learn-course-design-with-phoebe / Delivery session 1 of 6
Learn Course Design with Phoebe · Delivery track, session 1 of 6

Needs analysis

"Can you do an hour on data contracts so this stops happening." That request is a diagnosis and a prescription, delivered by somebody who has not examined the patient, and if you accept it you will build something excellent that changes nothing. Tonight: the five causes of a performance gap, only two of which training can touch, the one question that settles it in about ninety seconds, and how to say not-only without losing the relationship or the budget.

🟢 Start here Anyone who receives training requests Track B, first session 45 min
0-3 · Welcome 3-18 · Five causes, and the question 18-40 · Build-along: diagnose the real request 40-45 · Q&A
Part 0

How this track works

Track A designed the learning. Track B is everything outside the room that decides whether any of it matters: was this even a training problem, does anybody want to be there, what happens on Monday, how would you know, and how do you get it funded.

🎫 Clear all three quiz questions to stamp your passport Live = presented in the 45 minutes Self-study = the full depth, after class

★ What you walk out with tonight. Daybreak's request diagnosed properly, a five-cause check you can run in a meeting, and a script for saying "training will help with about a third of this" without it sounding like a refusal.

LiveThis track absorbed the corporate-training course2 min▶

Worth saying once, plainly. There was a planned learn-corporate-training-with-phoebe on the shelf alongside this one. The two were describing the same subject from opposite ends - designing learning, and delivering it inside an organisation - and two entries covering one subject disagree with each other eventually.

So this became track B, and the other entry was retired. Needs analysis is here, adult motivation is b2, facilitation is b3, transfer is b4, measurement is b5, and the business case is b6. If somebody sends you looking for the corporate-training course, this is where it went.

Part 1 · covers the five causes

Five reasons somebody is not doing the thing

7 min live

Only two of them are training. The other three are extremely common, and a course aimed at any of them is a course that will be well received and change nothing - which is worse than doing nothing, because everybody now believes the problem was addressed.

Why they are not doing it What actually fixes it Training? They do not know how practice, with feedback yes They do not know it is expected telling them, once, clearly partly They have no tool for it a CI check, a template, a job aid no Doing it right is punished change what gets rewarded no The environment prevents it change the process or the deadline no Daybreak, honestly diagnosed Rows 1 and 2 are real - some engineers genuinely cannot classify a change. And row 4 is real too: shipping fast is rewarded and nobody has ever been thanked for a deprecation notice.
🔍 Click to zoom - most requests have at least one row from the bottom three in them
LiveThe question that settles it in ninety seconds4 min▶

"Could they do it if their life depended on it?"

If the answer is yes - if, with enough at stake, they would get it right - then it is not a skill gap, and no amount of training will help. What you are looking at is expectation, tooling, incentive or environment.

Run it on Daybreak: could a senior engineer, told their job depended on correctly classifying this schema change, get it right? Mostly yes. Which tells you immediately that a pure skills course is aimed at maybe a third of the problem.

The follow-up questions, in order

"Has anybody ever told them this is their job?" Often nobody has.
"What happens today if they do it right?" At Daybreak: nothing. The PR takes longer.
"What happens if they do it wrong?" Also nothing, for them - the analytics team absorbs it at 08:40.
That third answer is usually the whole diagnosis, and no course fixes it.

"Can you do an hour on data contracts so this stops happening?" - "Sure."

You build an excellent hour. Everybody attends, the feedback is good, and four months later a producer renames a column and thirty-four assets break. The conclusion drawn is that the training did not work, or that engineers do not care. Neither is true, and you now have less credibility for the next request.

"Before I build it - could they do it if their life depended on it? Has anybody told them it is their job? What happens today if they do it right?"

"Mostly yes. Probably not. Nothing, it just takes longer." So: a 40-minute session for the third who genuinely cannot classify changes, a CI check that fails the build, and one line in the team's definition of done. The session is now a third of the solution, and you said so in advance.

Part 2 · covers saying it

Saying not-only, without it sounding like no

5 min live

The diagnosis is the easy part. The hard part is telling somebody who asked for a course that a course is a third of the answer, in a way that leaves them pleased rather than defensive.

"Training will not fix this" True, and it lands as a refusal and a lecture They go and ask somebody else, who says yes "Sure, I will build it" Comfortable now, expensive in four months The failure gets attributed to the training, and to you "Yes, and two other things" Build the session, name the other two, own one You are now solving their problem rather than filling their order The third response is the only one where you keep the relationship and the outcome. It also requires you to have done the ninety seconds of diagnosis first, which is the whole session.
🔍 Click to zoom - "yes, and" is not a softening, it is a better diagnosis said out loud
Self-studyThe sentence, and what to do with the other causes4 min▶

The shape that works, borrowed straight from learn-communication-with-phoebe - ask first, then the options:

"Yes, and I think it gets you about a third of the way. The other two thirds are that nobody has told them it is their job, and that today a careful producer just gets a slower pull request. I will build the session. Can you own the definition-of-done line, and shall I ask platform about a CI check?"

