Instead of learning budgets, try this...

Most courses don't work. Here's how to really help your team be more effective in 2026

‘Tis the season to spend your learning budget, so I’ll say it… 

Most "learning goals" are bullsh*t. People sign up for a course, watch some videos, feel productive, and nothing changes.

They learn facts and frameworks, but they don’t become more effective – which is what they, and you, ultimately want. They need skills like:

• Communicate succinctly with confidence

• Become more strategic

• Influence without authority

We learn these skills by doing, but doing new things takes courage. 

And you don't get courage from videos. Instead, give them experiences that will allow them to develop these skills.

Instead of learning budgets, try this..

Ask each employee, for 2026, what's the main gap standing between you and your professional goals?

And what’s the smallest, scrappiest way to build that muscle with real stakes?

For example:

1. To communicate with more confidence, do frontline sales a half day per week. Rejections will toughen them up, and they’ll get closer to customers.

2. To be seen as strategic, gather metrics for the weekly business review. They’ll build relationships across the org and understand the business better than most execs.

3. To influence without authority, handle customer support escalations. They’ll learn to get favors from Risk, Compliance, Engineering, and Ops – all while helping customers.

(I did #2 early in my career and it got me invited to weekly C-level dinners. Though I never got dessert – they'd ask me to leave early so they could discuss the truly confidential stuff.)

Don't send them to another class. Give them a project that throws them into the deep end.

Now, what’s holding your whole team back?

Uncertainty? Debate? Competing priorities?

All symptoms – manifestations of fear.

Fear of talking to customers who might criticise your product. Fear of killing projects you've already invested in. Fear of hard conversations. Fear of trying things we've never done before. Fear of running bold experiments that might fail.

Your team won’t build courage by watching videos or reading a newsletter.

That's why our coaching program isn't a course – it's a forcing function.

Here's how it works:

• Your team joins a cohort with other companies tackling similar challenges

• You’re paired with one of our expert coaches for weekly private sessions

• Every week, a scorecard shows everyone who did the work and who didn't

• Real experiments on your actual business with real revenue at stake

In 10 weeks, your team will:

• Run Jobs-to-be-done interviews and discover what actually motivates your prospects

• Use data to make the hard tradeoffs between good ideas and great ones

• Ship experiments fast, learn from failures, and do it again

• Deprioritize small optimizations to test bold ideas

Not from lectures. From doing it – with real stakes, real accountability, and a coach who won't let you bullsh*t yourself.

If you want your team to do fewer, bigger things next year, we should talk. Our next cohort starts February 2nd.