Let me begin with a familiar situation. A business leader comes to L&D and says, “People are not following the process. We need training.” We respond professionally. We analyze the content, define learning objectives, build a course, conduct assessments and report completion. Ninety-five per cent of the employees complete it. Their scores are excellent.
Then Monday arrives—and the old behavior continues.
Why?
We often assume that poor performance is caused by a lack of knowledge. Sometimes it is. But very often, employees already know what they are expected to do. The real barriers lie elsewhere: the new behavior is inconvenient; the required tool is unavailable; the workflow discourages it; the manager rewards something different; colleagues resist it; or the employee fears being blamed if the new approach fails.
This insight emerged powerfully in my conversation with Fabrício Peres, a go-to-market expert drawing on his experience of working with farmers across several geographies. Although his examples come from agriculture, they have direct relevance to workplace learning.
Table Of Content
- The Real Barrier May Not Be Knowledge
- Diagnose the Barrier Before Designing Training
- The Messenger Matters
- Connect Change to an Immediate Outcome
- Employees Need Support to Take the Risk
- Support Must Be Available at the Moment of Action
- Test Solutions Under Real Conditions
- Context Cannot Be Ignored
- Performance Comes Before Technology
- The Complete Solution Matters
- Questions to Ask Before Saying, “We Need Training”
- The Real Test Comes on Monday
The Real Barrier May Not Be Knowledge
Consider the use of personal protective equipment when applying crop-protection products. Companies had spent years training farmers and operators. They explained the risks, demonstrated how to use the equipment and reinforced the safety rules. Yet many people still did not wear it.
The easy conclusion was that they lacked awareness.
But when the farmers were asked, “Do you know you should wear PPE?” they answered, “Of course.” The problem was not knowledge. In some places, wearing the equipment was unbearable in 40°C heat. Elsewhere, farmers could not afford it, could not find it locally or owned equipment that was no longer serviceable. Some worried that neighbors would see the protective clothing, become alarmed about spraying and blame them for anything that happened nearby.
No additional presentation on the importance of PPE could remove those barriers.
Diagnose the Barrier Before Designing Training
The lesson for L&D is uncomfortable but essential: before designing training, diagnose the barrier to performance.
Ask employees what happens when they try to perform the desired behavior.
- Do they have the right system access?
- Does the process allow enough time?
- Is the equipment available?
- Does the supervisor support the behavior?
- What trade-offs are they making?
- What could go wrong for them personally?
This changes our role. We move from being providers of knowledge to partners in performance.
The Messenger Matters
The PPE example also shows that the messenger matters.
In one initiative, farmers’ children learned about the dangers and urged their parents to protect themselves. A message from one’s children carried an influence that another corporate lecture could not. The farmers wanted to be responsible role models.
Inside an organisation, we should ask: whose voice will influence this behavior? It may be the line manager, a respected technician, an experienced peer, a customer or a colleague who has dealt with the consequences of getting it wrong. L&D does not always have to deliver the message. Our task is to find the credible voice and equip that person to support the change.
Connect Change to an Immediate Outcome
The next lesson is to connect the change to an outcome people care about now. Fabrício described how the long-term goal of reducing fertilizer-related emissions could be presented through an immediate concern: reducing fertilizer costs when prices were high. The environmental purpose remained important, but the reason to act today was grounded in the farmer’s present economics.
Learning professionals frequently lead with the organisation’s distant objective: digital transformation, customer centricity, innovation, sustainability or a new culture. Employees, however, are thinking about the work in front of them. Will this new method save time? Reduce rework? Help them meet their target? Prevent a customer escalation? Make a hazardous task safer?
Training must connect the strategic destination to Monday’s problem.
- A salesperson is more likely to use a new discovery method when it helps advance the next difficult account.
- A supervisor is more likely to hold a better safety conversation when it prevents an incident on the next shift.
- A service employee is more likely to use a new system when it reduces duplicate entry today.
Employees Need Support to Take the Risk
But benefit alone is insufficient. We must also examine risk. Suppose an employee applies the newly taught method, and the result is worse in the short term. Will the manager support the experiment—or blame the employee for missing the number? If the learner carries the entire downside, returning to the old behavior is rational.
