Before You Invest in Another Training Course, Ask Yourself One Question
What do people actually need to know and do differently?
Not what content we think they need.
Not what’s easiest to buy.
Not what everyone else is doing.
Because most training doesn’t fail due to poor delivery.
It fails because it was built on assumptions.
I’m not inflicting yet more training on the world that’s neither wanted nor used.
We already have a world overflowing with courses, guides, videos, and other “helpful stuff”.
Some of it is genuinely excellent.
I’ve found it, used it, and recommended it.But I’ve also had a lot of not-so-great training inflicted on me.
Now I’m the boss, I get to dodge that bullet and help others do the same.
We all want it to work.
I’ve yet to meet a business that doesn’t want the best outcome from the training they provide.
We all want it to work.
And yet we still hear the same things:
“At least they serve a free lunch.”
“It’s a paid hour just to click ‘Next’.”
“Tick the box, collect the certificate, go back to work.”
No one sets out to accept mediocre training.
The clichés exist for a reason:
“Training is an investment in our people.”
“We need to upskill to stay competitive.”
“This will improve performance.”
“Learning never stops.”
They’re not wrong.
The right learning, at the right time, delivered the right way, does make a difference.
The problem is guesswork
Where things start to go wrong is much earlier than the design stage.
We think we know what people need to learn.
We guess how they prefer to learn it.
And we hope what we build will work for everyone.
Those assumptions are expensive.
You’ve seen it before.
Time and goodwill go into a new course or onboarding programme.
A few months later, the same issues resurface.
Performance hasn’t shifted.
People forget what they learned.
Managers are still firefighting.
It’s frustrating, especially when you’ve genuinely tried to do the right thing.
But most training doesn’t fail because it’s poor quality.
It fails because it was built on assumptions, not insight.
What this looks like in real life
A line manager I worked with was visibly relieved when we caught up a few weeks after his team gained the certifications they needed.
We hadn’t created new training.
We’d identified exactly what was missing, cut through internal barriers, and sourced the right content.
The knock-on effect was bigger than expected.
The sales team could now meet certification requirements for new business.
Employees felt valued instead of overlooked.
Retention improved because people no longer felt they had to leave to develop.
Previously, people had been leaving just to access training elsewhere.
Not because they didn’t care.
Because the system hadn’t supported them.
One insight changed everything.
The hidden cost of getting it wrong
When training misses the mark, the cost isn’t just financial.
It’s lost time.
Slower performance.
Lower engagement.
And the exhausting cycle of “didn’t we already cover this?”
A CIPD report found that fewer than half of organisations feel confident their learning initiatives actually improve performance.
Not because leaders don’t care.
But because they never started with enough insight in the first place.
If this sounds familiar, pause here
If you’ve ever launched training that didn’t quite land, or found yourself wondering why nothing’s changed, the issue usually isn’t effort or intent.
It’s visibility.
You didn’t have a clear view of what people actually needed.
That’s exactly what the Know Your Learner approach is designed to fix.
👉 Explore the Know Your Learner course
And if you’re thinking, “I don’t want another course — I just want someone to help us work this out properly,” that’s completely valid.
Not every business needs to build this capability in-house straight away.
Sometimes what’s most useful is having an external partner who can slow things down, ask the right questions, and help you translate insight into clear decisions.
That’s exactly what my Define & Align service is designed to do.
Knowing your learner changes everything
At Jessanol, we believe effective training doesn’t start in the design room.
It starts with discovery.
That often feels like the slow part.
You’re keen to do something.
To fix it.
To move on.
But when you slow down just enough to understand:
what learners are unclear about
what’s assumed but never explained
where performance breaks down
Everything that follows becomes faster and more effective.
Clarity accelerates action.
What “knowing your learner” looks like in practice
Imagine you’re improving onboarding.
You run a short focus group with employees and managers.
Within half an hour, a clear pattern emerges: no one is sure what “good” looks like in the first month.
New starters feel unsure.
Managers feel disappointed.
Some people leave before 90 days.
One insight sparks the right conversation.
Not about more content but about expectations, support, and timing.
One conversation prevents weeks of confusion.
That’s the power of knowing your learner.
Why structured discovery matters
Structured research turns loose feedback into usable evidence.
It helps you see:
what’s working
what’s not
and why
That means every design decision that follows is grounded in insight, not guesswork.
And once you learn the method, you can reuse it again and again:
onboarding
role-specific training
manager development
programme refreshes
It scales with your business.
From insight to impact
When learning is shaped by real learner data:
training feels relevant
performance improves
managers see change
learners feel heard
And from a business perspective, you finally have evidence to support your decisions, whether you’re justifying investment, demonstrating ROI, or aligning learning to strategy.
The first step to training that works
You can’t fix what you don’t understand.
The Know Your Learner course shows you how to uncover what people really need, using practical research methods that fit real SME life.
You’ll learn how to:
run focused discovery conversations
capture insight without heavy data collection
translate findings into clear, evidence-based training requirements
It’s about swapping instinct for insight — and designing learning that actually delivers.
Ask. Listen. Observe.
When you truly know your learners, everything else gets easier.
If you want to build this discovery capability yourself, the Know Your Learner course gives you the tools and structure to do exactly that.
If you’d rather be supported through the process, without turning it into a course or another internal project, my Define & Align service helps businesses clarify real learning and performance needs before anything is built.
Either way, the goal is the same:
stop guessing, and start designing with confidence.