How CLOs Replace the Order Taker Mindset with Real Business Impact

Introduction

Nolan: Hello everyone and welcome to the Talent Equation podcast, formerly known as the Learning and Development podcast. This episode is sponsored by Infopro Learning and hosted by me, Nolan Hout. Joining me today is Jess Almlie, who has spent 30 years in the talent development world, working her way from trainer all the way to VP of Learning. And somewhere along the way, she got fed up with L&D just being treated like a vending machine. Put your quarters in, place your order, and there you go.

So, she wrote a book on it. Jess Almlie is the author of L&D Order Taker No More. She is a consultant, speaker, thought leader, and the host of a podcast called L&D Must Change. Today we are going to talk to Jess about what it looks like to stop taking orders and start being the strategic partner your organization needs. Jess, welcome to the Talent Equation.

Jess: Thanks, Nolan. I am excited to be here.

Jess Almlie’s Origin Story and Career Journey

Nolan: I am excited to have you. Let us start like we always do. I mentioned you have a notable record in this area, but where did it all start? What was your first entry point into L&D and talent development?

Jess: My very first time when I figured out maybe this could be a career, I was in college and I worked at McDonald’s as a crew trainer. My family is full of teachers and software engineers. I loved the teaching piece, but I could never see myself in a classroom all day. When I was a trainer at McDonald’s, I thought, maybe there is something here. I was just patient enough with new people to let them do it while I guided them, so they learned instead of me just telling them. That was just a gut thing. My first role out of college was as an orientation coordinator in corporate, and from there I worked my way up to Vice President of Learning many years later.

Nolan: What is it that kept you in the field? The entry point was, I guess I am good at this, I will do this. But what made you passionate enough about this to continue for so long?

Jess: My answer to that has changed over the years. When I was younger, I loved the light bulb moment, like everybody does. That is why a lot of people stay in this. As I got further into my career, I realized the thing I love most is that there is an opportunity to marry strategy and creativity in this role that I do not think exists in a lot of other roles. Creativity in terms of the learning we did and the problem solving, and then strategy in terms of working in alignment with the business. Being able to marry both of those things, as well as that people development piece, that is what has kept me.

Nolan: I think that is a good call out. The role is very strategic but also creative. You must think of ways to engage vast audiences on things they sometimes do not even want to learn about. And you also must be strategic enough to ask, why should they even care about what this training is? A lot of those things are connected. So, you wrote a book, and I believe that came out September of last year. It is called L&D Order Taker No More. After spending your time in corporate and consulting, why did you decide to write this book, and why on this topic?

Jess: I have always been a person who thinks there has got to be a better way to do this. My master’s thesis was on whether leadership can be learned in a classroom, because I did not really believe that it could. Most listeners will say, of course, we can introduce concepts in the classroom, but we cannot learn how to be a leader until we put in the reps. That shifted how I designed learning and leadership development experiences to be more multifaceted, and to not start and end with a classroom.

But when I began to lead L&D teams, I led them to do very much the same. We were creative. We were following all the learning and talent development best practices. We were doing everything right. And I will never forget the day I was sitting across from a stakeholder, and she looked me straight in the eye and said, Jess, your team’s training was not good enough. I had a moment of, wait a minute, yes, it was. What are you talking about? My team does high quality work. But that was not the issue. The training never would have solved the problem in the first place.

That was my first moment where I said, we have got to do something differently. So, I started to figure out how to work differently. There was not much out there to guide me. So, I studied parallel professions: project management, product management, sales and marketing. Performance consulting was also a huge unlock. We shifted how and when we used our products, and how we had conversations with stakeholders about them. We got to a point where stakeholders no longer came to us and asked for training. They came to us and said, “Can we have a conversation about how to solve our talent challenges? That is a totally different conversation.”

Then I wondered, why does not everybody work this way? So, I interviewed learning leaders from all different sizes of companies and industries and asked, “Are you able to work this way?” If you are, what do you do differently? If you are not, what is holding you back? The result of that, along with my own experience, is the book I wrote to be the handbook I never had.

The Organizational Barriers L&D Leaders Face

Nolan: Let us start with the people who express barriers. In your story, someone pushed you to this path by saying the training was not good. You thought, what do you mean, it is not good? It followed every model. It hit everything. But they said it did not do what they wanted. What are leaders saying when they tell you, I would like to do this, but I cannot?

Jess: The very first thing everyone talks about is all the reasons why it cannot happen in their organization. Our leadership does not buy into this. We do not have enough resources or budget. We are not given a seat at the table. But when we dug a little deeper, that is where we found the real answers. We must turn the mirror around. Because there are a lot of reasons why we are stuck in the seat we are stuck in is the way that we work. We think we are working in a way that is helpful, but we are working in a way that just keeps us secure in that order-taking seat without realizing it.

