Most learning leaders know their function needs to be more strategic. Fewer know what that actually looks like in practice, or where to begin.
That question drove a recent webinar featuring Loren Sanders (VP of Learning Strategy & Consulting, WeLearn), Roberta Gogos (HR & Learning Tech Industry Analyst at Lighthouse Research), Karen Ganitsky (Global Sales L&D Leader, 3M Company), and Jennifer Myers (Senior Director of L&D, Center for Internet Security).
The session was built around findings from our learning strategy maturity research, which surveyed 118 L&D leaders across 27 industries and scored organizations against six dimensions of learning maturity. 80% of organizations scored at the bottom two levels: reactive or operational. Only about 1 in 5 reached strategic or transformational levels.
What learning leaders should be asking
The research pointed to consistent gaps across organizations, but the real value came from how the panelists translated those gaps into decisions. Where do I start with governance when the scope feels impossible? What does it actually take to move from operational to strategic? Which gaps should I defer, and how do I defend that choice? And how do I know whether I’m on the right track when no one inside my organization can tell me?
Insight 1: Governance doesn’t require a company-wide overhaul. It requires a starting point.
Governance showed up as a top gap in the research, and the panel explored why it tends to stall. In large organizations especially, ownership of learning is spread across business groups, HR functions, and regional teams. Trying to define who owns what across the entire enterprise can feel paralyzing, so it gets pushed off.
The more productive approach, based on what surfaced in the session, is to start small. Define roles, decision rights, and accountability within your immediate team first. Get that working. Then use it as a model you can extend to partner groups and cross-functional stakeholders.
“I don’t need to define the governance for the whole of 3M,” said Karen Ganitsky. “I can start with the governance within my team, from what’s in our span of control.”
That reframe matters. Governance stalls most often not because teams lack the will, but because they treat it as an enterprise-wide problem before they’ve solved it locally. When you build a working model inside your own team first, you create something concrete to point to when the conversation expands.
Governance also shows up in how L&D gathers input. When the process for identifying learning needs depends on informal channels or liaisons with varying levels of engagement, priorities tend to reflect whoever is most vocal rather than what’s most strategic. That’s a governance problem disguised as a communication problem. If L&D isn’t directly in the room hearing needs firsthand, the quality of your strategy becomes a function of who happens to show up.
“Whoever was speaking the loudest that day was what got brought in,” said Jennifer Myers. “Not necessarily what was the most strategic.”
What to take from this: If governance feels too big, shrink the scope. Start with what’s in your control. That becomes the proof of concept for everything else.
Insight 2: The jump from operational to strategic is a leadership move, not a technical one.
A recurring theme throughout the session was the difference between having access to data and actually owning the narrative around it. Most L&D teams can report completions, participation, and engagement. But that kind of reporting tells you what happened. It doesn’t tell you whether it mattered.
During the webinar, a distinction was made between reporting (which tells you what you did) and measurement (which tells you whether it mattered). And the story you build from measurement is what moves L&D from cost center to strategic partner.
The practical application is straightforward. Ask stakeholders what they’re getting evaluated on at the end of the year. Reverse-engineer your learning objectives from there. When L&D outcomes connect to what the business actually measures, the conversation with leadership changes.
That shift also applies internally. Building a more strategic L&D function often means getting your own team aligned to a new way of working. And that’s where a lot of transformation efforts quietly stall. The strategy might be sound, but if the team carrying it out hasn’t shifted how they see their own role, execution stays stuck in old patterns.
“How would I take my team and have them buy in quickly to where we were going?” said Karen Ganitsky. “That is a complete leadership trait. It’s not a technical skill that’ll get you there.”
Even when the internal shift happens, though, development still depends on leaders across the organization reinforcing it. L&D can build the programs, track the data, and tell the story. But if leaders aren’t modeling and reinforcing what’s being taught, the impact stops at the classroom door. The goal isn’t for L&D to own development end to end. It’s for leadership to co-own it.
“There is only so much we can do from an L&D seat in someone’s personal application of what they learn,” said Jennifer Myers. “At some point, the ownership falls on the employee and the leader.”
What to take from this: If you’re stuck at operational, the barrier probably isn’t resources or tools. It’s visibility. Find a business problem you can help solve, even a small one, and use it to show what L&D looks like when it’s connected to outcomes.
Insight 3: Not every gap needs to be closed right now. Choosing what to defer is strategic too.
AI readiness scored lowest across every organization in the study. Not because people lacked access to tools, but because most L&D teams haven’t defined their role in AI yet. Are we consumers? Curators? Strategists? Most organizations haven’t decided.
There’s a lot of pressure right now to have an AI strategy. But having one that’s premature can be worse than having none at all. When the organization hasn’t aligned on risk tolerance, use cases, or policy, launching AI-driven learning creates confusion, not progress.
“It’s not that we’re choosing not to focus on AI readiness,” said Jennifer Myers. “It’s just the nature of the beast. Sometimes we can only go as fast as we can go.”
The same logic applies beyond AI. Trying to close every gap at once dilutes focus. Leaders making the most progress deliberately sequence their priorities, tackle governance and measurement before longer-term strategic planning, so that each layer of work strengthens the next.
What to take from this: Look at your gaps honestly. Then decide which ones you’re acting on now and which ones you’re intentionally deferring. Being able to articulate why you’re sequencing things the way you are builds credibility with stakeholders.
Insight 4: External perspective changes everything when you’re building without a benchmark.
One of the more relatable themes in the session was the challenge of building a learning strategy without an external reference point. When you’re the one setting direction, there’s often no one else inside the organization who can tell you whether you’re on track. Internal stakeholders see the outputs, but they’re not positioned to evaluate the approach against what the rest of the market is doing.
That’s part of what makes peer communities and external assessments so valuable. They give learning leaders something they rarely get internally: an honest read on where they stand and where to focus next.
“You get in the flow and start working out of habit,” said Jennifer Myers. “To take yourself back to the basics is so helpful sometimes to keep you on track.”
When you’re deep in execution, the foundational elements of your strategy can quietly drift out of focus because the daily work crowds them out. A regular external check-in pulls you back to those fundamentals before small drift becomes a real gap.
What to take from this: Build external check-ins into your rhythm, whether that’s through a peer community, a maturity assessment, or a trusted partner. The best learning leaders constantly pressure-test.
