It’s Tuesday morning. Someone on your team needs to find a document, edit it, and share it with three colleagues. They completed SharePoint training two weeks ago. They passed the assessment. They’re certified. And they have absolutely no idea where to start.
I’ve watched this SharePoint training pattern repeat across organizations for years. Training sessions walk users through sites, libraries, lists, and document sets. They learn terminology. They see features. They take notes. Then they return to their desks and forget everything.
The Question Nobody Answers
When someone sits through SharePoint training, one question dominates their thinking: How does this work for me? Traditional training never answers it. Instead, trainers walk through every option available. Every feature. Every function. The complexity overwhelms users before they understand the basics: upload, edit, share, collaborate.
They need to think of SharePoint as a container for all their work. But they’re drowning in technical terminology that has nothing to do with their Tuesday morning document problem.
Why Features Don’t Stick
Here’s what happens after feature-focused training: people forget immediately.
SharePoint is complex. It’s now the backbone of the entire Microsoft 365 suite, driving most content and Copilot behind the scenes. That complexity demands immediate application or the knowledge evaporates.
The data backs this up. Research shows that 70% of learning comes from hands-on experience, 20% from social learning, and only 10% from formal training programs.
Yet most SharePoint training inverts this model completely. It’s all formal instruction with no real-world application.
Adults learn best when they can apply new information to real-world problems immediately. Without that connection, the training becomes noise.
The Mess They Create
Even when people remember the features, they create disasters. They build SharePoint sites where nobody can find anything. Libraries don’t surface the right content. Search returns garbage. Teams get frustrated and abandon the platform.
The problem? They never learned to plan before they build. Nobody taught them to ask: Who is this site for? What will it contain? How does it fit into the rest of the organization? What content actually matters?
These strategic questions come before any “click here, drag this” instructions. But training jumps straight to the clicks.
If you’re ready to stop the chaos and learn how to plan SharePoint sites that actually work, I created The Container Method to walk you through exactly these strategic questions before you build anything.
What Actually Works In SharePoint Training
When I run SharePoint training differently, I start with a real workplace scenario. We build it together in class, tailoring it to their specific situation as we go. The reaction is immediate. They get excited to leave and build their own solution. Or fix their current mess. The difference? They can finally answer “How does this work for me?”
A marketing team needs different SharePoint training than a finance team. Not because the features are different, but because their work contexts are completely different. Training must reflect that reality.
40% of organizations consider their SharePoint implementations unsuccessful. The root cause isn’t the platform. It’s deploying without clarity on the business problems it should solve.
The Shift That Changes Everything
Organizations keep getting this backwards because they follow tradition. They’ve always taught software by walking through features. So they continue. But SharePoint isn’t simple software anymore. It integrates with everything. The stakes are higher. The complexity is greater.
The solution is counterintuitive: teach less, but teach it in context. Show people how to plan first. Then scale. Start with the strategic questions. Build understanding of what they’re trying to accomplish. Only then introduce the features that solve their specific problems.
Training should enable someone to immediately apply what they learned to their actual work. Not in a week. Not after they review documentation. Immediately.
When that happens, adoption follows naturally. People don’t need to be convinced to use tools that solve their Tuesday morning problems.
They just need someone to show them how.
