L&D has earned a place in the conversations that shape capabilities, technology, and workforce strategy. Whether being in those conversations translates into influence is a different question. The function still lacks decision ownership, strong evidence tied to business metrics, and enforcement through the systems we use.
In practice, that means we’re great at offering options. The business asks what we could build, and we come back with five programs and three workshops. Then we measure ourselves on whether the training got delivered, not on whether anything changed in how the work gets done.
What we don’t do is push back on whether the business should be building any of these programs in the first place.
We chatted with three senior L&D leaders recently (Karen Ganitsky at 3M, Brian Jarvis at WM, and Loren Sanders at WeLearn) about why that keeps happening.
The seat is conditional
Karen Ganitsky, Global Sales Training Leader at 3M, doesn’t take her seat for granted:
"I feel like my seat has wheels. I'm holding myself to the table, but I could get pushed away if I don't do the right things."
Karen thinks good timing (and a bit of luck) helped her get there, and a position that arrives that way can leave the same way. Holding it locked in means showing, over and over, that L&D moves the business’s priorities forward — and pushing back against an old assumption that the function isn’t a critical part of the business. That assumption shows up in who gets invited to strategy conversations and how decisions about learning get made. Karen’s pushback is structural. Governance is her main focus area within L&D, and decision rights are the most complicated piece of it, she told us. The work clarifies what L&D owns, what it doesn’t, and where it sits when bigger calls about learning are being made. That clarity is what gives the function the ground it needs to lead.
Discomfort by design
Brian Jarvis, Senior Manager of WMSBS Learning and Development at WM, doesn’t want to feel comfortable in his seat, and he says he never will.
"You are the only one that needs to prove why you exist, and you have to be comfortable with it. It doesn't make me uncomfortable to always be looking over my shoulder and wondering if I'm doing enough."
Brian’s working from a different premise than the one most of us learn: that getting to the table means you’ve arrived. He thinks settling in is when trust starts breaking, in the gap between what stakeholders thought they were getting and what they’re actually getting.
That same vigilance shows up in how Brian handles boundaries. The function regularly gets pulled into work that isn’t traditionally L&D’s, because partners need help and L&D is the team that can deliver. When that happens, he writes it down. The working agreement says, in clear language: this is L&D helping outside its lane, not the new normal. Otherwise, he told us, the stretch becomes the expectation, and the expectation becomes the job description. A function defined by what it absorbs has no position to push back from.
On moving from advisory to deciding
Loren Sanders, VP Learning Strategy & Consulting at WeLearn, names the underlying choice. The seat is settled. What’s still in play is whether L&D shapes the decisions, resources, and consequences attached to the work, becoming operationally critical to how the business runs, or stays advisory while someone else owns the decision. Most functions today are still in the second mode.
Levelling up happens through the kind of work Karen and Brian are doing. Karen’s governance work goes after decision ownership. Brian’s written agreements pin scope down before it drifts, and his self-issued reports send L&D’s narrative out without waiting for sign-off. Both are setting constraints rather than offering options. That’s how the seat starts to translate into influence.
If you’re at TICE in June
Karen Ganitsky, Brian Jarvis, Loren Sanders, and Valerie Marsh, Senior Director of Learning & Development at Jushi, are taking this conversation further on stage:
L&D Has a Seat at the Table. Why Isn’t That Translating to Influence?
June 17th, 2026 from 11:15 am to 12:15 pm in the Empire Ballroom A–C
