The Missing Capability in Most Learning Teams

Most L&D teams are great at creating things like courses, job aids, toolkits, and LMS curricula. But many teams struggle to figure out, before designing anything, if a course is even the right solution. The real gap is being able to diagnose a performance problem before jumping to a learning solution. This skill is what separates order-takers from true consultants.

I learned this firsthand on a project with a national retailer with more than 40,000 people leaders. The organization had a performance gap: leaders weren't managing their teams' performance effectively. The easy move would have been to assume a knowledge gap and ship a training course. Instead, I partnered with their performance management and learning teams and ran the problem through a full performance-consulting process before I built a single eCourse. Here's what that looked like in practice.

1. Intent Clarification

Before doing any analysis, I used a simple Intent Clarification Tool to figure out what leaders really needed to achieve, why it was important now, and what might happen if nothing changed. This exercise did more to bring stakeholders together than any kickoff meeting. It made everyone agree on the goal before talking about how to get there.

2. Stakeholder Analysis

I didn't stop at “who needs to approve this.” I mapped executive sponsors, HR business partners, directors, store leaders, and cross-functional teams by influence and interest, then built a tailored engagement strategy — different cadence, different message, different ask — for each group. A performance strategy that ignores its stakeholders doesn't survive contact with the org chart.

3. Performance Analysis

Rather than guess, I used Gilbert's Six Boxes model to analyze the workplace, the work, and the workers. That surfaced real barriers: performance support tools scattered across systems, daily reporting that made coaching hard, and a stigma that “managing performance” meant punishment. None of that shows up if you start with “what course do leaders need?”

4. Cause Analysis

I explicitly challenged the default assumption — that a knowledge and skill gap was to blame — and analyzed each of the six behaviors that made up “managing performance.” What I found was mostly environmental: unclear expectations, weak feedback loops, and no meaningful incentives. Skill-building alone would have fixed almost none of it.

5. Measurement Planning

I defined success up front: lift employee engagement above 67% and raise the Performance Management Index by 5% by Q3 2019, with performance tracked across organizational, leader, project-team, and implementation levels. It worked. Leaders citing “overly complicated resources” as a barrier dropped from 75% to 11% year over year — a number that exists only because I planned to measure it.

6. Sustainment Planning

Courses fade; behavior needs reinforcement. I built a formal Sustainability Plan around four pillars — communication and engagement, resource allocation, ongoing measurement, and integration into other talent processes — and wove the content into new-leader onboarding so it outlived the initial launch. Nothing about that plan lives in an LMS.

The Argument

The future of L&D isn't content creation.

It's performance consulting.

Look back at that list. Five of the six capabilities that drove this project's results — intent clarification, stakeholder analysis, performance analysis, cause analysis, measurement and sustainment planning — happened before or after the eLearning got built. The curriculum itself was the smallest part of the work and, arguably, the least important to the outcome.

That's the uncomfortable part for a lot of learning teams: the skills that got 40,000 leaders managing performance better weren't instructional design skills. They were consulting skills — the ability to clarify intent, read a stakeholder landscape, diagnose root causes instead of symptoms, and build in measurement and sustainment from day one. Content creation is a craft. Performance consulting is a discipline. Teams that only have the first one will keep building courses nobody asked for, for problems training was never going to solve.