Do’s and Don’ts: Convincing Your C-Suite to Invest in L&D

If there’s one concern almost every business leader shares, it’s this: Profit.

Boosting revenue. Controlling costs. Mitigating risks. Profit depends on all these factors, which means your company’s future is, too.

So, what does this have to do with L&D? Once you understand the specific forces—good or bad—that are impacting revenue and costs across your organization, you can focus on providing relevant and personalized development that addresses your organization’s most critical needs.

In other words, savvy learning leaders align L&D with strategic business objectives.

Achieving strategic alignment between L&D and the business comes down to convincing the C-Suite that investments in learning—new programs, content, technologies, headcount, and more—are essential.

The Do’s: Proactively Aligning L&D with the Business

According to Gartner, L&D “functions face growing pressure to deliver critical skills in an environment of fast-changing skills needs, heightened employee expectations, and economic uncertainty.”

You can help meet this challenge in four steps:

1. Discover your company’s strategic initiatives. Know what C-suite leaders want and how they plan to get it. Strategic initiatives are a company’s high-level goals to improve the business, like driving efficiencies, entering new markets, or launching innovative products.To gain insights, engage with senior leadership, participate in strategic planning sessions, review quarterly and annual reports, and watch earnings calls. Upskill yourself on the internal and external drivers of your company’s business performance to understand these strategic initiatives.
2. Uncover and map the drivers of these strategic initiatives. Identify the underlying tree of drivers that enable your company’s initiatives. These drivers are internal factors that impact broader corporate goals—like go-to-market strategy, technological innovation, or team efficiency.By understanding these, you can position learning as an enabler of strategic change. To get started, ask yourself and others: “What needs to change at my company to make this initiative a reality?”Leadership teams often guide which key drivers to focus on. Run with them. And remember, you’re not the only person trying to figure this out. Collaborate and discuss which critical factors matter most.
3. Identify drivers that L&D can address. In the previous step, you identified what drives and supports company priorities. For this next step, ask yourself, “What aspect of underlying drivers can L&D directly address or enable?”The reality is that people are at the center of basically every corporate initiative, and L&D is uniquely positioned to enable people. Ask, “How will what I’m working on ultimately drive revenue, lower cost, or accomplish a particular strategic initiative?” If this link isn’t clear to you, it won’t be transparent to your business stakeholders.

   If leaders have identified any business outcomes for strategic initiatives, use them to identify some low-hanging fruit—like specialized learning programs for a few individuals in critical roles. This can help you generate some quick wins and also help you identify larger and more ambitious opportunities.

4. Document L&D’s solution and impact. Now that you have an area to prioritize within L&D and a clear link to how it supports strategic initiatives, craft a plan to upskill targeted workers and measure the correct type of results.When you present your plan to leadership, use the right metrics and language. Too often, L&D uses terms like “the learning experience” and metrics like “participation rate” with leadership. But they’re like regional expressions only understood in L&D circles.You don’t have to use cringe-worthy words like “synergy.” Instead, pay attention to the terms your leaders use. If they talk about return on investment (ROI), change management, operational efficiency, or a particular key performance indicator (KPI), then identify an underlying metric L&D can influence and use that language to show L&D impact in their terms.

   In addition, be sure to translate L&D metrics for leadership. Presenting experience, completions, and engagement likely won’t impress your CEO. They’re only interim measures that aren’t usually directly connected to outcomes. If you report 50,000 hours of engagement in your new “Rapid Onboarding” program, be ready also to share how that measurably increased productivity or other key company objectives.

The Don’ts: Sidestepping Common L&D Mistakes

Creating L&D programs can be challenging because there’s always so much potential. It’s essential to stay focused and keep things in perspective.

1. Don’t overdo “learning” metrics. You can convince senior leaders to value your programs when you translate L&D outcomes into C-suite terms and metrics—such as drivers for profit margins, revenue growth, and productivity. Measure the business outcomes and report on more than just learning activities.
2. Don’t build your approach in a vacuum. When you ask business stakeholders their goals and objectives at the start, you can craft your programs and outcomes around their most important needs and create champions for your initiatives.
3. Don’t ignore qualitative benefits. When you communicate the intangible benefits of L&D, sharing how it contributes to a positive work environment and long-term business health, you can squash any misperception that learning is less important than other business functions.
4. Don’t be afraid of change. When you regularly step back and consider the major changes your program requires, you can avoid an unhealthy dependence on the status quo. Keep your eye on the big picture.
5. Don’t treat learning as a one-time event. When you approach learning as a long-term imperative, constantly tending to the needs of your programs for ongoing improvement, you avoid thinking about development as a session and more of an ongoing process.

And lastly… Don’t get left behind.

When learning leaders don’t fully understand strategic initiatives and drivers, the full power of L&D goes unrealized. Work to be a learning pro with the business acumen needed to effectively communicate the value and positive impacts of L&D. When Learning is championed, L&D can bridge the talent gap. With a seat at the business strategy table, L&D can build skills that innovate and transform.