Managers therefore cannot be treated merely as people who nominate participants or send reminder emails. They must clarify expectations, make room for practice, provide feedback and share the risk of trying the new behavior. If their targets, incentives and informal signals contradict the training, the work environment will defeat the course.
Support Must Be Available at the Moment of Action
There is also a timing problem. The learner encounters the content today, but the performance decision may occur next week, in the middle of a customer call, machine fault, audit, negotiation or safety incident. Recall is then competing with pressure, habit and limited time.
This is why every learning solution should answer two questions: At what precise moment will the employee need to act? What support will be available at that moment?
The answer may be a checklist beside the machine, a decision tree inside the workflow, a short demonstration accessible by QR code, a conversation guide in the CRM, an observation sheet for supervisors, an AI assistant or a simple escalation rule. The course may prepare people, but point-of-action support helps them perform.
Test Solutions Under Real Conditions
Fabrício also challenged the way organisations run pilots.
We often test training under favourable conditions: enthusiastic participants, supportive leaders, protected time, extra facilitation and close attention from the project team. The pilot succeeds. Then the program is launched into the real organisation, where managers are busy, systems are imperfect and employees are sceptical.
We have proved that the training can work under special conditions—not that the performance solution can survive normal conditions.
A stronger pilot includes sceptical users, ordinary managers, realistic workloads and the actual systems and constraints employees will face. We should measure behavior and operational results after training, not just satisfaction, completion and test scores. If the solution works for cautious employees in everyday conditions, the advocates will usually follow.
Context Cannot Be Ignored
Context matters just as much. Fabrício described a company whose carbon-measurement software had already been deployed in Asia, North America and Europe. It appeared ready for Brazil. Instead of immediately presenting the product, the team spoke with farmers, distributors and agronomists about the outcome they were trying to achieve. They discovered different practices, systems and complexities and concluded that the solution needed substantial redesign.
Global L&D teams face the same temptation: build centrally and distribute universally. Translation is then mistaken for localization. But the real question is whether the behavior, examples, tools, authority levels, customer expectations and work conditions are comparable. The people doing the job often know what a global designer cannot see. Co-design is not a courtesy; it is a source of operational truth.
Performance Comes Before Technology
We must also distinguish an impressive capability from the employee’s essential job. In another example, a company promoted a crop product’s additional plant-vigor benefit. The farmer’s immediate question was simpler: will it kill the pest in my soil? The differentiator was real, but it was not the customer’s principal concern.
L&D can make the same mistake by leading with immersive learning, AI, gamification, simulations or a sophisticated platform. These may be useful. But the business wants fewer errors, faster proficiency, safer work, stronger sales or more consistent customer service. Technology is a means. Performance is the job to be done.
The Complete Solution Matters
Finally, the complete offer matters. Fabrício recalled a strong product for coffee farmers that had disappointing market results. Payment was due in October, which appeared generous because customers received several months to pay.
But October was a poor time for cash payment: it followed the harvest, prices were low and farmers were holding their crop. When the company allowed payment through part of the crop, adoption changed dramatically. The product and selling process stayed the same; the surrounding terms changed.
The L&D equivalent is that good content may still fail because the conditions of use are wrong. Employees may lack time, permission, practice opportunities, manager support, system access or reinforcement. Training is not simply the course. The complete solution includes the workflow, tools, incentives, managerial behavior, communications, practice, feedback and performance support surrounding it.
Questions to Ask Before Saying, “We Need Training”
So, when a stakeholder says, “We need training,” let us resist the urge to begin with content. Let us ask:
- What must people do differently?
- What prevents them from doing it today?
- What happens if they try and fail?
- Who must support or influence them?
- What immediate result will make the change worthwhile?
- What will they need at the moment of action?
- And will the solution work under ordinary, imperfect conditions?
The Real Test Comes on Monday
Learning remains important. Knowledge and skill are indispensable when they are genuinely missing. But training should not be our automatic answer to every performance problem, nor should course completion be mistaken for business impact.
Our real product is not learning delivered. It is improved performance made possible.
The ultimate test of our work is not what learners knew on Friday afternoon. It is what they were able and willing to do, with the support they needed, when Monday arrived.
