Is Your L&D Strategic Enough to Accelerate Business Growth?

When an organization’s finances are under pressure, learning and development (L&D) programs are often among the first budgets to be cut. I’ve seen this pattern repeat across economic cycles and business contexts. But recently, I’ve observed a new trend: even in cost-conscious times, some companies continue to invest in leadership development while others scale back. So what determines which programs survive?

The ones that last are those built with strategic value. They directly support business goals—and have the metrics to prove it. Programs that do get cut aren’t necessarily poor quality. They may be well-executed, valued by participants, and even seen as prestigious. But these traits alone don’t make them strategic.  

Strategic L&D isn’t about providing more training. It’s about linking leadership development to critical business needs to accelerate growth.

What Makes L&D Strategic?

Strategic learning and development is designed to advance organizational goals and is directly tied to business outcomes. That’s different from isolated workshops, generic training events, or large libraries of self-paced learning with no clear unifying aim.

It’s tempting to assume a program is strategic if it was designed in a data-driven way. For example, a new manager learning journey based on needs analysis, engagement data, exit interviews, and endorsed by senior leaders may feel strategic. But is it?

The short answer: probably not.

That’s not to say that the program isn’t valuable or that it won’t solve real problems. But if you can’t connect it to mission-critical business objectives (or measure its impact) it falls short of strategic value.

To evaluate whether your learning & development strategy truly drives business performance, ask these three questions:

1. Does it target business outcomes?

Not all metrics are strategic. It’s important to distinguish between HR metrics and business outcomes. Engagement, turnover, and retention matter—and as L&D professionals we are often held accountable for them. But during challenging times, these numbers can feel like vanity metrics to non-HR leaders.

A company facing a multi-million-dollar budget shortfall and planning a 15% workforce reduction isn’t focused on engagement scores. And turnover? Your CFO may welcome some healthy voluntary turnover to reduce severance costs.

Instead, link your L&D strategy to outcomes that matter to business leaders, like accelerating innovation, improving quality, or expanding market share.

2. Can you prove it’s a critical lever (and not just aligned)?

Strategic L&D programs don’t just align with company priorities. They enable them. If your program is meant to support a strategic initiative, like advancing product innovation or improving your position against a major competitor, can you demonstrate that it’s essential to success? Or might it be seen as “nice to have,” simply adjacent to the core efforts?

3. Does it address readiness or succession needs that the business cares about?

When business leaders see leadership readiness as a barrier to performance or succession gaps as a risk to execution, your program becomes essential. It prepares leaders and protects your ability to deliver results. Strategic L&D builds your leadership pipeline, prepares successors, and ensures the company can perform under pressure.

Assessment, Development, and Succession: The Strategic Trio

A high-impact L&D strategy is more than a series of courses. It combines assessment, development, and succession to drive business results throughout the leadership lifecycle.

That’s because strategic leadership development doesn’t just build skills—it builds the leadership capacity your business needs to grow. While leaders can learn skills like coaching or delegation in a classroom, their ability to translate those skills into broader capabilities like sensemaking or getting the most out of others comes through application, feedback, and reflection.

This is where the strategic trio comes in.

Robust assessments accelerate leadership development. They build self-awareness, personalize the experience, and help leaders focus on the right growth areas. Assessments also reveal gaps so leaders and organizations can close them before they become performance risks.

At the same time, an effective learning and development strategy must consider pipeline health. Strategic L&D builds bench strength across all levels.

Assessment plays a crucial role here, too. It highlights which skills leaders need to move to the next level. That insight can help organizations understand where leaders need more support and prevent a familiar scenario: a top-performing manager who suddenly struggles after promotion to director.

Because learning and development strategy looks at the entire leadership ecosystem, it’s not enough to only develop frontline leaders and high potentials. You also need to monitor weak points in your pipeline.

One common gap? Experienced managers. Too often, these leaders haven’t received formal development in years—if not decades. Yet they’re often the talent pool for director roles. Without proactive development, you end up with a bench comprised of leaders who have learned to lead in their own way—creating chaos when they step into broader roles.

Making Smart Trade-Offs

When budgets are under scrutiny, it’s important to make strategic choices about how to balance assessment, development, and succession. For example, if 30% of your high-potential program’s budget goes toward assessments to select participants, would those funds be better spent improving the development experience? Or, if you’re trying to scale a program, are you diluting the quality of the learning experience?

Strategic doesn’t always mean selective. It means using your resources in the most efficient way to accelerate business outcomes.

