I used to start in the same place a lot of L&D teams do.
I’d review training requests coming through our system and regularly sit down with capability leads to ask the question: “What training does your team need?”.
And every time, I’d get a long list back. On the surface, it looked useful. People were engaged, requests were coming in and learning activity was happening.
But over time, it started to feel like a bit of a Christmas wish list: full of individual desires, but with no clear link to what the business was actually trying to achieve.
A lot of what was being asked for wasn’t wrong, but the connection wasn’t always clear in terms of business priorities.
Despite delivering the training that people valued, I found it difficult to point to any real organisational impact, or to be seen as a strategic L&D partner to the business.
A new approach
That is when I realised I needed to change the way I was approaching it. Not just apply tweaks to the process, but to rethink where L&D actually starts. So I took a step back and started breaking it down differently.
Figure 1: A strategic framework for L&D
This framework outlines the critical areas of focus, in sequence, for L&D to truly become a strategic partner and drive organisational performance. Let’s break down each component.
Despite delivering the training that people valued, I found it difficult to point to any real organisational impact
The organisation
Everything starts here.
Instead of asking what training people needed, I started asking a different set of questions:
- What challenges are we actually facing right now?
- Why are those challenges happening in the first place?
- Where are we trying to get to, and what does success actually look like?
It sounds simple, but it completely changes the conversation.
This is not a new concept. Most people in L&D would say they already do this. But when you look at where the time and effort actually goes, it is still heavily focused on training.
It shifts things away from “what learning do we need?” to “what are we trying to achieve as an organisation?”, which is a very different starting point.
Because without that clarity, it is almost impossible to know whether any learning is actually helping the business move forward.
Within your means
In reality, it is not always that easy.
I have worked in organisations where getting time with senior leadership was difficult. You are not always going to sit down with a CEO or CFO and get clear answers to these questions.
So you have to work with what is available.
For me, that often meant paying closer attention to company all-hands, listening to how leaders talked about priorities and picking up signals from across the business.
It is not perfect, but it is usually enough to start building a clearer picture of what actually matters.
Leadership capabilities
Once that is clear, the focus shifts to leadership capability.
With a better understanding of what needed to be delivered, the next question was whether we were actually set up to do it.
This is where working closely with leaders became important. If I wanted to be seen as a genuine partner, I needed to understand what they were trying to deliver and where things were not working.
So I started asking better questions:
- Do leaders have a clear view of what they are trying to deliver with their teams?
- Where do we have the right capability in place, and where are the gaps showing up?
- What kind of environment have leaders created for people to perform?
This is where things started to move away from generic training and towards something more targeted.
It became less about delivering courses, and more about understanding what people actually need to perform in their roles.
Operating system
In some cases, people have the skills, but the environment around them makes it hard to actually use those skills.
For example, you might invest in helping teams present ideas more clearly to clients, structuring their thinking and telling better stories.
But if they are working on tight timelines, jumping between multiple client demands, or being pulled into projects at the last minute, those skills do not always show up in the way you would expect.
That is where things started to shift for me.
How well do our processes actually support what we are trying to achieve? Where are our tools helping, and where are they slowing things down?
This made me realise L&D cannot just focus on skills in isolation.
This component is another challenge because it is not something L&D owns. But it is something L&D needs to understand and raise. Our power here lies in our ability to influence the right people.
If the environment is working against people, no amount of training is going to fix it.
Our power here lies in our ability to influence the right people.
The employees
And finally, it comes down to the employees:
- How well do people actually understand how the business creates value?
- Where do they feel confident in their skills, and where do they struggle in their day-to-day work?
- And what kind of environment are they working in?
- Does it actually support them to perform consistently?
This is also where I had to be careful not to swing too far the other way.
Because not everything should be driven by immediate business priorities.
Within the organisation I work for, we conduct annual career conversations. This is an opportunity for employees to reflect on where they see the trajectory of their career going.
These conversations usually lead to agreed learning objectives that
support their development. This is one part of the conversation. The other is managers giving feedback and being clear on expectations, based on performance and capability gaps.
There is still real value in development that is not directly tied to an organisational goal, but still matters to them. Whether that is helping someone grow in their role, build confidence, or prepare for what is next.
What became clearer over time is that both matter.
There’s the capability people need to deliver today, and then there’s the development that keeps people engaged and moving forward.
But without that link back to the business, it is easy for L&D to lean too far in one direction.
To help put this new approach into practice, I’ve found it useful to consolidate the key diagnostic questions across these four areas.
I developed an ‘Organisation Diagnostic Checklist’ which serves as a starting point to guide conversations and uncover opportunities for strategic L&D intervention.
Figure 2: Organisation Diagnostic Checklist
Rethinking where L&D starts
What I eventually realised is that I’d been approaching things back to front.
Like a lot of L&D teams, I was starting with the employees, focusing on skills, development and training, and then trying to connect that back to the organisation.
But that connection rarely held.
When you start at the employee level, it is much harder to work your way up to something that clearly links to organisational outcomes.
Once I flipped the order, the conversations started to change. We spent less time talking about courses, and more time talking about what teams were actually trying to deliver and where things were getting stuck. The output from L&D started to feel more focused and relevant.
L&D felt less like a support function, and more like something that could actually contribute to performance.
And over time, that shift starts to build credibility.
Not by asking for a seat at the table, but by showing why you belong there.
Try this for your next read: Workplace training has a problem but L&D already knows the answer
