Ever Heard Of L&D Leadership Accountability?
The sad truth about training programs stats in 2025: 75% of leaders who find their programs ineffective are simply spending money. The moneymakers are the 8% who have moved beyond satisfaction surveys to ROI governance, turning a cost center into a performance system (ATD). This means that company leadership (maybe your company leadership!) is ready to spend money, but not invest it? How does that make sense for anyone, really?
In the times when we're struggling to justify human effectiveness as opposed to AI, reading statistics that say that your L&D leadership cannot account for the vast pools of money spent is dangerous. Because, if that's the case, what is their purpose? This is also dangerous for the profession. We have to talk about effectiveness and L&D leadership accountability.
If your organization is part of the global $400B spend on the L&D spending landscape, who owns the outcome? Is it the vendor delivering "engaging" videos, or is it a leadership-governed system that guarantees predictability?
Money-making strategies treat learning as a performance lever where the ROI is visible, measurable, and, most importantly, expected before the first dollar is allocated. In this respect, accountable leadership is the one ready to show the effects of their actions, and own them.
Intelligence Vs. Assumptions
As we step into the second half of the decade, it's encouraging to find that the many global economic crises have shown that people are the most valuable asset. This means that businesses are not afraid to invest in L&D departments. Furthermore, the allocation of capital has increased from 2024 (Freifeld).
The assumption is that true leadership sets on the postulate that developing human capital is the only way to advance their business and achieve growth. That's amazing! But in the green pool of money being put to L&D, how come we're reading only the poor 8% being the ones seeing the real, actual ROI? Basically, on one side, we have the big spenders who rely on creating content at any cost, and measure its "effectiveness" with post-training surveys (and whose top obviously struggles with the lack of accountability). On the other hand, the L&D moneymakers have been shifting to a paradigm that uses intelligence to support leadership decisions. These L&D pros are not just creating content, but rather a lever for their business environment—that is supported by evidence.
To confirm the above, let's see some data from the global L&D spending landscape. While global estimates vary by source, the US market serves as the primary bellwether for corporate spending trends.
- 2023: $101.8 billion spent in the USA / global market estimation ~$370 billion (Freifeld, 2023)
- 2024: $98.0 billion spent in the USA / global market estimation ~$385 billion (Freifeld, 2024)
- 2025 projections: $102.8 billion spent in the USA / global market estimation ~$400.7 billion (Freifeld, 2025) (MRA)
Over the last five years, corporate training spend has ballooned into a $400 billion global industry. In 2022 alone, US firms broke the $100 billion ceiling (Freifeld). But here is the sarcasm-free reality for the C-suite: most of that capital was spent on activity, not performance. When you spend $100 billion without a strategic agenda and a governed system, you aren't investing; you're just subsidizing a lack of accountability.
The slight dip in spending we saw in 2024 wasn't a retreat from learning. It was a correction. Leadership teams began questioning "budget drift," the tendency for L&D costs to rise while business outcomes remain anecdotal. This is, of course, just one way to read it, but makes sense at this point. A business needs a justification for investments, meaning that capital allocations into learning departments (L&D) require business performance.
The key for money-making organizations is that they treat learning as a performance lever. They start with Results Evaluation Alignment, and not merely with a training initiative, to define what success looks like, and who owns the outcome even before the first dollar of that $100 billion is allocated.
Measurable Learning Outcomes Exist
Learning strategy, as a phrase, has a distinctive meaning. It's not a training initiative, it's not learning for the purpose of having it. Developing learning strategies is a result of a governed system.
Something we should remember: strategy stems from war vocabulary. At its core, it is a plan to survive, overcome, and override. It is based on a set of detected problems (yes, problems, not challenges!) and data. The essence of a strategos, stemming from Greek, is total visibility: accounting for every variable, defining the strategic line of action, and auditing organizational capacity to ensure a predictable outcome (Nadar). So, basically, a strategy is something that is spread across all levels of an organization.
You may wonder why I am mentioning all this. The answer is: in order to have a strategy ready, there is a set of actions that must precede it. And that's when alignment between the L&D and top management comes into play.
