What happens when organizations reportedly spend billions of dollars globally on L&D and yet many managers and employees report dissatisfaction with L&D and don’t believe their capability is built enough for their roles? According to a recent Harvard Business Review article, this is the state of affairs of the L&D industry. Despite the rising urgency to upskill in a fast-changing business environment, capability building often feels disconnected from real impact.
On the flip side, if you’re in L&D, you’ve probably felt it before…
“We plan programs but people don’t prioritize them over their work.”
“I’m constantly asked to ‘make it shorter’ or ‘make it optional’ but deliver business impact.”
“We built something impactful—but without leadership reinforcement, it just sat there.”
Despite a growing consensus that learning is vital to business growth, L&D teams continue to fight an uphill battle for relevance, credibility, and resources.
The Credibility Gap in L&D
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In theory, learning is essential. Without learning and upskilling, an organization facing continuous flux in its environment can’t hope to stay afloat. Without learning and upskilling, people given ambitious goals based on the company strategy may not feel adequately prepared to achieve them.
However, a Brandon Hall Group study found that only 42% of organizations report above-average to excellent alignment between learning initiatives and business objectives. A majority do not have strong alignment. Many L&D teams remain stuck in reactive cycles or struggle to access the decision-making table early enough. When learning isn’t visibly tied to what the business cares about, it can be easy for programs to be sidelined.
This is not to say that once alignment is achieved, impact measurement and reporting takes care of itself entirely. In India, according to the ETHR Global Learning and Skilling Insights 2025 Report, measuring impact of learning programs remains one of the leading challenges for L&D professionals. Unlike in sales or finance, L&D results often show up indirectly, or over time. Without that clear line of sight to outcomes, it can be hard to sustain stakeholder commitment.
Over time, these dynamics can contribute to a credibility gap — not because learning isn’t important, but because its value isn’t always visible in the ways the business recognizes.
The Reality L&D Teams Work Within
That gap doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s shaped by real-world constraints:
Balancing Expectations: L&D is expected to meet and align with business goals, while reacting with quick solutions to immediate needs, and simultaneously cater to evolving learner preferences around personal growth. These don’t always align — and L&D often has to navigate all.
Priorities: Learning is not seen as a priority — over 70% of L&D professionals report that less than half of their organization’s workforce continuously participates in learning initiatives (ETHR Report 2025). For many, learning remains a “nice-to-have.”
Budgetary Constraints: In regions in the East including India, nearly 70% of organizations allocate less than 10% of their budget to L&D initiatives (TOI 2025). Underfunding limits what’s possible — even for teams with good ideas and solid intent.
Even when the programs are well-designed, with content that’s relevant and timely, there are moments when adoption just doesn’t follow. And it’s not because the program wasn’t good. It’s because learning doesn’t happen in a vacuum — it happens within a system.
Moving Beyond Content: Why Technical Excellence Alone Isn’t Enough
Imagine recommending a restaurant to a colleague you barely know. You describe the great food, excellent service, and reasonable prices. They smile and say thanks — and then go somewhere else.
Now imagine saying to a close friend: “Trust me — you’ll like this place.” And they go.
It’s not about how convincing you were. It’s about who you are to them.
The same holds true in L&D.
Even when programs are technically sound — aligned to business needs, thoughtfully built, and learner-focused — adoption still depends on whether people trust who it’s coming from and believe that it’s valuable for them. Whether they believe that L&D understands their world. Whether they feel heard.
In that sense, trust and credibility often precede great work being taken seriously. That’s not a substitute for good design — it’s a condition for it to matter.
That’s why in L&D, influence, trust, and stakeholder relationships aren’t “soft” skills. They’re what makes the work land.
Working in the System You’re In
It’s tempting to think that fixing learning is mostly about better programs, stronger platforms, and more innovative formats. And yes — those matter. But technical strength alone doesn’t guarantee traction.
Because learning lives inside systems — of time pressures, competing priorities, and diverse stakeholder beliefs. That means being effective in L&D isn’t just about what we design, but how we navigate that system.
It looks like:
- Reframing conversations with business heads who see learning as a cost.
- Engaging skeptics with relevance, not defensiveness.
- Moving forward even when budgets are tight and timing isn’t perfect.
It’s about knowing when to speak up, when to step back, when to ask better questions. It’s about building trust not through grand pitches, but through consistent, thoughtful partnership over time.
The Shift
Too often, we focus only on the technical side of L&D. But in practice, what helps programs succeed isn’t just design — it’s trust. It’s being seen not as a service provider, but as a partner. It’s being able to connect the dots between a business need and a learning solution — in a way the stakeholder in front of you recognizes and values.
That kind of credibility isn’t built overnight. But it’s often what determines whether our work gets adopted, scaled, and remembered.
Being effective in L&D means not just knowing how to design learning — but knowing how to make it matter for people as a Trusted Learning Advisor.
