The goal wasn't to justify training.
It was to understand what was standing in the way.
What was actually getting in the way?
I didn't want to treat the initial request as proof that training was the right answer. I wanted to look more closely at what was happening in the work itself, where performance was breaking down, and what someone would actually need in order to perform differently.
QUESTION THE REQUEST
I started by separating what the business was asking for from what employees actually needed to perform differently. A training request gave me a starting point, but not enough information to design the solution.
LOOK FOR THE BARRIER
I wanted to know what was getting in the way of the desired behavior. If employees already knew what to do, repeating the information would not solve the problem. The more useful question was whether the barrier came from knowledge, the environment, expectations, resources, or something else entirely.
LET THE EVIDENCE DECIDE
I built the analysis so the evidence could lead somewhere other than training. Learning remained one possible response, but it had to earn its place. If the performance gap could not reasonably be changed through learning, I did not want the analysis to manufacture a reason to build it.