Your blood pressure is normal at home, but the moment that well-meaning medical professional wraps that cuff around your arm, it spikes. The act of measuring creates the very problem it’s trying to manage.

This isn’t unique to medical settings.

Your training programmes tick every compliance box, your completion rates are high, and your post-course evaluations consistently show positive feedback. Yet when those same employees return to their desks, something fundamental is missing. They struggle with client conversations they’ve never encountered before. They freeze when stakeholder priorities conflict. They can recite the frameworks but can’t read the room. They’re not workplace-ready.

The 5% problem

Recent research reveals this contradiction starkly. LinkedIn’s 2024 Workplace Learning Report found that fewer than 5% of major reskilling initiatives advance far enough to measure success, whilst separate studies show 79% of business leaders say new talent still arrives unprepared for workplace realities. When surveyed, only 27% of employees feel confident they can demonstrate essential capabilities when it matters most.

Not only is this a colossal waste of time and money, it demonstrates a fundamental mismatch between how we develop capabilities and how those capabilities actually get used in the real world.

The invisible barrier

The issue lies in what happens when we try to make complex workplace skills teachable at scale. To create consistent, measurable programmes, learning teams naturally break down sophisticated capabilities into manageable components. “Effective stakeholder management” becomes a framework with clear steps. “Strategic thinking” gets reduced to a methodology with reproducible processes.

There’s nothing wrong with these frameworks—they’re accurate, evidence-based, and logical. But they represent knowledge once-removed from the messy, high-stakes situations where employees actually need to apply them. They don’t deliver workplace-ready talent.

Consider the difference between knowing that “active listening involves maintaining eye contact and asking clarifying questions” and actually navigating a heated budget meeting where three departments have conflicting priorities and the CFO is clearly losing patience. The framework provides the foundation, but the real capability emerges through practising judgment under pressure.

This explains why traditional training often produces what we might call “competent beginners”—people who understand the principles but struggle with the improvisation that workplace effectiveness demands.

The fiction solution

The most effective solution lies in an unexpected place: the power of realistic workplace fiction.

When employees engage with carefully crafted scenarios featuring fictional colleagues facing authentic challenges, something remarkable happens. They stop trying to demonstrate their competence and start simply solving problems. The psychological distance created by fiction paradoxically allows for deeper engagement with real workplace dynamics.

Data analysis training provider IO-Sphere recognised that whilst many courses taught technical data skills effectively, graduates still struggled to apply this knowledge in real workplace contexts. They could analyse data but couldn’t navigate stakeholder conversations, create compelling narratives from their findings, or influence decision-makers effectively.

The solution? We helped them develop a fictional e-commerce company and stakeholders to reframe ‘teaching’ as ‘engagement in realistic scenarios’. Rather than abstract case studies, participants followed data analysts navigating genuine workplace challenges—conflicting stakeholder demands, incomplete briefs that changed mid-project, and the politics of presenting findings that contradicted senior expectations.

Instead of learning about stakeholder management in theory, participants found themselves actually managing fictional stakeholders with distinct personalities and agendas. They developed the confidence to present complex findings clearly, learned to read room dynamics, and gained practical experience in the soft skills that determine whether technical expertise translates into business impact. The programme now successfully converts novices into workplace-ready data professionals in just 14 weeks.

Why fiction works where facts fail

Fictional scenarios succeed because they eliminate the performance anxiety that traditional training often creates. When employees know they’re helping fictional characters navigate challenges, they engage objectively rather than defensively. There’s no fear of “getting it wrong” because they’re not being evaluated—they’re simply solving interesting problems.

This psychological safety allows the sophisticated judgment that employers actually value to emerge naturally. Instead of following predetermined frameworks, employees demonstrate the adaptive expertise that distinguishes high performers from merely competent ones.

The approach also preserves the complexity that makes workplace challenges genuinely challenging. Unlike simplified case studies, fictional scenarios can include all the messiness of real organisational life—conflicting stakeholder interests, incomplete information, shifting priorities, and political dynamics—without overwhelming participants with actual consequences.

The strategic advantage

The organisations we’ve worked with who have implemented scenario-based training report measurable improvements in exactly the capabilities that traditional training struggles to develop: handling ambiguity, adapting communication styles for different stakeholders, making ethical decisions under pressure, and building strategic relationships across hierarchical boundaries.

Perhaps most significantly, these capabilities transfer immediately to real workplace situations because they’ve been developed through realistic practice rather than theoretical instruction.

For senior managers facing pressure to demonstrate ROI on training investment, scenario-based learning offers a pathway from measuring satisfaction scores to measuring actual workplace effectiveness. When employees can navigate complex challenges because they’ve practised similar situations in safe environments, the business impact becomes immediately visible.

