Earning the Seat at the Table: How CLOs Prove L&D’s Business Value

Introduction

Nolan: Hello everyone, and welcome to the Talent Equation Podcast, sponsored by Infopro Learning. As always, I’m your host, Nolan Hout. Joining me today, we have Kristy Callahan. Kristy figured out something most learning leaders are still trying to crack: how to make L&D something a business can’t afford to ignore. She leads learning for a very large life sciences firm in the US and Canada, sits on the board of LTEN, and has spent years connecting training outcomes directly to business performance. Not completion rates, actual behavioral change. Today we’re going to explore with Kristy how she earned her seat at that table, and how you can do the same in your company. Kristy, welcome to the podcast.

Kristy: Thank you. Honored to be here. Excited for the conversation and the topic. It’s not an easy one.

Why “Seat at the Table” Still Feels Out of Reach

Nolan: Let’s just jump right into it. This term, “seat at the table,” has been floating around forever. Why do you think it’s still there? What’s that gap that keeps learning leaders on the outside saying, I don’t feel like I’m there yet?

Kristy: I think it’s easy to view L&D, enablement, development, whatever your word choice of the day is, as a soft skill, something that’s a nice to have or an extra. The important thing is to ensure you’re continuing to drive value. What’s hard is that value looks different to every stakeholder. How do you ensure your worth, your relevance, and your impact are all tied together and felt at the point in time when it’s most impactful?

Nolan: How did you learn that? Looking back on your career, was there an aha moment, or was it more a bunch of lessons learned along the way?

Sales Roots and Understanding Human Motivation

Kristy: I’ve always been fascinated by human development. It’s what I studied in my master’s. It’s what I’ve always spent my spare time researching. I think it’s the differentiator, and it’s something every organization has: individual humans, and how you unlock the potential from each one.

I learned it multiple ways along the way. I started my career in sales, and I think that innately paired me with understanding human behavior, how people buy, what they’re interested in, what works and what doesn’t. Then throughout my career I’ve been at multi-billion-dollar companies and startups, so you see things work in different ways, and you self-reflect: who am I dealing with? I think of everyone as if I’m selling to them. What are their needs, their values, what motivates them, what does success look like for them?

Nolan: I’d like to double click on that sales skill piece, because the CLOs and heads of learning I’ve met have almost always had some role in sales at some point, whether directly owning a book of business or eventually moving into consulting, where they’re selling themselves. What is it about the connection between sales and leadership that makes it so important, maybe critical, to the job?

Kristy: That’s an interesting question. I constantly think about whether I’d be as successful in my current role without the number of different positions I’ve held: sales, marketing, leadership, development. It definitely makes it easier, because you learn to see things in different ways and tap into what matters to the individual. That’s what helps you catapult that energy, and they see the value in you. If I know something is of interest to you, I also see the business importance, and I’m able to marry those together.

To lead in L&D, you generally have to put others first. What I’ve found in the different L&D teams I’ve led is it’s really hard for the team to start sharing what it is they do well.

Owning the Win: Taking Credit Like Sales and Marketing Do

Kristy: That’s the key. It’s not what we do well, it’s what we’re helping the stakeholder accomplish, and having a metric that ties that together so it’s not just a feeling or a nice to have. When the organization can’t imagine launching something without the L&D team being part of it, that’s when you know you’ve really made it.

Nolan: I was sitting with our CEO once, and he got so frustrated. We were talking about some sales training we were doing, and he said, you know how Salesforce’s website says, when the client bought Salesforce, their sales grew five thousand percent? He said, that’s so stupid. Nobody bought Salesforce and then sales went up five thousand percent. Sure, it helps, but why can’t we in L&D take ownership like Salesforce does? Why can’t we swoop in at the end and say, that was our win? Marketing does it, sales does it. Why can’t we?

Something you said is important, and I think it’s a critical point in any conversation with people outside L&D: what is it that they care about versus what you care about. Within L&D we’ve got metrics like completion rate, cost per learner, satisfaction score. Business probably doesn’t care about any of those things. What have you found they care about most?

Finding the Metrics the Business Actually Cares About

Kristy: I love that question. Put yourself in the shoes of the CEO. You own the organization. You hear the stats: five hundred people went through it, we spent thirty hours, everyone liked it, it was great. Who cares? What the CEO hears is, you took my team out of the field, spent a significant amount of money, and what’s the output? What do I get from it? They had a great time? They could’ve had a great time on their own time.

