Santa Noeta Design & Performance Improvement
Was This Even a Training Problem?
Performance improvement and instructional design for workforce contexts. We start with the gap, not the solution — and we build the thing that closes it, whether that’s training or not.
Lead Performance Architect
Marc Reyes, CPT
Marc Reyes has spent twenty years in performance improvement — in manufacturing, healthcare, and workforce development contexts. He holds the Certified Performance Technologist (CPT) designation from the International Society for Performance Improvement, which he will mention exactly once in any given meeting and then get on with the work.
His view of the field is blunt: most training programs are built to solve problems that aren’t training problems. The right answer to “our workers need training” is almost always “do they, though?” He has made a career out of asking that question before anyone has spent the budget.
What SNDPI Does
- Performance gap analysis — before any curriculum gets designed
- Instructional design — for workforce and technical training contexts
- Curriculum development — sequenced, measured, field-tested
- Evaluation frameworks — aligned with SNR’s research protocols
- Non-training interventions — when the problem is process, not knowledge
Active Work
Current Engagements
FlyForward — Primary Engagement
Zero-Emission Retraining Curriculum
Design and development of the FlyForward retraining curriculum for STQ ground and maintenance personnel. Work includes task analysis with current workforce, competency mapping, module sequencing, and embedded evaluation aligned with SNR’s effectiveness framework. Currently in iterative development with field pilots scheduled.
SNUSD Partnership
CTE-to-Workforce Pathway Analysis
A collaborative analysis with Dr. Raymond Okafor at SNUSD examining alignment between current CTE program offerings and regional employer skill requirements. Identifying gaps and recommending sequence adjustments before students enter the workforce pipeline.
Our Approach
Analysis Before Design. Always.
SNDPI does not start projects by designing training. It starts projects by asking whether training is the right answer. In most cases, the presenting problem is “people aren’t performing” — and the causes are distributed across knowledge gaps, process problems, tool failures, incentive misalignments, and environmental factors that no amount of curriculum will fix.
When training is the right answer, we design it rigorously: task analysis, sequenced objectives, assessments that measure what actually matters, and evaluation protocols designed with the SNR team from the beginning. The result is curriculum that can be defended when someone asks why it was built the way it was.
When training is not the right answer, we say so — and help figure out what is.