In this week's Field Notes Edition of The Adoption Curve, we explore the structural problem behind every late documentation project: L&D treats SMEs as co-creators when they should be performers. The fix isn't more SME time. It's redesigning the SME system: how you scope work, build intake, and capture knowledge as multiplication rather than extraction.
What you'll learn
- Why the SME problem is structural, not personal
- How to build SME commitment into intake, not mid-project
- The reframe that turns capture from extraction into multiplication
About Field Notes
Each week, we speak with industry experts and iorad users around the world to understand how they're solving challenges in Enablement and L&D. We share those stories through The Adoption Curve.
But across those conversations, patterns have started to emerge.
Field Notes is where we capture them: distilling insights from interviews, customer feedback, and real-world experience into the trends that matter most.
Fix the SME System
Every enablement and L&D team has run into the same wall. You have the workflow. You have the tool. You have the budget. And then you are waiting on the SME.
This is not a people problem. It is a system design problem. Organizations have accidentally built a model that turns subject matter experts into part-time instructional designers, and then chases them down when projects slip.
The teams who fix it do not work harder on SME outreach. They redesign three things: how they define the SME's job, when they secure SME commitment, and how they frame the capture conversation. The shift is structural, and the unlock is fast.
Key Insight #1: Redefine the SME as Performer Not Producer
Most L&D and enablement teams treat SMEs as co-creators: help with the storyboard, review the draft, record a video, approve the final. Each ask is reasonable in isolation. Stacked together, they turn a subject matter expert into a content production dependency.
The corrected model is simple: SME performs the workflow. L&D turns that performance into something scalable. The SME's job ends when the workflow is captured correctly, in the real system, once. Everything downstream (editing, formatting, publishing, versioning) is L&D's responsibility.
Teams that make this shift report the same outcome: dramatically less SME time per deliverable, faster launches, better content quality. The person doing the capture is focused on doing the work, not also being an instructional designer.
Key Insight #2: Build SME Commitment Into the Intake Process
A pattern shows up constantly: teams try to solve the SME availability problem during the project. By then, the project is already stuck.
The fix is structural and upstream. High-performing teams build SME commitment into the intake process itself. Before a project starts, three things get confirmed: what workflows are in scope, who specifically serves as the SME, and which leader is accountable for that person's availability.
Executive commitment is the unlock. A named SME without a VP or director behind the commitment is just a name. Once a senior stakeholder's fingerprints are on the resourcing plan, the coordination friction that normally consumes weeks does not materialize. The accountability conversation moves to the beginning, when the person who approved the project is still engaged.
Key Insight #3: Reframe Capture as Multiplication Not Extraction
SMEs resist documentation because they have been burned. Helping with documentation has meant more meetings, more reviews, and projects they did not ask to own.
The reframe that lands: documentation is not adding to their workload. It replaces the hidden teaching load they already carry. Every SME is already teaching constantly, in ways that do not compound: the same workflow explained in three meetings, the same question answered every Tuesday.
The pitch: capture this once and stop answering the same question forever. The framing matters at the role level. Telling an expert you want to document how they do this because they are one of the best at it lands differently than asking them to record a tutorial. One puts them on stage. The other on the assembly line.
Downloadable resource
SME System Reset Worksheet for L&D Teams
Diagnose where your SME process breaks down today, then redesign role definition, intake commitment, and capture framing so documentation gets captured without burning out your experts.
