“Do you already have a course on this?”

I have been asked that question more times than I care to remember. A client identifies a problem, decides that training is the answer and then approaches the Learning and Development professional with what appears to be a perfectly reasonable request: “Do you already have the course?”

Increasingly, I think the better response is: “Before we discuss the course, can we discuss the problem?”

When an organisation decides that training is required before understanding what is causing the performance problem, it is effectively prescribing the medicine before examining the patient. For CEOs and senior leaders, this matters because somebody is about to commit the organisation's time and money to an intervention that may have very little to do with the problem they are trying to solve.

“A training request is not a diagnosis. It is a hypothesis.”
Margaret Jackson

Consider customer service. Complaints are increasing, so someone concludes that employees need customer-service training. Perhaps they do. But what if employees already know how to serve customers and the real problem is that they lack the authority to resolve complaints? What if staffing levels are inadequate, the technology is unreliable or a badly designed process frustrates both employees and customers?

You could deliver an outstanding customer-service programme to highly engaged participants and still change very little.

This is why I become uncomfortable when an L&D professional who asks to conduct a needs assessment is seen as slowing things down. Good diagnosis is not bureaucracy. It is part of making a responsible business decision.

CIPD's guidance on learning needs analysis supports this approach: start with the organisation's current and future capability requirements, identify the gap between current and desired performance, and then determine how that gap should be addressed. Importantly, we should not automatically assume that a course is the answer.
 

Before TRAIN, ask WHY

I use three simple questions:
W — What
What should people be doing that they are not doing well enough now?

H — Hurdle
What is actually preventing them from doing it?

Y — Yardstick
How will we know performance has improved?
 

The What forces us to describe the performance gap rather than name a course. The Hurdle makes us investigate whether the problem is knowledge, skill or capability, or whether something in the work environment is getting in the way. The Yardstick makes us define what success should look like before we spend the money.

That changes the sequence from “We have a problem, therefore we need training” to “We have a problem, let us understand why it exists and then decide what intervention is appropriate.”

This is not an argument against training. Quite the opposite. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 found that 63% of employers identify skills gaps as a major barrier to business transformation. If skills and capabilities are that important, we should be even more rigorous about where we invest in developing them.

And L&D must take some responsibility too.

We cannot complain that senior leaders treat us as order-takers if, when someone says, “We need a two-day leadership programme,” our first questions are about participant numbers, dates and venue.

Perhaps our first question should be:

“Tell me what is happening that makes you believe training is needed.”

That requires L&D professionals who are interested not only in designing programmes, but also in understanding performance, customers, operations, strategy and the realities of work. Sometimes our diagnosis may even lead to an uncomfortable conclusion: the organisation does not need training.

That is not L&D failing to provide a solution. It is L&D helping the organisation find the right one.

And no, diagnosis does not have to take three months. A needs assessment should be proportionate to the problem. Sometimes performance data, observation, conversations with the right people and a few intelligent questions are enough to reveal what is really happening.

The purpose is not to make L&D slower. It is to make the organisation less likely to spend money quickly on the wrong solution.

So, CEO, the next time someone says, “Our people need training,” perhaps don't begin with:

“Do you already have a course on this?”

Begin with:

“What problem are we actually trying to solve?”

Because good L&D should not begin with a course.

It should begin with curiosity.