We like tidy models in L&D. Clean loops. Clear steps. A funnel or two for good measure. But the reality is, most organisations aren’t tidy. They’re complex, reactive, political, people-shaped machines. And as Laura Overton wisely said, the world of work is messy.
If L&D is going to thrive, not just survive in this world, we need to stop chasing neatness and start building value through agility, experimentation, and genuine partnership with the business. Not partnership in the “we’ll take your order and come back with a course” sense. But in the “we work together to solve problems that matter” sense.
That shift isn’t a process. It’s a total mindset change. And it starts with being willing to change everything, even the things we think are sacred.
Step One: Be Willing to Change (Potentially Everything)
Be honest, how often does your team say yes to requests that don’t feel quite right, but you build the thing anyway?
“We need a bitesize” hour long eLearning module.”
“We need a workshop on resilience.”
“We need a PDF guide to replace common sense.”
Too often, we jump straight to the build phase because that’s what we’ve always done. And because challenging the request feels risky. But if we’re serious about becoming business partners, we have to be willing to change how we operate and that means everything is up for review: tools, processes, job roles, relationships, even how we measure success.
This doesn’t mean we abandon learning. It means we stop seeing “learning” as the product and start seeing performance as the outcome we’re responsible for.
Changing mindset before method is hard, especially in teams under pressure. But it’s the foundation for everything else.
Step Two: Understand the Business Like You Work There
If you want a seat at the table, metaphorical or otherwise, you must know what’s being served.
That means getting under the skin of your organisation:
- What are its strategic goals and success measures?
- What actually drives revenue or impact?
- How does the business structure influence decision-making?
- Is the company public or private, and what does that mean for short- vs long-term thinking?
Understanding how the business operates isn’t optional anymore, it’s a core skill for L&D teams. You can’t prioritise meaningful problems if you don’t understand what “meaningful” looks like to the people running the show.
In short: if you can’t read a balance sheet, talk to the sales director, or explain the value of your work in business terms, you’re not a partner. You’re a provider.
Tools like business model canvases, stakeholder maps, and KPI breakdowns aren’t just for product teams. They’re how L&D gets fluent in the language of the organisation and starts solving problems that actually matter.
Step Three: Adopt Agile Thinking and Build a Backlog
Once we understand the business, we can stop reacting and start prioritising.
Traditional L&D tends to run on urgency. Stakeholder shouts, and we sprint. But high-value L&D teams work from a performance backlog, a dynamic list of known performance problems in the business, discovered through ongoing analysis, observation, and collaboration.
This doesn’t mean endless discovery phases and post-it notes. It means keeping your ear to the ground, building relationships with ops, sales, and service teams, and regularly asking:
“What’s getting in the way of doing great work here?”
You’ll never eliminate surprises, but when you work like this, the “emergencies” are usually things you already had on the radar. You can either mitigate their impact or adapt your roadmap without panic.
Backlog items aren’t tasks they’re problems to solve. And they’re prioritised based on business impact, not internal politics or who books the fanciest meeting room.
This is the foundation of agile L&D: you don’t plan content, you plan how to solve problems.
Step Four: Solve Through Small, Smart Experiments
Now comes the exciting bit action.
In agile, experiment-led L&D, the team doesn’t start with a six-week build. They start with a question:
“What’s the smallest test we can run that will increase certainty and reduce risk?”
That might be trying two different feedback methods in a pilot group. It might be offering a micro-coaching intervention to one team. It might be removing a single step in a process to see if it improves speed or accuracy.
We run discovery experiments to understand problems (e.g., where is a process breaking down? Why is that team’s performance dipping?).
We run validation experiments to test whether our intervention works (e.g., does this checklist reduce rework? Does this prompt improve sales conversions?).
The key is learning before scaling.
This approach is backed by learning science, lean product thinking, and behavioural design. It’s how high-performing teams outside L&D have been working for years (Ries, 2011; Petersen, 2020; Kolb, 1984). Now it’s our turn.
The Hard Bits (Because Yes, There Are Some)
All of this sounds great in theory. But as we’ve established the world of work is messy.
You’ll hit resistance. Some leaders still expect shiny learning portals and glossy courses. Some teams don’t want to be experimented on. You’ll need to navigate internal politics, legacy systems, and the occasional panic project that jumps the queue.
So what do you do?
- Start small. Run one experiment with one team. Show results.
- Build allies. Find a manager who cares about outcomes and partner up.
- Communicate differently. Talk about business impact, not learning metrics.
- Be transparent. Make your backlog visible. Show your decision-making process.
- Give it a name. People rally around a method. “Here’s how we approach performance problems in L&D” is far more powerful than “We’re just trying something new.”
You don’t need a reorg to do this. You need permission, purpose, and a process.
Final Thoughts
If we want L&D to be seen as a strategic function, we have to behave like one.
That means:
- Being willing to change how we work
- Learning how the business really works
- Prioritising performance problems, not requests
- Solving those problems through experiments, not assumptions
This isn’t just a better way to work. It’s a way to build credibility, show value, and move faster without rushing blindly.
It’s not always neat. But then again, it’s not supposed to be.
Because the world of work is messy.
And we’re here to make it work anyway.
References
Fosway Group. (2024). Digital Learning Realities Research. https://www.fosway.com/research
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Prentice Hall.
Petersen, R. A. (2020). The Lean Learning Cycle: A Guide to Designing Effective Learning Experiences. Independently published.
Ries, E. (2011). The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. Crown Publishing.
Overton, L. (2022). Learning Changemakers: Stories from the Frontline of L&D Transformation. Insights interview series, The Learning Network.
