You’re on a call. Teams, if you’re like me; Google Meet, if you’re one of the cool ones. A stakeholder says, “We need a course on XYZ.” So, you build a course on XYZ. They’re happy, you’re happy, the completion rates look healthy in the quarterly report and everyone moves on. Job done.
Except it isn’t, is it? Because three months later the same problem is still there, the same people are still frustrated and you’re back on another call being asked for a refresher module. You’ve treated the symptom and left the cause untouched. But you did what was asked of you and in L&D that has always been enough to keep the lights on.
Don’t be an order taker. You’ll hear it at every L&D conference, read it in every L&D book, nod along to it on every L&D podcast. The advice is everywhere and it’s not wrong. But it glosses over something important, being an order taker feels safe. It’s the professional equivalent of ‘nobody ever gets sacked for buying IBM’ (although, come to think of it, whatever happened to OS/2?). The point is, when a stakeholder arrives with a clear request and a deadline, pushing back takes a kind of courage that nobody really prepares you for. Clients don’t enjoy being told that the thing they’ve asked for might not be the thing they need.
And yet. Like the L&D cousin of Ewan McGregor in that Trainspotting monologue — choose order taking, choose comfortable irrelevance, choose measuring your worth in SCORM completions — I chose not to choose that. I chose something else. Specifically, I chose the Learning and Performance Institute’s Performance Consulting Masterclass.
What performance consulting actually is
The premise is simple. Instead of starting with the solution like a course, resource or workshop, you start with the business goal. What are we actually trying to achieve? What does good performance look like? What’s the gap between where we are and where we need to be and what’s really causing it?
Only sometimes is the answer training. Other times it’s something else entirely. Something like unclear expectations, a broken process, a lack of motivation or an environment that quietly prevents people from doing their best work. Performance consulting is about diagnosing the real issue before prescribing the solution. It’s about seeing the whole system with our own eyes before looking at it through the lens of the tools we have at our disposal.
The LPI has led on this approach, performance is literally its middle name. Their masterclass is built around the idea of shifting the conversation from courses and content to outcomes and impact. That doesn’t mean training becomes less important. It means that when we do recommend it, we can be confident it’s the right response and it’s tied to a measurable business outcome rather than an attendance rate.
Why it’s harder than it sounds
I know what you’re thinking: if it were this easy, everyone would be doing it. And you’re right, it’s not easy. Stakeholders and clients approach projects with set expectations and so do the people they report to. The brief has already been written. The budget has already been allocated. The solution has already been decided before you’ve had a chance to ask a single diagnostic question.
Can someone expected to push out two or three learning resources each week really put each request through the full McKinsey treatment? Absolutely not. But they can still approach each one knowing the bigger picture; what are the business objectives, what problem is this learning actually trying to solve beyond the perennial favourite, “just to make people aware.” They can still ask “why” a few times and sometimes that’s enough to shift the whole direction of a project.
And still, there will be pushback. The project sponsor expects a certain output and that output is non-negotiable — outcomes be damned. In those moments, you’re not going to win every argument and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. I’m not an order taker, but I’ll choose my battles carefully. The difference is that I’m now much better at identifying which battles are worth fighting than I was before I understood performance consulting as a discipline.
No, it’s not easy. But then, neither is anything else we do in L&D that’s actually worth doing.
What it means for how I work
I’m an L&D adviser with a focus on digital learning and Open Badges. Performance consulting has sharpened how I approach both sides of that work.
On the digital learning side, it’s given me a framework for the diagnostic conversation, the one that should happen before anyone opens an authoring tool. When a stakeholder comes to me with a request, I now have a clearer way of asking the questions that get us to the root cause rather than jumping straight into building something that might look impressive but solve nothing.
On the badges side, the connection is worth spelling out. Digital badges aren’t just certificates in a different format. At their best, they’re a way of encouraging real-world activity through their criteria (what we ask people to do in order to become eligible). Consider the difference between a badge that says ‘completed the onboarding module’ and one that says ‘demonstrated the ability to conduct a client needs assessment using our diagnostic framework, verified by a line manager.’ The first records an event. The second shapes behaviour toward a genuine performance outcome.
That makes badges a performance tool as well as a recognition tool. And a performance consulting mindset helps makes sure what I credential is tied to business need, rather than just logging someone that someone sat through a video.
The masterclass itself
The LPI’s Performance Consulting Masterclass is a 14-hour programme. I took it online, though it’s also available over two days in person. It covers the core frameworks, tools and consulting skills you need to work in this way.
The best part was a realistic business simulation that ran across the course. Working in groups, we had to apply everything we’d learned by diagnosing performance gaps, identifying root causes and recommending solutions to a fictional scenario. It made the theory come alive in a way that reading about it and hearing about it hadn’t. You quickly discover that what looks like a training problem often has structural or systemic causes underneath and that the skill lies not just in spotting them but in presenting your findings in a way that doesn’t make the stakeholder feel you’ve just told them their baby is ugly.
If I have one critique, it’s a structural one. The masterclass is delivered as a concentrated block and I think it would benefit from being staged into shorter sessions with weeks of practice in between to try the techniques on real projects, stumble, adjust and come back with better questions. Despite this, the course materials are extensive enough that the real learning can continue well after the workshop ends.
What’s next
I’m resisting the urge to wrap this up with a neat bow, because the honest answer is that I’m at the beginning of something, not the end. I have new frameworks, new diagnostic tools and a much clearer sense of what good looks like. What I don’t yet have is the muscle memory that comes from doing this consistently, project after project.
That’s the work now. Not a certificate on the wall or a line on the CV, but a change in daily practice. Asking better questions before jumping to solutions, tying what I design to outcomes that matter and being honest with stakeholders even when the honest answer isn’t the comfortable one. The masterclass gave me the tools. Using them until they become second nature is on me.
If you’re in L&D and you’ve ever suspected that you’re solving the wrong problems, it’s worth a look. You can find out more on the LPI’s website.