ATD Blog
To ensure success of learning experiences, the training trifecta—L&D professionals, the business, and learners—must be aligned on the shared business goals, associated metrics, and desired behavior changes.
Wed Jan 29 2025
Successful learning interventions require tight alignment between business partners (BPs), leaders, learning and development (L&D) professionals, and learners. While we don’t all need to be experts in each other’s domains, we do need to speak a common language with an aligned purpose to achieve our shared goal. We all need to be on the same page about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. So how do we come to that shared understanding?
One of the best ways to start moving toward alignment is to explore our differences. By clearly identifying what each of the groups in our training trifecta does and cares about, we’re better able to respect and accommodate our varied priorities.
L&D: Our role as L&D practitioners involves analyzing performance opportunities and designing learning experiences that address those opportunities. We do this by collaborating with our business partners to translate business problems or opportunities into goals that the business cares about and identifying what people need to do differently to achieve these goals. From there we can write our terminal objectives, which outline what the learner should be able to do when the training is completed successfully. These identified behavioral outcomes will also serve as the Level 3 (Behavior) evaluation measure of training effectiveness.
Once we have the desired behaviors, we’re ready to partner with the business to identify the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required to perform at the desired level. These insights will then be used by L&D to craft enabling objectives that will guide content development and serve as the Level 2 (Learning) measure of training effectiveness.
The tight partnership between L&D and the business during the analysis and design phases ensures the solution is aligned with the business’s strategic goals and performance expectations.
The Business: L&D needs the business to have clearly defined business priorities with measurable associated metrics. We also need accountability to these priorities and documented roles and responsibilities from relevant teams collaborating to achieve these goals. Finally, we need a line of sight into the above information, and especially access to performance metrics so we can evaluate and report on the impact of our work.
Ideally, the business champions L&D’s efforts and holds learners (and their leaders) accountable for the learning they’ve requested, as well as the expected behavior change required to see business impact.
Learners: Ultimately, the learner’s role in all of this is to complete the learning experience and perform the desired behaviors to achieve the business goal. Behavior change is hard, and for learners to act differently to meet these goals they first must know the expectations, and more importantly they must be motivated to act in a new way.
This means we must clearly communicate to learners how the training aligns with business goals and how it will benefit them in achieving those goals. Instead of presenting learners with the same list of objectives we crafted to ensure effective instructional design, we can reframe these for learners in terms that are meaningful to them.
Each member of the training trifecta has a different role to play in a successful learning experience. But we also have a lot in common as well.
Learners want to invest their workplace learning time wisely, and L&D wants their learners to see that ROI (colloquially, not mathematically…but maybe that, too, when appropriate). We want to deliver value with every learning experience. It’s why many of us chose this field. And, the value we can deliver is amplified the closer we can get to the business and its priorities. The more visibility L&D has by way of business goals and associated metrics, the better positioned we are to show the business what they want to know: how will this training influence our performance?
The business goal(s) associated with the learning solution are crucial elements that L&D professionals, business partners, and learners must all clearly understand. Each group is responsible for achieving these goals in different ways. Similarly, the desired behavior change (or what the learner needs to do) to achieve the shared business goal is another key element that must be clearly understood, agreed upon, and tracked by L&D, BPs, and learners, albeit for different reasons.
Even though we may need the same information, we don’t need it for the same reasons and therefore how we communicate it can and should vary. For example, L&D professionals must understand the behavior change required to achieve the associated business goal to design effective training that achieves the desired outcomes. Learners need to understand these overarching objectives to know what is expected of them after completing the training and why it matters. Business Partners and leaders must understand how the learning experiences we plan to design support their goals, what is required of them post-training to sustain the behavior change, and what metrics will be tracked to evaluate success.
Decoding the Trifecta: Who, What, and What Next?
Behavior Change | Business Goals | Continued Growth | |
Learner | What do I need to do and why does it matter to our business? | How am I contributing to our success and am I meeting expectations? | How am I growing professionally? How can I build on this? |
BP/ Leader | How do I support and champion the behavior change? | How are we measuring accountability? Who needs more support? | How are we investing in our talent? How does this inform my strategy? |
L&D | What do I need to enable? How do I need to enable it? | How can I assess training impact? What data do I need? | What else is needed? How does this influence other learning initiatives? |
To ensure the success of the learning experiences we create, the three groups in the training trifecta—L&D professionals, the business, and learners—must be aligned on the shared business goals, associated metrics, and desired behavior changes.
This starts with clear communication tailored to each group’s needs. L&D professionals translate business priorities into learning objectives and effective training solutions. Business partners provide measurable goals, access to performance data, and champion accountability. Finally, learners understand what’s expected of them, engage with the training, and are motivated to implement the required behaviors on the job.
By embracing these distinct roles and fostering a shared purpose, together we can drive meaningful results.
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