Explore actionable strategies for L&D teams to align with corporate priorities and prove measurable impact as Ryan Austin shares insights in this epic feature
For over 20 years, Learning and Development (L&D) leaders have discussed earning a seat at the leadership table. While progress has been made, as outlined in the LearnOps Maturity Model, it is time for L&D teams to not just seek recognition but to operationalise their strategy and earn that seat automatically.
Of the $130 billion invested annually in learning programs, less than 25% is judged to be effective
This article will explore step-by-step frameworks to help L&D teams run their functions like a business, aligning with corporate priorities and demonstrating undeniable value.
The corporate L&D landscape: An opportunity for impact
The corporate learning market is rapidly expanding, with spending expected to grow from $361.5 billion to over $800 billion by 2035. Of the $130 billion invested annually in learning programs, less than 25% is judged to be effective. To gain credibility and influence, L&D teams must transition from content creators or order takers to business value creators. This means becoming stewards of capital, owning return on investment (ROI) metrics, and proving that they understand how learning investments align with corporate goals and unlock measurable business value—whether by building skills, competencies, or workforce expertise where it matters most.
Steps you can to take to get an automatic seat at the table
1. Think like a business leader
For decades, L&D teams have strived for recognition at the leadership table. Today, the path forward is clear: operate the talent function as a strategic business unit. L&D must take on the role of stewards of capital, demonstrating ROI by aligning investments with business priorities and accelerating workforce expertise to achieve those goals more efficiently.
Align efforts with corporate goals
Define your mission by answering, “What is the company’s 1-year plan, 3-year goals, and 5-year vision?” To uncover these priorities, L&D leaders must become investigators.
Start by:
- Engaging stakeholders: Have one-on-one conversations with senior leaders across departments, including the CEO, CFO, and HR executives. Ask probing questions to understand what success looks like for the organization and where talent development can contribute. A good real-world example of this can be read at: Deloitte’s chief learning officer on speaking to 100 leaders in 100 days.
- Reviewing business plans: Request access to the company’s strategic business plan or annual goals. Most organisations articulate their priorities in these documents, which serve as a roadmap for aligning L&D initiatives. If the company is publicly traded, leverage resources such as annual reports, investor presentations, and earnings calls. These sources often outline financial targets, market priorities, and strategic focus areas.
- Understanding market context: Research industry trends and competitive positioning to identify areas where talent development could provide a competitive edge.
By thoroughly investigating these sources, L&D leaders can align their programs with corporate goals, ensuring their contributions are seen as vital to organisational success.
Adopt the language of business
Metrics such as time (capacity management), cost (budget allocation), and impact (ROI) resonate with leadership. For example, measure the time required to design programs, the budget invested, and their outcomes relative to business goals. Regularly report on these metrics to ensure alignment and demonstrate strategic value.
- Time: Capacity Management – evaluate the time invested in developing and delivering learning programs. Track how long it takes to move from concept to implementation and how efficiently your team allocates time across various initiatives. This metric allows you to highlight areas where processes can be streamlined, reducing inefficiencies and accelerating outcomes. For example, if a new training program takes 30% less time to develop than average but achieves equal or better results, this demonstrates operational efficiency.
- Cost: Budget Allocation – Analyse the financial resources allocated to each program. Break down the costs into categories such as content development, facilitation, platform usage, and vendor management. Use this data to identify high-cost areas that may not yield proportional benefits. For example, by comparing spending across multiple programs, you can determine which initiatives deliver the best ROI and redirect resources accordingly.
- Impact: ROI and Business Outcomes – Measure the outcomes of your initiatives against the initial objectives. Start by defining clear, measurable goals for each program—whether that is to increase employee retention, improve productivity, or close a skills gap. Then track the actual results. For instance, if a leadership development program leads to a 20% improvement in manager productivity, quantify this improvement in terms of business value. ROI calculations should encompass both the direct financial benefits and indirect impacts, such as employee engagement and reduced turnover.
Create a consistent cadence for reporting these metrics to stakeholders. Develop dashboards and presentations that clearly communicate the time, cost, and impact of your initiatives on business goals. Use visualisations to make data accessible and engaging, ensuring leadership understands the strategic value of your work. Regularly review these metrics in partnership with key stakeholders, such as HR and finance teams, to ensure alignment with corporate priorities and foster a collaborative approach to decision-making.
