Excuse #2: Our People Should Know

It’s tempting for leaders to reassure themselves with: “Our people should know.” It sounds like confidence, but more often it’s avoidance.

The Real Challenge

This excuse assumes that our people have enough skills to do the job, but skills alone don’t guarantee effectiveness. Culture (how people get along) is what ensures those skills are applied consistently and collaboratively. Without deliberate investment in leadership and development, knowledge gets trapped, gaps widen, silos form, and performance becomes inconsistent.

In addition to this, learning styles, neurodiversity, generational gaps and language barriers could all be contributing to a breakdown in communication, understanding and comprehension. We may have said it repeatedly, but we need methods of determining competency and that is where human connection makes so much difference.

At Straza Solutions we define culture as the by-product of the dynamics between people and people, and people and systems. When those dynamics go awry, performance suffers, and assuming people should know is a sure-fire way to impair healthy dynamics.

The Consequence

McKinsey’s 2025 research shows productivity gaps between high and low performers can be as high as 800% in complex jobs (McKinsey, 2025). Without strong cultural mechanisms for coaching, feedback, and learning, organizations fail to unlock their top talent and struggle to close those gaps.

McLean & Company’s HR Trends 2025 report underscores that leadership development is the top organizational priority this year, yet many organizations struggle to build this capacity (McLean & Company, 2025). At the same time, 73% of leaders report their skills will need to change completely or almost completely by 2030 (McLean & Company, Future of Work Report, 2025). In other words, even leaders don’t “already know what to do”, why assume employees do?

Further, HR Monitor 2025 highlights that only one-third of critical roles are backed by succession plans, and 26% of employees reported receiving no feedback in the past year (McKinsey, HR Monitor 2025). With  25% of the workforce slated to retire in the next 8-10 years we can’t afford to make assumptions any longer. Intentional development is our only way out.

The Reframe

Instead of assuming, “Our people should know what to do,” reframe it as: “I’ll invest in development so knowledge gaps don’t widen.”

This doesn’t mean micromanaging. It means creating structures for mentoring, skills and knowledge transfer, along with coaching and feedback mechanisms. For example, one manufacturer documented the “tricks of the trade” from retiring employees in a video library, preserving wisdom and knowledge for years to come (McKinsey, 2025).

A Practical Step

This week, ask your team: “What is one thing you have learned in your role that may be beneficial for others to know?” You could go one step further and move from just conversations to documentation of these valuable insights in a place that everyone can utilize.

Team members don’t just need to “know what to do.” They need the workplace culture that makes it safe and easy to talk about and ask questions.