Your Training Plan is Not a Capability Development Strategy
Every year, as budgets are finalized and calendars are set, learning and development (L&D) teams gather to answer the same question: “What training will we offer next year?”
It’s a familiar rhythm across industries from financial services to pharma, from high tech to heavy industry.
Yet this question, however well-intentioned, misses the mark, because a training plan is not the same as a capability development strategy.
Plan vs. Strategy: Why the Distinction Matters
Let’s start with definitions.
• A plan is a set of actions arranged to achieve a specific outcome.
• A strategy is a coordinated approach that connects actions to a broader goal — aligning resources, priorities, and timing to achieve sustainable advantage.
Too many L&D organizations mistake the former for the latter. They produce impressive catalogs of courses, compliance calendars, and engagement campaigns but often without a clear throughline to the business’s core objectives.
When we do that, we set ourselves up to be busy but not strategic. And when budgets tighten, “busy” is always the first to go.
The Trap of Curriculum-Driven Thinking
This problem is particularly common in regulated industries. In banking, pharma, and heavy industry, compliance often drives the agenda. Learning leaders get trapped in a cycle of fulfilling curriculum requirements instead of solving business problems.
The result? Teams design courses before diagnosing the issue. Leaders say, “My people need to learn delegation,” or “We need more safety training.” L&D jumps straight into design mode, producing high-quality programs that may be beautifully built but strategically irrelevant.
A course, no matter how engaging, is not a solution unless it changes performance in a way that changes results.
From Order-Taking to Performance Diagnosis
True capability strategy begins not with a course request but with a business question:
“What are the outcomes this organization needs to achieve, and what human performance gaps stand in the way?”
That means L&D leaders must become diagnosticians. Before deciding what to teach, we must understand:
1. What defines success for the business (market share, tonnage, speed to market, cost per unit, etc.)
2. What processes drive those results — and where bottlenecks exist
3. What level of performance those processes are currently achieving
4. Which roles most directly influence those processes
5. What skill or behavior gaps are holding those roles back
Only then should we ask, “What learning interventions will help close those gaps?”
Prioritization is a Leadership Act
Here’s the hardest truth: everyone cannot be key.
When I facilitated a strategy development session at the Training Industry Strategy Summit, many learning leaders declared, “Everyone in my organization is a beneficiary of our learning strategy.”
But if everything is a priority, nothing is.
Data (and common sense) tell us the Pareto Principle applies here: 20% of your people drive 80% of your results. Strategic capability building means identifying and investing in the critical few roles where improved performance will move the business.
That’s not an indictment of anyone’s value; it’s a discipline of focus. Pretending otherwise isn’t kindness; it’s avoidance.
Making the Hard Choices
Great L&D leaders make hard calls.
They shut down programs that don’t serve the strategy.
They invest disproportionately where value can be unlocked.
They align learning with business cycles, not calendar years.
When I’ve seen organizations take that courageous approach, something remarkable happens: Growth follows focus.
When the business succeeds, bonuses grow, engagement rises, and people feel part of a winning system, not a busy one.
Ask Yourself This Q4
As you sit down to plan for the next fiscal year, pause before opening your training catalog. Ask yourself:
• Are we building courses or building capability?
• Are our priorities driven by the business strategy or by what’s easy to fund?
• Are we measuring attendance or measuring impact?
• And are we willing to say no to what’s not strategic?
A training plan fills calendars.
A capability strategy fills business gaps.
It’s time to make that distinction — and elevate L&D from order-takers to performance accelerators.
Author’s Bio:
Andrea Lipton is the Senior Director, Consulting & Advisory Services at NIIT MTS. She holds both a Master’s and a Bachelor’s degree from Columbia University. Andrea leads global learning and talent development consulting engagements with a human-centered approach for Fortune 1000 clients across industries including mining, aviation, shipping and logistics, and financial services.