Tip: Build cross-functional teams with business partners to review metrics and evaluate effectiveness quarterly. Collaborative reporting ensures alignment with business priorities and builds trust with stakeholders.
2. Prioritise strategically
Effective prioritisation ensures that every L&D investment aligns with corporate goals and creates business value. This requires both top-down planning and bottom-up input from business partners.
Top-down alignment
Begin with corporate goals to identify the most critical areas for workforce development. To effectively leverage these goals, L&D teams must approach them with a structured framework:
- 1-Year Plan: Focus on immediate and actionable business priorities set by the CEO. These are typically outlined in the company’s annual strategic plan and provide a roadmap for urgent business needs. Use this plan to design programs that deliver quick wins and measurable impact within a short timeframe.
- 3-Year Goals: These mid-term goals require L&D to think beyond the immediate horizon. Align programs and initiatives with broader organisational objectives, such as market expansion, technological upgrades, or workforce transformation. Design roadmaps that support the company’s growth trajectory and ensure programs remain flexible to adapt as needs evolve.
- 5-Year Vision: The long-term vision often reflects aspirational objectives and the overall direction the company wants to take. While these goals are less concrete, they serve as a guiding compass to ensure L&D strategies remain aligned with future trends and opportunities. Stay informed about shifts in leadership or market dynamics, as these can influence the vision and necessitate recalibration of L&D efforts.
By anchoring their efforts to these timelines, L&D teams can filter out requests that do not align with organisational priorities and ensure their contributions are strategically aligned at every level vs. falling for the traditional order-taking traps.
Establish bottom-up feedback
Create a robust request process to capture insights from business units. Begin by developing a standardised intake system where business partners can submit their training and development needs. Use this system to capture not only immediate requests but also contextual information about the underlying challenges and business goals associated with each request.
To ensure alignment to business goals and facilitate prioritisation, include specific, targeted questions in your process:
- Strategic alignment:
- What organisational goals does this request support (1-year, 3-year, or 5-year objectives)?
- How would this training request contribute to the company’s strategic priorities?
- What organisational goals does this request support (1-year, 3-year, or 5-year objectives)?
- Problem solving:
- What specific business problem are you aiming to solve?
- What measurable outcomes do you expect from addressing this challenge?
- What specific business problem are you aiming to solve?
- Impact and urgency:
- What would happen if this request is not addressed?
- How urgent is this initiative, and why?
- What would happen if this request is not addressed?
- Stakeholder context:
- Who are the primary stakeholders, and how will they measure success?
- Are there any dependencies or risks associated with the proposed program?
- Who are the primary stakeholders, and how will they measure success?
Once collected, analyse the requests to identify patterns, emerging needs, and recurring themes. Cross-reference these insights with corporate priorities to ensure alignment. For instance, if the company’s annual plan emphasises digital transformation, prioritise requests that focus on upskilling in technology-driven roles or processes. Use prioritisation frameworks such as a scoring matrix to evaluate requests based on factors like urgency, potential impact on business objectives, and resource availability.
Incorporate questions to establish baselines for program measurement and gather business evidence along the way, such as:
- Measurement planning:
- What metrics will indicate the success of this requested program?
- How will progress be tracked throughout the initiative?
- What metrics will indicate the success of this requested program?
- Evidence collection:
- What baseline data exists to measure the current state of the problem?
- What specific business evidence (e.g., performance metrics, financial data) will be gathered during and after the program in partnership between you and L&D?
- What baseline data exists to measure the current state of the problem?
- Outcome definition:
- What are the intended outcomes, and how will they be quantified?
- What evidence will validate whether the program achieved these outcomes?
- What are the intended outcomes, and how will they be quantified?
Additionally, ensure you execute on the above business a consultation process with business units to ensure that submitted requests are not just orders to be fulfilled but opportunities for strategic partnership and collaboration. During these consultations, focus on uncovering how proposed initiatives align with the organization’s 1-year, 3-year, and 5-year goals. Use these discussions to refine the requests, ensuring they are outcome-driven and designed to deliver measurable business impact.
By filtering and prioritising requests through the lens of corporate priorities, L&D can move away from an order-taker role to becoming a trusted strategic advisor. This approach enables the team to focus resources on initiatives that truly drive organizational success.
Actionable Step: Implement a training request portal that allows departments to submit their training and development requests. Ensure the portal categorises requests by urgency, impact, and alignment with corporate goals. Or if you’re leveraging predictive analytics, score requests using AI on top business goal priorities to help automate prioritisation.
