At ATD’s 2023 International Conference & EXPO, I had a front-row seat at the start of a revolution in the talent development industry.
To facilitate the session The Future of Work: The Evolution of the Talent Development Field, I tapped Tamar Elkeles, former chief learning and talent officer for Qualcomm, and Chris Yeh, co-author of Blitzscaling, a book on how to build world-changing companies like Amazon, Alibaba, and Airbnb. What was originally imagined as a small networking session capped at 60 talent development leaders who would exchange their thoughts and experiences about the field turned into a standing-room-only event of more than 300 TDLs eager to discuss strategies and best practices to advance the profession and their organizations.
I call it a revolution because so many TD professionals chose this session over other events offered at the same time. It was an inflection point with an energy and determination to evolve the TD profession. Clearly, attendees wanted to know what was needed to prepare for the future.
The objective ATD set out for Tamar and Chris went beyond discussing current events and the field’s future. We also wanted them to provide context for what TD leaders are experiencing in their organizations.
Tamar noted that she could easily discuss the future of L&D, but she “believes that the future is being built by the people who are TD leaders today. The people in our profession are shaping it together. There are forces in technology, the economy, the job market, and in every industry that are impacting the work these professionals are doing.”
This means that it’s the job of organizations like ATD to understand and observe what’s happening in the industry. As TD leaders started discussing the disruption affecting their work, the session pivoted to a dialogue about their challenges and current workplace realities. And we listened.
It became clear that for ATD and TD professionals to think about the future, we must understand today’s current challenges. With this pivot, the result was a session where TD leaders outlined 50 important challenges.
Two Types of Challenges
Many of the challenges uncovered during the session are familiar to those in the field, such as:- Issues around demonstrating learning impact
- Getting executive sponsorship for the function
- Developing an L&D value proposition
- Closing skills gaps
- Managing change
- Delivering best-in-practice leadership development programs
- Getting a seat at the C-suite table
Meanwhile, some relatively new challenges were added to the list, like the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in talent development, employee well-being and burnout, and data privacy.
“As I reflect on the list of challenges, I realize that they fall into two buckets. There are the challenges that are in our control versus those challenges that are happening outside our control,” says Tamar.
Overcoming Challenges Within Our Control
The challenges in our control seem to be perennial issues. For example, consider the difficulties TD professionals experience in measuring learning impact or showing ROI and the value of the L&D function.Why do these issues continue to create obstacles for leaders in our field? Tamar believes there are two reasons.
For starters, she says, “There’s a long-standing focus among TD leaders that it’s our role to show the value of learning and prove our budgets. As we evolve the TD function, we need to elevate that narrative to focus on why companies need to invest in talent, not justify our training dollars. Companies that want to retain and engage their people invest in them. It’s not the training that needs to be proven, it’s the impact of investing in our talent that matters.”
Next, Tamar thinks nontraditional career entry points into the TD profession, or “pit stops,” also play a role in the staying power of some challenges. “Today’s TD teams come from various backgrounds and don’t have unidimensional career paths into the TD profession. They may enter a TD role from HR, a line organization, or even an engineering background—and in some cases may even be transitional roles. The benefit is that there is a lot of diversity of skills among today’s TD professionals, but to evolve the TD function we need to ensure core TD capabilities are being built across our TD teams.”
These are challenges that may never disappear, but we have some control over them if we build strength in our TD functions by providing continuous development opportunities for our TD teams.
Alleviating Challenges Outside Our Control
The second group of challenges—items like technological changes and AI, supply chain deficiencies, or staff reductions—are external forces we can’t necessarily control.“As talent development leaders, we need to be proactive in embracing new technologies and staying abreast of rapidly changing economic and industry shifts,” Tamar explains. We are not going to be able to slow down AI’s evolution, and we cannot individually change the economy. What we can do is adapt quickly, be resilient, and be innovative in our approaches and our thinking. As the TD profession evolves, we need to think differently about how we work and what kind of work we do. We have strategic value to add, and the only thing stopping us is our mindset.”
Tamar concludes, “In the end, these challenges can be overcome if we first determine whether the challenge is external or internal. There are the things that are happening in the world, and then things that are happening in my world. We need to address both to succeed in the future. "
What’s Next?
The session at ATD23 highlighted the challenges TD leaders face. The next step is to develop resources and strategies to address these challenges so TD leaders can plan for the talent development function of tomorrow.With only an hour allotted for the session, we did not capture every challenge or obstacle holding back TD’s progress, but we made a good start.
Here is the list of 50 challenges shared by attendees at Tamar’s and Chris’s session. ATD wants to dig deeper, and we would like to hear from you. We invite you to review the full list and provide your input on the following questions:
- Which of these challenges are you facing?
- Which are not pain points for you?
- What is missing from this list?
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