  • Say yes first. They asked for something reasonable and refusing it is the fastest way to have the conversation end.
  • Quantify your share. "About a third" is honest, memorable, and sets the expectation you will be measured against in b5.
  • Name the other causes as facts, not criticisms. "Nobody has told them" is a gap; "your team does not care" is an accusation about the same gap.
  • Take one of them yourself. Owning one non-training action is what stops this reading as an excuse, and it is usually the cheapest one.
Build-along

Diagnose a real request

★ 22 min · everyone builds

The gap, behaviourally. Not "they do not understand contracts". What is somebody doing or not doing? "Producers ship schema changes without checking consumers." Now it is observable.

Could they, if it mattered enormously? Yes means it is not a skill gap for most of them. Ninety seconds, and it reframes the whole request.

Five causes. Know-how, expectation, tools, incentives, environment. Mark which apply. Most requests have two or three, and rarely only the first.

Your share. What fraction is genuinely training? Write the number. It will be smaller than the request assumed, and saying it early is what protects you in month four.

The sentence. Yes, and. Name the other causes, take one, ask them to own one. Write it before the meeting.

Write the gap as a behaviour. If your sentence contains "understand", "awareness" or "culture", rewrite it until it names something somebody does or does not do.

Ask the life-depended-on-it question out loud. It feels dramatic and it works because it separates capability from everything else in one move.

Ask the three follow-ups. Has anybody told them? What happens if they do it right? What happens if they do it wrong? The third answer is usually the diagnosis.

Mark the five causes for your real request. Be honest about the incentive row - it is the one everybody skips, because naming it sounds like criticising the manager who is asking you for the training.

Write your fraction. A third, a half, most of it. This number goes in the b6 business case and it is what stops you being blamed for the other two thirds.

Draft the yes-and sentence. Say it out loud once. If it sounds defensive, you probably led with the diagnosis rather than with yes.

Decide which non-training action you will own. One. Usually the cheapest - a job aid, a line in a checklist, a conversation with the platform team.

Notice the trap. Making it mandatory and annual is the standard organisational response and it makes things slightly worse: it converts a session for the people who need it into a compliance exercise for everybody, and b2 is about exactly what that does to a room.

Homework

Before session b2

25 min
  1. Diagnose a real request you have received or delivered. Five causes, marked honestly.
  2. Ask the three follow-ups of somebody real. Especially "what happens if they do it wrong". Write the answer verbatim.
  3. Write your fraction down and say it to whoever asked. Note how the conversation changes.
  4. Look at a course that did not change anything. Which of the five causes was it actually aimed at?
  5. Bring a mandatory course you have attended to b2 - b2 is about what compliance does to a room, and having a real example makes it land.
Check yourself

Three questions

Clear all three and this session gets stamped in your passport.

1 · What does "could they do it if their life depended on it?" establish?

It separates "cannot" from "does not", which is the single most useful split in this discipline and takes about ninety seconds. Training only ever addresses "cannot", and a large share of requests are about "does not".

2 · At Daybreak, nothing happens to a producer who ships a breaking change - the analytics team absorbs it. Which cause is that?

This is the row people skip, because naming it sounds like criticising the manager asking for the training. It is also frequently the largest share of the problem, and no course has ever fixed an incentive.

3 · Why is "training will not fix this" the wrong response even when it is true?

Being right is not the same as being useful. "Yes, and it gets you about a third of the way - here are the other two thirds, I will take one" keeps you in the conversation, and it is a better diagnosis rather than a softer one.

Sources covered

What this session teaches, and where it came from

✓Five causes of a performance gapKnow-how, expectation, tools, incentives, environment - with what fixes each and whether training touches it
✓The life-depended-on-it questionSeparates cannot from does not in ninety seconds, plus the three follow-ups, of which the third is usually the diagnosis
✓Quantifying your share"About a third", said in advance, and why it is what protects you in month four
✓Saying yes-andYes first, name the other causes as facts rather than criticisms, take one yourself. Structure borrowed from learn-communication-with-phoebe
✓The absorption noteThis track replaced the planned learn-corporate-training-with-phoebe, and where each of its topics went
◐Formal root-cause analysisNamed. The full method lives in the operations and lean literature

Every fact on this page, and its verification tier, is recorded in the course's source map. Daybreak is a teaching scenario.

Delivery b1 cheat sheet · pin this

The question"Could they do it if their life depended on it?" Yes means it is not a skill gap.
Five causesKnow-how · expectation · tools · incentives · environment. Only the first two are training.
The third follow-up"What happens if they do it wrong?" Usually the whole diagnosis.
Say your fraction"About a third." In advance, so month four is a conversation and not a blame.
Yes, andNever "training will not fix this". They will find somebody who says yes.
Own one non-training actionIt is what stops the diagnosis reading as an excuse.