The measurement paradox dissolves when learning experiences develop genuine capability rather than just theoretical knowledge. Your training investment finally delivers what it promises: employees who don’t just know what to do, but can actually do it when it matters most.

You might also like:

• Ding’s Learning Design Almanac provides practical solutions to real-world learning challenges. No theoretical padding—just essential techniques that work when you need them to.
• The Ding Blog shares fresh perspectives on educational practice. We cut through the noise to focus on what actually makes learning experiences engaging and effective.
• The Ding-O-Meter Podcast features honest conversations with learning professionals. Real discussions about the messy realities of creating meaningful education, with insights you can apply immediately.
• JUICE (Journal of Useful Investigations in Creative Education) does exactly what its name suggests—extracts the essential oil from academic research. We squeeze complex studies until the practical wisdom separates out.

For over eight centuries, roses have symbolised profound knowledge—wisdom that’s precious because it demands real effort to obtain.

Persian mystic Rumi wrote of roses as divine secrets locked within “a hundred veils of petals,” each layer hiding deeper truth from anyone unwilling to work for it. Medieval alchemists understood roses as containers of spiritual essence—but essence that wouldn’t give itself up easily. In Dante’s vision, divine wisdom appeared as a celestial rose where knowledge flowed outward from an unreachable centre through layer after layer of complexity.

Distilling the essence

In Bulgaria’s Valley of Roses, farmers understand this too: at 4am, they start harvesting 60,000 rose petals in a precise four-hour window. Those roses contain essence so concentrated and valuable that a single bottle sells for £8,000—but that essence would stay trapped forever without one key step: steam distillation.

The process is simple but transformative; steam passes through the rose petals, creating conditions where the essential oils can separate from the plant matter. The steam carries these oils away as vapour, which then cools and condenses, leaving behind pure rose essence. Only by adding steam, can farmers extract concentrated oils that would otherwise remain locked inside the petals forever.

Why learning often remains locked up

Training courses contains vast amounts of knowledge too. But what makes that knowledge truly valuable isn’t its presence in textbooks or syllabi; it’s when learners can apply it in real situations.

This applied knowledge is the ‘essential oil’ of learning and training. It exists within our curricula, but conventional teaching methods often struggle to extract it. Worse, conventional teaching—which likes keeping theory and practice separate—can lock this practical wisdom up even tighter.

Rose growers know what happens when buds can’t open properly: they “ball”—staying closed without blooming. Conventional teaching does something similar to knowledge. Learners may absorb information, but when theory stays separate from practice, that knowledge balls up: it forms but never truly flowers.

Until someone introduces fictional scenarios.

Scenarios are more than just decoration

Scenario-based learning creates imaginary situations where learners must make decisions, solve problems, and navigate challenges as if they were actually there. Instead of learning about leadership through textbooks, for example, learners might find themselves managing a fictional team crisis with competing deadlines and difficult stakeholders.

But fictional scenarios in learning settings will often meet resistance. “Why add all these fictional layers when we could just teach the concepts directly?” “Aren’t scenarios just decorative elements that complicate simple learning?” “Don’t these made-up situations just add clutter that gets in the way of real knowledge transfer?”

These concerns assume that fictional scenarios add complexity to learning. But fictional scenarios work like steam distillation. When we create workplace scenarios, we’re not adding complications—we’re creating conditions that allow practical wisdom to separate from all the theoretical content that keeps it locked up.

The fictional scenario provides what steam provides: it’s a deliberate intervention that helps essential capabilities become accessible.  Time pressure, role clarity, competing demands—these elements don’t dilute or contaminate learning; they create the conditions where practical wisdom emerges intensely.

Using scenarios to enhance compliance training

When people push back on fictional scenarios, they’re missing what actually happens in the learning process. We worked with a major energy company last year on compliance training. Their existing approach was all about explaining regulations and procedures, but when installers got to real customers’ homes, they were struggling to apply it because every customer interaction was different and unpredictable.

This is a prime example of the balling effect. The knowledge was there, but it couldn’t open out into practical action. But by creating a fictional smart meter installer character who encounters different customer situations throughout the training, learners went beyond simply memorising compliance rules—they were practicing how to explain meter benefits to a sceptical customer.

Adding this fictional layer in fact made the compliance requirements clearer, not more complex. This is comparable to the steam distillation process: the fictional elements—the character, the situations, the time pressure—don’t muddy the learning. They create the right conditions for practical wisdom to separate out from all the regulatory information that would otherwise just sit there inert.

