Lost in the Learning Maze!
- Joanna Smith
- May 13
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 11
Last year, we were approached by an organisation to help them with their training efforts. Naturally, we were delighted to start the conversation, but we soon learned that the person in charge of training was in a bit of a pickle.
They were over-stretched, working regular 60-hour weeks, and just wanted help to get stuff done. When we asked a few more questions, it became clear that although the person had put their heart and soul into some training events and delivered some heart warming sessions, the efforts were ad-hoc, there was little coordination with other parts of the business (including HR and quality control) there were no systems in place to follow for creating further courses, and there were no systems in place for reporting to inform continuous improvement. And most of the work happened inside this one person’s head.
In short, the person was chasing their tail. They were working extremely hard, but spinning their wheels, and making little progress. My heart went out to them, because they clearly had a heart for the mission of the organisation, but they were clearly exhausted, and this would not end well, if it continued.
Does this sound familiar?
Common Challenges
For many organisations, training responsibilities are handed to someone already balancing multiple roles, such as an HR manager or team leader. Without dedicated time or systems, training often becomes reactive and disorganised.
Some of the most common issues include:
Unclear Priorities: Teams struggle to decide which training is most critical.
Disorganised Content: Training materials are scattered across platforms, files, or even departments.
No Defined Process: There’s no clear pathway for turning ideas or content into structured training.
Lack of Evaluation: Training is rarely reviewed for impact or improvement.
When these challenges persist, organisations miss opportunities to use training as a strategic tool to support growth and success.
Building Structure: A Step-by-Step Approach
Bringing clarity and efficiency to workplace training doesn’t require a major overhaul. Instead, focus on building simple, effective systems:
Audit Existing Training Efforts
Map out current training initiatives and resources.
Identify gaps, redundancies, and opportunities for alignment with business goals.
Set Clear Priorities
Coordinate with other departments in order to understand their priorities, and what they are measuring.
Focus on training that addresses the organisation’s most pressing needs, such as compliance, critical skills, or high-impact areas.
Say no to work that is not high-priority. Let the requestors know where that priority sits in the list.
Streamline Content Management
Create a clear process for curating, creating, and storing training materials.
Centralise resources in one location to improve accessibility and consistency.
Evaluate and Improve
Establish feedback loops, such as post-training surveys or assessments, to understand effectiveness. (Kirkpatrick’s’ evaluation methods are always a great place to start.)
Use insights from evaluations to refine content and improve outcomes.
We’re Here to Help
With the client I mentioned at the start, I recommended our first project together would be to take a step back, and evaluate how they are doing training. We asked a series of simple questions, to get a snapshot of what ‘training’ was in the organisation.
Who are our learners? What do we train? Who are our experts? How do we prioritise? How do we capture training requests? What is our process for building training? What records do we need to keep? How do we know what success looks like?
By starting with these simple-sounding questions, we were able to have some great conversations, and we discovered a lot of unrecognised assumptions, some really tangled historical issues, and some great places to start scratching the surface deeper. Together, we came up with a list of initial projects that would help clarify systems and structures, so that we could move forward with confidence and clarity.
Feeling stuck?
If you resonate with the exhaustion of this client, we’d love to help. We can help you take a step back, assess your training challenges, and implement practical solutions tailored to your needs. Reach out, and let’s get the conversation started!
