The Habit Problem: Why Knowing What to Do Isn’t the Same as Doing It
The Behavior Gap Everyone Recognizes
You deliver the training. People engage, they pass the assessment, and then nothing changes back on the job. In the third episode of her seven-part series unpacking the Kirkpatrick Model, Vanessa Milara Alzate names the gap for what it is: most learning solutions are designed for knowledge, not for behavior or performance. We assume that if people understand something, they’ll apply it. But that’s not how people work, and it’s definitely not how the brain works. Training and change initiatives don’t usually fail because people are uninterested or resistant — they fail because they’re misaligned with how humans actually learn, change, and make decisions.
Three Sciences, One Answer
Vanessa draws on three fields to explain why: cognitive science, how people process information; neuroscience, how the brain rewires itself and reacts emotionally; and behavioral science, why people don’t follow through even when they know exactly what to do. Understanding all three, she argues, is what separates learning design that actually changes behavior from learning design that simply transfers information.
The Brain Doesn’t Unlearn. It Competes.
The most important principle in the episode is also the simplest: the brain doesn’t erase old behaviors, it replaces them. What people call “unlearning” isn’t really erasing anything — it’s neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to form and reorganize connections through repeated experience. That means an old habit is never truly deleted; a new neural pathway has to be built strong enough to compete with it. Unless the new behavior is stronger, easier, or more rewarding than the old one, people will default back to what they’ve always done — whether that’s a new customer service script, a safety protocol, or a leadership habit like coaching more often.
The Formula: Practice Plus Reinforcement
Behavior doesn’t change through exposure, Vanessa says — it changes through repetition and reinforcement. New neural pathways only strengthen with consistent practice, the same way a muscle does. That gives L&D a formula: practice plus reinforcement equals habit. Without practice, people don’t build the capability. Without reinforcement, they don’t sustain it. Without both, behavior change doesn’t stand a chance.
The Emotional and Social Layers
Two more pieces of brain science round out the picture. Emotionally engaging moments during learning activate the amygdala, which strengthens memory — people may forget what you said, but they rarely forget how you made them feel. And because humans are social learners by design, mirror neurons mean that watching a peer confidently use a new skill, or a leader visibly model a new behavior, causes the brain to simulate that same action internally. Social modeling, Vanessa points out, is one of the most underused tools in learning design.
Why People Don’t Follow Through: Loss Aversion and Friction
Behavioral science adds two more obstacles. Loss aversion means people are often more motivated to avoid losing credibility, letting their team down, or missing a promotion than they are by rewards or incentives — a distinction that changes what actually motivates a rollout. And the brain, whose core function is to keep people safe, prefers routine and predictability, which is why any new behavior feels risky even when it’s better. That produces what Vanessa calls the intention-action gap: the space between wanting to do something and actually doing it. It’s rarely about willpower — it’s usually about friction, the small barriers in the environment that make a new behavior just inconvenient enough to skip.
Designing for Behavior Change: Before, During, and After
Put together, this becomes a design framework. Before training, engage leaders to frame the why and pre-assess confidence and readiness. During training, connect content to work emotionally, build in repetition and reflection, and create commitments through peer discussion. After training, provide job aids and nudges, reduce friction, train managers to coach and reinforce, and anchor the new behavior to something people already do — what author James Clear calls habit stacking in Atomic Habits. Done well, this turns training from a one-time event into a system for behavior change.
Your Assignment This Week
Vanessa’s challenge: think of one behavior you want people to adopt — not what they should know, but what they should do. Ask what one reinforcement strategy would help that behavior stick, and what one piece of friction you could remove to make it easier. Knowledge alone doesn’t change performance; behavior change requires practice, reinforcement, motivation, and a supportive environment. But even once behavior starts to change, there’s still a gap between what happens in training and what shows up consistently on the job — that’s the subject of the next episode in the series, on transfer.
This is the third of seven episodes walking through the full Kirkpatrick Model, building toward a live Public Book Club this fall. It’s still a great time to pick up Building a Culture of Evaluation and follow along before the next module.
Join the book club here: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/sl/lSZFbHe
Grab a copy of the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Building-Culture-Evaluation-Kirkpatrick-Performance/dp/1963392337/
