Making L&D business-critical: Talent development strategies that work

Let’s skip the warm-up and get straight to the point: Learning and Development is at a crossroads.

We either evolve and lead with strategy, or we stay boxed into the role of reactive order-taker, ignored in executive conversations, first to lose budget, and last to be taken seriously.

If you’re reading this, I know you didn’t choose a career in L&D just to build workshops on demand. You chose it because you believe in people. You believe learning changes lives, cultures, companies. And now, more than ever, it’s time for us to show the business that we’re not just helpful, we’re essential.

But here’s the catch: this shift won’t happen because someone finally recognizes your value.

It happens because you’re already showing up where it counts, leading the right conversations, solving the right problems, and making yourself impossible to overlook.

We’re not here waiting to be invited into important rooms, we’re walking in with purpose. Not to sit at the elusive table but to add value, ask better questions, and drive the business forward.

Because when you’re aligned, strategic, and focused on outcomes that matter, your presence in those rooms isn’t a request, it’s a no-brainer.

Let’s talk about why L&D gets sidelined

Most L&D teams are built to serve, not to lead. We say yes to requests. We chase completions. We talk about learning outcomes instead of business outcomes.

And then we wonder why no one sees our strategic value.

In one company I worked with, the L&D team worked relentlessly—delivering content, hosting programs, checking every box. But because none of it tied to business goals, it didn’t matter. When the budget got tight, they were the first to go.

In another company, L&D took a different approach. They asked better questions. They aligned every initiative with revenue, retention, and future readiness. Leadership saw them not as trainers—but as business enablers. Guess who stayed when things got tough?

The difference wasn’t talent. It wasn’t budget. It was mindset.

Stop starting with training. Start with strategy

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most L&D teams are stuck in a cycle of urgency masquerading as impact.

A leader asks for a workshop. A department wants a new course. A policy changes, and suddenly there’s a rush to launch something, anything, to keep up. And because we’re helpful (and high-performing), we do it. We build. We deliver. We tick the box.

But then… nothing changes.

No shift in behavior. No uptick in results. Just another line item in the LMS and another “course completion” metric that means nothing to the business.

This isn’t a training problem. It’s a strategy problem.

We have to stop treating training as the starting point, and start treating it as the final, deliberate choice we make once we understand the real business need.

That’s where the L&D Satellite View comes in. This isn’t a framework filled with “you shoulds” or theory. It’s the lens I use with clients and in my own programs to rewire how we think about learning. It’s not about what’s urgent, it’s about what’s essential.

Let me walk you through it.

1. Zoom out: Global trends are your starting line

We live in a world where the skills that mattered five years ago barely register today. AI, automation, economic shifts, changing social values, these aren’t just headlines. They’re the forces shaping what your organization needs to thrive.

And yet, many L&D teams design in a vacuum, building programs based on yesterday’s assumptions.

If you’re not tracking what’s happening in the broader world of work, you’re already behind. Strategic L&D starts by understanding how global trends impact talent, capability, and performance.

Ask:

• What’s disrupting or influencing our work right now?
• How are roles evolving, or disappearing altogether?
• What human skills will matter most when everything else can be automated?

This is about future-proofing. Not fire-fighting.

2. Tune in: What do people actually want?

Here’s what most L&D dashboards won’t show you: how your people feel about their development.

Are they inspired by it? Or are they checking out entirely?

Today’s employees want growth that feels real. They want stretch, purpose, mobility, not a parade of mandatory modules. If we’re building learning that no one is excited to engage with, we’re not solving capability gaps. We’re reinforcing disengagement.

So be honest:

• Are people opting in, or opting out?
• Does your learning feel valuable, or just… required?
• Are you helping them build a career, or just survive compliance?

If L&D doesn’t help people feel seen, stretched, and supported, they’ll find development elsewhere, or they’ll leave.

3. Look around: Your industry isn’t standing still

Every industry is evolving, some faster than others. And if your learning strategy hasn’t changed in three years, it’s probably irrelevant.

Take financial services. It used to be all about compliance and customer service. Now it’s cybersecurity, AI fluency, and digital trust. In retail, it’s less about foot traffic and more about logistics and data-driven customer experience.

If you’re not building capability for where your industry is headed, you’re training people for jobs that won’t exist tomorrow.

Ask:

• What emerging capabilities are other companies in our space investing in?
• Where are we falling behind, or missing an opportunity to lead?
• How can we get ahead of the curve and build skills before the business asks for them?

L&D isn’t just about supporting the business. It’s about helping the business compete.

4. Zoom in: Align with what actually matters to the business

Now, finally, we narrow in on your organization. Forget the mission statement. Forget the corporate values slide deck.

