The Question I Didn’t Ask

How L&D teams and their vendors keep each other in Assumption-Based Training, and what changes when expectations are defined before design.

A brief that was sure of itself

Not long ago, we got a request from a well-known global fashion brand. The brief was short. They had a lot of training in their LMS, but enrollment and engagement were very low, and they had concluded that the courses weren’t produced well enough. They wanted better design, more interactivity, and better multimedia, and they came to us because they believed eWyse could do that.

We produced a whole series of courses at a very high production level, with rich multimedia and plenty of interactivity. In our team, we call that “all the bells and whistles.”

What happened after that, we don’t know. We never learned what results those courses were supposed to bring to the business, whether people started working differently, or even whether enrollment went up. Shortly after the project ended, we heard that the L&D manager who had commissioned it had left the company. The whole project became a black box, both for us and for the client. Nobody can say what all those hours and all that money actually produced.

How I let it happen

I had doubts about the brief from the beginning. I wanted to understand where their certainty came from, because in my experience low engagement usually has other causes, like how the organization treats learning and whether managers care about it at all.

In the first needs analysis meeting, I asked how they knew the design was the cause. The L&D manager was very firm that it was, and that they needed a better one. I tried from another angle and asked how senior management sees L&D in their company, because I wanted to understand whether the problem might be cultural. The answer was sharp: management values L&D very highly.

I still remember the tone of that answer. In that moment, I understood that if I asked one more question that doubted the brief, or even mentioned measuring results, we could lose the project. So I stopped asking. Maybe I should have handled it differently; I don’t know. What I do know is that in our industry it’s already hard to win a project, and it’s even harder to sell an approach that questions whether the project makes sense in the first place.

The pattern has a name

That project is the one I remember best, but unfortunately it isn’t an exception. Many of our projects start in a similar way.

Someone in the organization decides something should improve, and usually already has some result in mind. The idea reaches L&D, which turns it into a training brief that will hopefully move that result. Somewhere along the way, the result gets lost. By the time the brief reaches an agency like ours, nobody knows exactly what the result was, who asked for it, or how we would measure whether it was achieved.

I call this Assumption-Based Training: training that starts without agreed expectations, without a defined business outcome, and without anyone responsible for answering how we will know it actually worked.

Why it keeps happening

I think it’s because the arrangement is comfortable for everyone. It’s as if everyone knows where they stand, and there’s no need to rock the boat.

L&D is afraid of a bad result, and there’s little reason to propose measuring impact if nobody in management has asked for it. Defining outcomes before design looks like extra work and extra cost for something no one requested, so very few people start it on their own.

Agencies like ours fear losing the project if we push clients in a direction they don’t want to go. I think we have to admit that we are accomplices in this.

iSpring’s research shows where this leads: only 11% of L&D professionals can confirm with data that training led to a measurable business improvement, and that number hasn’t changed in a year.

What I ask for now, before we build

Before we start building anything today, I first want L&D to know that every training initiative can be connected to the business result it’s supposed to achieve, and that this connection has to be made before design.

It starts with a simple question: who are the stakeholders? Most often I hear a few people from L&D, maybe a subject matter expert, and the target audience. What’s missing are the people who will decide whether the training was a success.

The most important stakeholder is the sponsor who authorizes the initiative. This is one person who controls the budget, has the authority to decide, and needs the result. They define what success looks like, and everything designed afterward serves that definition. It’s often someone from senior management, but it doesn’t have to be.

There are usually a few people around this sponsor who reinforce the initiative. They’re close to them, often a level below, and they know what needs to change on the ground and can support it after the training.

Then there are line managers, who are most often left out. They’re closest to the people being trained, so they know which behaviors need to change and what knowledge is needed to change them.

All of these people define expectations from their own position. Jim and Wendy Kirkpatrick call this Return on Expectations. It’s broader than ROI, and it may or may not include a financial return.

For me, the most important change is that L&D is no longer the only one responsible for the outcome. Everyone who defined the expectations shares responsibility for the success or failure of the training. I believe this shift in who owns the result could finally move that 11% upward.

Tip: Ask about the present, the past, and the future

After you’ve identified the stakeholders, you need to talk with each of them. Depending on the initiative, that can be five people or more than fifteen, and interviews with senior management can be challenging.

Many stakeholders find it hard to answer the question “What do you expect from this training?” It’s too abstract, so you usually get something general like “better communication” or “more engagement.” It works better to take them through three points in time, starting with what is happening now, then how it started, and then what success would look like in a year.

Present: “Can you describe a specific situation from the last few weeks where you saw this problem?”

Past: “How long has this been going on, and what do you think caused it?”

Future: “Imagine it’s twelve months from now and this has worked. What are people doing differently, and what would you show as proof?”

I usually add one more question: “Let’s say the training works perfectly. What else would need to change for that to happen?” The first three questions give you the stakeholder’s expectations. The last one tells you whether training is the right solution at all. If the answers are mostly about processes, tools, or how managers lead, you may be looking at a problem training alone can’t solve.

Before any money is spent

Pre-Design Intelligence means agreeing with everyone who has a stake in the result on what an initiative must change and how that change will be measured, before anything is designed. It doesn’t guarantee results. But it opens up the possibility for stakeholders to agree on what success means before design starts, and for L&D to take part in that conversation as a real partner. And because everyone agreed on the result before the project started, they can later check whether the money spent on training actually paid off.

I didn’t have that conversation with the fashion brand. To this day, nobody knows whether all that work made a difference.