By Thomas Bohné
Most executives agree on one thing: corporate learning should be tied to business strategy. Harvard Business Review has covered this repeatedly — advising leaders to start with strategic goals, embed learning in the workflow, and use managers as multipliers.
The problem? In my recent research with 23 L&D leaders across Europe, Asia, and the Americas, I found that even when programs are well-aligned on paper, their impact rarely makes its way back into strategic decision-making. The alignment looks solid in the launch deck — but in the months that follow, the connection frays.
One head of L&D told me,
“By the time we know if the training worked, the business has moved on to the next priority.”
The thesis research revealed three common breakpoints in the alignment-to-impact chain:
Perceived vs. Measured Success
Stakeholders often declare a program successful based on satisfaction scores or attendance — long before any behavior or business outcomes can be confirmed.
Desired vs. Feasible Evaluation
Leaders may want ROI or direct performance attribution, but legal restrictions (e.g., GDPR), fragmented systems, and limited resources make this impossible at scale.
Feedback Collected vs. Feedback Used
Even when post-training surveys or qualitative feedback are gathered, they’re not systematically fed back into program design — changes are reactive, ad-hoc, and often too late.
These breakpoints are the hidden reason many strategically aligned programs fail to sustain impact.
The good news: closing the loop doesn’t require a radical overhaul. It requires designing evaluation and feedback flows into the program from day one, so they become part of the operating system — not an afterthought.
Step 1: Anchor Metrics in Strategic Goals Upfront
If a sales program is meant to shorten deal cycles, define exactly how and when you’ll measure that — and ensure the data will be available. Align every evaluation question to that metric.