Is 'training doesn't stick' actually backed by research, or is it just a feeling?

It's well documented. McKinsey found only 11% of executives strongly agree their leadership-development interventions achieve and sustain results, and Gallup found only 23% of employees rated recent compliance/ethics-style training 'excellent,' with just 1 in 10 saying it changed how they actually work.

How much money is actually being spent on training that doesn't produce lasting change?

A very large amount. Harvard Business Review has reported companies globally spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on training, yet the learning routinely fails to change organisational performance because people revert to old habits once the programme ends.

What's the biggest practical obstacle CHROs report to making development actually work?

Time. Gallup's 2025 research on employee development found 89% of CHROs cite time away from job responsibilities as the top obstacle. Development competes directly with the day job, and the day job usually wins by default.

Why does insight fade even when the workshop itself was genuinely good?

Because a workshop changes intent, not infrastructure. The moment people return, the existing meetings, unspoken decision rights, and incentives reassert themselves, since they're the only thing that's actually structural, so insight without infrastructure always loses.

What does 'embedding over events' actually look like day to day?

The new behaviour has to be load-bearing somewhere real: a decision review that now requires it, a standard that's checked, a ritual that reinforces it. That way the desired behaviour becomes the easiest way to get work done, not something people have to remember to do.

How do you actually measure whether development spend is working, beyond a satisfaction survey?

The real test isn't how people felt during the programme; it's what's structurally different a quarter later: which decisions, meetings, or standards changed and stayed changed.

Is this something an internal L&D team can fix on their own?

Often the diagnosis is easy for an internal team to see; the harder part is redesigning the operating rhythm itself while still running the business, which is usually where outside structure accelerates things rather than replaces the internal team's work.

Is 'training doesn't stick' actually backed by research, or is it just a feeling?

It's well documented. McKinsey found only 11% of executives strongly agree their leadership-development interventions achieve and sustain results, and Gallup found only 23% of employees rated recent compliance/ethics-style training 'excellent,' with just 1 in 10 saying it changed how they actually work.

How much money is actually being spent on training that doesn't produce lasting change?

A very large amount. Harvard Business Review has reported companies globally spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on training, yet the learning routinely fails to change organisational performance because people revert to old habits once the programme ends.

What's the biggest practical obstacle CHROs report to making development actually work?

Time. Gallup's 2025 research on employee development found 89% of CHROs cite time away from job responsibilities as the top obstacle. Development competes directly with the day job, and the day job usually wins by default.

Why does insight fade even when the workshop itself was genuinely good?

Because a workshop changes intent, not infrastructure. The moment people return, the existing meetings, unspoken decision rights, and incentives reassert themselves, since they're the only thing that's actually structural, so insight without infrastructure always loses.

What does 'embedding over events' actually look like day to day?

The new behaviour has to be load-bearing somewhere real: a decision review that now requires it, a standard that's checked, a ritual that reinforces it. That way the desired behaviour becomes the easiest way to get work done, not something people have to remember to do.

How do you actually measure whether development spend is working, beyond a satisfaction survey?

The real test isn't how people felt during the programme; it's what's structurally different a quarter later: which decisions, meetings, or standards changed and stayed changed.

Is this something an internal L&D team can fix on their own?

Often the diagnosis is easy for an internal team to see; the harder part is redesigning the operating rhythm itself while still running the business, which is usually where outside structure accelerates things rather than replaces the internal team's work.

Leadership Challenge

Why leadership development doesn't stick

Q: What from your last leadership programme is still visibly changing how your team works today?

For most organisations running the Event Trap, the honest answer is very little, which is the clearest sign the programme delivered insight without a system to hold it, and the old operating default reasserted itself once everyone was back at their desks.

The offsite was energising. The frameworks were sharp. Three weeks later, almost nothing has changed. This is the predictable arc of development delivered as an event: insight without an operating system to hold it. Capability that isn't wired into how decisions, reviews and handoffs actually run will always decay back to the old default — because the old default is the only thing that's structural.

Meet the adversary

The Event Trap

The Event Trap converts development budget into a temporary mood. You pay for energy that fades, then pay again next year to re-create it — while the behaviours you actually wanted never become permanent. The recurring spend hides a recurring failure to change anything structural.

What the research shows

The vast majority of leadership-training content is forgotten within weeks of delivery, and most corporate development spend produces no measurable behaviour change — the failure is not the content but the absence of a system to embed it.

Ask yourself

What from your last leadership programme is still visibly changing how your team works today?

The reframe

Development sticks only when it is wired into the operating system — the reviews, decisions and handoffs that run every week — rather than delivered as a moment. You don't program new behaviour into people for a day; you install it into how the work runs, so the new way becomes the path of least resistance.

Why insight decays back to default

An offsite gives people new language and intent, but it changes nothing structural. The moment they return, the old operating system — the standing meetings, the unspoken decision rights, the existing incentives — reasserts itself, because it is the only thing that is actually built. Insight without infrastructure always loses to infrastructure. The fade isn't a motivation problem; it's gravity.

