Most conversations about developing capability stop at the individual. Can this person do the thing? Has that been assessed, confirmed and recorded? It tells you nothing about whether their work allows them to use it.

• A skilled negotiator with no time to prepare will not negotiate well
• A manager trained in difficult conversations, but given no authority to act on what emerges, will eventually stop having them
• A team handed new tools without any change to the process those tools were meant to replace will keep working the old way, with extra steps bolted on

In each case, the skill is there, but the conditions for using it are not.

Workload, authority, tooling, management support and process design determine whether a skill gets exercised or simply recorded. Build the skill and leave those conditions alone, and what you get is activity: completion data, assessment scores and a well-populated record of who can do what.

Not capability and definitely not performance.

Development strategies that stop at the individual will keep measuring the wrong thing. The harder and more useful question is whether the organisation has designed work that allows the skill to be used. That is a work design question, not a training question.

And it is often where the real problem sits.