Learning Mise en Place: Content

The Importance of Content Readiness

I used to be a huge fan of cooking shows — from instructional programs on Food Network, to reality competition shows like MasterChef, to documentaries like Chef’s Table. By far, one of my favorite people to watch was the late Anne Burrell. She had a huge personality and a serious passion for what she did — and you could feel it through the screen. She was also apparently a great teacher, having led 15 subpar cooks to victory on Worst Cooks in America, where contestants “trained” to cook a three-course meal for a panel of culinary experts. According to my internet sleuthing, this makes her the show’s most successful mentor.

But enough about cooking. What does this have to do with learning? Well, one of Burrell’s primary tenets, which she brought up in every episode she was in, is the importance of mise en place, a French phrase meaning “everything is in place.” According to this article, Burrell stressed the importance of mise en place, saying, “Do all your prep work before you start cooking and then clean as you go. It removes the freak-out factor from cooking when everything is ready, and you can just be calm.”

I think this concept maps beautifully to the processes we follow when creating custom training and performance support materials. If we start with the end in mind (like a cohesive, successful three-course meal), we can think through how to get there and get all our mise en place. It all begins with having the right “ingredients,” specifically the content.

Content Readiness: Having All the Ingredients

Instructional designers aren’t usually subject matter experts — unless we’re discussing instruction itself. This means we don’t typically create learning content from what we already know; we build from the content provided to us. So, it’s vital that clients come to us “content ready” or are prepared to spend time collaborating with us to draft or identify the necessary material with the required detail and focus.

If you’re familiar with the field of Learning and Development (L&D), you’ve probably heard someone say, “We have the content, it just needs a little work.” But then you receive the files, and they’re not ready to work with. Common issues include too much content, too little content, or content that simply isn’t the right fit.

Too Much Content

This may seem like a good problem to have, but it can cause unnecessary work — and we all know that unnecessary work equals more time spent, which increases costs and can negatively impact the timeline.

Why does it cause unnecessary work? Let’s think of this in terms of our mise en place. If you need to make chocolate cupcakes for your child’s birthday party, would you purchase and prepare cacao seeds? You could, but that would be a more time-consuming method compared to using a box mix or even starting with cocoa powder.

So now let’s think about creating role-specific onboarding to a process, and let’s focus on loan underwriting. You could send everything you could think of to the L&D team — information about all the financial institution’s loan products, history of loan products, requirements, forms, checklists, policies, regulations, and even lessons learned from teammates over the years. This could give you the result you’re looking for, but how much time will it take for the instructional designers to scan through all these documents, trying to identify which pieces are relevant? Can they do it? Yes, of course. But are you asking them to make chocolate cupcakes from cacao seeds? Is there a box mix that has most of the key ingredients, and the designers need to mix in some time-sensitive ingredients, and then proceed with the rest of the cupcake making process?

Too Little Content

I’m pretty sure this is self-evident, but not having enough source material is also a difficult place to start. Again, this isn’t impossible, but it does add to the time spent creating learning materials.

Looking through the lens of mise en place, this is like being expected to make Gordon Ramsay’s famous beef Wellington, but you only have the right cut of beef. You can do a lot with the cut of beef, but it’s not going to be beef Wellington. There are no mushrooms, no puff pastry, no ham, and nothing for the red wine sauce. Now, you can find those ingredients, but you can’t hit the ground running.

Coming to the L&D table with limited content means it’s going to take a lot of work to identify all the necessary information. Say you’re creating a show-and-tell video on how a manufacturing worker needs to complete a task while on the line. Your only source material is a quick, rough video of someone completing the process. You’re on the way to a good “show” video, but not so much of the “tell.”

Wrong Content

This situation is one that can be deceiving because you may not realize you’re in it until things aren’t adding up. At a quick glance, the number and size of files may seem appropriate, and the document titles seem correct, but the specific information you’re looking for isn’t there.

If we again look at mise en place, starting with this kind of content can feel like an episode of the food competition show Chopped, where participants are given an odd assortment of ingredients they’re required to use for a dish — like creating a dessert using turkey ice cream cake, mashed potato candy, cranberry salsa, and green bean ice pops. These are ingredients. And you can do a great mise en place, but do you know what direction you’re going in?

Say you want to create a set of job aids for a new performance management system, but you realize you have an outdated user manual for the software, un-approved procedure documentation for how leadership handles performance management, and a YouTube video about the importance of having a growth mindset. Those are content items — but are they the right “ingredients” to be working with?

How to Have the Right “Ingredients”

Thankfully, this is often an easy problem to solve. Again, if you think with the end in mind, you can walk yourself back to the right ingredients. For example, ask yourself:

• What do I need learners to be able to do?
• How do I know this is the correct behavior?
• What guidance is already provided regarding this behavior?
• What guidance is missing?

Often, plenty of material exists about a topic, but the work is in crafting the material around your objectives. So, you want to find content that is:

• Correct and relevant: Having correct content allows the instructional designer to focus on aligning the material with the objectives, rather than trying to determine if it’s “right.” For example, if you want someone to explain their responsibilities in a new system, you don’t need a leader’s message about why the system was selected, but you do need information about how the learner will use the system.
• Complete: Think of this like a press release versus a presentation. Both could be complete enough for the task at hand, but one provides more detail than the other.
• On “brand:” If there’s a concept that’s globally understood but your company takes a different approach to it, make sure you’re presenting information from your company’s point of view. For example, are you looking to process soybeans for human consumption or for biodiesel? The materials you choose should reflect that slant.

Mise en Place for Meaningful Learning

Just like a chef wouldn’t start cooking without prepping their ingredients, instructional designers can’t create effective learning without the right content in place. Content readiness isn’t just helpful — it’s essential. When we approach learning design with clarity, completeness, and relevance, we set the stage for training that’s not just functional, but transformational. Thinking with the end in mind allows us to gather the right ingredients, align them to our objectives, and create something truly impactful. Your learners — and your budget — will thank you.