By Kevin Wallace
Most organisations don’t have a learning problem. They have a timing problem, and until that shifts, behaviour won’t.
Organisations are investing heavily in capability. Programs are well designed. Content is relevant. Engagement is often strong. Yet when the moment to apply the learnings arrives, people revert to old habits. Not because they didn’t learn, but because they could not access that learning when it mattered. Because most learning is delivered at the wrong time to be useful.
We assume learning transfers because people understand it. The brain does not work that way. There is a biological reason for this. Under pressure, the brain defaults to familiar patterns stored in well-established neural pathways.
Timely cues and feedback can interrupt this, helping the brain encode new responses while the experience is still active. Without this, people revert to habit, even when they know better (Kahneman 2011; Sousa 2017).
Next time you’re on a plane and the safety presentation is being made, have a look around and see how many are paying attention. Now imagine the pilot has announced that the plane will be making an emergency landing. The safety presentation is then replayed. How many people do you think will now be paying attention?
In most organisations, learning is still treated as something that happens in dedicated times and is often away from the workstation.
People attend programs, absorb frameworks, and return to environments that demand immediate performance. The expectation is that learning will transfer later. Often, it does not.
Athletes do not rely on recall from a session delivered weeks earlier. They train in conditions that mirror performance. Feedback is immediate. Adjustments are constant. Learning and doing are inseparable.
A professional services firm invested in leadership development focused on difficult client conversations. Participants rated the program highly and demonstrated strong capability in simulations. However, application remained low.
When observed in live client settings, leaders defaulted to old habits under pressure. There was no structured support in the moment, no prompts, and no immediate feedback.
The later shift in behaviour came from introducing three simple in-the-moment cues used immediately before key client interactions:
What outcome matters most in this conversation?
What is the client likely concerned about?
What question will I ask first?
Leaders captured these in a 60-second pre-meeting pause. Immediately after the meeting, managers ran five-minute debriefs using two questions:
Where did I stay with the intent?
Where did I revert to habit?
Behaviour shifted within weeks. Not because capability improved, but because it was activated at the moment of use.
Insight: Capability did not fail. It was simply unavailable at the moment it was needed.
The implication is not to build better courses, but to design better moments. This requires a shift in mindset:
Practice should resemble performance
Feedback should be immediate
Support should appear at the point of need
Repetition should be built into work
This is not a learning-design challenge. It is a work-design challenge. Leadership development does not fail in the content; it fails in the moments where no one intervenes.
A manufacturer introduced a new project governance framework supported by formal training. Leaders understood the model and could explain it clearly in workshops. In practice, project reviews continued to follow old patterns. Under time pressure, leaders defaulted to familiar behaviours, focusing on updates rather than decisions. The shift occurred when governance meetings were redesigned around specific decision triggers.
At three defined points in each review, participants were required to pause and ask:
What decision are we making here?
What risk are we accepting?
What alternatives have we not considered?
A rotating peer observed each meeting and provided real-time feedback immediately after, focused on decision clarity and challenge quality, not content. Within one reporting cycle, discussions became shorter and clearer.
Insight: Behaviour changed when learning was triggered in the flow of work, not remembered afterwards.
This has a direct implication for leadership. In high-performing environments, leaders do not just allocate work. They shape when and how learning happens within it. The most powerful interventions are small. A question asked at the right time. A pause before a decision. A reflection immediately after an interaction.
These are the moments where behaviour shifts.
Performance does not change when people understand something. It changes when they can adjust, in real time. The uncomfortable observation is that many learning strategies are optimised for delivery, not for use. Until that changes, neither will behaviour and performance.
References and Further Reading
Kahneman, D. (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow, Penguin.
Sousa, D. A. (2017) How the Brain Learns, Corwin.
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An accomplished senior executive with demonstrated competencies in leading people, strategic planning, safety, customer relationships and delivering profit and cash results. Kevin guides business leaders through their toughest challenges to achieve their goals. With a deep understanding of organisational issues and a broad business knowledge base, Kevin is a valuable external asset to any team. His talent for deep listening helps him uncover root causes and develop tailored solutions. Kevin thrives on complexity and brings proven concepts, applied experience, and personalisation to every project. Contact via kevin.wallace@stokeconsulting.com.au or
https://www.stokeconsulting.com.au/