Embedding over events

To make capability stick, the new behaviour has to be load-bearing somewhere: a decision review that now requires it, a standard that is checked, a ritual that reinforces it. When the desired behaviour is the easiest way to get the work done, it persists without anyone having to remember the offsite. The test of any development spend is not how people felt that week — it is what is structurally different a quarter later.

Leaders who've moved past this

Real client outcomes, attributed by role and sector (names withheld).

Strategy that sticks

"He embedded strategy into how our leadership team operates daily. It stopped dying in the inbox."

COO

Healthcare network · US

The offsite finally stuck

"Every offsite used to evaporate by week two. This one changed how we run Mondays."

Head of Operations

Energy · Australia

Capability that outlasts

"A multi-year partnership that rebuilt how our entire leadership layer operates. The capability outlasted my tenure."

CEO

Enterprise telecommunications · Australia

Board-ready clarity

"Evidence-based and board-ready. He challenged our thinking at the top, the operating model is materially clearer."

CFO

ASX-listed financial services · UK

A clearer operating model

"He re-architected our leadership operating model from the top. Fewer meetings, faster decisions, clearer ownership."

EVP Operations

Industrial manufacturing · Canada

Measurable capability

"He turned a vague 'leadership development' ambition into a measurable, organisation-wide capability."

CHRO

Global manufacturer · UK

Proof

What installing capability changed

Real engagements where this exact constraint was removed, the intervention, and what changed.

Fortis Investment Management Australia (FIMAL) → BNP Paribas

Alignment System

Constraint

Under a global corporate transaction, FIMAL's European parent was acquired by BNP Paribas. With $4.3B in local assets under management across individually managed accounts, the APAC restructure carried extremely complex and sensitive strategic and operational stakes, and two earlier attempts to lead the integration had already failed before Stuart was called in.

Intervention

Brought in as the fixer after two prior attempts had stalled, Stuart took over the restructure and led the APAC region integration program end-to-end through the M&A, resolving leadership and operating-structure issues across the newly combined organisation on multiple fronts simultaneously, not the single workstream that had failed twice before.

Outcomes

Succeeded where two earlier attempts had failed, the $4.3B AUM APAC integration led through to completion
Strategic and operational continuity maintained across multiple fronts through a highly sensitive restructure
Individually managed accounts transitioned without disruption to service
Earned a lasting reputation inside the organisation as "the Fixer", the person called in when an integration was already failing, not just when it started

International Telco · multi-team

Confidential engagement

Constraint

Change kept living in the PMO instead of the business, this wasn't the first attempt: new processes and systems had already been rolled out more than once without sticking, adoption stalling below 60% each time, with every relaunch meaning the same work redone from scratch.

Intervention

Rather than run a fourth identical rollout, installed a common leadership language and toolset owned by the leaders themselves, not the program office, fixing the ownership problem, the process problem, and the habit problem together.

Outcomes

Adoption of new processes and systems rose from 57% to 86% in 6 months, this time, it actually stuck
Rework due to poor adoption decreased by 33% within 9 months
Stakeholder satisfaction with change delivery improved by 19 points over 12 months

Healthcare scale-up · ~$60M

Confidential engagement

Constraint

Rapid hiring had roughly doubled headcount inside eighteen months, and the culture hadn't kept pace, what got rewarded in practice (speed, individual heroics) quietly contradicted what leadership said mattered (collaboration, sustainable pace). Regretted attrition was climbing fastest in the teams the business could least afford to lose, and exit conversations kept naming the same gap: what was said and what was actually lived didn't match.

Intervention

Activated a cultural reinforcement system rather than another values poster, translated the stated values into specific, observable behaviours, built them directly into how every manager ran recognition and performance conversations, and made the gap between what the organisation said it valued and what it actually rewarded visible and correctable in real time.

Outcomes

A culture the team is proud of again, not just words on a wall
Regretted attrition in critical teams fell
What gets rewarded finally matches what's said

International Bank · global division · 1000+ leaders

Confidential engagement

Constraint

A multi-region digital transformation was already stalling by the time Stuart stepped in, each country ran its own version of the operating model, wide variance in performance, and rising local resistance to change, after an earlier transformation cycle had failed to land.

Intervention

Took over a program that had already burned one cycle and installed a single execution rhythm across every country at once, decision rights, meeting cadence, and accountability loops fixed together rather than one country at a time, coaching local leaders to run it themselves instead of waiting on direction from HQ.

Outcomes

87% of countries implemented the new operating model within ±10% of the planned timeline over 18 months, in the cycle that actually landed
Performance variance in core processes across countries reduced by 27% in 12 months
Escalated resistance incidents decreased by 38% compared to the previous, unsuccessful transformation cycle

Why leadership development doesn't stick

Why insight decays back to default

Embedding over events

Related reading

See where this shows up in your organisation

Leaders who've moved past this

What installing capability changed

Frequently asked questions