L&D as a Lever for Strategy: Connecting Vision to People

By Euan Campbell

Most businesses still treat L&D as a support function. It’s there to plug skills gaps, roll out leadership programmes, or tick off compliance training. Useful, sure but rarely strategic.

The problem is, strategy doesn’t fail because of a lack of ideas. It fails because the organisation isn’t built to deliver them. And if you want to change the organisation, you have to start with its people. That’s why L&D – done properly – isn’t a support function at all. It’s one of the most powerful levers you have to turn vision into action.

Strategy Lives in Behaviour, Not in PowerPoint

We’ve all seen it happen. A new strategy is launched, the slides look great, the town hall is inspiring… and then nothing changes. That’s usually because the business hasn’t thought about how the people side connects to the plan.

If your strategy requires new products, markets, or technology, it almost certainly requires new behaviours too. People will need to think differently, make different decisions, and collaborate in new ways. If that shift doesn’t happen, the strategy stays a concept rather than becoming a reality.

This is what we mean by Strategic Connection – building a direct line between the organisation’s ambitions and the day-to-day actions that make them possible.

From Training Plans to Capability Roadmaps

Too often, learning plans are created in isolation: a list of workshops, coaching sessions, or leadership modules that sound useful but don’t link clearly to the business direction.

A more powerful approach is to build a capability roadmap instead – one that starts with the question: “What do we need our people to be able to do in order to deliver our strategy?”

When you design development around that question, the focus shifts. It’s no longer about how many people you train or how many courses you run. It’s about building the capability that the business needs to succeed three or five years from now.

Every Strategic Decision Has a Human Side

Strategic choices – whether that’s expanding into new markets, investing in technology, or changing your product mix – are usually framed in commercial terms. But every one of them has a human consequence.

Automation changes roles. Expansion changes leadership requirements. A new product line might require new ways of thinking about collaboration.

If you ignore that side of the equation, strategy becomes theory. If you build L&D around it, you create the conditions for change to stick.

Leadership: The Missing Link

One of the biggest gaps I see is leadership behaviour. Strategies often fail not because the direction is wrong, but because leaders continue operating as they always have.

Building strategic leadership capability – helping leaders think beyond their function, take a longer-term view, and make decisions aligned with the bigger picture – is often the difference between an ambition that fizzles out and one that transforms the business.

L&D Isn’t Support. It’s a Strategic Engine.

When L&D is treated as a lever for strategy – not an afterthought – everything changes. People understand not just what needs to happen, but why and how they contribute. Capability builds in the right places. Leadership behaviours shift. And the strategy that once lived on a slide deck starts to become the organisation’s reality.

In the end, the real question isn’t “What’s our learning plan this year?” It’s “What capabilities do we need to build to deliver our future?”

Answer that – and L&D stops being a cost. It becomes one of the smartest investments you can make.