START WITH PERFORMANCE. NOT THE PROGRAMME.
Development is often designed around competencies. It should be designed from execution.
Organisations frequently begin with a solution category.
A leadership programme.
A presentation course.
A sales workshop.
A resilience intervention.
That is understandable. Programmes are tangible. Easy to procure. Easy to describe.
But beginning with the programme introduces a risk. The activity is selected before the performance problem has been fully defined.
The real question is: “What needs to improve, and what Professional Performance is required?”
START WITH THE RESULT
Most organisations can describe what they want to achieve. Fewer can describe precisely what people must do differently to make it happen. That translation matters.
A Business Result depends on people performing effectively in the Critical Performance Moments where value is created, protected or lost.
So before deciding what development people need, identify the Critical Performance Moments your people will encounter as they attempt to execute your strategic priorities.
Who needs to perform? Where? With whom? Under what conditions? What does ideal Professional Performance look like in those moments?
What is the gap between that requirement and what people consistently deliver when the moment becomes live?
Design from execution, not activity
Once the requirement is clear, the development question changes.
It is no longer: “What programme should we deliver?”
It becomes: “What will enable better Professional Performance when the real moment arrives?”
That distinction matters.
A single team may need to prepare for one critical customer event.
A leadership population may need to improve a recurring set of difficult conversations.
A global function may need a broader Performance Programme connected to several strategic priorities.
The scale can vary enormously. But the principle remains the same. The Professional Performance requirement determines the Performance Programme.
Not experience. Not habit. Not a hunch about what is wrong. Not what was delivered last year. Not the latest development trend.
One guiding principle: design from execution.
Capability is not the outcome
A programme can build knowledge, skills and Performance Capability. But capability alone is not enough. The commercial value of a programme comes when people can access and apply that capability as confident and consistent Professional Performance in real work.
That is why development cannot be designed only around what people need to learn. It has to be designed around the performance they need to deliver.
Measurement starts with the same question
If the starting point is the performance requirement, a more useful question becomes possible: What evidence would show that Professional Performance has improved?
That evidence might be observable changes in behaviour. Manager assessment. Workplace application. Customer response. Conversion. Progression. Adoption. Retention. Or another measure the organisation already uses to judge success.
The exact measure depends on the requirement. But the evidence that matters is whether Professional Performance has improved, and what Business Result followed.
THE DESIGN PRINCIPLE
“What needs to improve, and what Professional Performance is required?”
Identify the Critical Performance Moments. Define the ideal Professional Performance. Understand what is preventing people from delivering it consistently. Then determine what development and transfer support will enable that performance, and what evidence will show improvement.