What Actually Happens When You Map
Action Mapping is a design process that starts by asking what learners need to be able to do on the job, not what they need to know. You skip the learning objectives entirely at first and go straight to observable behaviors. The goal is to build a training experience where every slide, every quiz question, every piece of content maps directly to a real workplace task. I've used this for client projects across L&D teams that were burning through budgets on courses nobody finished. The shift in thinking alone usually cuts the first draft phase from two weeks down to three days, assuming you get honest answers from the SMEs. That's the best case.
How to Run a Session Using Cathy Moore Action Mapping
You start with a blank page and a whiteboard, or a shared doc if everyone is remote. Write the business goal at the top. Something like, reduce onboarding time to full productivity within 90 days. Not a vague thing like improve customer satisfaction. Something you can measure after the fact. Then you ask the SME what people actually need to do. Not what they need to understand. Do they need to process a refund? Run a report? Calibrate equipment? List every single action verb. Stop when you hit about ten to twelve items. Anything more and you have a reference guide, not a course. Next you mark each action with A or B. An A action means people must practice it in the training. They need feedback, scenarios, decision points. A B action is information-only. A policy statement, a definition, a quick reference they can look up later. These B items go in a job aid, not a module. This step is where most programs get trimmed down to something reasonable.
After that, you write the practice scenarios for the A actions. Each one should mirror the actual work environment as closely as possible. If they use a CRM with a specific workflow, build the scenario inside that workflow, not some sanitized abstract version. Include the distractions. The time pressure. The ambiguous data. That's what makes the practice stick. Then you layer in the just-in-time information. Only teach what they need at the moment they need it in the scenario. Don't front-load background theory. People forget it before they get to the point of application. Finally, you build a performance support resource for everything that doesn't need practice. A quick-reference sheet, a checklist, a flowchart. Keep it under two pages. If it's longer, organize it as a searchable guide.
Get the Full Details
The Stuff Nobody Tells You About This Method
Most people think Action Mapping is about skipping content. It's not. It's about ruthless prioritization of practice over information delivery. The counter-intuitive part is that the A/B filter usually reveals you need more practice, not less. Because when you strip away the fluff, the remaining actions demand deeper scenarios, not bullet points. Another thing beginners miss: the gap between the business goal and the actions is where projects die. You write a goal like reduce call handling time, then your SME lists actions that have nothing to do with call time. They're describing knowledge gaps, not behavioral ones. You have to push back. Ask them to show you the evidence. What are people doing wrong on the job right now? What does the data actually say? If you can't pin it down, you're designing a course about nothing.
Cathy Moore Action Mapping in the Real World
I ran into a situation where a compliance team insisted every regulatory item had to be an A action. Thirty-two actions on a safety checklist. The result would have been an eight-hour interactive module, which nobody would sit through. The workaround was to group related actions into composite scenarios. Instead of testing each step separately, I built one scenario that forced learners through the full sequence, and the scoring only triggered when they missed a critical decision point in the chain. The SME got their coverage, and the course stayed under forty minutes. This is the tradeoff. Composite scenarios are harder to write and require more upfront analysis. You have to map every dependency between actions. But they're closer to how work actually happens anyway, which is the whole point.
Where It Breaks Down
Action Mapping assumes you have access to people who do the job and can describe it accurately. If your SME is out of touch, or if the work process is unknown because it's brand new, the whole thing collapses. You end up with plausible-sounding actions that don't match reality. It also doesn't work well for training that's primarily about attitude change or cultural alignment. You can't map a behavior for empathy the same way you map one for operating a machine. For that stuff, you need a different framework entirely. And there's the stakeholder problem. Clients often reject the method because they can't see the content on a page. They want to see slides, modules, completion certificates. When you hand them a job aid instead of a course, they ask what they're paying for. You need a conversation about business outcomes before anyone gets in the room, or you'll spend the whole engagement defending the approach instead of building the thing.
Resources
The original template and worksheets are available on Cathy Moore's website at cathy moore.com/actionmapping. She also published a book called Save the Flies that walks through the full process with more examples. The templates there are free to download and use directly. If you want a visual walkthrough of the A/B filtering process, there's a recorded webinar on her site that runs about twenty minutes. It covers the edge cases like reference material and knowledge checks better than the worksheets do.
