Complete learning designs and design-craft essays, published in full and grounded in named, citable research — not gated, not a teaser for a sales call.
"Get everyone trained on AI" is usually four requests. Four questions show which one is actually training.
Diagnostic craftTurn "make them more strategic" into a behaviour you can design for: three questions, one test, one line for your brief.
Diagnostic craftHow to check an AI meeting summary from a training needs conversation: three searches of the transcript, five minutes.
Diagnostic craftHow to close a training needs conversation with stakeholders: read back three lines, and ask which one is wrong.
Diagnostic craftSix common leadership symptoms mapped to the framework each one implies, the modules that follow, what you can measure, and when the frame is wrong.
Diagnostic craftFew leadership briefs are purely technical or purely adaptive. How to split one, which frame each half needs, and what you can honestly promise.
Business caseBig ROI numbers can cost you the room. Work out what a leadership programme must achieve to pay for itself, then test that against a conservative method.
Design craftWell-structured training proposals lose all the time. The five causes, the three readers every proposal has, and the clause most consultants refuse to write.
EvidenceEvery guide says confirm the source exists. In L&D that test passes the errors that damage you. Here is a five-check method with five worked examples.
EvidenceNine claims our program designs rest on, traced to the sources we read — with sample sizes, locators, and the popular versions the sources do not support.
Design craftMost group leadership curricula assume authority a capability-centre manager does not hold. The decision-rights audit, cohorting rule and measurement fix.
Diagnostic craftManagers escalating every decision has three possible causes. Here's the test that separates them, the frame each implies, and what you can measure.
Business caseOpen-enrolment seats, a bespoke design, or build it in-house. Work out the headcount at which each one becomes cheaper, using published prices and your own quote.
Full programme designEvery module states the capability it builds, the research it rests on, what happens in the room, what the manager does between sessions, and how you'd know whether it worked — plus a measurement plan and an honest section on what the design does not fix.
Design craftThe diagnostic call gets most of the attention. The conversations before and after it decide whether the program actually lands.
Design craftMost proposals treat a client's competency framework as a formality to map against. Four moves that treat it as the design brief it already is — including the two adjacent level descriptors that hand you a pre-approved objective.
Design craftL&D is almost always your entry point. It's rarely your actual audience. The gap between the two causes more design misses than any framework failure.
Diagnostic craftSix annotated excerpts from a discovery call: what the client said, the wrong turn, and the exact words that redirect it — plus what the evidence says about whether any of it works.
Diagnostic craftThe can't-versus-won't test tells you whether it's a training problem. It doesn't tell you whether it's a solvable one. The second test, the four situations they produce, and what to sell in each.
MeasurementWhich behaviour, rated by whom, at what point, against what threshold — with a worked observation rubric and the evidence on who should do the rating.