Finding the real problem

Training can’t fix every problem. We all know that. Those of us in the learning profession also know we are commonly asked to solve problems in the business that aren’t, at their core, learning problems. But what is the problem? And if training can’t fix it, what can?

Not having a clear way to answer these questions is one of the reasons I often felt uncomfortable pushing back on training requests. My gut would be telling me training wasn’t the answer, but I couldn’t articulate my reasons. Rather than simply saying “no, that won’t work”, I would go along and create training that probably didn’t make much difference.

After a few years of this I decided to sit down and think about a better way. I started to wonder if there was a simple set of questions I could go through in order to point out the real problem.

It turns out, there was. I am sure this list isn’t exhaustive, but this short list of four questions turned out to be quite successful at highlighting problems that needed to be addressed before any learning program could make a difference.

Question 1: Is the problem affecting more than one or two employees?

We have all seen this before. One person makes a mistake and now we all have a new training requirement. Don’t do that. If someone makes a mistake, the manager should be handling the issue directly, not laying a new requirement on everyone.

Question 2: Is there a well documented process that works?

If you don’t know what good looks like, you can’t teach people to do good. Very often, the business doesn’t understand the difference between documentation and training, and they think of the two interchangeably. Take the time to explain the difference and figure out a plan to have the documentation created before you embark on any training.

Question 3: Do employees have the resources required to follow the process?

With this question, I am using a broad definition of the term resources. Resources could be time, it could be money, it could be tools. If people can’t practically follow the process then it isn’t a training problem, it is a process problem. Either give them more resources or change the process. Then think about training.

Question 4: Are employees getting feedback when they do something wrong?

Though this can be related to question 1, it has broader implications. Especially in companies where work gets passed from one department to another, it is very possible that problems don’t appear until the work has moved to a new department. Unless you have processes in place to send that information back to the original department, they might have no idea anything is going wrong.  

Unless the answer to all of these questions is yes, a learning program probably isn’t going to fix your problem. And that is ok. These questions can help you clearly identify what the actual problem is, which will allow you to help develop a solution.

Don’t spend time making training that won’t make a difference. These simple questions can help guide your discussions to find the real problem and then solve them.