It’s Not You. It’s the System.
There’s a particular kind of frustration that L&D people carry around, and most of us never name it.
It sounds like this: “I know I’m good at what I do. So why does it feel like nobody takes my work seriously?”
Or this: “I keep hearing I need to be more strategic, but every time I try, I get pulled back into building another course that someone asked for yesterday.”
Or my personal favorite: “I’m supposed to prove business impact on a program that had no measurable goals when it was approved.”
If any of that landed, good. It was supposed to. Because the conversation about “strategic L&D” has been deeply unfair to the people actually doing the work. (Share your experiences in the comments!)
The Quiet Lie L&D Professionals Keep Hearing
Somewhere along the way, the narrative shifted. The message went from “L&D is valuable” to “L&D needs to prove its value” to “If L&D can’t prove its value, it’s because L&D professionals aren’t being strategic enough.”
And that last part? That’s the lie.
Not because strategy doesn’t matter. It does. But because the implication is that the problem sits with you. That if you just learned to “speak business,” if you just got better at data, if you just found a way to “get a seat at the table,” everything would click into place.
Meanwhile, the actual structure of most L&D departments looks like this: requests come in from the top, you build what’s asked for, you deliver it, you do it again. The hamster wheel spins. The inbox fills. And somewhere between the project deadline and the SME who ghosted your review email, you’re supposed to find time to become a strategic business partner.
The math isn’t mathing.
Most L&D Roles Were Designed for Order-Taking
The truth is that most L&D roles were designed to be reactive. The job descriptions, the reporting structures, the way training requests flow through the organization – all of it was built for order-taking.
Think about how training requests typically arrive. A manager decides their team needs sales training. They submit a request (or more likely, send a vague email). Because you’re good at your job, you try asking clarifying questions. They say, “Just make it short.” You build the thing. They approve it. Completions get tracked. Everyone moves on.
At no point in that process did anyone intelligently state what business problem the training was solving. At no point did anyone define what success looks like beyond “people took the course.” And at NO POINT did anyone set you up to be anything other than the person who builds what’s requested.
Here’s another situation you’ve probably lived: Someone walks into your office on a Tuesday and says, “We need training on the payroll system by next week.”
- No performance data.
- No context on what’s actually going wrong.
- No conversation about whether training is even the right solution.
Just a deadline and an assumption that you’ll make it happen. You do, because that’s the job. And then three months later, someone asks why the training “didn’t work.” As if the problem was your design and not the fact that, despite being asked, nobody could define what “working” meant in the first place.
You start trying to talk about performance outcomes and measurement strategies, and leadership looks at you like you’re speaking Klingon. Not because you’re wrong. But because nobody in that room was ever trained to think about learning as a business function. They think of you as the person who makes courses. Full stop.
That’s not a personal failing. That’s a systemic design choice. You were hired into a structure that functions as a training vending machine – and then told the problem is that you act like a vending machine.
What Being Reactive Actually Costs You
Here’s what makes this especially exhausting – it’s not just a workflow problem. It’s an identity problem.
When you spend years being good at something, really good at it, and the response is a collective shrug from the people making decisions, that does something to you.
You start second-guessing yourself in meetings. You stop raising your hand with ideas because the last three got smiled at and ignored. You watch other departments get invited into strategy conversations while you’re still being asked to “just put together a quick eLearning on that.”
The quiet cost of a reactive system isn’t just wasted time and misaligned training. It’s the slow erosion of confidence in people who have every reason to be confident. It’s talented professionals wondering if they’re in the wrong field when the truth is they’re in the wrong structure.
And the worst part?
Every article, conference talk, and LinkedIn post telling you to “be more strategic” reinforces the idea that the gap is yours to close. That if you were just better, sharper, more business-savvy, you’d have that seat at the table by now.
That narrative needs to stop.
From Frustration to Strategic Shift
Validation without a path forward is just venting. And venting feels good for about ten minutes before the same frustration creeps back in.
So let’s be honest about two things at once.
First: The frustration is legitimate. If you’ve been feeling like you’re spinning your wheels, like your expertise gets overlooked, like the “strategic” expectations don’t match the “reactive” reality of your day-to-day – you’re not wrong. That’s an accurate read of a misaligned system. The gap between what’s expected of you and what you were set up to do is real.
Second: Recognizing the system is broken doesn’t mean waiting for someone else to fix it. Because they won’t. The people who set up the reactive structure aren’t losing sleep over it. They think it’s working fine. The person who emailed you a vague training request with a five-day deadline isn’t going home thinking, “I really should have defined success metrics for that.” They’re already onto the next fire.
The shift has to come from you. Not because it’s your fault, but because you’re the one who sees the problem clearly enough to do something about it.
What Actually Has to Change for L&D to be Business Partners
This isn’t about adding “strategic thinking” to your to-do list between the eLearning build and the SME meeting. It’s about fundamentally changing where you start.
- Instead of starting with “what training do they want?” start with “what business problem are we solving?”
- Instead of reporting on completions, start asking what happened after the training.
- Instead of waiting for requests, start showing up with observations about performance gaps you’ve noticed.
- Instead of translating your work into learning jargon that makes sense to you, start translating it into business language that makes sense to them.
Will that be uncomfortable? Yes. Will some people look at you funny when you start asking business questions instead of just building what’s asked? Probably. Will it feel awkward to push back on a training request that doesn’t have clear goals? Absolutely.
But awkward is better than invisible. And pushing back with good questions is how you stop being the person who takes orders and start being the person who solves problems.
You’re Not Just Becoming a Strategic Partner. You’re Training the Business.
What do you need to know about pushing back with better questions? It’s not just a one-time act of bravery. It’s training. You’re training the business. Ironic right?
- Every time you respond to a vague request with “What’s the business problem we’re solving?” You’re teaching that person to come to you with an answer next time.
- Every time you ask, “How will we know this worked?” You’re setting a new expectation for what a training request actually looks like.
It won’t happen overnight.
The first few times, you’ll get blank stares. But over time, something shifts. People start showing up with context. They start thinking about outcomes before they email you. The system that was built for order-taking starts to quietly rebuild itself around problem-solving – because you changed the pattern.
That’s how a reactive system becomes a strategic one.
Not with a reorg or a new title. But with one L&D professional who stopped accepting requests without questions and started changing the conversation, one interaction at a time.
I wrote a full breakdown of how to make this shift, including a 30-60-90 day action plan that starts with small, concrete steps. Check out the From L&D Order-Taker to Strategic Business Partner.
So, if this post hit a nerve, that post gives you somewhere to start.
Because the system isn’t going to fix itself. But you’ve already done something most people haven’t. You’ve stopped blaming yourself for a problem you didn’t create. That clarity is where every meaningful shift starts.
This is the kind of conversation we have inside the Learning Rebels community. L&D pros who are done pretending the system works and are helping each other build something better. If that sounds like your people, come find us.