We see this pattern repeatedly. Whether it’s leadership development, technical training, or professional skills—the moment you put knowledge into a fictional but realistic context, it becomes usable in ways that traditional teaching just can’t achieve.

Five key takeaways for distilling learning using fictional scenarios

Here are five practical takeaways for “unballing knowledge” through scenario-based learning:

1. Facilitate, don’t broadcast: Your role shifts from delivering information to guiding discovery. Instead of explaining how to handle difficult conversations, create scenarios where learners must navigate them. Watch, listen, and intervene only when learners get stuck. The practical wisdom emerges through doing, not through being told.

2. Uncover the hidden curriculum: Every subject has unwritten rules that experts take for granted. In business scenarios, this might be reading room dynamics or knowing when to push back on senior colleagues. Design scenarios that force these invisible skills into the open where they can be practised and refined.

3. Create the right pressure: Practical wisdom separates from theory when learners face genuine constraints. Add time limits, competing priorities, or resource restrictions that mirror real workplace pressures. These aren’t complications—they’re the conditions that force knowledge to become usable.

4. Start with what they need to do: Begin with what learners need to be able to do, not what they need to know. If they must influence stakeholders, create scenarios requiring influence, then let the knowledge they need emerge naturally from attempting the task. The content becomes a tool rather than an end goal.

5. Trust the messiness: Resist the urge to smooth out complications or provide too much guidance. When learners struggle, make mistakes, or feel uncertain, that’s often when practical wisdom is separating from stuck knowledge. Create space for this productive confusion rather than rushing to eliminate it.

And just as those Bulgarian farmers extract every drop of essence from their roses, we’re always squeezing the pips of our own learning design projects—distilling insights from every challenge, every breakthrough, every lesson learned. Our resources offer concentrated wisdom from years of practical experience:

• Ding’s Learning Design Almanac provides practical solutions to real-world learning challenges. No theoretical padding—just essential techniques that work when you need them to.
• The Ding Blog shares fresh perspectives on educational practice. We cut through the noise to focus on what actually makes learning experiences engaging and effective.
• The Ding-O-Meter Podcast features honest conversations with learning professionals. Real discussions about the messy realities of creating meaningful education, with insights you can apply immediately.
• JUICE (Journal of Useful Investigations in Creative Education) does exactly what its name suggests—extracts the essential oil from academic research. We squeeze complex studies until the practical wisdom separates out.

You might also like:

• Why scenarios are more effective than a best practice approach to learning
• How scenario-based learning delivers skills in improvisation and adaptability
• Getting your casting right: Deploying your course team to maximise impact

In the 1940s and 50s, Viola Spolin was transforming how we understand learning through her pioneering work in improvisational theatre. Working with the Compass Players in Chicago, Spolin developed a systematic approach to theatre training that would influence generations of performers and educators.

Her seminal book, “Improvisation for the Theater,” published in 1963, remains a cornerstone text for theatre practitioners. Through her son Paul Sills, she founded The Second City, a comedy theatre that would become a proving ground for some of comedy’s most celebrated talents—Tina Fey, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Bill Murray, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Amy Poehler…

Spolin’s technique centred on what she called “theatre games”—structured improvisational exercises designed to liberate performers from self-consciousness and mechanical acting. These weren’t just performance techniques, but carefully constructed learning experiences that challenged participants to be fully present, responsive, and creative.

“Through improvisation,” Spolin wrote, “the actor learns to trust his own spontaneity, to rely on his own discoveries, to be both the source and the critic of his own work.”

Four core attributes of employability

In our webinar The Art of Employability, Phil and I identified four core attributes essential for navigating today’s complex world: Agility, Innovation, Holistic Problem-Solving, and Principled Action.

Spolin’s championing of improvisation speaks directly to how we develop these essential human capabilities—spontaneity that helps us move quickly when things change, the confidence to rely on our own discoveries and turn them into innovative solutions, an ability to synthesise by connecting different perspectives, and the wisdom to be both ‘the source and the critic’ of our own efforts.

Just as Spolin argues that performance emerges from the ability to create and critique in the moment, learning transforms when we move beyond recitation to active, adaptive understanding.

Declarative knowledge—the facts, definitions, and information we can recite—becomes truly powerful only when transformed into functioning knowledge. Functioning knowledge is what happens when we move beyond simply storing information and learn to apply it in unpredictable, real-world contexts.

This transformation doesn’t occur through passive learning, but through active engagement—through improvisation, experimentation, and reflection. It’s about turning static information into a living, adaptable capability.

