Managers: IDs belong on your BI team
- Offload low-value tasks from your ID
- Invite IDs into early strategy conversations
- Integrate ID-generated insights into your regular BI processes
This allows your BI team to:
- Surface friction points earlier
- Reduce costly misalignment and frustration downstream
- Translate human behavior into actionable insight
Now, let’s dive deeper…
Underutilized and Overlooked
Most managers are under constant pressure to hit numbers yet struggle to understand the story behind their dashboards. Meanwhile, your Instructional Designer is already collecting that intelligence. As mentioned in the first article, because of the nature of their work, Instructional Designers see what others miss. They spend their days interviewing stakeholders, building relationships across the organization, and understand the constraints people are facing.
Instructional Designers see through your business
When employees struggle silently, customers feel it loudly, and IDs are trained to spot internal issues before they become external failures. But too often, this intelligence gets siloed in training instead of informing upstream decisions that impact downstream outcomes.
So how can you tap into this goldmine without disrupting their workload or overwhelming your strategy sessions?
Shift right, strategically
In Dan Heath’s latest book, Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working, he explores solving organizational breakdowns by addressing under(Non)utilized talent; employees doing low-value work when they’re capable of high-value contributions. Gary Kaplan of AXA XL calls this “shifting right“: delegating routine tasks so skilled team members can focus on strategic ones.
IDs are perfect candidates for shifting right. Managers can start by auditing the ID’s workload and identifying what can be handed off or automated. Then, invite them to observe a strategy session, brief them on key challenges, and ask what patterns they’ve noticed in their work.
This simple shift (right) allows your ID to transform their research findings into intelligence your BI team actually uses; you’re now surfacing friction points sooner, addressing blockers proactively, and translating human behavior into understandable, actionable insight.
The benefits are immediate:
- Shorter feedback loops between identifying issues and solving them
- Fewer costly misalignments during rollouts
- Insights that explain human behavior and why
You don’t need to overhaul your org chart, just bring them into the room and listen to the operational intelligence they’re already gathering. Your competitors are still trying to figure out why their systems aren’t working; you’ll already know because your ID flagged the adoption barriers months ago.
The Ask for Managers
Managers, here’s your opportunity: stop underutilizing your internal insight experts. Include your Instructional Designer in your BI meetings, project kickoffs, and retrospectives. Give them visibility and listen to what they uncover.
Because you don’t just need data. You need someone who understands and can explain the story behind it.
Ready to get started? I’ve created a detailed 30-day plan that walks you through how to shift your ID into BI discussions – download it here
In Part III…
I’ll give IDs a practical playbook for making a case to their managers and positioning themselves as strategic BI assets. Have questions about how this could work at your organization? Message me, the insights you need might be sitting just a few departments away.
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