Your CEO is slightly right. We started being edgy enough to say, let’s claim a piece of this. We know we didn’t sell but look at the difference. For example, our top sellers engaged us 15.8 times a year versus the bottom sellers, less than four. What’s different? They engaged with us. That builds our credibility. We’re not saying everything we have is right or that one course makes you amazing. We’re saying the top sellers have the behaviors, being curious, wanting to learn, knowing they need to keep growing, and that’s who we want to feed. It’s also reassuring that the investment in us is worthwhile.

Nolan: And I think that’s the job. The leader has to find those metrics, because they don’t inherently come to you while you’re building the learning program. It takes the thinking of, what data do we have, what data do they have that they care about, how do we find the intersection between the two? How much of that falls on you as the leader versus becoming a culture on your team?

Building a Team That Thinks in Business Outcomes

Kristy: I’ve worked to inspire the team to think this way, and it’s a difficult skill. If your passion is instructional design and you’re really good at creating, you’re not necessarily as good at creating the metrics and validating them, because to you, if somebody did the training, the metric that matters is that it happened. That doesn’t resonate with the C-suite.

It’s our job as leaders to find people on the team who can think that way and champion it. At a previous company we spent significant time with a small tiger team trying to uncover how we were developing leaders, what that looked like at launch, and the early indicators that told us we were on the right track. I spend a lot of time with commercial teams, so a lot of my examples are sales-related. We had a new-to-the-organization sales program, and we knew that people who went through the entire program had higher orders than those who didn’t. We’re not claiming it’s only because of us, but we’re a piece of it, and that’s enriched the conversations to go deeper.

Nolan: I had a professor, well, a high school teacher, tell me something once. He spent an entire semester in college trying to understand how to write creatively, and what they found was that if you took two completely abstract points and tried to find a connection between them, that’s what created creativity. I wonder if you’re onto something there: what’s a key stat that’s important to us, and can we find a key stat that’s important for business and then try to prove the connection between the two.

It doesn’t have to be sales; it can be skill development or a capability. I don’t think this is just an L&D challenge either. I lead a marketing team here at Infopro, and it’s a challenge we have too. How do we create a lead the business cares about? It’s hard to get sales out of the mindset of, a lead isn’t connected to revenue, it sucks. I think it’s a universal problem solved mostly through repetition. But once you get people who get it, they take a big load off your shoulders.

Kristy: It’s hard to get, and it takes intentional pause and focus, which most L&D and marketing teams don’t have because they’re running a million miles a minute. That’s part of what makes the job fun, but it does take a definite pause and reflection to pull that out.

Nolan: Do you think you can get somebody to think that way, or is it inherent in the person you hire?

Kristy: One of my strengths is finding the strengths in others and getting them to lean into that. If this isn’t someone’s jam, it’s going to be too hard to get them thinking this way, though they may start to appreciate the value in it. We’ve tried sending everyone through training on how to think this way, and the output wasn’t any different than for those who already had it in them. So we leaned into a tighter team of accountability, building on that together, which also made it more exciting. I’ve seen it where one person is tasked with owning it, and that’s too much of a burden, unless it’s purely navigating the metrics and that’s what they love doing. But thinking this way while being far removed from the different stakeholders is too much to ask of one person. It has to be a group of people committed to thinking in the “so what.”

Earning Access to Data You Don’t Own

Nolan: It’s becoming more of a trend now with AI, everyone’s seeing the importance of data, since data is what’s driving these engines we create. What you’re describing is understanding what data you’re collecting, and finding ways to access data that isn’t in your own systems, HRIS, LMS, performance reviews, three sixty feedback. How do you go about getting access to the data points you need to prove what you’re doing?

Kristy: It’s all about building relationships and helping people understand your why. It’s influencing without authority, so it’s a bigger challenge than if the data owner sat on your team. To get the sales metrics, it took over nine months.

Nolan: Really. What’s behind the pushback?

Kristy: I think they see it as an added extra, everybody wants something from them, they’re already overworked. It wasn’t dismissive so much as protective, some are fearful of where the data might end up, and they want to be protective of it. Helping them understand our intent and how we’d use it was helpful.

Sometimes they got really excited about it, because they got to engage their brain and do critical thinking on how we might approach it. Sometimes they came back with something they were proud of and I had to say, that’s not the story we want to tell, let’s not use that one. But it was great that they were excited and became part of the team from then on.

