Getting L&D involved early matters, but this discussion shows that access alone is not the full answer. Kim Ellis, Cathy Hoy, Donald H Taylor and Laura Overton reflect on stakeholder relationships, strategic credibility and why influence grows when L&D understands the business well enough to help shape what happens next.
Summary
- The video explores why access to decision-makers is a practical enabler of L&D impact, not just a nice-to-have
- L&D should do more than wait to be invited into strategic discussions
- At leadership level, L&D should help shape the direction of the business and prepare for what is coming next
- Early involvement is often the result of strong relationships
- Genuine curiosity about what matters to stakeholders is important
- L&D influence is built through proximity, trust, business understanding and honest conversation
A recurring theme in the TJ L&D Influence Report is that good intentions and strong evidence are rarely enough on their own. What often makes the difference is whether L&D can get close enough to the right conversations, the right people and the right decisions to act. This video brings that issue to life.
Kim Ellis offers a very practical view of the challenge. When stakeholder access is poor, projects do not just become frustrating, they become more expensive and less effective. Chasing multiple people for sign-off, trying to work without context, and navigating layers of approval all slow progress and add avoidable effort. Her reflections on the difference between employed and freelance work are telling too. A direct line to the person with responsibility for budget, priorities or direction can cut through red tape and create a much smoother process.
Cathy Hoy takes the argument on another step. For her, L&D should not simply hope to be brought in earlier. At leadership level, L&D should be helping the business prepare for what is ahead. That means understanding the wider pressures shaping organisations, from economic uncertainty to demographic change, and using that understanding to guide action.
Donald H Taylor adds an important note of realism. Being invited into strategic conversations is often not the starting point. It is the result of relationship-building, trust and shared language. In organisations where L&D is already close to decision-making, that proximity has usually been earned over time.
Laura Overton rounds out the discussion with a useful challenge. Stakeholder conversations should not only be about persuading others to support L&D ideas. They should begin with genuine curiosity about what matters most to the business.
Taken together, the interviews reinforce one of the report’s strongest messages: influence grows when L&D builds trust, understands context and gets closer to where decisions are made.
Including interviews from:
Video transcript
Transcript from TechSmith Audiate:
Kim Ellis: It’s really nice to have one stakeholder…with as much information as you could possibly want, an encyclopedia for you to dig through to find the content to create the course or the thing, what they want. Does that happen often? I’d say less than half. I’ve had, like, a committee of twenty odd people on the sign off, and it was…difficult to manage. I have the previous material, but no other context.
Everything else I had to dig. And it it actually cost the the company so much more money because I was having to manage it so much more, and there was and there was everything was taking so much longer because I was having to chase twenty people.
Cathy Hoy: It’s a really important message. I think not only that l and d, you know, need to be involved in the conversations early, but, honestly, I think l and d should be leading them. I think at, uh, a real l and d leadership level, you should be telling the business where the business is going and how you’re gonna be supporting it and making sure that, you know, it it gets where it needs to go.
I think if you, you know, you understand what’s coming down the line, so you, know, you know the headwinds and tailwinds, you know, all the kind of macro level influences like, um, climate change, uh, aging populations, uh, economic uncertainty. I’m sure we can all relate to some of these. Um, if you know about those and you understand how they’re gonna impact your organization, then you can get ahead of the game and you can prepare for business.
Donald H Taylor: You have to be involved in the conversations early on. But too often, that has been seen as… the starting point…for showing this. For me, being involved in the conversations early on, when I look at organizations that are doing this successfully, is a byproduct of other things that is happening in l and d, in particular, building relationships, building networks, and establishing a common communication, which means that naturally, of course, you’re invited in. So you’re not trying to get into the conversation. It’s just assumed. You’re gonna be there.
Kim Ellis: I’d say…I had a lot less power when I was employed… Um, there were… there there was a there were a lot more barriers to the decision makers…So I was, you know, a designer deliverer. And if I wanted to change something, if I wanted to push something through, I would have to go to my manager who would then go to the, like, area partner and then it gets to the head. Um, and it’s…when when you’re a freelancer, you’re usually talking to the head of or the manager of that area.
So if you have ideas about something or if you want to implement something, if you want to have a conversation about budget and say, look, actually, this is your budget, you can do this. So having that conversation with someone straight away rather than having to do it through committee is really important no matter whether you are internal or external.
Just having that direct line cuts out so much red tape and it just makes the whole process…smoother and more fun because you can just crack on rather than…just staffing with meetings and trying to get things seen.
Laura Overton: Ultimately, we want those conversations because we want them to buy into our ideas rather than us being genuinely curious about what’s important to our stakeholders and genuinely curious about what’s driving us in our profession. So for me, there was, you know, that’s that sense of conversation. That to me, I think, is is very powerful, particularly if we can be genuinely honest about where we are in the profession.