Some call it many different names, I call it Results Evaluation Alignment (REA). Whatever the acronym, the principle is the same: measurable learning outcomes are not the byproduct of a strategy; they are its foundation.
In a money-spending culture, measurement is an afterthought: a "smile sheet" or a completion rate collected once the budget has already been exhausted. In a money-making strategy, the order is reversed. We don't ask "What do they need to learn?" until we have answered "What business lever needs to move?"
To put it differently, and, hopefully, more clearly, here's one money-spending scenario: organizations start with a perceived need: "We need leadership training." They buy content, they deploy it, and then they ask, "Did it work?" This is budget drift in action. It's an expense with a hope, and definitely not a strategy.
If a "strategos" requires total visibility, then a learning strategy requires a defined Return On Expectation (ROE) before a single hour of development is logged. You don't want your L&D department, as well as the money you put into it, to end up in a black box.
So, how can this be achieved in practice? Three stages are crucial on the road to building a learning strategy that results in positive, measurable business performance:
- Firstly, identifying the specific friction points in the business (whether that is a lag in sales cycles, a high error rate in manufacturing, or a breakdown in executive decision-making), and anchoring the learning system directly to those points.
- Secondly, treating evaluation as a structural requirement. This is pivotal because when success criteria are baked into the initial design, the learning process becomes a governed system. This allows leadership to move away from assumptions and toward intelligence.
- Thirdly, co-owning the accountability for results. In a governed system, the accountability for results doesn't sit solely with an L&D department or an external partner. It is co-owned by the leadership teams who define the business priorities. When outcomes are measurable and transparent, learning ceases to be a "black box" expense. It becomes a predictable performance lever that the board can actually see, manage, and scale.
At their core, the three stages are the pillars of eWyse's Business and Learning Performance System. By defining what success looks like, and how it will be audited, before any action is taken, the organization removes the ambiguity that leads to wasted investment.
Conclusion: Hope Is Not A Business Strategy
If you cannot draw a straight line from your L&D budget to your business performance, you're managing a donation. Still, I'm guessing that you'd like to be managing a strategy instead, that includes either Return On Investment (ROI) or Return On Expectations. To help clarify these metrics, eWyse's CEO Mario Buljan and Strategic & HR Director Sanja Damiani have recorded a deep-dive session on bridging the ROI vs. ROE gap for leadership teams.
The $400 billion global spend on learning is proof that organizations have the capital and the intent to grow. But intent without governance is a budget drift. The money-making shift doesn't require "more" training; it requires the discipline to stop treating learning as a black box and start treating it as a governed business system.
When you define results before action, you remove the gamble. You stop hoping for effectiveness and start expecting it. In 2026, the competitive advantage won't go to the company that spends the most, but to the leadership team that has the visibility to see exactly what their investment is doing: not spending; governing.
References:
Association for Talent Development. 2025 State of the Industry. May 2025.
Freifeld, Lorri. "2022 Training Industry Report." Training Magazine, 16 Nov. 2022, trainingmag.com/2022-training-industry-report/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.
Freifeld, Lorri. "2023 Training Industry Report." Training Magazine, 14 Nov. 2023, trainingmag.com/2023-training-industry-report/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.
Freifeld, Lorri. "2024 Training Industry Report." Training Magazine, 20 Nov. 2024, trainingmag.com/2024-training-industry-report/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.
Freifeld, Lorri. "2025 Training Industry Report." Training Magazine, 10 Nov. 2025, trainingmag.com/2025-training-industry-report/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.
Market Report Analytics. Market Deep Dive: Exploring Global Corporate Workforce Development Training Market Trends 2025-2033. 10 Jan. 2026, www.marketreportanalytics.com/reports/global-corporate-workforce-development-training-market-5563. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.
Nadar, Jackson. "The Etymology of Strategy." Medium, 2 June 2016, medium.com/@jack_nadar/the-etymology-of-strategy-4e8035c8f497. Accessed 3 Feb. 2026.