Nolan: Once you dig the well, do you have to dig a well every time, or does the infrastructure make it easier the second time?

Kristy: The first one is the hardest, and it’s great when the first one is a good one.

Nolan: When you can say, here’s what we did together and look what we accomplished, then maybe the trick is to find the easiest point of data to access first, something you’re confident will show improvement. When you were asking for this data, was it pitched as, we’re taking your people out of the field, I want to show whether it’s worth their time, speaking in terms they understand rather than terms only L&D cares about?

Kristy: That’s a great call out. I never broke it down this way before, but each experience starts with a hypothesis I want to prove or disprove. That’s exciting to data people. You go deeper and say, here’s what I think, here’s what we’re starting to see. They also appreciate that we can do some of the legwork ourselves, we just need the raw data and we’ll do the rest. With Power BI and other data tools now, there’s so much there, and getting them to think that way is fun for them too, depending on their interests.

When and How to Use Your Data to Build Trust

Nolan: When you get a data point like the sales engagement correlation, what do you do with it? Is it for the next budget ask, or does it come back some other way? A lot of this is framed around “seat at the table.” When do you use it?

Kristy: When we first get it, we pressure test it with people we think will be open to it, because sometimes a filter was on or something was off, and you want the story to have believability. If you don’t trust the data, what’s the point? That’s an opportunity to share it and say, I want to make sure we’re helping develop your team, here’s what we’re seeing, what do you see, what would you expect to see?

That gets them thinking, this isn’t just your average L&D team, they might actually be a good partner in solving something I’ve tried multiple ways to move. If we haven’t proven ourselves yet, we’re probably not their first stop. Teams are also competitive with one another internally, so if we have data on one team, another team asks, why not us? Great question. What’s your biggest challenge, what are you trying to uncover, who could help us?

Nolan: I like that. It’s an interesting perspective shift from, this problem is wrong, let’s buy another SaaS tool, to, we spent this much on training and saw a notable performance difference between those who went through it and those who didn’t, maybe we should invest in the people already there. There’s a weird psychology to buyer behavior. If I asked you what you’d spend on a water bottle, you might say thirty dollars sounds fine, but when it comes time to actually spend it, you wouldn’t. People overestimate what they’ll do until it’s time to write the check. Every annual report says invest in our people, but when it’s time to write the check, it gets hard.

Kristy: When you have data to back the decision, it removes that bias, the tension between wanting to spend and wondering if it’ll actually deliver versus a SaaS platform promising overnight returns.

Nolan: Good point.

Kristy: Which is really about trust. Do I trust her, do I trust them? I think that’s also why humans remain part of the buying process. There’s research showing that even though most people say they don’t want to engage with a salesperson, when there’s a human component, people feel more confident and see more value after the purchase. That matters, especially for those of us who believe humans should keep doing the work that fills us up, something to pay attention to as the AI conversation keeps waving and sparkling around whether it’s taking our jobs.

Becoming Indispensable: Proactive vs. Reactive L&D

Kristy: It’s such a huge thing to stay close to, what is our value and how do we keep portraying it, no matter what role you’re in.

Nolan: I want to touch on that. What you’re describing to me is how you become indispensable, and a lot of that comes down to constantly proving value, the difference between being reactive, here’s what I did because you asked, versus proactive, continuing to ask what more you could do. Was there an instance where you looked at the data and expanded a program, saying, I know we were only tasked to do this, but with a bit more money, time, or seat time, we could get a lot more out of it, instead of just responding to the request for more training?

Kristy: A couple of instances come to mind. The biggest one was several years ago, there was a product launch that didn’t go well. As good L&D professionals, we didn’t just take the request and redo what someone else had already done. We asked, how do we rethink this and get to the root of the challenge? That’s where I began to appreciate design sprints and design thinking. What we found was that they kept going to the same people, but the SMEs from the last launch weren’t necessarily the ones whose skills transferred to a new product launch. These were new skills and new capabilities. We used that to challenge the process and say, here’s what we’re finding, here are the people who’ve actually figured it out and here’s why.

That’s a good example of being a proactive partner. If I’d just been reactive, we’d have wasted a lot of money and effort and seen the same results. I truly care about the value our team provides, because I know we’re expensive, and I know when times get tough, and I’ve felt those constant restrictions. But it’s the big things you help move for the business that keep you a relevant partner.

