Where it started.
When I first wrote this article about moving from Order-Taker to Partner in 2023, L&D professionals were just beginning to recognize they needed to evolve. Fast forward to 2025, and most of what we knew has transformed dramatically:
Let’s talk about what’s changed:
- AI has exploded onto the scene, completely reshaping how skills development happens (and no, it’s not slowing down)
- Economic realities have put L&D under the microscope – if you can’t show value, you’re on the chopping block
- The pace of business change has gone from fast to supersonic, putting L&D in the hot seat to help organizations adapt quickly
- The skills gap has become more like a skills canyon as technologies evolve faster than traditional training approaches can address
Bottom line? The days of being an order-taker are DONE. Finished. Over. Today’s successful L&D professionals need to be strategic business partners who directly contribute to organizational success. This isn’t optional anymore – it’s survival.
Let’s Address the Elephant in the Room
Look, we’ve all heard about “getting a seat at the table” for years. But now? Getting a seat at the table isn’t the most important thing. It’s not just about getting invited to the meeting – it’s about bringing valuable insights that nobody else can provide. Whether you are at the table or not.
With AI reshaping entire job categories, business leaders are scrambling to understand what skills their workforce needs, how to develop those skills efficiently, and how to measure the impact. If you’re still waiting for training requests to come in, you’re already several steps behind.
The most valuable L&D professionals today are proactively identifying skills gaps, proposing innovative solutions that blend technology with human-centered learning, and measuring impact in business terms that executives understand and value.
Breaking Free from the Reactive Cycle
You know that hamster wheel you’re on? The one where you wait for training requests, create what’s asked for, deliver it, and repeat? It’s time to jump off!
The reactive cycle isn’t just limiting your impact—it’s actively undermining your credibility in a time when business conditions are changing faster than you can finish updating those perfect learning objectives that nobody but you will ever read.
Breaking this cycle isn’t optional anymore. It requires a deliberate disruption of comfortable patterns and habits that may have served you well in the past but now keep you trapped in order-taker territory.
five actions that will force you to Think differently:
1. Understand the Business First, Learning Second
If you want the support of decision-makers in your organization, it’s important to pull on your boots and learn business. When I say L&D needs to get out of their comfort zones, I mean stretching beyond just flashing your badge about learning theories and training techniques. You need to actively involve yourself in the day-to-day realities of the business. With economic pressures mounting, you need to understand:
- How does the company make money?
- What are the profit margins in different business units?
- Who are the competitors and what are they doing?
- What industry trends are disrupting the business model?
This isn’t about casual curiosity – it’s about connecting learning directly to business survival and growth. Schedule time with finance teams, sales leaders, and operations managers. Ask questions that might feel uncomfortable at first. Take notes. Connect dots.
Remember, this isn’t about surface-level knowledge of your organization’s mission statement – it’s about developing a deep understanding of the business mechanics that drive decisions, priorities, and investments in the C-suite.
2. Forget Learning Jargon. Translate Everything Into Business Impact
When you start talking about “learning objectives,” “instructional design,” and “knowledge transfer,” you might as well be speaking Klingon to most executives. Strong L&D professionals know that talking about “course completions” and “satisfaction scores” is not the same as learning impact.
With the economic uncertainties we’re facing, smart leaders want to know if their training dollars will connect with business:
- How will this learning initiative help us capture more market share?
- Will this program reduce costly errors or customer churn?
- Can this approach help us innovate faster than competitors?
- What’s the expected return on our investment in this training?
When someone asks for sales training, don’t just say, “Sure!” Ask: “What specific sales metrics are we trying to improve? By how much? What’s happening in the market that’s creating this need?” Show your business cred!
3. Create a Network of Learning Champions
With skills becoming outdated almost overnight, you need a coalition of advocates who can help you stay ahead of organizational needs. These aren’t just people who enjoy your training programs – they’re strategic partners who:
- Alert you to emerging business challenges before they become crises.
- Advocate for learning investments during budget discussions.
- Provide real-world feedback on skills gaps in their departments.
- Help implement and reinforce new learning approaches.
As economic pressures force more frequent reorganizations and strategy pivots, these champions serve as your frontline intelligence network, alerting you to shifting priorities before they become official mandates.
4. Master Data Storytelling
Let’s face it – AI is now spitting out data faster than anyone can drink from the firehose. The real problem isn’t getting data (we’re drowning in it!). The challenge for most L&D people is figuring out what the heck all those numbers actually mean and then translating them into stories that make business leaders sit up and take notice. Without that skill, you’re just another person with a pie chart that nobody wants to look at.
You don’t need a data science degree, but you do need to:
- Connect learning metrics to business outcomes through clear visualizations
- Present trends and patterns that highlight future skill needs
- Use data to predict where training will have the biggest impact
- Show the cost of inaction alongside the benefit of investment
The L&D people who grow in their roles in 2025 won’t be the ones with the fanciest “butts-in-seats” reports. They’ll be the ones who can take all that complicated learning data and turn it into something the leadership team actually cares about. If you can’t explain how your programs improve sales, reduce errors, or save money, you’ll be stuck setting gout donuts in the next training class while the decisions happen in meetings you weren’t invited to.
