A
ccording to HealthDay News (April 2006, p. 1), an online medical advisory
newsletter, “an Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is characterized by an
unusually high level of concern or anxiety about a particular subject. It’s
believed to be caused by a brain abnormality that affects the way informa-
tion is processed. According to the Obsessive-Compulsive Foundation, an
antidepressant is typically used to treat OCD. Your doctor may also recommend behav-
ioral therapy or counseling to help treat the disorder and minimize symptoms.”
Although I would never trivialize the devastation to the lives of those who have this
disorder, I use this disorder as an analogy because I believe that we in the field of train-
ing and performance improvement are still writing objectives poorly because we have
developed an Objectives-Compulsive Disorder about the precision with which they
must be written. We agonize over, debate, and discuss the wording of each objective to
the nth degree and forget about the purpose of an objective, which is to clearly state
what learners are to know, what they are to do, and how they are to react after an inter-
vention. But there is a prescription for the Objectives-Compulsive Disorder that if
followed can lead to a cure.
It is probably important at this point to define the term intervention as it is used through-
out this article. I use this term to describe any type of solution that enhances learning or
performance: for example, a training program, a performance enhancement system, a
help system, an organizational change effort, or a data management solution. I use the
term prescription to refer to the antidote for the Objectives-Compulsive Disorder.
Yet the Compulsion Remains
The scene was set for the role of objectives in traditional instructional design by
Mager’s 1962 book, Preparing Instructional Objectives, in which Mager advocated
using objectives to put the focus back on the learner and the desired outcomes of train-
ing. Shortly thereafter Gagne’s 1965 book, The Conditions of Learning and Theory of
Instruction, established learned capabilities as the basis of the five-part objective.
Literally hundreds of thousands of words have been written since then about objec-
tives. Thousands of workshops have been conducted on how to write objectives and
probably billions of objectives have been written.
THE CURE FOR THE OCD
(OBJECTIVES-COMPULSIVE DISORDER)
by William W. Lee
14
Performance Improvement, vol. 45, no. 8, September 2006
© 2006 International Society for Performance Improvement
Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) • DOI:10.1002/pfi.004

Lately, there have been many attempts to alleviate our
obsession with this traditional instructional design pro-
cess. For example, Sharon Gander’s article in Performance
Improvement (2006) almost convinced me of the value of
her proposal to eliminate part of the instructional design
process—objectives. Gordon and Zemke (2000) believe
that the traditional process is obsolete. They charge that
the instructional design process (1) is slow and clumsy,
(2) attempts to turn the art of training into a science, (3)
produces bad solutions, and (4) clings to a wrong world-
view that learners are stupid and cannot figure things out
for themselves.
And yet the instructional design process survives, appar-
ently healthy and strong, along with the step in the process
that states write objectives. There is a way to stay within the
structure of the instructional design process rather than take
Gander’s or Gordon and Zemke’s suggestions to just throw
away the entire process or eliminate a step. Objectives do
have a purpose. Let’s remember what that purpose is.
Starting over risks our spending the next 44 years work-
ing our way back to where we are today.
The Cure for the Objectives-Compulsive
Disorder
This author has been an educator and consultant with orga-
nizations for 40 years and still finds objectives that no one
could measure (except with a ruler, because they are so
lengthy and convoluted), hundreds of objectives for a one-
day course that could not possibly be covered, and
statements that delve so deeply into every element of an
intervention it would be impossible to measure them. If you
are spending project time writing copious and detailed
objectives just because it’s a step in the instructional design
process, then stop! You are affected by the OCD! The cure is
simple once you accept the following five prescriptions.
However, if you begin to obsess on any one of the five and
cannot move on, you will not be cured.
Prescription 1: Substitute Common Terms for Technical Terms
The first prescription is to remove the terms cognitive, psy-
chomotor, and affective from our customer vocabulary and
replace them with terms anyone can understand. These
words are the language of the instructional design profession
and are not in the daily lexicon of those outside the profes-
sion. If our purpose is to obtain information from subject
matter experts who do not understand our secret language,
then it makes sense to use terms such as know, do, and impor-
tant. Cognitive now becomes know, psychomotor becomes
do, and affective becomes important.
Remember, instructional designers need to collect informa-
tion from subject matter experts so they can arrange the
intervention content in a logical flow. The best way to col-
lect this information is for those who possess the knowledge
and those who need to collect it to use a common language.
Developing a common language of work has been advocated
by Langdon (1996) for all areas of endeavor and this
approach seems particularly poignant for the training industry
that is attempting to integrate more closely with its customers.
I think the best argument for simplifying terminology is the
fact that even instructional design professionals have not
been able to develop common terminology and standardiza-
tion of objectives. There are behavioral objectives, terminal
objectives, learning objectives, and performance objectives
among the various nomenclatures. There are four-part
objectives and five-part objectives. The confusion goes on
and on. Select a random sample of 100 instructional design-
ers, ask them to write an objective about a learning activity,
and you will probably get 100 different objectives.
With so much variability in thinking about the who, what,
when, and to what extent of objectives within the profes-
sion, it is unfair to ask those outside the profession to be
able to understand them and help us write them.
Prescription 2: Limit the Number of Objectives
The second prescription is to stand up and loudly declare,
“There is no intervention that needs more than three objec-
tives: one cognitive, one psychomotor, and one affective!”
(Now that was therapeutic, wasn’t it?) One objective for
each of these three domains would constitute the desired
terminal outcomes of an intervention. Designers need
answer only the following three questions to determine
these three objectives:
1. Summarized in one sentence, what does someone really
need to know about [whatever the intervention is]?”
(Cognitive)
2. “Summarized in one sentence, what does someone really
need to be able to do after [whatever the intervention
is]?” (Psychomotor)
3. “Summarized in one sentence, why is knowing and
doing [whatever the intervention is] important?”
(Affective)
Designers can craft the terminal outcomes from the answers
to these initial questions.
Prescription 3: Eliminate Lesson or Learning Objectives
The third prescription is to eliminate lesson or learning
objectives. First, list the content topics for the intervention,
without consideration of sequence or order at this point.
Table 1 provides a model for this activity.
Second, ask the subject matter experts to list the components of
each topic. Third, ask the questions listed under the correspond-
ing terminal objective in Table 1. If this activity resembles
15Performance Improvement • Volume 45 • Number 8 • DOI:10.1002/pfi