When a team isn’t performing as expected, the explanation that reaches learning and development (L&D) is usually that the team needs to know more, and the request that follows is for training. Yet a perceived knowledge gap may be an application, incentive, workflow or customer-value problem. Training strategy built on the wrong diagnosis will aim at a problem the team doesn’t have.

I recently had Fabrício Peres as a guest on our podcast and this came up in several of the experiences he shared. Fabrício has spent around 20 years in the agriculture sector, working across science, sales, sustainability and technology, and across local, regional and global roles. His experience includes working with AgInput and AgTech businesses and helping take technical solutions to market in Brazil.

Two of his experiences, along with a recent CommLab India engagement, follow the same pattern. Each started with the explanation that the team needed more knowledge and, each time, looking closer changed what the training needed to do.

When the Gap Is Customer Value

One of these experiences involved a customer I worked with in the water-purification business.

The company sells equipment, software and products to factories that use water. It has a large team of highly qualified senior sales professionals. The challenge was with its software business. The person responsible for the software revenue was frustrated because the sales teams were not educating customers about the value of the software, and the targets were not being met. On the surface, it seemed that the sales teams needed to get better at explaining the software.

When I described the situation to Fabrício, he looked at it from the customer’s perspective. Was the software addressing a problem the customer actually had? Was the value being communicated in a way that mattered to the customer? Was the company looking at the whole solution or only at what it wanted its sales teams to sell?

His experience had taught him to look at the problem from that side of the conversation as well. A company can have good technology and experienced sales teams and still struggle if the solution is not connected to the customers’ needs.

In this case, coaching sales teams on customer-value framing helped them position the software around the specific problems it could solve for each customer. That gave them a stronger way to communicate its value and ultimately led to better product sales.

The sales teams had the qualifications and the experience. The gap sat in how the software connected to each customer’s problem.

Before finalizing a brief for product training, check whether the sales team can name the specific problem the product solves for each customer. Then look at whether the training is built around what the customer needs or around what the company wants to sell.

When the Gap Is Application and Incentives

Fabrício came across a similar assumption in his work with frontline sales representatives.

Earlier in his career, he was involved in training sales representatives around stewardship and sustainability. Later, when he moved into global roles, he sometimes received global training programs and questioned whether the content addressed what was actually affecting performance.

Before adapting the material, he would speak with the frontline sales representatives who were going to use it. Some initially felt they lacked the required knowledge. But when they talked through their work, it became clear that they already knew more than expected and that they understood their customers and the practical challenges they faced.

What surfaced instead were other factors, including incentives and the realities of the job.

Here, the perceived knowledge gap was an application and incentive problem. Knowing what to do does not always translate into doing it when the environment makes the desired behavior difficult, unrewarded or impractical. A learner-centric approach means understanding these realities before deciding what the training needs to address.

For a brief like this, the frontline conversation comes first. Ask the team what it already knows and what gets in its way on the job, and check whether current incentives reward the behavior the training is meant to build.

When the Gap Is a Changing Workflow

A reorganization puts the same assumption to the test at a much larger scale. That was the case in a recent CommLab India engagement with a multinational organization, a leading American producer of packaged consumer foods, which was going through a major reorganization and needed to upskill employees on newly defined methodologies.

The organization’s engagement with CommLab India had focused on instructional design and development. As it went through the reorganization, it expanded the scope of that work. It brought in a learning architect to work with its internal L&D team, first to understand the need and scope it, and only then to decide on the learning strategy and solutions.

The diagnosis examined how the reorganization affected each core division. It showed that the change involved more than new processes. Regional teams had to collaborate differently on strategy and execution. Employees who stayed in their existing roles were affected, and so were those who moved into new ones. And the new operating model depended on managers, leaders and teams working closely together. Knowledge of the new methodologies was needed, but the gap also sat in the workflow itself and in the shift in mindset the change asked of employees, which called for sustained change management alongside upskilling.

The learning strategy was built around this. The journey opened by preparing learners’ mindsets for the change, then introduced the new work methodologies and process frameworks. After that came skill-building and practice in a social learning environment, backed by performance aids employees could use on the job. Managers received resources to support and coach their teams and learning champions were recognized and incentivized, reflecting the same application and incentive factors Fabrício described. The learning was organized into three-month, role-specific journey maps for 11 audiences and a social microlearning platform was used to encourage collaboration across regions.

The results were tracked at two levels across the program, which combined custom eLearning with microlearning and other formats. More than 300 learners completed over 1,400 hours of learning on the microlearning platform, with an 80% completion rate. Beyond participation, two KPIs tracked before and after the training showed improvement and tool usage increased by between 16% and 700%.

When the brief is for a reorganization, map how each role’s daily work will change before signing off and note what employees will need besides new knowledge, such as practice on the job or support from their managers.

Across all three situations, looking closer changed what the training needed to do. And that leaves me with a question for L&D leaders: How often do we pause before building the training to ask whether the performance challenge calls for more knowledge — or something else?