Expensive habits that no one talks about
There are patterns that repeat across sectors and budgets. The organization decided it needed to modernize its training. Someone proposes a new learning management system. There will be demos, procurement processes, and announcements. Six months later, the platform was live. After a year, completion rates are low, management doesn’t see any difference in performance, and no one can explain why it’s not working.
This is not a technology issue. It’s a matter of order. Organizations bought solutions before understanding the challenges.
The discipline that must precede these conversations is learning strategy, not “What kind of course should I build?” But, “What performance gap are we trying to close? Why does the gap exist?” If you can’t find an answer to this question, no platform in the world can close that gap.
Why technology-first decisions continue to fail
A good platform can extend learning, personalize experiences, and surface useful data. The problem is never the tool itself. The first thing to do is buy the tools. If that happens, you’ll run into the same set of problems.
Adoption rate is low. Learners don’t log in because the content doesn’t reflect their real work life. This platform was chosen to represent an idea of what learners need, rather than an actual analysis of what they are struggling with. Content without direction. Without a clear strategy, production becomes reactive. Teams upload videos and PDFs not because those assets are part of a coherent learning experience, but because they can. Unprovable ROI. If you don’t define success before you start, you won’t be able to demonstrate it at the end. This is a particularly painful position for NGOs reporting to donors. Misalignment with business goals. Training that isn’t anchored to a specific outcome covers topics and checkboxes, but doesn’t focus on performance, retention, or mission accomplishment. Underutilized systems. Research across the corporate training sector shows that a significant portion of LMS licenses are not fully activated. Organizations pay for functionality built around a list of capabilities rather than a defined set of learning needs.
What to do first: 5 questions every organization needs to answer
A real learning strategy is not a course catalog or training calendar. This is a series of careful decisions made before designing a single slide. Here are the five questions you need to ask first.
What business problem are we solving? Training is not the goal. The goal is to reduce errors in financial reporting. The goal is to reduce onboarding time. Start with real-world results and work backwards. Whose behavior needs to change? Capacity development is about changing what people do, not just what they know. Identify the specific behaviors that are causing the gap and the people whose behaviors need to change. Who exactly are our learners? It’s not just the job title. What devices do they use? How much bandwidth do they have? What languages are they working in? What time constraints do they face? All design decisions are made based on this. What constraints do we operate under? Budget, connectivity, cultural background, access to devices. Organizations that skip this step build strategies that look great on paper, but fall apart in the field. How do you know if it worked? Before you design anything, define what measurable success looks like. Beyond completion rates, you can also observe observable behavioral changes and changes in organizational outcomes.
Before you buy: A simple checklist for decision makers
If you can’t clearly answer these questions, you’re not ready to buy technology yet.
Has a learning needs analysis been completed? Is there evidence of actual performance gaps? Have measurable learning outcomes been identified? Specific, observable behavioral changes rather than “staff understanding the policy”. Do we know the learner’s technology environment? Devices, bandwidth, connectivity, mobile and desktop. Have you mapped out the learner journey? What does the complete experience look like beyond individual modules? Is there an assessment framework? How do you measure impact on behavior, not just completion? Is technology contributing to or defining strategy? If you’re building content for a platform, stop and reevaluate.
what actually happens
We’ve seen both sides of this pattern. Organizations that started with a strategy consistently outperformed those without a strategy, regardless of the platform they ended up using.
NetHope (large scale leadership development)
When NetHope commissioned the Leadership Skills Development Academy, the conversation didn’t start with “Which platform should I use?” It started with a tougher question: What does digital-age leadership in humanitarian organizations actually look like, and what capabilities are currently missing? This required analytics that shaped everything from learning architectures, modalities, cohort models, and content sequencing. Technology helped strategy, not the other way around. Read the full story in the NetHope LSDA case study.
IFI/UNHCR (Learning in the Most Constrained Environment)
Learners in this program had access to unpredictable technology, time, and stable learning conditions. A team that started by choosing a platform would quickly realize it wasn’t a good fit. Mr. Kashida began by mapping the reality of learners. Next came the decision on the format. Technology was selected last. The completeness reflected the difference. For more information, see the IFI UNHCR case study.
How will Mr. Kashida tackle this?
We don’t start by proposing a platform or drafting a course outline. We start with questions that clarify whether training is the right solution, and if so, what it looks like. In practice, our process follows five steps:
Diagnose performance gaps. We distinguish between knowledge, skills, motivation and environmental issues. Define measurable outcomes. Before we begin design work, we agree on what success looks like at a behavioral and organizational level. Build a customized learning strategy. It includes not only implementation planning, but also modalities, sequencing, learner experience architecture, and ongoing support. Design and produce experiences that inform your strategy. Content built to be contextually relevant, engaging, and connected to real-world job performance. Deliver it and measure it. We help organizations deploy learning at scale and build the evaluation infrastructure to prove impact.
Constraints vary depending on whether we work with global humanitarian networks, public sector agencies, or local NGOs. The principle is not.
takeout
Technology will continue to evolve. The platform continues to add features. And organizations will continue to invest in them before they are ready to take advantage of them.
Organizations that lead the way in talent development don’t necessarily have the most sophisticated tools. They are the ones who have learned to ask the right questions before opening a purchase order. They first defined a learning strategy and leveraged technology.
If your organization is planning a learning initiative in 2026, or trying to understand why your last learning initiative wasn’t quite as successful, the answer will almost certainly start with strategy, not software.
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