When training isn't enough

Six weeks after go-live, Cera pulled the adoption data.

Her team knocked it out of the park with a 94 percent completion on training. On paper, it was a success. In practice, usage was inconsistent, managers were reverting to old workarounds, and the help desk was fielding questions the training had explicitly covered.

“They know how to do it,” her implementation partner told her. “They’re just not doing it.”

That distinction is the gap that most project plans never design for.

What training does (and doesn’t do)

Formal training teaches people what to do. It creates awareness, documents the process, demonstrates the steps. What it doesn’t do is change behavior. What you truly want is people to DO things differently. 

The 70:20:10 model, developed by Lombardo and Eichinger, describes how adults actually learn in professional contexts:

70% of learning comes from on-the-job experience — doing real work, navigating real problems, making decisions under the actual pressure of the job.

20% comes from social learning — peer exchange, coaching, collaborative problem-solving, working alongside someone who already knows.

10% comes from formal training — courses, job aids, structured instruction.

Most project training plans invest heavily in the 10 percent. They assume that if people understand what to do, they’ll do it. Behavioral science consistently contradicts this assumption.

Designing for work, not the classroom

The framework in Chapter 8 of Inspired by Fear asks you to define success as a behavior, not a knowledge level. Not “managers understand the approval workflow”. But:  “managers are processing requests within 48 hours using the system without a workaround.”

Cera went back to her adoption data and picked the three roles where uptake was lowest. For each one, she identified a single on-the-job moment. A real situation that already existed in their week where the new behavior could be practiced with support nearby. She also identified a peer role model in each team: someone who had already made the transition and could make the new behavior visible.

Within three weeks, the reversion rate in those three roles dropped significantly. Not because the training improved. She improved the learning environment (on-the-job, at work).

The learning design self-check

Before any major training rollout:

• Have I defined success as a behavior, not a knowledge level?
• Does each role have at least one on-the-job moment before formal training begins?
• Is there a feedback loop so people know how they’re progressing?
• Does formal training follow practice, not precede it?
• Have I removed a barrier that makes the new behavior harder?
• Have I identified a peer role model to make the new behavior visible?

Most project teams can answer yes to three or four of these. The ones they can’t answer are usually the ones driving the adoption gap.

Learning that sustains behavior change

When learning happens focused on the 70 percent that happens in real work, with real peers, under real conditions, it builds something that outlasts the project: a team that knows how to figure things out together.

Get immediate access to the full learning design worksheet is in the downloadable toolkit when you buy Inspired by Fear. 

Related reading:

– How to improve transformation execution

– Your project training is hitting only 10% of learner needs

– The complete guide to applying behavioral science to organizational change