Navigating Budget Cuts Without Losing Leverage

Nolan: You mentioned budget cuts. I’ve found that when you’re asked to cut budget, and it happens, I’m asked to cut mine pretty regularly, there are a couple of ways to respond. One way is to just go back to your team and say, we’ve been told to do this. The way I try to be a true business partner is to say, I understand times are tough and we’ve got to cut budget, but here’s what cutting this is going to cost us. Which of these results do you want less of? Because I can’t deliver the same without this. Here’s what I recommend cutting and here’s the impact, are you in agreement? If you can’t communicate back in terms they care about, they don’t see it, and most people aren’t trying to cut budget just to cut it. They’re relying on you to make a smart call. CFOs seem unreasonable sometimes, but they’re usually pretty reasonable if you go to them and say, I understand you want me to cut budget, but here’s what my biggest expenditure bought us last year, the people who went through this program outsell others three to one.

When you do that, the business trusts you because they know you’ve got their back. If you just say okay and cut it, you become expendable, because anybody can do that. If you challenge it and put the impact in language they care about, like one less instructional designer doesn’t mean anything to a CFO, but less enablement at launch, or two more weeks to get something out the door, that means something.

Kristy: That sounds right, and I think it also brings them further into the decision, it’s almost gaining their buy-in.

When Decision Makers Keep Changing

Kristy: One thing I’ve found really tricky is that decision makers are constantly changing in a large organization. You get several locked in, and then suddenly there’s a totally new group. You have to start over: here’s what matters, here’s what’s table stakes, and is that changing? If you put your cards on the table and say, if this, then that, and that was the biggest value you offered, but the business can no longer afford it, then what’s your purpose for existing to the organization? It’s not always easy to determine.

What’s Actually Within Your Control

Nolan: What if the extra capacity comes from cutting people? How do you replace the value those team members added, or help them add value doing something else?

Kristy: It’s difficult. I have the benefit of my dad having been a CEO at a manufacturing company, so he’s always asking how work is going. A few years ago I told him, my team is doing all this awesome stuff, our engagement is up, people stay longer, and I was insert word, because my budget is down fifty percent, my headcount is down fifty percent, yet we’re overperforming. He stopped and said, Kristy, can I play the role of CEO again with you? I said sure.

He said, as CEO, I don’t care. Your job is to ensure the teams are developed however you can do it. Showing me all that is fine, just don’t complain, because what I see is, you outperformed when I pressed you, and I know you’re not taking advantage of the company, that you’re a good financial steward.

Nolan: I don’t know where I stand on this. I was talking to an organizational psychologist who said the mental state of the average American employee is at an all-time low, because so many of us have been doing fifty percent more with fifty percent less and are just expected to keep doing it. You read labor market reports and feel thankful to have a job, so it’s hard to push back, even though the alternative advice is, if they don’t value you, find somewhere that does. That’s easier said than done, especially now. I’m proud of doing more with less as a team leader, but I also realize that pride is just telling the company I can keep doing it.

Kristy: It’s a delicate balance. You see other people navigate it differently and wonder, if I didn’t know another way, would I still be holding it together with duct tape and bubblegum?

Nolan: Sometimes you do everything right and it still doesn’t work, because some things are out of your control, the market, tariffs, industry shifts. You can’t blame the sales training for that. And unfortunately, in some companies, a CEO’s role is transactional, three years, get the stock price up, then move on to the next thing.

Investors don’t want to hear that you sunk ten million dollars into a leadership program that pays off after the CEO who approved it is already gone. We don’t always talk about that, but sometimes these things really are out of your control. It’s about finding the win where you can, being proud of keeping your team together or delivering more with less.

Kristy: Sometimes I wonder if I’m just finding a resolution for my own ego. You see other teams growing that haven’t put up the numbers you have, and you wonder what you’re doing wrong. There’s clearly more for all of us to learn.

Closing Thoughts

Nolan: That’s probably a different podcast, one with a very long leather chair. We’ll schedule an hour for that. Kristy, thank you so much for joining. Any closing remarks before we wrap?

Kristy: Thank you for this opportunity. I love the engagement and being part of this conversation. None of us have it mastered. And I think the passion that we have and understanding human potential and what that can look like is imperative to what it’s going to take to be a differentiator for all of our organizations and even us as humans. Really appreciate the conversation.

Nolan: A hundred percent agree with that. Thank you for joining, Kristy. Thanks everybody for listening. We’ll catch you soon. See ya.