Case study: scenario-based learning in action

Turning information into ‘a living, adaptable capability’ was precisely the challenge IO-Sphere presented us. As a data analysis start-up, they’d discovered a critical gap: technically skilled analysts who understood the numbers but couldn’t breathe life into that knowledge within real workplace contexts.

Ding approached this by developing a multi-dimensional learning experience that went far beyond traditional training. We created an entire ecosystem of video-based learning resources, working with professional actors and a professional film crew to bring a fictional data analysis team to life. We filmed on location within IO-Sphere’s own premises, crafting intricate characters and scenarios that directly mirrored the real-world challenges their learners would encounter.

Our approach was holistic: we developed the characters, wrote detailed scripts, and produced professionally filmed narratives that introduced learners to a team of data analysts struggling with the very professional complexities they would likely face.

These video resources weren’t standalone content, but became the foundation for project briefs, learning activities, and immersive scenarios that surfaced the real turbulence of workplace dynamics—the conflicts, challenges, and collaborative complexities that traditional training typically sanitises.

Drawing from film and TV storytelling techniques, we crafted scenarios that demanded more than data analysis. Participants had to create value, tell compelling stories, navigate workplace dynamics, and influence decision-makers.

The actors’ experience

Advait Kottary, an actor who performed in the IO-Sphere project, captured Ding’s scenario-centred approach perfectly. “It’s almost like me describing to you how an apple would taste versus me just handing you an apple and asking you to experience it,” he noted.

What made our approach even more immersive was the deliberate blurring of boundaries. “Almost like you were a fly on the wall, seeing a situation unfold,” Kottary explained. 

The real magic happened when Kottary was invited back by the IO-Sphere coaches to “break the fourth wall” and interact directly with the learners who had experienced these scenarios.

“I actually had the chance of interacting with several of the learners who underwent this bootcamp,” he shared, “and it was quite amazing to see how invested they were in the situation and the premise that had been created through these scripts.”

Why learning needs more improvisation

Spolin’s pioneering work in developing theatre games is more relevant than ever. As AI makes content easy to produce, effective learning experiences need to incorporate more improvisation in order to develop learners’ skills in adapting to change.

Incorporating scenarios and simulations into your learning and training is an effective way to begin developing the core attributes professionals need to be ready for the workplace. 

You might also like:

• Getting your casting right: Deploying your course team to maximise impact
• The Kuleshov Effect, and why learning designers are editors
• Designing learning for the future of work

Think about your favourite film or TV show for a moment. Now imagine if all the same words were spoken, but by completely different actors. Wild, right? That’s the power of casting – get it right, and the experience feels effortless. But cast the wrong people, and you can quickly who is in the wrong role. 

This same principle plays out in a learning situation, where getting the right people in the right roles can make or break a learning experience.

The parallel universe

Casting directors don’t just pick good actors – they pick the right actors for specific roles. An actor with a reputation for Hollywood disaster movies may not be such a good fit for a romantic comedy.

Similarly, brilliant researchers might not be the best choice to lead introductory courses. They may be an expert in their field and globally renowned, but they may also have forgotten what it’s like to ‘not know’ about their subject.

If this person is tasked with teaching first year undergraduates, they may end up blaming students for ‘not being clever enough’. Conversely, students may blame the researcher for not making the subject interesting, leading to a fall in student satisfaction.

So when we’re thinking about the route through a learning experience, we need to get the casting right by considering who is the best person to take charge of each stage of the journey.

Letting each person play to their strengths mirrors how we might cast a character actor for intense dramatic scenes while using a different performer for lighter moments. In education, this could mean having a theoretically-minded professor handle complex conceptual discussions while engaging a practitioner to lead case study analyses. This way, everyone operates in their comfort zone, leading to more authentic and confident delivery.

And creating multiple voices and perspectives is similar to how an ensemble cast brings different energies to a film. In learning, this means intentionally incorporating various teaching styles and viewpoints throughout a course. When learners hear from multiple voices, no single instructor’s limitations become overwhelming, and students benefit from a richer, more nuanced understanding of the subject.

Using guest speakers for key moments is like bringing in specialist performers for crucial scenes. By strategically incorporating expert guests for specific topics or critical concepts, we can ensure that particularly important or challenging material is delivered by someone with deep expertise, even if they’re not available for the entire course.

3. The Director’s cut

• Structure sessions to maximize engagement
• Create clear ‘stage directions’ in materials
• Provide detailed facilitation guides

Structuring sessions to maximise engagement is similar to how we pace scenes in a film to maintain audience interest. This means carefully planning the flow of each class session, alternating between different types of activities and ensuring key concepts are introduced when learners are most receptive. Good structure can help compensate for varying levels of instructor charisma.

