Why content-led training remains popular, despite it not changing behaviour

I’ve been working with L&D practitioners for long enough to see the same frustrations surfacing over and over again. One of them is the pressure to cram in content. There’s a reason stakeholders like to see a packed course agenda. Pages of content, dozens of slides, a clear syllabus, a neat test to tie everything up. It signals effort. It looks like value for money. You can point at it and say “we covered this”.

The problem is that covering something is not the same as changing something.

I’ve been thinking about this A LOT recently, partly because of a couple of sessions at IDTX that have stayed with me. One was Kurt Ewald Lindley’s session on causal agency: the idea that you can teach someone everything they need to know about climbing a mountain, and they still might never climb one. The other picked up similar ground from a different angle, and covered the fundamental difference between training for raising awareness and training to deliver behaviour change. I’ve written about both separately, and you can read those blogs here and here if you want the detail. But the thing that’s been niggling me is how much of what we design still sits here – simply because our stakeholders want training they can tick off and mark as done.

Syllabus-led training made for content delivery and assessed by someone who has never met the learner has fairly limited application in professional development. (I’ve written about this in a previous blog too) There are contexts where it makes complete sense: manual handling, food hygiene, commercial pilot training – roles where there are right and wrong answers and performing a specific task to a specific standard is essential. But that’s a narrow category, and outside it, things are not so clear cut.

But think about a project manager… A syllabus-based project management course covers the same ground regardless of where someone works. In practice, the job looks completely different depending on whether you’re in a small architectural firm, an IT services company or global logistics. It differs depending on whether you manage people directly, use subcontractors, and what your budget and timescale is. A generic course can give someone general principles and a vocabulary. What it cannot do is tell them how to apply those things to their specific situation, with their specific team and their organisation’s particular culture. That’s where standardised content, wrapped up with a neat little test, doesn’t deliver real value – even though participants have a certificate to suggest otherwise

Most of what determines whether learning actually transfers happens outside the event: in the learner’s head, in the relationship between the learner and their line manager, in whether there’s opportunity to try something new, in whether it matters too much if it doesn’t work first time. The 12 Levers of Learning Transfer model maps this out in some detail, and it’s a useful reminder of how small a part of that picture a well-designed training event actually covers.

Then there’s the individual dimension, which the standard content model doesn’t take into account at all. Once someone has reached basic competence in a professional role, their development stops being something that can sensibly be standardised. Their prior experience shapes what they already know. Their current workload affects what they can realistically try. Their confidence and their relationship with their manager affect whether they’ll take any risk at all. And if neurodiversity isn’t in the mix (which it is), a content-heavy, slide-led, pace-standardised programme isn’t a neutral experience. For some learners, a heavily prescribed set course actively gets in the way of real learning.

Knowing is not the same as doing. Both are important, but we shouldn’t assume that one leads to the other. More importantly than that, we need to help stakeholders (who love to see the slide deck, the workbook and the assessment) see that this is just the first step in a learning journey. Having my suitcase packed, my plane booked and itinerary sorted means I’m READY to go on holiday. Until I actually get there, experience the things I’ve planned (and some other’s besides), it’s just a plan. An intention.

There are lots of things we can do to help design formal learning experiences that move away from delivering content and towards enabling real learning. I’ll be discussing some of them at the next Lunch and Learn on Monday 20th July at 1.00pm, but in short:

• It starts with a conversation, not a content list.
• It builds around realistic problem-solving rather than information-giving.
• It treats the learner as an active partner rather than a recipient, because they’re ultimately the ones who decide what to apply and what success looks like in their situation.
• And it stays connected after the event, because one session is rarely enough to shift anything.

None of that is new. Most of us know it. The harder question is how we balance what we know is good practice with what the stakeholders (and budget-holders) want to see.

Why not join me to explore this? Register here and even if you can’t make it, you’ll get the recording.