The first and most critical step in action mapping is data collection. This mission is a fact-finding exercise that helps to understand the context, identify performance gaps, and investigate the reasons for such gaps within an organization. To conduct a thorough needs assessment, we must gather data from stakeholders, experts, existing documents, and performance metrics.

During this stage, instructional designers should ask critical questions to uncover specific challenges or improvement opportunities. These questions may be about current performance, existing training materials, organizational priorities, learner demographics, or expected business outcomes. Such data collection and analysis provide valuable insights into the performance gap.

Given the universality of businesses, others may have faced similar challenges globally. Therefore, it's wise to explore external research on other companies with potentially better solutions. This could involve discussions on restructuring the workplace or modifying schedules to devote more time to problematic tasks.

After researching and identifying the problem, the next step is to set a clear, tangible goal—for instance, for a training initiative. This goal aligns the training program with broader organizational objectives and defines what learners should achieve post-training.

Goals can also be set by reverse-engineering a concern. Suppose your objective is to lose weight by skipping breakfast. However, your real goal should be to achieve a healthy weight without feeling hungry. If skipping breakfast doesn't help you achieve your weight loss goal, it could lead to overeating or lack of motivation.

It's crucial to provide as many details as possible and establish how progress will be measured. Suppose the initial goal is to reduce warehouse safety incidents to 15% by the next audit. However, if research reveals a high injury rate, the final goal should be to align warehouse safety with top practices. This could mean reducing all work-related injuries to 10% and ladder-related ones to 18% by the next inspection.