5. Become a Solutions Consultant, Not a Training Vending Machine
Stop being the learning vending machine that only offers the same old processed options. Sure, sometimes you need to pop out a quick course (Lordy, I love me some cheesy crackers!), but with the skills canyon widening, your business can’t survive on junk food learning alone. Today’s L&D professionals need to become the ‘smart vending machine’ that offers a full nutritional menu:
- Analyze performance issues to determine root causes
- Recommend blended approaches that might include coaching, AI-powered tools, job aids, or process improvements alongside formal learning
- Help managers become better at developing their teams in the flow of work
- Create learning ecosystems rather than isolated training events
This approach transforms you from ‘that person who makes us take courses’ into ‘that strategic partner who helps us perform better.’ In today’s business reality, that’s the difference between being seen as a cost center and being recognized as a competitive advantage.
30-60-90 Day Action Plan
Let me be blunt: Reading articles about being strategic doesn’t make you strategic. Action does. And with AI reshaping jobs weekly, you don’t have the luxury of a gradual transition. Here are five steps to take in the next 30-60-90 days that will immediately begin your transformation:
First 30 Days: Wake Up and Smell the Business Coffee
- Schedule a business immersion day – Spend a full day shadowing someone in sales, customer service, or operations. Don’t just observe—ask uncomfortable questions like “How do you measure success?” and “What keeps you up at night?” Warning: This might require leaving your desk and your comfort zone.
- Host an AI impact conversation – Gather a few managers for lunch (food always works) and ask them which parts of their jobs they think AI could handle versus what will always need a human touch. Don’t try to be the AI expert—be the person who gets people talking about what matters.
- Audit your L&D vocabulary – Record yourself in your next meeting and count how many times you use L&D jargon. Then create a personal “translation guide” to replace terms like “learning objectives” with “performance outcomes” and “completion rates” with “business impact.”
Days 31-60: Build Your Business Partner Muscles
- Reframe your biggest program in business terms – Take your most expensive training program and completely rewrite its purpose and goals using only language a CFO would care about. If you catch yourself writing about “engaging learning experiences,” start over.
- Recruit your first three champions – Identify respected leaders who already value learning and invite them to coffee. Don’t ask for support yet—ask about their challenges and listen like your career depends on it (because it does).
- Join a business meeting you weren’t invited to – Find a departmental or strategic planning meeting and ask if you can sit in to better understand their challenges. Come with no agenda other than to listen and learn. Take notes on problems you hear that nobody is calling “training issues.”
Days 61-90: Show You’re Not the Same Old L&D
- Build one simple impact dashboard – Create a visual that directly connects your most important learning initiative to a business metric that executives actually care about. If you can’t find a connection, that’s valuable information about where you’ve been spending your time.
- Pitch a solution, not a course – Identify a business problem and propose a solution that doesn’t start with training. Include performance support tools, process improvements, and coaching components. Show you’re a performance consultant, not just a training vending machine.
- Present to leadership in their language – Request 15 minutes at a leadership meeting to show how your team is addressing a specific business challenge. Use no L&D terminology whatsoever—only business metrics and outcomes. Practice with someone from another department first to make sure you’re speaking business language.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Let’s cut to the chase: Many in our field are sleepwalking toward obsolescence. They’re still tweaking the same old courses, celebrating completion rates, and wondering why they weren’t invited to the strategy meeting. By the time they wake up, their skill set will be as relevant as a fax machine.
Look, the skills that made you a learning rock star in 2020 are table stakes in 2025. Being able to build a beautiful eLearning module or facilitate a great workshop isn’t enough anymore. That’s like bringing a butter knife to a gunfight. Today’s currency is speaking business language, turning data into insights, solving performance problems (not just training needs), and having the courage to challenge stakeholders when they’re asking for the wrong solution.
This evolution isn’t just about saving your career—though that’s a pretty good motivation. It’s about ensuring learning remains valuable when budgets get tight and AI can generate content faster than you can say ‘learning objective.’ Organizations desperately need L&D people who can help navigate rapid change and build capabilities that matter. The question isn’t whether you should make this transition—it’s whether you’ll do it before someone else takes your seat at the table.
The opportunity is enormous for those willing to evolve. The question is: Will you be one of them?
What steps are you taking to transition from order-taker to strategic business partner? Share your experiences in the comments below.
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I come from a business background. I managed high-ticket retail stores, sold real estate, and am developing my own online business. I also have a teaching background which has morphed into workforce development for a local branch of a state government entity. I see the sense of what you are proposing and also realize that the strengths current trainers have are not enough and have not prepared them for the “lingo” of business and profits. I think you are providing a great beginning in discussing this issue; perhaps transition education for long term L & D professionals is needed. In the world of business, profits definitely ARE the name of the game and boring slides don’t matter when the subject matter speaks to the heart of the reason for business…profits. What do you think?