When someone isn’t performing the way an organization expects, the first instinct is usually development.

More training. A new course. A certification. A coach.

Sometimes that’s exactly right.

But sometimes the person already knows how to do the work. They’ve known for years. The training isn’t the gap.

What’s missing is harder to put on a development plan. They’re capable in the wrong context. Skilled, but positioned somewhere that doesn’t let those skills land.

More development in that situation doesn’t fix anything. It just adds credentials to a problem that was never about credentials.

The work doesn’t improve. The frustration does.