Why I Never Assume a Good Workforce System Will Still Be Good Next Quarter.
Every quarter at I-Train Africa starts almost the same way.
This morning is our H1 review and H2 planning session. Tomorrow, we’ll do the same with operations.
Before those meetings, every team member submits their reports. I review what worked, what didn’t, and then I ask one question:
“What needs to change before the next quarter?”
Interestingly, I’m rarely looking for a complete overhaul.
I’m looking for one or two refinements that will help the team perform better over the next three months.
I learnt this lesson the hard way.
Last year, I noticed some new team members were struggling with reporting.
My first instinct was training. We organised a reporting workshop. Things improved.
A few weeks later, I realised another gap had appeared. This time, it wasn’t reporting.
It was performance appraisal and accountability.
We trained again.
Performance improved again, but something still wasn’t quite right.
That was when I stopped asking,
“What else should we train?”
and started asking,
“What in our system keeps producing this same gap?”
The answer wasn’t another workshop.
It was redesigning the system.
We went back into our onboarding process, our Workplace Fundamental Skills curriculum and our internal workflows.
Instead of waiting for new staff to struggle, we built those lessons into the system from Day One.
That shift changed how I think about workforce development.
Training matters.
In fact, I probably invest more in training today than I did five years ago.
What has changed is my understanding that training cannot remain static while organisations continue to evolve.
A few months ago, one of our programmes grew from roughly 500 participants to almost 900.
We used the exact operating system that had worked perfectly before.
It broke.
Not because the system was bad. The environment had changed. The numbers had changed. The organisation had changed. Our system hadn’t.
Personally, I don’t think that observation only applies to people.
I think it applies to organisations too.
The organisations that keep improving are rarely the ones with perfect systems.
They’re the ones that keep refining them.
That philosophy is gradually shaping how we’re building Workforce Upgrade™.
Not simply as another corporate training programme.
But as a workforce system that helps organisations continuously improve how people perform as their business grows.
Dr Aderinsola Adio-Adepoju
Global Employability Strategist | Innovation & Workforce Systems Architect
Building workforce systems that help people, organisations and economies perform better.