How XPLANE expanded a successful consultancy by creating an academy
Creating something new isn’t easy, especially when you’re already busy with existing client work. But XPLANE had a bigger vision for themselves to establish an entirely new business model to augment their client service delivery.
Photo credit: Cristinia Morillo on pexels.com
Envisioning a bigger impact.
With more than 30 years of exceptional design and strategy consulting under their belt, XPLANE wanted to expand their impact and diversify their revenue sources, thus providing increased stability for their own business in a rapidly changing world.
For years, XPLANE had nurtured a growing community of enthusiasts who loved XPLANE’s visual and personable approach to solving big, meaningful challenges. Clients routinely asked how they could learn to do things “the XPLANE way.”
Participants loved the experience and content of XPLANE’s courses, but the process of creating and delivering the courses was laborious and inconsistent. In the past, creating new courses could take up to a year because of the demands on project members’ time. Subject Matter Experts could get sidetracked by deep details, forgetting where novice learners were starting … leaving them confused.
Without a formally defined curriculum and standard, course delivery varied between cohorts and instructors.
Our goal was to smooth the process so instructors and subject matter experts could engage efficiently with a project, harnessing their expertise while making the course development process predictable and shorter.
Get to know each other
Flagship course curriculum design.
Zahler Design introduced the team to a structured process for designing course experiences, creating curriculum, and documenting instructor notes to train additional instructors in course delivery.
Course topics developed include:
Strategy Activation Intensive
Storytelling for Change
Design your Facilitation Strategy
Beyond the Board: designing engaging digital whiteboards
It’s going great, let’s do more!
Build a robust multi-year academy strategy.
We developed Learner Profiles and Aspirational Journeys and an XPLANE Competency Model; developed shared product definitions, goals, and marketing funnel for year-round awareness; designed an intentional Development Cycle Planning process; mapped product and course topics and development roadmap; tested hypotheses with potential customers; and established business metrics.
Prepare to sell and systematize
Harness technology to sell and engage.
Basecamp had worked great as a way to test early course and prove the business case, but it was going to cut it in the long run. We evaluated and selected Thinkific, a Learning Management System (LMS) that we paired with some light automation to create an interconnected system managing email campaigns, learner profiles, course management, and e-commerce.
Using the new LMS trimmed course delivery time by about 20 hours for the flagship multi-day course offering.
Our team just got bigger
Acquisition, transition, and shared definitions.
At the end of 2022, XPLANE was acquired by TiER1 Solutions, a global people-centered consultancy. Zahler Design shifted focus with the team to navigate the business transition and define the new path forward. We brought the XPLANE and TiER1 Performance Institute teams together to map out a combined academy strategy that would simplify the back-end processes, enable brand-specific product development, and ensure every experience and product was of the highest consistency and quality possible.
ABOUT XPLANE
XPLANE is a design and strategy consultancy in Portland, Oregon. They help organizations transform by designing and aligning Vision & Strategy, People, Process, Tools, and Activation.