Nolan: That is fascinating. I heard something from an L&D leader who said, if somebody calls it learning versus training, do not correct them. There are battles worth fighting. At the end of the day, let us all speak the same language. If you frame it as a business challenge and ask about the performance metrics we are trying to move, it starts shifting the narrative because you are speaking the language the rest of the business understands.

Jess: Exactly. The work that we do is not about us. It is not about L&D creating a fantastic learning experience. It is about helping the business achieve their goals by equipping and enabling the people inside that organization to do the work that needs to be done. That is why we exist as a function, but sometimes we miss that.

Language: From Helper to Partner

Jess: There was one significant language shift I found in my research that had started teams on the path to working more like strategic partners. They stopped thinking of themselves as being here to help. Instead of showing up as, how can I help you, they started showing up as a partner in problem solving. Some teams had even outlawed the word help. They no longer said, “I would love to help you with that.” Instead, they said, I would love to partner with you to come up with the best solution.

Nolan: That is phenomenal.

Jess: It is a simple mindset shift. Next time you find yourself in one of those conversations, show up thinking of yourself as a partner in problem solving rather than a helper. Just make that shift in your own mind and see how the conversation progresses differently.

Nolan: I had someone on who said when he gets those classic requests, his first response used to be, that is not a training problem. He realized he needed to take it one step further. What he did was load the problem and available company data into his AI tool and ask, what kinds of problems might we be trying to solve here, what performance metrics should we be looking at? So, before he even went back to the stakeholder, he had that dialogue to get himself further along. In L&D we have to be the expert of so many different domains. If you can bring the conversation even a bit further toward the middle, you are helping that person meet you somewhere.

What Strategic Partnership Actually Looks Like

Nolan: What does it actually look like when an organization is operating as a strategic business partner versus an order taker?

Jess: Order taker versus strategic business partner is in many ways opposite, but they exist along a continuum. It is not one or the other. Because very likely, some stakeholders already see you as their partner. And others expect you to show up, take notes, leave, and come back with fully formed training. Your goal is not to jump from one end to the other overnight. Your goal is to do small things that move the needle closer to the other end more often.

When you are working as a strategic business partner, you are in strategic conversations earlier. There is no more, oh my goodness, we forgot to loop in training and this launches in two weeks. You are on the front end, not the back end. You work proactively rather than reactively. You can even bring recommendations before anyone has asked. And you show up as a business partner who happens to have learning expertise. You do not lead with that expertise. You walk into the room as a fully formed business leader alongside them, as an equal. Your learning expertise is in the backpack on your back. You pull it out when you need it. But you are talking about business challenges first.

Nolan: Something you said there resonated with me. I was fortunate to get pulled into conversations early in my career, well above my experience level. And at that time, I was just curious about how the business worked. I had no filter. If something did not track, I would just say, help me understand, why would we do it this way? And I had phenomenal conversations out of that. But as I became more of an expert in my field, I noticed I had narrowed. I was only bringing a marketing and revenue lens to the table. I had stopped being curious about everything else. I think for people in that arc, whether you are naive enough to ask or now know enough to think you should not, you have to find that balance. Stay confident enough to speak up when something seems off, even if it has nothing to do with L&D. That is how you get associated with performance outcomes and not just training delivery.

Jess: Yes. And a really well thought out question is often better than stating what you think, because you are not trying to be the expert in the room. You are drawing the expertise out of everyone else, so the best decision gets made. People in L&D are often good facilitators. That is kind of all it is. You are facilitating the conversation, rooted in your own curiosity. Asking the right question often gives you more influence than having the loudest opinion.

Real Story: Taking Orders Strategically

Nolan: How do you handle those situations where a pre-baked solution lands on your desk from the C-suite and you just have to execute? We had a client once who was going to live with a point-of-sale software across 150 stores, 10,000 people, and they came to us a month before launch and said, just create some program, it should cost 50 grand, you should be able to do this. It came from the CTO. How do you market yourself into those business units so that you are being brought in earlier?

Jess: Every time we create a miracle, we show that we can do it. And now we have set the expectation that we can do it again. What I always tried to think about was, how do I do something different within this order I already got, so that next time I can work more strategically? Let me share an example.

The customer onboarding department came to us and said the sales team has sold more than they have ever sold. We need to get more customers onboard onto this SaaS platform than ever before, and we do not have enough people to handle all the questions. So, create webinars so all our customers can attend at once and get their questions answered. From the start I am thinking, I do not know that webinars are going to solve this. But they said the C-suite had already signed off and we just needed to create them.

So, I said, okay, we will create them. But here are my conditions. I will give you my best people on this project if, once we are done, we can do a full analysis of the customer education process, so we are not in the same position next year. And two, we are going to measure along the way. We will track whether the webinars reduce calls to your floor team, whether they save time, whether you can onboard people more quickly. I need access to your people and your data. They said fine.

