Stop calling every performance problem a skills gap. It’s the easiest diagnosis – someone says something inappropriate, put them on a diversity course. Regularly late? A timekeeping course.

Job done, box ticked, and budget spent. Except most of the time it isn’t a skills gap at all.

Ask a manager why their team keeps missing a deadline and watch what surfaces. Half the time it’s not that people can’t do the task. It’s that nobody told them what “good” looks like.

Or they know exactly what to do and don’t have the time to do it properly because three other priorities landed on the same week.

Or the process routes the work through four approval steps that didn’t exist a year ago.

Or the tool they’re required to use fights them at every turn.

Or their manager says one thing in the team meeting and something else entirely when the pressure’s on.

None of that is fixed by ‘training’ or ‘learning’. You can run the best course in the world, and the deadline will still slip, because the deadline was never about ability. Skill is one possible cause of a performance gap. It’s rarely the first one worth checking, and it’s almost never the only one.

Before you commission anything, ask what’s actually broken: can they not do it, don’t they know what’s expected, don’t they have the time, is the process working against them, are the tools adequate, is management sending mixed signals. Training answers exactly one of those questions.

What evidence do you have that it’s skill, and not one of the other five?