The Adoption Curve

Close the Training Speed Gap

In this week's episode of The Adoption Curve, Sean breaks down the training speed gap: the costly window between when software changes and when your people are ready for it.

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Featuring

Sean Adams

CRO, iorad

What you'll learn

Why the training speed gap is a cadence problem, not effort
How to triage software changes before you build anything
The capture-based approach that closes the gap fast

Meet our guest

Sean Adams is the Chief Revenue Officer at iorad, a B2B SaaS platform that helps L&D and enablement teams build interactive software tutorials in seconds. His direct work with organizations navigating rapid software adoption means he sees the training speed gap in action across hundreds of customer environments each year.

In this solo episode, Sean brings a practitioner diagnosis built from that field experience. His position at the intersection of software adoption and learning operations makes him well-suited to name why training always seems to arrive late and what it actually takes to close that gap.

Featuring

Sean Adams

CRO, iorad

Connect

Closing the Training Speed Gap

Somewhere in your organization, software is changing right now. A button moved, a field got renamed, a workflow shifted. By the time most users log in, the training is nowhere in sight.

Sean calls this the training speed gap: the space between when a change ships and when your people are competent at the new version. In most companies, that window is measured in weeks. Nobody tracks it. It is just accepted.

"It's not about just build faster, make more content. It's actually the mechanisms that are gonna help you scale from a system standpoint."

The fix is structural. Getting upstream of changes, triaging by impact, capturing rather than creating: those are the mechanics. This is the playbook.

Key Insight #1: Get Upstream Before the Change Ships

The gap starts with timing. Most L&D teams learn about a change when their users do: the release is live, friction is real, and training starts from zero.

Getting upstream means inserting yourself before a change is announced. Three places: release notes before broadcast, planning rooms where changes are scoped (sprint reviews, IT change calendars), and one direct contact in product or IT.

"You really wanna be on the draft version of when this thing is happening. You don't wanna be on the broadcast. You wanna be in the room when the draft is happening about when the update's coming."

Look for behavior change: not backend updates, but changes where someone does their job differently on Tuesday than Monday. A week of lead time transforms what you can build.

Key Insight #2: Not Every Change Needs a Course

Most L&D teams are behind for one reason: every change gets the same treatment. Full course, full review cycle, full launch. Treat them all the same and you are always underwater.

The change triage is two questions: how many people does this touch, and how much does the behavior change? Four responses: big audience and big change earns real enablement (protect your time for this); big audience and small change gets a fast polished note or clip; small audience and big change gets a direct conversation; small audience and small change gets a release note.

"That's the only box that really gets built by enablement. And you protect your time for these."

The discipline is knowing which box you are in before opening a blank deck. Triage first. Build second.

Key Insight #3: Capture Over Creation, Deliver in the Flow

When a change earns real training, most teams open a blank deck and start from scratch. That is why the gap is measured in weeks.

The faster path is capture: record the real workflow once, by someone who knows it, and let that recording become the documentation. Build time collapses from weeks to hours.

"What capture says is I want to extract know-how where it already exists in a light and quick fashion, something that's going to mimic what it feels like in real life."

But building fast is only half. Sean's three-layer model: Layer 1 in the flow of work (at the moment of need), Layer 2 as searchable reference, Layer 3 as the awareness message. Most teams build only Layer 3. Build Layer 1 first.