The problem with most L&D strategies
What we tend to overlook and over-index – and what to do instead.
These past few weeks, I’ve been talking to a lot of leaders lately about their learning and development (L&D) strategy for 2025.
Here are trends in what I’ve been hearing from folks…
“We want to make sure we’re focused on providing more coaching and social learning…”
“We’re trying to figure out how to increase adoption and traction of our existing offerings…”
“We need to provide more training around certain skill gaps that we have…”
All of these ideas — while full of merit — often miss the most fundamental piece of an effective strategy for L&D.
Performance, not performative.
Ultimately, the most effective L&D strategy is NOT about helping people learn more skills or adopt existing learning solutions more.
(As much I love learning as an intrinsic concept, the foundational purpose of learning is for that learning to be translated into meaningful action.)
An effective L&D strategy is about helping people PERFORM BETTER.
It’s about solving the most burning, pressing need for your team, so they feel they can do their jobs better than before.
This means doing two things when crafting your L&D strategy for 2025:
1️⃣ Ask your managers about their burning problems:
What is the #1 burning problem that you feel you face as a leader?
What do you see as the biggest barrier to your team’s success?
What do you find most frustrating + the #1 thing that gets in the way of doing your job?
2️⃣ Asking your individual contributors (ICs) about their burning problems:
What is the #1 burning problem that you feel in your role?
What do you see as the biggest barrier to your team’s success?
What do you find most frustrating + the #1 thing that gets in the way of doing your job?
Sustainable high-performance only happens when the burning problems of our team are being actively addressed and solved.
L&D is merely a path and helpful lever for solving those burning problems.
Discussion, not just data.
We need to “de-datafy” the L&D space.
Trust me, I love numbers. I deeply appreciate seeing the macro view of where people stand, and the emerging patterns that show themselves.
But, my goodness, have we grown overly reliant on “putting a survey together” – especially as a replacement to talking to our teams.
I understand why. Who hasn’t been scarred by senior leadership asking you to “show the numbers to back it up.” That we need to “take a more data-driven approach now that we’re at scale.” But as leaders in L&D and people operations, we have forgotten what lays at the heart of those numbers: People.
There is no number in the world that can capture the valence of how BURNING or PAINFUL a problem really is as hearing in-real-life: “I feel like I’m drowning at this company…” or “I feel like the level of trust here is broken…”
Seeing “4/10” on an aggregated survey response doesn’t give you nearly the complete picture.
What’s further advantageous about opening up a direct discussion — and not just a survey with an anonymous comment box — is the depth of insight you can discover. For example, imagine asking:
Is the “drowning” from the sheer work load, lack of organizational direction, or both?
Is the “broken trust” from a specific initiative, something that applies to all senior leaders, or the compounding result of a million paper cuts?
The answers will reveal telling clues for an accurate diagnosis of the underlying problem. And, the more accurate the diagnosis, the more effective the solution.
Even better, if you have the time, absolutely do both. Have the discussion and run the survey! Let the insights from your roundtable discussions give color and detail for the burning problems you uncover.
(P.S.: I plan to do a deeper post on how to run an effective group discussion and listen-and-learn tour well. More from me in the future on this.)
Theory of Change, not tactics.
Let’s say the #1 burning problem you end up identifying for folks is: “I’m being asked to do too much. The workload feels unrealistic.”
(In fact, over this past year training thousands of leaders here at Canopy, that is the most commonly cited burning problem 😅)
From this, I think it’s very natural to start brainstorming tactics and projects. For example:
“We should start a workshop series where people can share best practices on how they’re prioritizing their work...”
“We should bring in an outside speaker share productivity techniques…”
“I think we need to start training people more on AI tooling so they can get more done…”
Nothing is inherently wrong with these ideas. But they’ve skipped the critical piece of an effective L&D strategy (or perhaps any strategy): A Theory of Change.
A term first coined by Peter Drucker in 1954 (oh yes, a Druckerism!), the essential premise is that you have some set of assumptions of how events will unfold after your intervention, that lead to the larger change that you’re seeking.
It feels relatively obvious… until you start applying it.
For instance, take the example we have at hand. The current state is, “I’m being asked to do too much. The workload feels unrealistic.”
But before even sharing assumptions for the events that might unfold with an intervention — what is the larger change that we want to see, in the first place?
Is that we simply want greater overall output from the team? Is it that we want the team to not be so fickle to day-to-day fires and focus on the most pressing priorities? Is it that we want people to operate more self-reliantly and autonomously toward the overall business goals? Is it all of the above?
Each of those ideal “end states” in fact have a wide varying set of potential interventions, and then potential resulting events that unfold in the process. If you’re not clear on picking one — on having at least one Theory of Change — you’ll end up with an amalgamation of them all. Some assortment of semi-related tactics that seem promising on the onset, but that you quickly find takes more bandwidth to execute and maintain…And then doesn’t really solve your team’s #1 burning problem. Uh-oh.
The tactics took over. A clear Theory of Change abandoned.
A funny side effect happens when you focus your L&D strategy on performance: The ROI shows itself. Because you’re keyed in on your team’s #1 burning problem, your L&D efforts either help solve the burning problem or they don’t. Performance either goes up, goes down, or stays the same. Your impact becomes self-evident.
I hope these thoughts here are helpful to you, as you consider your impact for 2025, and beyond.
-Claire
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