In theory, this should be the moment for the chief learning officer to have a prominent seat at the table to help the executive team shape organizational strategy and upskill employees to align with future needs.

But a series of recent interviews I conducted with 25 chief learning officers (CLOs) suggests a disconnect: Almost half of them said they felt only “somewhat connected” to their CEO’s top priorities. This aligns with a recent report from LinkedIn that found that only 58% of learning and development professionals feel as though they have a “seat at the executive table.”

What can these CLOs learn from their colleagues who feel more closely connected to their company’s strategy? My interviews identified five distinct practices they can adopt.

[Here are the first two.]

Apply an agile approach to developing learning programs.

Most companies take far too long to develop large workplace learning programs. LinkedIn’s recent report found that between 2022 and 2024, fewer than 5% had made it to their final phase. These delays are likely to increase the gap between workplace learning and strategic priorities — and increase frustration among business stakeholders.

To speed up, some companies are adopting a more agile approach to L&D programs, in which cross-functional teams of designers, content developers, and business stakeholders collaborate on learning experiences that are continuously improved with feedback and testing.

Standard Chartered is one company that’s adopted this approach. Its L&D team went from having dedicated account managers serving each line of business to having multidisciplinary teams who are more able to “grasp all the creative possibilities” for a given learning need, according to Dr. Amelie Villeneuve, the bank’s global head of learning. As a result, the relationship between business stakeholders and the learning function has improved. According to Villeneuve, her business stakeholders now participate in a “diagnostic conversation with our team” instead of simply ordering learning programs from a menu. “This enables us to have much more strategic conversations.”

When PwC wanted to encourage its employees’ adoption of AI, an agile approach helped CLO Leah Houde respond to the business priority much faster. “In the first six months we operated in sprints,” she explains. “We didn’t know what would be coming and didn’t want to have to re-do a year-long strategy.”

Even if adopted partially, an agile approach can help speed up production. “We’ve got small and agile teams within the business who can turn things around on a dime,” says Mike Kosiarek, vice president of learning and development at Navy Federal Credit Union. “Now, we partner with those teams to increase capacity when we need to take something to enterprise scale.”

Design workplace learning around strategic priorities instead of roles.

Most workplace learning focuses on training people for individual roles and functions. Training Magazine’s annual survey found that only 28% of training went to categories deemed as “function-agnostic,” such as management, executive, and communication training.

Some CLOs I spoke to say their companies are benefiting from rethinking the focus on roles, particularly when the company needs to move quickly in a new direction.

At Novo Nordisk, Head of Global Learning & Development Sanne Mantoni Macaire’s team focuses on “the most important enterprise skills and mindsets.” For example, one program, focused on digitalization, is made available to all employees. While a more traditional approach would have built individual training programs for each function, the current digitalization program covers a range of topics, including digital enablers, patient profiles, digital marketing, automation in production, and more. According to Mantoni Macaire, this approach is delivering far greater impact: “We see a 46% improvement in participants’ ability within our bespoke ‘digital acumen’ skill set,” she says. “Even more impressively, the number of digital experiments is up 85%, which we take as a direct proxy for business impact.”

L’Oréal has practiced a cross-functional approach to learning for nearly a decade. In 2015, then-CEO Jean-Paul Agon committed the company to shift e-commerce revenue from single-digit percentages to 20% of total sales. This required a massive shift in the mindset and skills of leaders.

To achieve this, L’Oréal launched a leadership simulation called the “wine game,” in which leaders from general management, marketing, sales, supply chain, finance, and legal come together for two days to learn how to sell wine online. The game takes place on real platforms, teaching leaders about digital ads, web analytics, customer experience, and brand positioning. CLO Nicolas Pauthier credits this program with playing a significant role in achieving L’Oréal’s ambitious e-commerce goals. In 2023, L’Oréal’s revenue from e-commerce was 27% of total sales.