3. Build governance and agility
Governance and operating models are the backbone of efficient L&D operations. They must be designed to provide a clear structure for decision-making, accountability, and resource management while remaining agile to adapt to shifting business needs. This means creating systems that allow for quick pivots in response to organisational changes, such as new leadership priorities, market disruptions, or evolving workforce demands. By balancing flexibility with accountability, governance frameworks can ensure consistency in operations while enabling innovation and responsiveness.
Traditional governance models
Select a governance structure that best fits organisational needs: centralised, federated, or decentralised. The three most common governance structures are:
- Centralised Governance: All decision-making, strategy, and resource allocation are managed at a corporate level. Ensures consistency across global operations, particularly in large enterprises with a unified vision. Best suited for organisations aiming for streamlined processes and standardised training programs.
- Federated Governance: Combines central oversight with regional or departmental autonomy. Allows individual business units or regions to tailor training initiatives to their specific needs while staying aligned with overarching corporate goals. Ideal for organisations with diverse geographical markets or business functions requiring flexibility.
- Decentralised Governance: Decision-making and resource management are distributed across various business units or regions. Promotes agility and faster response times to local needs but may risk inconsistencies across the organisation. Most effective in smaller organisations or those with highly independent business units.
Selecting the right model depends on factors such as organisational size, complexity, and strategic priorities. Regular reviews of the governance structure ensure it remains aligned with evolving business needs.
Operationalising strategy through governance
To effectively implement your L&D strategy, it’s essential to tie strategy, budget, and vendor relationships to each team within your governance model. This approach ensures that you maintain a clear, cohesive view of who is spending what on which programs and projects—and, most importantly, how these efforts align with broader business goals. If a program or project doesn’t directly ladder to a business goal, it’s an opportunity to coach the team on strategically saying “No.” This shift moves L&D teams away from being perceived as order-takers and positions them as strategic advisors who guide business stakeholders toward high-impact investments.
By focusing on prioritisation, L&D teams can help stakeholders allocate resources to areas that drive measurable business outcomes. For instance, even commonly requested initiatives like leadership or soft skills training should be evaluated critically. Ask whether these programs are essential to achieving 1-year or 3-year business plans. If the answer is no, consider pausing or redirecting those resources toward initiatives that deliver the greatest business impact—especially in today’s business environment, where resources are often constrained.
In a federated governance model, for example, the central enterprise team can establish a top-down strategy aligned with corporate goals. Each federated learning or talent team then builds their own strategy that directly supports the central strategy. This ensures alignment across all levels while enabling regional or departmental flexibility. With this model, you can also track budgets, vendors, and their contributions to business goals across each teams, gaining a unified view of your learning investments’ efficiency and effectiveness. This scalable approach works for organisations of all sizes, fostering accountability and strategic decision-making across the board.
Enabling governance with technology
Use platforms to simplify and enhance governance management. These tools enable seamless alignment of user roles, budgets, and vendor relationships with organisational goals. By integrating governance functionalities into a single platform, good platforms reduces the complexity of managing diverse governance structures, such as centralised, federated, or decentralised models. This adaptability allows teams to pivot quickly in response to business changes without significant disruptions. For example, if a global enterprise needs to transition from a centralised to a federated governance model, quality platforms will have a configurable workflow and reporting capabilities to ensure a smooth transition while maintaining accountability and efficiency.
Case Study: A manufacturing company centralised its L&D operations across 72 countries by establishing nine Centers of Excellence (CoEs) to lead strategy, standards, and frameworks. Using a federated governance model, the CoEs provided global consistency while enabling regional teams to adapt training initiatives to local needs. For instance, the CoEs standardised content and vendor relationships, ensuring alignment with global digital transformation goals, while regional teams focused on local market demands such as upskilling in region-specific technologies. Advanced governance tools supported real-time tracking, collaboration, and alignment with corporate objectives. This approach allowed the company to reduce redundancies, respond rapidly to local market demands, and measure training impacts both regionally and globally, resulting in an agile L&D function that balanced global strategy with local adaptability.
Ryan Austin is Founder and CEO of Cognota.
In part two:
- Operationalise Strategy: Learn how to bridge strategy and execution with capacity management and budget optimisation
- Evaluate for Impact: Discover evidence-based evaluation processes to measure ROI and align training with business goals
- Data-Driven Decisions: Explore dashboards, predictive analytics, and storytelling techniques to showcase L&D’s strategic value