The webinars were a complete failure. Hardly anyone showed up. We would have a producer and facilitator on a call with one or two clients. So really just an expensive phone call. It did not reduce calls to the customer team. However, I came back at the end and said, “Remember what you promised me?” And what we found when we did the analysis was it had nothing to do with the number of employees. Their processes were manual that running one report took overnight to process, and then someone had to comb through 100 lines by hand to figure out who needed outreach. Once I brought that back to them, they said, thank you, we are automating right away. And that team never came to me with a pre-baked solution again.

Nolan: And what I love about that approach is it is a yes-and. You are putting the problem back on them in the most tactful way. You are saying, I will do this, I am happy too, but I am predicting right now it may not work for these reasons, and we are going to measure and find out. You are taking ownership, you are going to deliver, but you are also not going to take the fall for it because you said up front this may not be the right solution. And I bet that instilled in your whole team exactly how to be strategic. You showed them how to give a yes with demands attached.

Jess: I almost never said directly to a stakeholder, this is not going to work. I almost never said no. I was always able to redirect or say, this is bringing up additional opportunities. My strategy was always; I am on your same team. It is not me versus you. Let us figure out how to make the best of this for all of us, because you are coming to me because you have a pain point. Let us solve the pain point. And that is how I would get people to buy in.

Measurement as a Collaborative Activity

Nolan: How important is measurement in the spectrum of becoming a strategic business partner? And how have you seen people overcome the challenge of getting access to the data they need?

Jess: It is incredibly important. Every other business unit in the organization makes data-driven decisions. L&D should be no exception. And if we are going to make good decisions about what is working, what is moving performance, what is removing blockers, we have to have the metrics. And we usually have to partner with business units to get there. Measurement is a collaborative activity. It is not meant to be only a survey that tracks satisfaction and activity. It has to be done together. And when we are all watching the same metrics, that actually helps us operate more as a business partner because we understand what the business units are trying to accomplish.

Nolan: A lot of L&D leaders say they want to measure but struggle to actually pull it off. One move I have found effective is to be transparent about the gap. Tell the stakeholder, here is what I can typically give you: whether people consumed the content, whether they passed or failed. I doubt you actually care about those numbers. So, what data do you want to see after they complete this program? That move of acknowledging what you do not have and asking what they need does two things. It gives them an opening to tell you what actually matters. And it builds your team internally, because now everyone knows they are accountable to metrics beyond the LMS.

Jess: I love that. It is an excellent strategy to bring them in because this is a partnership. It is not just me bringing something to the table. We together need to do this so that the numbers move. I can share a story about how I got access to metrics I had never seen before. I had one stakeholder who was a very tough nut to crack. She saw me as a nice training lady and nothing more. But because I had a good relationship with her, one day I asked, those reports you send out quarterly to the C-suite, next time you do that, would you copy me?

She looked at me like I was crazy. But she shared them. I am sure she expected me never to read them. I did. And at our next meeting I started asking her questions about what the metrics meant for her team. That was the turning point.

Nolan: And what I would add for anyone listening is you do not have to promise total revenue impact out of the gate. Start with leading indicators. What is the very first metric that would tell us something is working? If you did a sales training program, maybe it is a 3% lift in demo-to-opportunity conversion in the first 90 days. That is not the end of the revenue story, but it is a real data point tied to a real outcome. Start there. And as you build credibility with that metric, you build access to the next one.

Jess: Yes. And I love what you said about how asking them what they can bring to the table is an excellent strategy. Because if we are thinking about this as a true partnership, it is not just me bringing something to the table. We both need to do this. When we are all driving toward and watching the same metrics together, that is what working as a business partner actually looks like.

Final Advice for L&D Leaders Ready to Make the Shift

Nolan: Jess, this is my absolute favorite topic to talk about on any podcast. Thank you for giving us this whole session on it. What would you like to leave people with before we end today?

Jess: The biggest things, if you are just looking to start: Number one is the mindset shift. Stop showing up as a helper and start showing up thinking of yourself as a partner in problem solving. Number two is that this is going to happen over time through small movements, not an overnight leap. I do talk to people who are frustrated, saying they have tried to walk in and ask different questions and push back and it is not working. That shift does not happen overnight. It is small things, over and over again.

And the third piece of advice is to go where the energy is. Work with the will. There is probably someone along that continuum who is more open to working with you on this than others. Start there. Start practicing, start gathering metrics with them, and then use that to tell the story of what changed and build momentum. Do not go to your toughest stakeholder and try to start the shift there. Start where you are going to get the most traction the fastest and let those small changes add up over time.

Nolan: Lovely. And if you want more, Jess has two great resources. L&D Order Taker No More is available now. Jess also hosts a podcast called L&D Must Change. I encourage you to check both out. Jess, thank you so much for joining us today. It was a pleasure.

Jess: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.