For the past few months, I've had a ringside seat on a fascinating challenge. We're working with a large organisation on a significant transformation leadership programme involving people from across the business.
There was already a strategy. There was senior sponsorship. There was an appetite for change.
In other words, there was a moment.
But for L&D teams supporting major transformation, there's a much harder challenge:
How do you turn the change into a movement?
Because transformation doesn't happen when people complete a programme. It happens when enough of them start thinking, talking, deciding and behaving differently afterwards.
We're still on that journey ourselves. But here are five shifts I think L&D teams should be thinking about.
TL;DR
For Learning and Development (L&D) teams, the challenge isn't simply delivering a successful transformation programme. It's making the change last. That means connecting strategy to everyday decisions, building capability across functions, encouraging curiosity, learning from resistance and looking for changes in behaviour rather than participation alone. The real test begins when the programme ends.
1. From communicating the strategy → to helping people find their place in it
You can explain a strategy to everyone in an organisation. That doesn't mean everyone understands what it means for them. Different functions see transformation through different lenses. Individuals inevitably ask what it means for their team, priorities and role.
This is where L&D can play a much bigger role than simply delivering the learning associated with a transformation. They create opportunities for people to interpret the strategy, question it and connect it to the decisions they're actually making.
As we've written previously:
Strategy is abstract. Change is personal.
Helping people make that connection is one of the first steps from moment to movement.
2. From training one function → to building organisational capability
Digital transformation can't belong solely to Technology. Neither can AI. Or data.
Technology leaders need to understand more about strategy, finance, customers and the wider business.
But the exchange works in the opposite direction too.
Business leaders increasingly need enough understanding of technology, data and AI to participate confidently in the decisions surrounding them.
For L&D, that raises an important question:
Where does the capability really need to exist?
If transformation touches the whole organisation, concentrating knowledge within one team is unlikely to be enough.
In McKinsey's research on organisational transformation, respondents whose organisations gave employees regular opportunities to apply new skills were four times more likely to report outperforming peers.
The more I see this in practice, the more outdated the traditional divide between “the business” and “technology” feels.
Transformation becomes easier when fewer conversations require somebody to translate between the two.
3. From delivering answers → to creating curiosity
It's tempting to measure learning by how much knowledge we've successfully transferred. But one of the most valuable things L&D can create during transformation is curiosity.
People who ask:
Why are we doing this?
What happens if we don't?
Where could AI genuinely create value?
What are the unintended consequences?
What trade-off are we making?
And occasionally:
I don't understand this. Can somebody explain it?
Transformation rarely comes with perfect answers, and AI certainly doesn't.
So perhaps the objective isn't simply to give leaders more answers. It's to help them ask better questions.
4. From overcoming resistance → to learning from it
Work with a large, diverse group on transformation, and you learn something quickly.
Not everyone will agree with everything.
Nor should they. Some want greater specificity. Some question relevance. Some challenge assumptions. Some have lived through enough previous transformation initiatives to be understandably sceptical. And some simply have a demanding day job competing for their attention.
For L&D teams, the temptation can be to interpret disengagement or challenge as a problem to solve.
But resistance is also data:
- It can tell you where the strategy isn't understood.
- Where relevance isn't clear.
- Where organisational reality conflicts with ambition.
- Or where people simply don't believe what's being said.
A room full of people politely agreeing with everything isn't necessarily evidence of transformation.
That echoes an observation from MIT Sloan's work on strategic change: what looks like resistance can be feedback on whether leaders have created enough clarity and alignment around the change.
Sometimes challenge is evidence that people are starting to engage.
5. From measuring participation → to measuring behaviour
This may be the biggest challenge for L&D.
Attendance, completion and feedback are measurable. But measuring participation isn't the same as measuring learning transfer (ie, whether people actually apply what they've learned in their work). And neither participation nor learning transfer automatically tells you whether the wider transformation is succeeding.
The CIPD's work on learning transfer reinforces the distinction: the value of learning depends on whether new knowledge and skills are applied in the workplace.
Therefore, the much harder seven questions you need to ask are:
- What changed?
- Are conversations different?
- Are technology and business leaders understanding each other better?
- Are different questions being asked?
- Are leaders more confident discussing technology and AI?
- Are old assumptions being challenged?
- Are decisions being made differently?
Because eventually the workshops stop. The facilitators disappear. The programme finishes.
If everything stops with it, you created an event, not a movement.
We're still partway through this particular journey, so I'm certainly not claiming we've cracked the formula. But working alongside L&D teams on transformation is reinforcing something for me:
Organisations are actually pretty good at creating moments.
A new strategy, new leader, even a major technology investment- they all create a moment.
AI, for one, has created one enormous moment.
The opportunity for L&D is what happens next.
When the launch has been forgotten, the PowerPoint deck has disappeared, and nobody from the transformation programme is in the room; that’s when you need to ask yourself a few important questions:
- Has the language changed?
- Have the conversations changed?
- Have the decisions changed?
- Has behaviour changed?
Because perhaps that's the real measure of L&D's contribution to transformation:
Not how many people completed the programme, but whether the moment became a movement.
Key takeaways
- Strategy needs personal relevance. People are more likely to engage with transformation when they understand what it means for their roles and decisions.
- Organisational capability must cross functional boundaries. Technology leaders need greater business understanding, while business leaders need the confidence to participate in technology, data and AI decisions.
- Curiosity and resistance are valuable signals. Questions and scepticism can reveal where a strategy lacks clarity, relevance or credibility.
- Participation is not the same as impact. The more meaningful test for L&D is whether conversations, decisions and behaviours change after the programme ends.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What role should L&D play in organisational transformation?
Learning and Development (L&D) teams help translate organisational strategy into capabilities that people can apply in their roles. Their contribution includes helping employees understand the purpose of change, developing shared understanding across functions and supporting changes in behaviour that continue beyond formal training.
How can L&D make learning stick after a transformation programme ends?
Learning needs to connect with the decisions people make in their everyday work. L&D teams can create opportunities to apply new knowledge, encourage questions and challenge, and work with organisational leaders to reinforce new behaviours. The objective is to make learning part of how the organisation operates, rather than something confined to a programme.
How should L&D measure the impact of transformation programmes?
Attendance, completion rates and participant feedback are useful measures of activity, but they cannot establish whether transformation has succeeded. L&D teams should also look for observable changes in behaviour: different leadership conversations, greater confidence discussing technology and AI, stronger cross-functional understanding and changes in how decisions are made.
Why should L&D teams pay attention to resistance during organisational change?
Resistance can reveal problems that formal feedback mechanisms miss. Scepticism or disengagement may indicate an unclear strategy, competing priorities, unrealistic assumptions or a disconnect between organisational ambitions and employees' everyday responsibilities. Understanding those concerns can help L&D teams and transformation leaders identify where further work is needed.
How can individual technology leaders help sustain organisational transformation?
Technology leaders can help sustain transformation by connecting technical decisions to business priorities, encouraging cross-functional dialogue and making complex technology issues easier for non-technical colleagues to understand. Their contribution is particularly important when AI and digital initiatives require changes across the whole organisation.