Iberle
Iberle Consulting, Inc.
In this course, you’ll have the opportunity to learn directly from Katherine Radeka.
Katherine has helped product development teams around the world, with a special focus on climate tech, renewable energy and medical devices. She's the person to call when the world needed your solutions yesterday.
She is also the best person to call if you need to pull together an international team to support global adoption of Rapid Learning Cycles.
Katherine is the author of The Shortest Distance Between You and Your New Product: How Innovators Use Rapid Learning Cycles to Get Their Best Ideas to Market Faster and co-author with longtime collaborator Kathy Iberle of When Agile Gets Physical: How to Use Agile Principles to Accelerate Hardware Development.
Kathy Iberle was the first person certified as a Rapid Learning Cycles Certified® Advisor, and has been an affiliate with Rapid Learning Cycles Institute from the beginning.
Kathy has a strong interest in effective problem-solving methods that drive data-driven decision making, and she played a key role in developing these aspects of the Rapid Learning Cycles framework. She is the co-author of When Agile Gets Physical: How to Use Agile Principles to Accelerate Hardware Development.
Kathy’s background is in mixed hardware/software engineering with a focus on quality engineering. She has worked with a wide range of products – everything from printers to early web applications to cardiology and scientific instruments. In the course of her adventures in the high-tech world, she’s developed or improved many types of development processes for teams both large and small.
Kathy lives in Vancouver, Washington where she runs her own consulting business and enjoys hiking, camping, and snowshoeing in her spare time.