You’re finally hired as an instructional designer. You’re excited. You did everything you thought you needed — you earned your degree, you created that show-stopping portfolio, and you have the passion to drive change in this new organization.
You walk in ready to make an impact.
Then on your first day, someone says: “We need training. When do you think you can have it done?”
Expecting you to have the answer, you start taking them through the process… “Um, that’s not going to work. Can’t you have it done by Friday?”
“Just record a video.”
Sound familiar?
The Conversation That Happens in Every Organization
That first-day shock wears off, but the conversation doesn’t change — it just keeps showing up in different forms. Here’s how it seems it usually starts. A stakeholder comes to you with a problem. Maybe performance is down. Maybe there’s been an increase in errors. Maybe customers are complaining. Sales are less than they were last quarter. And their conclusion is always the same: “We need training to fix this.”
So you do what you were trained to do. You start asking questions. You try to identify the root cause. You want to do a needs analysis — even a quick one — to figure out whether this is actually a training problem or something else.
And that’s when you hear it: “We don’t have time for all that. We just need the training built.”
Okay. Fine. Deep breath. You’ll skip the full analysis and go straight to building — you’re nothing if not adaptable. But you still need something to build from. So you ask the next logical question: “What’s the process? Can you walk me through how this is supposed to be done?”
And the answer comes back: “Well… we don’t really have a documented process. But people should just know how to do it.”
So let me get this straight. You want me to build training… on a process that doesn’t exist… for a problem we haven’t diagnosed… and you need it by Friday.
If you’ve worked in L&D for any length of time, you’re either nodding right now or you’re having flashbacks. Maybe both. Maybe this is giving you heart palpitations you haven’t felt since your last “urgent” request.
Training Isn’t Always the Problem
Anyone who has worked in L&D for any period of time knows this, and it continues to be one of the biggest challenges we face: not every performance problem is a training problem. If you’ve been in the field for a while, you’ve probably got this line engraved in your vocabulary. If you’re new to the field, practice saying it. Better yet, learn how to identify that gap. It will help you go far.
It’s a Process Problem
Sometimes there’s no documented process — or the one that exists is inconsistent. You can’t train people on something that doesn’t exist yet. If your team is doing the same task five different ways, the first step isn’t a course — it’s defining what the right way actually looks like. That’s a knowledge management problem. And until you solve it, any training you build is teaching people something that hasn’t been agreed upon.
It’s an Accountability Problem
People know what to do — they just aren’t doing it, or nobody’s following up to make sure they’re doing it right, so they think it doesn’t matter. And yes — just like you, when nobody follows up with you on something, you might stop doing it too. Your learners are no different. Training won’t fix that. (Well, unless you design training for the leadership team on how to actually follow up.) You can deliver the most beautifully designed, perfectly implemented course in the world, and if nobody continues building on it afterward, nothing changes.
It’s a Tools Problem
The system is clunky, the software is outdated, the workflow has too many steps. People aren’t struggling because they don’t know the work — they’re struggling because the environment makes it harder than it needs to be. Training someone to use a broken system just means they’ll be better at working around it.
And Sometimes — Yes — It Really Is Training
There’s a genuine skill or knowledge gap, and a well-designed learning experience is exactly the right solution. But you can’t know that until you ask the questions. And that’s the part that keeps getting skipped.
The fastest way to waste time and money in L&D is to build training for a problem that training can’t solve.
The One-Day Event Trap
But let’s say the analysis does happen. Let’s say you identify a real training need, you design a solid program, and you deliver it. The session goes great. People are engaged. The evaluations are positive. Leadership is happy. Everyone walks away feeling good about it.
And then… nothing.
No follow-up. No reinforcement. Outside of the evaluations we should all be building into our programs, we need to consider the learning curve — how retention drops off, how to bring topics back up and re-engage the learner’s mind, especially when it’s not something they’re doing every day. No manager conversations about what was learned. No accountability. Just a single event, a checked box, and the assumption that the problem is now solved.
I’ve seen this pattern more times than I can count. And it’s one of the most frustrating things about working in this field — because it’s not that the training failed. It’s that no one treated it like the beginning of something. They treated it like the end.
Research has been telling us this for decades. Ebbinghaus’s (1885/1913) work on the forgetting curve showed that people forget roughly 70% of new information within 24 hours if it isn’t reinforced. More recent studies from the Association for Talent Development (2024) confirm that without reinforcement and application, most training content is lost within weeks, a finding further supported by Thalheimer’s (2024) review of the scientific evidence on learning retention. The learning doesn’t stick because learning was never designed to be a single event.
