“Dear L&D” is a reflective letter-style series where learning leaders address the profession directly, giving voice to the lessons, challenges and opportunities shaping the future of learning and development (L&D).

Dear L&D,

Not long ago, our organization hired a new head of entity. He came from a completely different cultural and professional background than our previous head of entity. This meant lots of changes in a very short timeframe. Some projects were put on hold, some were completely eliminated and new ones were introduced. Then, there was a trickledown effect of manager and supervisor turnover, and a complete restructuring of the organizational chart. For my learning and development (L&D) team, this meant going from a hiring freeze to weekly new employee orientations in no time, flat. It also meant a new model for our training delivery and a new program that was expected to be off the ground before we even understood the objectives ourselves.

We did our best, as we always do. Much of our success was due to my team’s uncanny skills in scaling programs and developing contingency plans.  We’ve gotten good at this because it isn’t the first time we’ve been through the changes brought about by a new head of entity. We know how to scale and pivot. It all felt very familiar and, at the same time, not.  And that worried me. It made me wonder how long we could keep it up. It made me ask those questions that feel way too familiar in L&D: When will next time be? Will it still work then? And the mother of all questions: Am I alone in this?

The answer to that last one, as is always the case, is a resounding “no”. In the last couple years, turnover at the C-Suite level has taken a sharp increase globally, and it’s not expected to change in the current climate. In addition, this trend isn’t limited to struggling companies — more organizations are increasingly hiring CEOs from outside the organization. Additionally, corporate restructuring is on the rise and is not expected to slow down. Much of this is due to strategic planning at the corporate level, while some is a trickledown effect like my team and I saw with our new head of entity.

This information is useful, but let’s not forget that knowing what’s possible and experiencing it are two very different things. That’s the problem with relying on scalability the way we’re used to using it: It looks good on paper, but in the moment, it’s still applied reactively, and those plans that made perfect sense before don’t land how we thought they would. Scalability solves the what and the how, but it assumes the why stays constant — and during leadership transitions, it rarely does. This is why morale drops with changes at this scale. Couple this with the pressure to have it all done yesterday, and the chances of switching into reactive mode may climb just like the CEO turnover rate. The why vanishes in reactive mode.

We need to refine our skills by looking beyond the dimensions of time and space. We need to add the dimension of motivational agility. Fortunately, the ability to realign people’s why as fast as their what and their how is where L&D is already positioned to step up.

When you’re delivering training, you want to know your learners’ current skill set. You then present objectives and you guide them from where they are to where you need them to be.  Sometimes you have to take detours to get them there, or spend more time on something than you anticipated, and sometimes you need to get more people there than you originally anticipated. However, by the end of the training, learners may achieve things they never thought possible.

You can apply this same basic roadmap when exploring the dimension of motivational agility in your planning: Find out why they enjoy doing what they are doing. We do this naturally, anyway. From that starting point, use the same strategy you use for teaching skills and knowledge. Your objective is the new or refined mission presented by your new leader. Create a path to get them from where their own motivations currently stand to move toward the company’s vision. Ultimately, they’ll understand the direction the company is headed and the role they play in contributing to it.

If we can help someone develop new skills through connections with their current level of experience, we can apply the same principles to motivations. I see this often when training new trainers: many start the class feeling it’s just an obligation to earn a bit of extra money. Yet the clearest sign of who will become a successful trainer isn’t how well they deliver a lesson — it’s how their perspective on training begins to shift. Success comes when they move beyond “getting people to do it” and instead focus on developing colleagues into capable, confident team members. Those who truly “catch the vision” in this way are invariably the most successful.

It’s a natural step to move from helping trainers grasp the value of training to helping employees — whether new or experienced — understand and embrace the company’s purpose. You may have to take some detours; it may take longer than anticipated; you may even end up guiding more people than you originally planned — but that’s just a matter of scalability.