A learning strategy is only as useful as the decisions it helps you make.
At the 2026 Training Industry Strategy Summit, WeLearn CEO Sean Stowers joined four learning leaders for a candid conversation about what it takes to build a learning strategy that works.
Jennifer Myers of the Center for Internet Security, Jonathan Sprague of the American Academy of Implant Dentistry, Sarah Casper of Spotify and Karen Ganitsky of 3M shared how they’re navigating changing business priorities, limited resources, governance, measurement and AI.
Their organizations couldn’t be more different. But many of their challenges sounded remarkably familiar.
Missed the panel? Watch the full conversation.
Five ideas from the conversation stood out.
1. Reliability comes first
Delivering quality learning experiences and meeting stakeholder expectations are essential. That said, being a reliable learning partner doesn’t automatically make you a strategic one.
As Jennifer Meyers called out during the panel, the key difference comes down to the questions L&D asks and when those conversations happen.
“A delivery team waits to be asked, and I think a strategic one starts the conversation.” — Jennifer Myers
Rather than waiting for training requests, strategic learning teams get involved early to understand business challenges, identify behaviors that need to change and determine whether training is the right solution.
That shift also changes how success is measured. It’s no longer just about whether a program launched or how many employees completed it. It’s about understanding what changed as a result.
Reliability builds the trust and credibility needed to become a strategic partner. The next step is helping the business decide what learning is actually needed.
2. Build a strategy that adapts
Business priorities change. Teams reorganize. New technologies emerge. Learning strategies need to keep up without being rebuilt every time something shifts.
A strong strategy provides a stable foundation through shared priorities, clear responsibilities and stakeholder alignment. The programs and resources supporting those priorities can evolve as business needs change.
At Spotify, keeping operations, training and quality aligned helps the organization adapt to new technologies and evolving customer support needs.
Regular strategy reviews help teams assess what’s working, what needs to change and which activities should stop.
A living learning strategy isn’t a constantly changing document. It’s a framework for making decisions as the business evolves.
3. Governance helps you say no
Learning teams are rarely short on requests — the challenge is deciding which ones deserve attention.
Without clear governance, priorities can become reactive, driven by whoever asks first or speaks the loudest. Effective governance establishes how priorities are set, who makes decisions and what determines whether an initiative moves forward. And it doesn’t require a complex enterprise-wide structure to get started.
At 3M, Karen Ganitsky realized her team could begin improving governance within its own area of responsibility rather than trying to coordinate every learning function across the organization.
The approach? Start by defining what your team owns, how requests are evaluated and who can approve or redirect work.
Good governance isn’t about adding bureaucracy. It’s about making better decisions — including when to say no.
4. Measure what matters to the business
If you want to demonstrate learning’s impact, define what success looks like before designing the program. A stakeholder may know that performance needs to improve without being able to identify the specific behaviors or measures that need to change.
That’s where L&D can provide strategic value.
Rather than immediately developing a course, work with stakeholders to identify the performance gap, agree on desired behaviors and establish how improvement will be measured.
At the Center for Internet Security, that meant delaying a sales training program until stakeholders agreed on business measures and a way to assess performance before and after training.
But defining success is only part of the challenge. The evidence of learning’s impact often lives outside the LMS.
Sales performance, operational efficiency and customer outcomes typically live in systems managed by other teams. Building relationships across the business helps L&D access the data needed to understand whether its initiatives are making a difference.
The goal isn’t to take credit for every improvement — it’s to connect learning and behavior change to outcomes the business values.
5. AI adoption is about people
L&D has an opportunity to move organizations beyond experimentation by defining what AI fluency means and helping employees develop practical skills.
Giving employees access to AI tools is one thing. Helping your team use those tools effectively is another. Employees need to understand how AI supports their work and how to evaluate its outputs.
Start with a business problem worth solving, not a tool looking for a use case.
Learning teams can also create opportunities for employees to experiment and share what works.
At Spotify, Sarah’s team participates in voluntary AI showcases that let employees demonstrate practical applications and share lessons learned. Those examples are captured in a knowledge hub for others to explore.
The Center for Internet Security uses an employee-led AI Champions Program to connect experienced users with teams looking to improve business processes.
L&D doesn’t have to own every single AI initiative. By creating shared expectations and opportunities to learn from one another, our teams can help turn AI access into meaningful capability across the organization.
Keep the conversation going
As Sean Stowers reminded the audience at the close of the panel, “A strategy that does not change decisions is just a document.”
Learning strategy isn’t something you create once and check off your list. It’s an ongoing process of aligning priorities and adapting as the business evolves.
Ready to see how your own learning strategy measures up? WeLearn’s Learning Strategy Scorecard can help you assess your learning function across six dimensions and identify opportunities to improve.
The Learning Strategy Scorecard: See where your learning strategy is strong, where the gaps are and what to focus on next. Take the Scorecard Assessment.