What are executives actually focused on? What’s being discussed behind closed doors? Is it top-line growth? Retention? Innovation? Expansion?

If your learning strategy doesn’t explicitly connect to those priorities, you’re building noise, not value. You should be able to draw a straight line from any learning initiative to a business priority.

“We’re investing in manager capability because we’re losing top talent to poor leadership.”
“We’re launching a customer experience program because NPS scores have dropped and it’s hurting renewals.”
“We’re developing internal mobility pathways because our hiring costs have tripled.”

This is how you get out of the training lane and into the growth lane.

5. Only then do you design learning

At this point, and only at this point, do you start thinking about learning solutions.

Because now? You’re not reacting. You’re solving.

You’re not guessing what people need. You know what the business needs.

You’re not creating content. You’re building capability.

And that, right there, is the shift that separates tactical L&D from business-critical L&D.

If you want to be strategic, you have to speak the language

The shift into strategic partnership doesn’t mean abandoning what you’re already doing well, it means framing it in a way the business understands.

You already know how to build meaningful learning. You already care deeply about engagement and growth. But to be seen as essential, not optional, you need to connect those efforts to the metrics that matter most to your stakeholders.

That means speaking in outcomes. In impact. In business language.

Instead of focusing solely on course completions or satisfaction scores, start linking learning to the goals your leaders are already tracking, like performance, retention, and customer satisfaction.

Ask:

• What are the top three business priorities this year?
• What behaviors or skills are holding us back from achieving them?
• Which existing metrics could L&D directly or indirectly influence?

When you anchor your work in these questions, you position learning as a lever for growth, not just a support function.

Here’s what that can sound like in practice.

Rather than saying:
“We need to run a leadership program,”

You might say:
“Exit interviews show we’re losing high performers because of poor leadership. Developing our managers will reduce attrition and protect our top talent, which is far more cost-effective than ongoing recruitment.”

Same initiative. Different framing. And that shift in language is what changes how the business sees your role.

This is the work. And the more fluently you speak in business outcomes, the more naturally you’ll find yourself involved in the right conversations, making decisions that shape the future, not just support it.

Forget ROI, here’s what to measure instead

Look, we all love a good ROI story. But trying to reduce all of L&D to a dollar-for-dollar return? That’s a trap. Reducing all of L&D to a dollar-for-dollar exchange misses the bigger picture, and often, the most meaningful impact.

Not everything that counts fits in a spreadsheet.

The goal isn’t to justify your existence. It’s to show how your work is already contributing to the business in ways that matter, both in outcomes and in capability.

That means shifting from trying to measure everything, to focusing on the right indicators. Indicators that tell a story leadership understands, values, and can act on.

Here are five places to start:

• Turnover rates in key roles after development programs
  
• Internal promotions versus external hires, showing growth from within
  
• Productivity gains linked to onboarding or skill-building initiatives
  
• Engagement or pulse scores, especially in cohorts with active learning support
  
• Customer satisfaction improvements where capability-building played a role

These aren’t vanity metrics. They’re business signals. They show where learning creates stability, momentum, and growth.

And in most cases, your organization is already collecting this data. The opportunity is to bring it into the L&D conversation, to connect the dots and demonstrate the ripple effect learning creates.

The shift starts with you

This isn’t about waiting for a rebrand of L&D or hoping for a more supportive exec sponsor.

This is about how we choose to operate, day to day.

When we lead with alignment, when we tie our work to business goals, and when we measure what matters, we stop asking to be seen as strategic, and start showing that we already are.

That shift begins internally.

It looks like:

• Understanding your company’s top priorities and working backward from them
• Building capability solutions that solve real business problems
• Asking questions that open up meaningful dialogue, not just transactional requests
• Telling stories of impact that leadership recognizes and respects
• Contributing to decisions, not just reacting to outcomes

You don’t need permission to start doing this. You already know your value. Now it’s about making sure the business knows it too.

And yes, it takes courage to lead this way. But if we want to change how L&D is perceived, we have to first change how we show up.

Want to go deeper? Download the free L&D Impact Toolkit and start leading with more clarity, confidence, and impact.

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About the author: 

Candice Mitchell, M.Sc. in Organizational Leadership (Strategic Innovation & Change), is the founder of Talent Development Nerds and the creator of The Talent Development Academy®, a program built for Learning and Development professionals who want to do work that actually changes lives. With nearly two decades of corporate & consulting L&D experience, Candice has turned everything we’ve been talking about for years, having more impact, being more strategic, and lifting people up, into a clear, actionable roadmap. Her work helps L&D professionals become confident, credible leaders who shape careers and transform workplaces.