Learning Leaders Digest #107

Here's what's interesting this week.

Jun 01, 2026

Welcome back, Learning Leaders.

I’m especially glad to be writing this one because the podcast is finally moving again.

My conversation with Amy Vaughan, CPTD is live, and I already have this week’s episode recorded and edited. After a longer pause than I wanted, it feels good to have that part of Lessons from Learning Leaders back in motion.

Now, last week’s poll.

The question was: “What makes it hardest for you to build training the right way?”

The answer was not close.

71% said stakeholders want too much content packed into too little time.
The only other answer that received votes was “I’m brought in too late, after the solution is already decided,” at 29%.

That tells a pretty familiar story.

Most trainers are not struggling because they lack ideas. They are struggling because the conditions are bad before they ever start designing. The timeline is tight. The deck is bloated. The stakeholder wants “interactive,” but also wants 97 talking points covered in 45 minutes. Then, when the session feels rushed, everyone wonders why the training did not land.

This is one of those problems that sounds tactical, but it is really about trust and influence. Can you push back? Can you protect practice time? Can you help stakeholders understand that covering more does not mean people learn more?

That is the real work. A question I like to ask stakeholders and SMEs is, “Can you tell me a real world scenario where the participants will need to know this material?” If they can’t give you an answer, then it isn’t “need to know” and can be put in the “Nice to Know” section of a workbook. That one question can help you separate the wheat from the chaff.

This week, I want to ask a question that gets underneath the design problem.