Creating clear ‘stage directions’ in materials parallels how detailed scripts help actors deliver consistent performances. By providing instructors with specific guidance about timing, activities, and key discussion points, we can help less experienced teachers deliver content more effectively and confidently.

Providing detailed facilitation guides is like giving actors comprehensive character backgrounds and motivation notes. These guides help instructors understand not just what to teach, but why certain approaches are recommended and how to handle common questions or challenges. This support is particularly valuable for those who might be teaching outside their comfort zone.

Sometimes that means writing to your actors’ strengths, sometimes it means creating systems that support their development, but it always means thinking carefully about who’s delivering what and how they can best serve the learner’s journey.

The best learning experiences, like the best films, aren’t just well-written – they’re well-cast, well-directed, and thoughtfully produced. Even with constraints, good design can help everyone shine.

You might also like:

• The Kuleshov Effect, and why learning designers are editors
• Callum Goodwilliam: Leadership through learning design
• The Art of AI in Assessment: How creative learning design can deliver robust outcomes

Attentiveness and accountability are two powerful levers that learning designers can use to drive engagement. Let’s take a look at how we can use digital technologies to create these important conditions for effective learning.

How accountability drives engagement

Firstly, let’s look at accountability. Now, you may well be thinking, ‘hang on, I’m already accountable for too many things – I don’t need to be accountable for anything else’. But accountability in learning design has a specific meaning, and it’s this: ‘what is going to make your learners do what you’re asking them to do?’ 

Let’s take Ding’s Learning Design Bootcamp as an example. Participants might love the content (because it’s so engaging and humorous…) but there would be little incentive for them to keep going if the Ding team weren’t looking at their module worksheets and giving them feedback. This is what accountability looks like – the facilitator’s role is to hold you accountable for what you’re learning. Unless we had designed the Bootcamp for accountability, it’s likely that participants wouldn’t complete the course.

Another proven way to produce accountability is through groupwork and teamwork. Creating collaborative projects makes participants accountable to their team members, and not just to the facilitator or coach. Digital technologies play a key role in supporting effective teamwork by enabling team members to make their learning visible. Miro boards, LinkedIn group messages and Padlets are just some ways in which technology can enable teams to see what each member is contributing, or not contributing. 

We know that accountability plays a key role in driving engagement because we can see what happens when we remove it. This is demonstrated by the fact that over 90% of people who sign up to Massive Open Online Courses drop out and don’t finish – the issue is learners aren’t held accountable for what they’re learning. 

How attentiveness drives engagement

This brings us to attentiveness. Attentiveness drives accountability. It’s the act of looking at what learners are doing, and making sure they know they’re progress is being monitored. In a physical classroom, attentiveness looks like the tutor or facilitator walking round the room and checking everyone is on task, then providing assistance as needed.

But in an online course, you can’t walk around the room. So how can we produce attentiveness?

The answer is this: we use technology to make learning visible. Getting learners to write on a blog makes their learning visible. Conversations in Slack or on discussion boards make learning visible. Asking learners to respond to a task in a Google Doc makes learning visible. 

Once this happens, you can produce attentiveness by responding to what learners have produced. You might do this by commenting on their work, ‘liking’ it, or even just adding a smiley face or the two-eyed emoji to show you’re looking at it. These simple gestures show learners that you’re being attentive, and this in turn produces accountability. 

Motivating learners

Too many learning experiences make the teaching visible, but not the learning.In order to make learning visible, we also have to motivate learners to do things. By showing learners we are being attentive and by making them accountable for what they’re learning, we produce motivation.

Motivation is integral to effective learning at all levels, but for adult learners it’s especially important. Adult learners can easily choose not to continue with a learning experience unless they feel motivated to do so. So as learning designers, we have a responsibility to design for accountability and attentiveness in order to create a learning experience that compels learners to continue. If we simply present learners with a load of content, it doesn’t matter how great it is – after a while, they’ll just stop consuming it because there is nobody to hold them accountable for what they’re learning.

One of our fabulous podcast guests, Geraldine Murphy talked about the importance of motivation in learning design. You can listen to her podcast here.

So to recap, attentiveness and accountability are two powerful levers we can use to motivate learners to engage. As we design any activity, we should always ask ourselves ‘how will learners be required to demonstrate what they’re learning?’ (accountability), and ‘how can we show them that their work is being looked at?’ (attentiveness). 

You might also like:

• Designing learning for accountability

• Should educators have exceptional digital literacies? 

• The role of personas in learning design

Thank you to:

• The Unsplash community for a fabulous photo!