Metrics that Matter (and Those That Don’t)

Learning professionals know how hard it is to gather solid ROI data, and how powerful it can be when you do. But beware the ROI illusion. Even with strong evidence of business impact, your program may still be cut if senior leaders haven’t seen the ROI data or don’t believe its relevance. A skeptical executive who doesn’t value leadership development might question your methodology or dismiss the findings altogether.

That’s why strategic L&D measurement requires a balanced approach:

Gather quantitative data linked to outcomes.

Do leaders who participated in your high-potential program have higher promotion rates than those who haven’t? Do graduates from your manager academy have teams that outperform in quality, productivity, or other key metrics? These measurable results go far in building a case for the program.

Collect qualitative stories.

Many measurement strategies overlook this element. While anecdotes aren’t a substitute for evidence, a well-crafted story can bridge the belief gap. A  participant’s testimonial describing how they applied what they learned and what changed in the business as a result can make your ROI data more credible and compelling.

Build a coalition of support.

Even the best programs can fail if no one outside HR is fighting for them. Strategic L&D leaders should focus on cultivating their networks and internal partnerships. Consider your relationships with the leaders of your learners (and their leaders, too). Do they understand your program’s purpose and their role in reinforcing it through feedback and on-the-job application?

Your New Decision Filter: The 3 Strategic L&D Questions

It can be challenging to determine whether a leadership program is truly strategic. These three questions serve as a litmus test to assess whether your program is designed to deliver real business value.

1. Does it support a business-critical goal?

If you can link your program to a business outcome that leaders already see as urgent, you’ve cleared the biggest hurdle. Practice a succinct talk track you can use with stakeholders. For example:

“This program will accelerate our transformation from a health insurance company to a health solutions provider by building our Directors’ capabilities in leading through ambiguity, driving innovation, and making complex decisions.”

2. Could I defend it to skeptical senior leaders?

I was once meeting with an L&D team just down the hall from the executive suite of a manufacturing company. As they discussed program design, I asked them to imagine a skeptical executive in one of those offices. If they walked into the room and asked, “Why are we spending money on this program?” what would you say? The room went quiet. That silence revealed that we needed a stronger value proposition for the program’s strategic relevance.

If your case wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny, it’s time to sharpen how you connect the program to business performance.

3. Do any non-HR leaders count on it to solve their business problems?

This is the inverse of the previous question. Who are your true believers? Do you have leaders who see your L&D program as essential, whether it’s to close succession gaps, navigate change, or build new capabilities? These champions are proof that your program is embedded in the company’s strategy and can accelerate business outcomes.

Making the Shift: From Tactics to Acceleration

Whether you’re designing a new leadership development program or revamping a current one, here are a few tips to turn your initiative into a competitive advantage:

1. Lead with strategy, not content. When you start with business needs, you elevate your role from learning content provider to business problem-solver. You become a business partner who has earned their seat at the table—and the right to ask for time, resources, and budget.
2. Tie every initiative to a readiness challenge. Adopt an application-first mindset. Ask: What is this program preparing leaders to do? What are the stakes if they’re not ready in time? If your answers don’t create at least a little discomfort, you’re probably not close enough to a real business problem.
3. Speak the business’s language. As L&D professionals, we must be marketers and storytellers. Avoid learning jargon and use terms that will resonate with your audience. Which sounds more like how your business leaders speak: learning journey or leadership innovation bootcamp? Leadership competencies or business skills? Think about how you brand your programs. If your company is undergoing transformation, a name like “Leading Forward for [Your Company]’s Future: A Transformational Leadership Experience” immediately shows relevance and urgency.

Building a Business Accelerator, Not a Training Program

Strategic learning and development isn’t a cost center. It’s your competitive edge.

But let’s face it: unlike other business functions, L&D is often held to a different standard. We have to fight harder to prove our relevance, justify our budgets, and earn executive trust. And we’re often pitching to skeptics whose past experiences with leadership development lacked impact or failed to connect to business outcomes.

That’s why strategic L&D must drive measurable value, solve urgent business problems, and prepare leaders for the future. It’s not about checking boxes—it’s about leveraging L&D to accelerate business growth.

Feeling overwhelmed by the challenge? You don’t have to tackle it alone. At DDI, we combine decades of leadership data, science-backed assessments, and proven succession strategies to help you design leadership programs that develop leaders and move the business forward.

Want to transform your leadership strategy? Build a leadership pipeline that accelerates your business.

About the Author

Mark Smedley is a client relationship manager for DDI. He works with healthcare organizations to design and implement their leadership strategies. He is passionate about helping organizations make leadership development a way of work in a fast-paced world.