The Training vs Capability Decision Model, Explained
One question decides whether a performance gap needs training or something structural — here's how to apply it properly.
The one question the model asks
The model reduces to a single test: is the knowledge or skill required to perform genuinely missing? Not 'would more training help' — almost anything can be marginally helped by more training — but whether its specific absence is what's actually causing the performance gap.
If the answer is yes: it's a training problem
Where the required knowledge or skill genuinely doesn't exist yet, training is the correct intervention, and the next step is a proper Training Needs Analysis to define exactly what's needed and how to build it defensibly.
If the answer is no: what it usually is instead
Where the skill or knowledge already exists but performance still falls short, the cause is usually structural: unclear roles, weak governance, a process working against the outcome, or leadership not creating the conditions for people to apply what they already know. None of these are fixed by more training, however well-intentioned.
Using the model without overcomplicating it
The model is deliberately simple, and that's the point — it's meant to be applied quickly, before budget is committed, not turned into its own lengthy analytical exercise. Where the answer isn't obvious, that uncertainty itself is the signal to run a proper diagnostic, like the Capability Readiness Review, rather than guessing.
Common questions on this topic.
Yes, and it's a common finding — the model doesn't require a single cause, only that each contributing cause is honestly tested rather than training being assumed as the whole answer by default.
Ideally both together — L&D alone may be biased toward finding a training answer, and the business alone may lack the framework to test the alternative structural explanations systematically.
No — it's the test that decides whether a TNA is the right next step at all, not a substitute for the analysis itself once training is confirmed as relevant.
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