Learning was never designed to be a single event.
True talent development takes commitment. It takes managers willing to reinforce what was taught, systems that support new behaviors, and a culture that treats learning as an ongoing investment — not one that says “we can’t take them off the schedule because it costs us too much money.” If your organization isn’t willing to invest in the follow-through, it isn’t really investing in learning. A training event can spark the change, but only the organization’s commitment to follow-up can sustain it.
A one-day training is a conversation starter. Without follow-up, it’s just a conversation that nobody continued.
What Good L&D Leaders Actually Do
So what do you actually do about it? Over the years, I’ve learned that the skill that matters most in L&D isn’t instructional design. It’s not course building. It’s not knowing Articulate or Captivate or any other authoring tool.
It’s knowing how to have the conversation.
When someone comes to you and says “we need training,” the best thing you can do is slow down just enough to ask the right questions. Not to push back for the sake of pushing back. Not to be difficult.
Pushing back because you care about solving the actual problem — not just checking a box.
I always start with the same question: “What do you want to happen?” Or, “What outcome are you looking for?” Or simply, “What’s the solution for you?” Once you understand the outcome they’re after, you can start walking backwards and back into the real problem. That one question opens the door to everything else — the root cause, the gaps, the actual solution. And when you ask it with the genuine intent to help, most stakeholders appreciate it — because they realize you’re not just taking an order. You’re trying to give them something that actually works.
And here’s the thing about adaptability: sometimes you still end up building the training. The timeline is real, the pressure is real, and you do the best you can with what you have. That’s part of the job. But even then, you can plant seeds — document the gaps, follow up with recommendations, build the course and flag that the course alone isn’t enough. Being adaptable doesn’t mean being silent.
And sometimes, you might find yourself in an organization that doesn’t actually want to grow — one that doesn’t want to hear it. In those cases, it’s okay to move on and drive change somewhere else. Your skills deserve an environment that values them.
Why This Matters for Our Field
I think about this a lot — especially right now, as someone who is actively looking for my next role. Because when I look at the L&D job market, I see two very different versions of what organizations think they’re hiring for.
Some organizations want a course builder. Someone who can take a request, crank out content, and check boxes. They want speed and output. And there’s nothing wrong with being fast — I’ve built programs on tight timelines my entire career. But if that’s all an organization wants from L&D, they’re going to keep running into the same problems over and over, because the real issues never got diagnosed.
Other organizations want a learning partner. Someone who can sit with leadership, understand the business problem, figure out whether training is actually the right solution, and if it is, design something that doesn’t just check a box but actually moves the needle. Someone who can also build the knowledge management systems, the performance frameworks, the reinforcement strategies — the infrastructure that makes training stick. That’s the kind of work that I do. That’s the kind of work that makes a real difference — the kind that keeps organizations competitive and driving ahead of the curve.
And if you’re reading this and thinking “that’s the kind of work I do” — then you’re a real instructional designer. You’re doing it. You’re identifying the real issues and creating real solutions — the ones that actually matter. The ones that help the organization grow, that help it scale, that move it into the future.
This isn’t a new conversation, either. I’ve heard it at conferences, in breakout sessions, in hallway conversations between sessions. Some of us are doing this well. Others are getting there. And as a profession, we need to keep advocating for this version of L&D — not just for our own careers, but for the people we serve. The employees who sit through training that doesn’t help them. The managers who keep requesting courses for problems that courses can’t solve. The organizations that spend money on learning events that never get reinforced. They all deserve better. And we’re the ones who know how.
The best L&D professionals don’t just build what they’re asked for. They build what’s actually needed.
If you’ve been in this situation — the “just build a course” conversation, the one-day training that never got followed up on, the request to train on a process that doesn’t exist — I’d love to hear your story. Join the conversation on LinkedIn — how do you handle it when the ask isn’t actually the answer?
References
- Association for Talent Development. (2024). 2024 state of the industry report. ATD Press. https://www.td.org/product/research-report--2024-state-of-the-industry-talent-development-benchmarks-and-trends/192416
- Ebbinghaus, H. (1885/1913). Memory: A contribution to experimental psychology (H. A. Ruger & C. E. Bussenius, Trans.). Teachers College, Columbia University. https://doi.org/10.1037/10011-000
- Thalheimer, W. (2024). Does eLearning work? What the scientific research says. Work-Learning Research. https://www.worklearning.com/catalog/
