Knowing how something is done and actually doing it are two separate things. Most checks in a business find out whether people know, almost none find out whether they do, and what bridges the two is drill.
The gap nobody checks
The source opens by stating that application implies use, and then says it plainly: “There is a wide gap between mere knowledge and the application of that knowledge.”
It also puts the same idea as a question. What separates a person who knows but cannot apply it from a skilled technician, meaning someone who can turn what he knows into a result?
To make the point, the source reaches for cars. You could understand the theory of the motor car, the science of how it is built and the art of how it is designed, and still be unable to build one, plan one or drive one. Building, planning and driving are skills of doing, and they are quite apart from knowing about them.
Why it bites hardest in your business
This gap matters to an owner because nearly every check he runs looks at the knowing side only. You ask whether the employee was told how to do it, and the answer is yes. You ask whether he understood, and again the answer is yes. Nobody asks whether he actually does it.
Suppose an owner runs a training session on a new intake procedure. Everyone understands it, and nobody fills in the form.
There is only one way for her to discover this. If she pulls ten forms at random a month later and reads what is on them, she sees what is really going on. The training session never told her that.
The difference between the two pictures is simple. The first one tested knowing. The second one tested doing.
When the check stops at knowing, the owner is sure the procedure exists and works. When the results then refuse to change, the natural move is to explain it all over again, or to go shopping for another tool. Both moves work on the side that was already fine, because the team already knows. And most businesses, as the booklet points out, check that side and never the other.
What golfers do instead
The source offers an example anyone can follow. Most golfers know you have to keep your eye on the ball just before you hit it, while you hit it, and after. That is the foundation of a long, powerful drive. So if everyone knows it, why do so few manage it?
The source's answer is that they have reached the stage of knowing they must, and have not yet reached the stage of being able to. Then, faced with all their bad shots, their heads get scrambled, and they go off and buy lucky charms, new clubs or books on ballistics. Unable to do the basic thing, they scatter into something else.
In a business, the new clubs are new software.
Suppose an owner switches between three customer management systems, the kind of software that tracks every client, in two years. Not one of the three broke down. The team simply never entered any data into them. Or think of a studio owner who buys a task-management tool after the team stops updating the old one, only to find the team does not update the new one either.
If the procedure is not being carried out, a new tool will not fix it. It is a distraction, and usually an expense too.
What actually closes the gap
The source answers in one word, and in one short sentence: “Drill overcomes this.” Drill here means repeated, guided practice of the actual task. According to the source, the skilled technician is a product of practice. He knows what he is trying to achieve and which parts he is working with, and only then can he produce a result.
From there comes the distinction that settles the subject. Poor results, the source says, do not really come from not knowing. They come from not being able to apply.
For an owner, that means one more explanation will not fix a problem of performance. Explaining produces knowledge. Ability comes from repeating the doing, with someone alongside you while you do it.
Suppose an owner explains a procedure to his crew once. The crew knows it, and does not do it. Now suppose the same owner goes through the procedure together with the worker several times, step by step. From that point on, the worker starts doing it on his own.
The booklet gives this chapter two short exercises, called check and perform. The practice section at the end of the booklet also has one called the verification.
The next time a procedure is not being followed, the question is not whether your people know it. The question is whether anyone has drilled the doing with them.