Beyond ROI: Learning & Development and what it actually delivers

A few years ago, I was sitting in a meeting with a group of executives reviewing a pretty significant investment in leadership development.

One of them leaned forward and asked: “So… what are we actually getting out of this?” It wasn’t confrontational. It was a fair question. And honestly, it stuck with me.

Because even after years across product marketing, change management, and management consulting, I realized something:  We weren’t very good at explaining the value of learning in a way the business could truly understand.

The Reality We’re Facing

We’re heading into a time where talent—not capital—is the biggest constraint. Companies are growing fast. Markets are changing quickly. But people don’t always keep pace. At the same time, employees know they need to keep learning. Many will leave if they don’t feel they’re growing. And organizations are investing more than ever in training and development.

So the effort is there. But the question still remains: Is it actually working?

Earlier in my career, I was appointed Chief Knowledge Officer at a Fortune 100 company. I worked closely with HR and IT to tackle a growing issue: the business was scaling fast—but people weren’t scaling with it.

We saw it everywhere. New hires took too long to get up to speed. Cultural alignment was inconsistent. Capability gaps showed up in critical roles. We responded the way most organizations do. We built programs. Rolled out training. Implemented platforms.

And to be fair—it looked good on paper. Participation was high. Engagement was decent. The systems were in place. But something still felt off. At some point, we had to ask:

Are we actually building capability—or just delivering learning?

Because those are not the same thing. We were measuring completions, attendance, engagement. But those didn’t tell us if people were making better decisions, if teams were performing better, or if the organization was moving faster.

We had activity—but not necessarily progress.

The big mistake? We treated learning like something separate from work. People would go to training, complete a course, attend a session—and then go back to their jobs, where everything was different. Learning lived “over here,” and work lived “over there.”  And because of that, the impact didn’t always stick.

Once we saw the problem more clearly, our thinking started to shift.

We stopped asking how to deliver more training and started asking a simpler, more practical question: How do we help people get better at their jobs—faster?

That changed everything.

We began focusing on real work, not abstract topics—things like giving feedback, handling customer situations, making decisions under pressure. Because that’s where capability actually shows up.

We started bringing learning into the workflow—simple playbooks, decision frameworks, and tools people could use in the moment, not after the fact. The closer learning is to the moment of action, the more useful it becomes.

We also realized how much value was sitting in the field. Regional teams and frontline employees were constantly learning what works and what doesn’t—but that knowledge wasn’t being captured or shared. Once we started treating the field as a source of insight, learning became a loop: do, learn, share, improve.

Managers became a big focus as well. Without reinforcement, nothing sticks. When managers coach, give feedback, and connect learning to real performance, that’s when behavior actually changes.

And some of the most effective learning didn’t come from courses at all—it came from solving real problems. Fixing performance issues in a region. Improving processes. Addressing customer challenges. When learning is tied to real work, it becomes immediate and meaningful.

Which brings us back to ROI.

The truth is, learning doesn’t always show up neatly in a spreadsheet. Some of the impact is obvious—faster onboarding, better performance, higher productivity. Some of it is less obvious—confidence, better teamwork, stronger leadership.

Both matter.

As I’ve seen over time, learning creates value in both tangible and intangible ways . But when learning is connected directly to work, measurement becomes clearer. You can start to see improvements in performance, speed, and outcomes. And that’s when the conversation changes.

The real shift is this:

We’re not trying to deliver more learning. We’re trying to build capability—faster.

That’s what closes the gap between business growth and human growth. Learning has always been important. But today, it’s not enough to just provide it. It has to connect to real work, show up in real moments, and lead to real performance. Because at the end of the day:

Organizations don’t win because they train more. They win because their people get better—and it shows up in how the business performs.