Sound familiar? You booked the training. Catering arrived on time. The slides were polished. Everyone attended. The feedback forms came back with 4.5 stars. Management ticked the box.

Six months later, nothing has changed.

I have seen this play out so many times I could set my watch by it. Different companies, different topics, different trainers. Same ending. The training was "great." The behaviour did not budge. And I am going to say the thing every L and D person knows but does not put in the post-training report.

4.5 stars and nothing to show for it

High satisfaction scores do not mean anyone learned anything. They mean the trainer was likeable and the sandwiches were good.

I have stronger feelings about feedback forms than is probably healthy. The smile sheet, as it is sometimes called, asks people to rate their experience right after they have had it. Of course it scores well. They just got a free lunch and a day out of their normal work. The bar is in the basement.

What feedback forms do not measure: whether anyone applied any of it. Whether the new tool got used. Whether the process changed. The actual point of the training, in other words.

And yet "4.5 stars" goes in the quarterly report and everyone moves on.

Capability is not a software update

The other issue is that capability is treated like a one-off event. As if you can install new skills in a person the way you install Office 365. One afternoon. Done. Restart your laptop.

It does not work like that and we all know it does not work like that, but the calendar still says "Power BI training, Wednesday 10am" and everyone shows up and we go through the motions.

Real capability is built through doing the thing. Then doing it again, slightly better. Then having someone show you a faster way. Then trying it on your actual data with your actual problem. None of that happens in an afternoon.

The SharePoint graveyard

The course is delivered. The trainer flies home. The slides go in a SharePoint folder called "Training Resources" or "L and D Materials" or, if you are lucky, "2025 Training Q2." That folder will never be opened again. I am very confident about that. I have audited those folders before. They are graveyards.

And then there is no follow-up. No coming back in three weeks to see how people are applying it. No quick refresher. No "remember when we showed you how to use the slicer? Let us look at the report you have been building and tidy it up." Just radio silence until the next training day, which is on a completely different topic.

The most important hour of training is the one that happens four weeks after the training day, when someone actually tries to use the new skill on their real work and gets stuck.

If nobody is there at that moment to help them through it, the moment passes. They give up. They go back to the old way. The capability evaporates.

Same people, same context

Here is what I have learned works. Training built around the tools people use every day. Delivered by people who actually understand those tools, ideally because they built them. Follow-up sessions that are not lectures but problem-solving. A trainer who can say, "Remember last month when we set up that report? Let us look at how you have been using it and where it is breaking."

When we deliver Power BI training, the person teaching it has often been the person who built the solution. That is not a marketing line, it is just a better way to do it. They know the data model because they made it. They know the business context because they sat through the scoping. They can answer questions about why something works the way it does because they made those choices.

It removes a step that nobody talks about: the step where the external trainer has to learn your environment before they can teach anyone about it.

If your training is not changing behaviour

If your training is ticking boxes but nothing is actually shifting, I would love to talk about it. This is the stuff I care about most. I have spent years designing training that lands and watching training that does not, and I have strong opinions about what makes the difference.

Bring me your training program. I will tell you what I think. It will be honest. It might also be a little bit blunt. But it will be useful.