If you teach technical training long enough, there is a moment you come to recognize immediately. Someone raises their hand and asks:
- “What are the use cases?”
- “How would I actually use this at my company?”
- “Can you give an example from a real organization?”
On the surface, these are reasonable questions. People want relevance. They want to understand how what they are learning connects to their day-to-day work. That instinct is natural, and in many cases it comes from genuine engagement.
But in short-format training sessions, especially one-hour workshops, these questions often point to a deeper misunderstanding about what training is designed to provide and where its responsibility naturally ends.
This post is not about shutting people down or dismissing curiosity. It is about clarifying the role of training, explaining why organizations are inherently messy, and showing why asking for “the use cases” is often less useful than it sounds.
Why use cases are not fully defined inside training
A trainer’s primary responsibility is to teach capabilities, not to design solutions for organizations they have never seen.
In a ninety-minute session, there is limited visibility into your data sources, business rules, approval processes, and the informal workarounds teams rely on to meet deadlines. There is no way to know which steps are sensitive, which systems cannot be touched, or which decisions are shaped by history rather than logic.
That is not a limitation of the training. It is simply the reality of working with real organizations.
Meaningful use cases do not exist in isolation. They are shaped by systems, people, incentives, and constraints. Two teams can use the same tool in very different ways because their environments demand it. When examples ignore that complexity, they can sound concrete while still being difficult to apply in practice.
When someone asks for “the use cases,” what they are often seeking is clarity and confidence. A sense that this will fit into their organization in a straightforward way. In a short session, the most responsible answer is not a recipe, but a framework for deciding when something is worth exploring.
Organizations are messy, and that messiness matters
Most training examples are intentionally clean. They use tidy datasets, simplified workflows, and minimal dependencies. This is not because trainers are unaware of reality. It is because learning benefits from focus before complexity.
Real organizations, by contrast, are layered and uneven. Automation is often partial. Manual steps coexist with more advanced tools. Spreadsheets evolve over time. Assumptions get embedded into formulas and are rarely revisited. Certain processes persist not because they are optimal, but because changing them feels risky.
This messiness is exactly why applying new skills requires judgment.
You cannot simply copy a use case from another organization and expect it to work unchanged in your own. Something always needs to be adapted. That adaptation work is valuable, contextual, and dependent on local knowledge. It usually happens through experimentation, discussion, and iteration.
You were given use cases, even if they were not labeled that way
In most trainings, learners are already exposed to use cases. They just appear at a different level of abstraction.
You are shown the kinds of problems a tool is designed to address. You see where friction tends to accumulate across teams. You learn what types of workflows can be simplified, stabilized, or automated. You are exposed to patterns that repeat across many organizations, even if the surface details differ.
What happens next is a shared responsibility.
The learner’s role is to reflect on how those patterns show up in their own environment. Where does work feel fragile? Which tasks absorb time without delivering insight? What tends to break under pressure? Which processes exist largely because they have never been revisited?
That translation step is where learning turns into value. It cannot be fully outsourced to a trainer who does not live inside the organization.
Why highly specific use case questions can derail live sessions
There is another reason experienced trainers are careful with org-specific use case questions.
When a session shifts into designing a solution for a single participant’s environment, time meant for shared learning can get consumed by details that apply only to a small portion of the audience. The session begins doing work it was not designed to do, and the broader objectives can get diluted.
This is rarely intentional. Most people are asking in good faith.
A well-designed training session works best when it stays at the level where ideas can generalize. That is what allows everyone in the room to leave with something useful.
“When would I use this?” is usually the real question
Most questions framed as “use cases” are really asking something simpler.
“When would I use this?”
That is a fair and important question. The answer is almost never a single scenario.
You tend to reach for new tools or techniques when work feels repetitive, fragile, or more manual than it should be. When errors surface late and create stress. When a task depends too heavily on one person. When the effort required no longer matches the value of the output.
Training helps you recognize those moments.
Once you start seeing them, opportunities become easier to spot. You begin to notice where small changes could have outsized impact. That shift in perception is often more valuable than a specific example.
Training puts options at your fingertips
A good technical training session does not necessarily leave you with a neatly labeled list of “use cases.” And that is not a failure.
The purpose of training is not to solve your organization for you. That work comes later and depends on a deeper understanding of your data, workflows, and constraints than any short session can provide.
What effective training does is expand the set of options available to you.
After a strong session, you may not know exactly how your organization will apply a tool. But you should leave thinking differently about your work. You gain new ways to frame problems, new language to describe inefficiencies, and more confidence to question processes that have gone unexamined.
When someone leaves training thinking, “I’m not sure yet where this fits,” that is often a sign the session did what it was supposed to do. It surfaced possibilities without forcing them prematurely into a context where they may not belong. Deciding when and where to apply those ideas happens through real work, discussion, and reflection.
As a trainer, my role is to identify common friction points, show what is possible, and help people think differently about how work can be structured. That way of thinking is what carries forward after the session ends.
Training and consulting are different for a reason
This distinction is not about withholding help. It is about protecting quality.
Training builds shared understanding and transferable skills. Consulting applies those skills to a specific environment. Both are valuable, and both have their place.
When learners understand the difference, training sessions become more focused and more productive. The question shifts from “Prove this works for my organization right now” to “How can we explore whether this fits our work?”
That shift leads to better outcomes.
So how do you actually answer the question?
When someone asks, “What are the use cases?” or “How would my company use this?”, I usually respond in a way that fits the format and keeps the session on track.
For example:
- “In a one-hour session, my goal is to help everyone understand when this is useful and what kinds of problems it solves. Designing use cases for a specific organization depends on your data, constraints, and workflows, which is why we focus on patterns here.”
- “Rather than a single use case, think about this as something you reach for when work feels repetitive, fragile, or more manual than it should be.”
- “Examples from other organizations can sound concrete, but they often break when applied directly. The real value is recognizing where your version of that problem shows up.”
- “If you’re unsure where this fits yet, that’s normal. Training surfaces options. Figuring out where they belong happens once you’re back in the work.”
- “When you go back to your team, the useful question isn’t ‘How do we copy this?’ It’s ‘Where are we doing work that feels harder than it needs to be?’”
- “If you want help mapping this to a specific workflow, that’s usually a separate conversation. Right now I want to make sure everyone gets the transferable part.”
Each of these answers acknowledges the question, sets a boundary, and redirects the conversation toward patterns rather than prescriptions.
You are not refusing to answer. You are answering at the level the format supports.
Conclusion
If you attend a training expecting a fully tailored implementation plan, you may leave frustrated. Not because the material lacks value, but because the expectation does not match the format.
If you attend looking to expand your options, sharpen your judgment, and see your work differently, training delivers exactly what it is meant to.
Once that distinction is clear, “use cases” stop being something you demand on the spot and start being something you recognize over time. That is where real value begins.