You are new to an organization and you are in charge of deciding what training to focus on first. Leadership has opinions. Sales says they need more pipeline. Operations says, "God forbid we get more sales — we can't handle what we have." HR wants onboarding. The executive team wants leadership development for the new managers coming up through the ranks.
What do you do with all of that?
These are hard questions, and every organization is different. I can't hand you a magic solution, but I can give you a vision borrowed from two of the most influential designers of the 20th century and three guiding questions that have helped me cut through the noise every time.
We want to make the best for the most for the least.
Ray and Charles Eames
Ray Kaiser was a painter. Charles Eames was an architect. Together, they built furniture that changed the world, not by chasing the flashiest design, but by asking who they were truly trying to serve and how they could reach as many of them as possible.
That question translates directly into organizational development.
How do we lift the most employees and benefit the company the most with the fewest resources? How do we provide learning and performance support at scale?
Once that becomes your lens, three questions follow naturally.
Question 1: If you could wave a magic wand and solve one major business problem right now, what would it be?
Ask this question across lines of business, sales, operations, HR, finance, and listen carefully. The answers will reveal what is actually keeping people up at night. This is not a survey. It is intelligence gathering. The patterns that emerge will tell you more than any training needs analysis.
Question 2: If you solved that problem, how would you measure success?
What number goes down? What number goes up? Fewer support tickets? Faster ramp time? Higher quota attainment? Reduced errors? Any measurable signal matters. If you cannot define what better looks like, you will not be able to demonstrate impact and you will not be able to defend your decision.
Question 3: What is the risk of doing nothing?
This is the most important filter. Sometimes a business problem feels urgent and looks like a perfect candidate for a polished eLearning course or a well-facilitated workshop. But if the answer to "what happens if we do nothing?" is essentially "not much," that is not your starting point. Move on.
The problem worth solving first sits at the intersection of all three.
It is the problem that affects the most people. It is a problem you can measure. And it is a problem with real consequences if left alone.
That is where the Eames principle comes to life in an organizational context, not in choosing the most visible problem or the loudest request, but in finding the one intervention that delivers the most value to the most people with the resources you actually have.
Moment → Meaning → Move
Once you have identified the right problem, the work shifts to turning it into something people can learn, apply, and build on. That is where my framework, Moment → Meaning → Move, comes in. It is a method for capturing the real story of what is happening in your organization, drawing out what it means for your people, and designing the one clear move that drives performance forward.
If this question is one your team is wrestling with right now, I would love to talk. The answer is closer than you think.