Nathan Chambers ← Back to site
A Framework From the Book

The ANCHOR Model

Accomplishment-anchored instructional design. Six commitments that keep every design decision tied to the worthy accomplishment — from the first conversation to the final measure.

From A Practitioner’s Guide to Instructional Design · Nathan Eric Chambers, M.S., ABD

Every lifecycle model — ADDIE, SAM, LeaPS — names a sequence of activities: analyze, design, prototype, iterate. What none of them names is the thing the activities are for. The ANCHOR model is the answer, distilled from the performance-improvement tradition.

Its premise comes straight from Gilbert (2007): performance is not the behavior; it is the valuable accomplishment the behavior produces — the crop, not the plowing. A course is never the goal. A worthy accomplishment is. ANCHOR exists to keep every design decision tied to that accomplishment, and its six commitments spell its name.

The ANCHOR Model: a compass-style diagram showing six instructional design commitments arranged in a cycle — Accomplishment, Name the Root Cause, Criteria and Evidence, How, Operate, and Results — each anchored to the worthy accomplishment at the center.
The ANCHOR Model™: every design decision anchored to the accomplishment.

The Six Commitments

Each commitment carries a single deliverable. Together they form the spine of any project.
A

AccomplishmentDefine the worthy accomplishment and size the gap

Before anything else, pinpoint the valuable accomplishment in Gilbert’s sense and size the gap: what does exemplary performance produce, what does typical performance produce, and what is the difference worth?

Deliverable: a one-sentence Accomplishment Statement plus the measured gap.
N

Name the Root CauseDiagnose the performance gap

Run the BEM scan and the Mager screen (Mager & Pipe, 1997). Determine which of the six cells drive the gap — and whether instruction belongs in the solution at all.

Deliverable: a BEM diagnosis and an explicit train / don’t-train decision.
C

Criteria & EvidenceDefine measures and objectives

Write the performance objectives — performance, conditions, criterion — and define the evaluation evidence in the same act, every objective paired with its measure and the baseline captured now (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). Evaluation is designed here, never appended later.

Deliverable: an Objective-Evidence Map.
H

HowDesign interventions that fit

Orchestrate the full intervention set, not just the course: instructional elements with the modality chosen by the performance outcome, plus the environmental fixes the BEM surfaced — job aids, incentives, process changes. Prototype early; test before you scale.

Deliverable: the intervention blueprint and built assets.
O

OperateImplement for transfer

Implement with transfer engineered in from the start — manager reinforcement, protected practice, required drivers — because the new behavior survives or dies in the environment, not the classroom.

Deliverable: the rollout with its transfer supports in place.
R

ResultsVerify accomplishment and adapt

Evaluate against the evidence defined at C, and judge worth the way Gilbert would: did the accomplishment rise relative to its cost? Loop back wherever the evidence says an earlier commitment missed.

Deliverable: a results review against the original Accomplishment Statement.

Not a Rival to ADDIE

It is the keel under whichever hull you sail.

ANCHOR is not a rival to ADDIE, and that is the point. ADDIE’s phases describe what you do; ANCHOR’s commitments describe what the doing is for. The two map cleanly onto each other, so you can run ANCHOR inside ADDIE, SAM, or any lifecycle your organization prefers. The phases may iterate, compress, or overlap — but the accomplishment stays fixed beneath them.

How ANCHOR maps to ADDIE

A · N→ Analyze — define the accomplishment and name the root cause
C→ Design — criteria, objectives, and the evidence to measure them
H→ Design / Develop — the full intervention set, prototyped and built
O→ Implement — rollout with transfer engineered in
R→ Evaluate — results judged against the accomplishment
The refrain this book keeps returning to is simple: drop ANCHOR before you design anything. The chapters are, in effect, the six commitments taught one phase at a time — and the appendix carries a one-page ANCHOR worksheet so the whole spine fits on a single sheet at the start of any project.

Learn the model in practice

A Practitioner’s Guide to Instructional Design teaches the six commitments one phase at a time, following a single real project — a customer-care coaching course — from a vague request to a finished, evaluated program.

Get the book
The ANCHOR Model™ · © 2026 Nathan Chambers. Adapted from A Practitioner’s Guide to Instructional Design: Building Skills Across the ADDIE Lifecycle.
References: Gilbert, T. F. (2007). Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance (Tribute ed.). Mager, R. F., & Pipe, P. (1997). Analyzing Performance Problems. Kirkpatrick, J. D., & Kirkpatrick, W. K. (2016). Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Training Evaluation.