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Most corporate learning is stuck in the past. Discover the uncomfortable truth about L&D strategies and how to future-proof your workforce before it's too late.
Here's the uncomfortable truth about corporate learning that nobody wants to admit:
Most organizations are building tomorrow's workforce using yesterday's playbook.
According to PWC, 42% of CEOs believe their company won't be viable beyond the next 10 years without reinvention.
Yet while business models transform at breakneck speed, learning and development strategies remain stubbornly anchored to traditional methods that prepare people for jobs that may not exist in five years.
Kamaria Rutland, Director of Talent Development at Kendo Brands (an LVMH affiliate), recently joined the LearnIt Lounge podcast to challenge this dangerous disconnect. With nearly 20 years in hospitality and talent development, including leadership roles at Marriott International, Kamaria brings a hard-won perspective on what it actually takes to keep workforce capabilities ahead of market disruption.
What emerged from this conversation was a wake-up call.
When asked whether L&D should develop employees for today's business or tomorrow's aspirations, Kamaria didn't hesitate: "It's our responsibility as talent development professionals to do both. We cannot afford to only do one."
This isn't the typical "balance" platitude you hear at conferences. This is an operational reality.
Think about the platforms that have emerged just in the past few years: MySpace gave way to Facebook. Vine disappeared. Instagram evolved. TikTok exploded. Twitter became X. International platforms like Weibo and Red Note reshaped global consumer behavior.
Each platform shift didn't just change marketing tactics. It fundamentally altered how consumers engage with products and services. Organizations that trained their teams exclusively on existing platforms found themselves scrambling when the landscape shifted.
Kamaria frames it brilliantly:
"We are like the master mechanic fine-tuning the actual engine while it's running. Sometimes we're replacing parts. Sometimes we're bringing in new technology to ensure the car is at its optimal peak performance."
You're not rebuilding the workforce in a controlled environment. You're upgrading capabilities while maintaining operational excellence. Miss either focus—today's performance or tomorrow's readiness—and you're not just falling behind. You're becoming obsolete.
What happens when L&D operates in a silo, disconnected from strategic business objectives?
Kamaria identifies two critical failures:
First, competitors will outperform you. "Speed to market is important, whether it be in the CPG industry or the service sector. There's going to be others that are just figuring it out faster. The opportunity cost is too large for us to not keep up."
When your L&D strategy lags behind business evolution, you're not just missing opportunities. You're actively creating competitive disadvantage.
Second, your training becomes obsolete before it's even delivered. "You're going to be delivering training that feels obsolete, that feels no longer relevant to your employee population. You're going to lose engagement."
This is the death spiral: irrelevant training leads to disengaged employees, which causes poor performance and then leadership questions L&D value. This ultimately leads to reduced investment and even less relevant training.
Breaking this cycle requires something most L&D professionals resist: ruthless alignment with business strategy, even when that strategy is still evolving.
Kamaria advocates for something that sounds basic but is rarely executed well: a thorough needs assessment.
Not the annual survey that asks "What training do you want?"
Real needs assessment means:
"Things are shifting. More processes are b ecoming automated. There are human skills that hold us back. Are we effectively communicating in the workplace? Are we able to show emotional intelligence or emp athy when there's something going on with an employee or with a consumer?"
As technical skills become automated, human-centric capabilities become the differentiator. But most organizations still measure and develop technical skills far more systematically than they develop communication, emotional intelligence, or problem-solving.
The gap isn't just in what we're teaching. It's in what we're measuring.
How do you demonstrate ROI on human skill development?
Kamaria's answer is honest: "This is probably the most challenging thing in the whole world of L&D."
Why? "It's really hard to quantify measurable improvement of human skills. How do we treat each other? What is the dynamic between a manager and employee? How effective are teams working together to produce a desirable outcome?"
You can measure time improvement on an assembly line. You can track sales conversion rates. But how do you quantify the ROI of a manager who finally learns to give feedback without triggering defensiveness? Or a team that stops wasting three hours a week in unproductive meetings?
Kamaria's approach: "We try to measure whatever we can because we know that what gets measured will get improved."
This includes:
But here's the contrarian insight: The biggest ROI might be the hardest to measure.
"Through a lot of training, we are trying to develop teams that are high-functioning, high-performing teams, no matter what their business function is. A lot of what we do in the L&D space is around building those people's skills so that people can work well together. That's the biggest time savings in itself."
When teams collaborate effectively, decisions happen faster. Conflicts resolve quicker. Innovation accelerates. Projects launch smoothly.
That's not a line item on a budget spreadsheet. But it's the difference between organizational agility and bureaucratic paralysis.
When asked about the most uncomfortable truth in talent development that nobody wants to admit, Kamaria didn't hesitate:
"Behavior change is hard. True, meaningful, impactful behavior change is hard."
Why? "People have learned so many habits, whether they be good or bad, before they even arrived at you at this point in time when you now have responsibilities to steward and shepherd their development."
Consider the newly promoted manager. Congratulations, you're a leader now. Except nobody taught them how to lead. So what do they do?
"They often emulate just behaviors that they see. It's like a copy and paste of behaviors in their environment."
If that environment is toxic, unproductive, or filled with bad habits? You're not just failing to develop good leaders. You're actively replicating dysfunction.
Kamaria's insight cuts deep: "At a certain point, an organization has to decide that's not who we want to be. Dismantling, demystifying, unraveling old habits is really, really hard. There are so many layers to it."
This requires:
Technical change is easy. Behavioral change is the real work. "Rolling out a new platform—you do some training, get people in the system. It's far easier than impacting behavioral change in an adult population that has been doing it for a long time."
Most L&D programs avoid this truth because it's uncomfortable. It requires admitting that your six-hour workshop won't fundamentally change how people lead, communicate, or collaborate.
Real behavior change requires long-term investment, systematic reinforcement, and cultural commitment, which most organizations are unwilling to make.
Here's where Kamaria introduces a genuinely innovative concept that challenges traditional L&D thinking: Give adults permission to play.
"Do you remember when you were a child and you were in elementary school and you just got a chance to learn a new sport just by playing? There was no expectation that you'd be the next star or that you would get it at the first try, but you just got an opportunity to try."
Now contrast that with corporate learning: Every training must tie to immediate business deliverables. Every workshop must produce actionable outputs. Every learning investment must demonstrate ROI within the quarter.
Kamaria asks the provocative question: "Do we provide adult employees in the workforce opportunities to just try and experiment with things without the pressure of immediate output?"
Her team recently implemented this with AI learning labs—giving people space to experiment with prompts, explore different AI capabilities, and discuss learnings in small groups without the pressure of turning it into a report, campaign, or strategic initiative.
"That type of environment, without the pressure of it being tied to a business outcome, was very, very impactful for how we were able to introduce a new tool."
The contrarian insight: Sometimes the fastest path to business results is removing the pressure to deliver immediate business results.
When people can experiment in psychologically safe environments, they:
This is how Google Maps and Gmail were born—from "20% time" that wasn't tied to immediate business deliverables.
Kamaria reframes L&D's organizational role in a way that challenges the traditional "training department" positioning:
"Think of what we own in the world of talent development: organizational capability, change management, onboarding of new employees. All of those touch points with our talent impacts retention, employee engagement."
Every time an organization announces new values, pillars, or mission? "It is typically talent development that helps to bring that to life."
This positions L&D not as a service provider responding to training requests, but as a cultural architect shaping how people experience and embody organizational identity.
The evidence shows up in what organizations prioritize: "We show employees what we value based off of what we're teaching. If communication is extremely important, if inclusivity is extremely important, if diversity of thought is extremely important—all of those things will come through based off of what we are teaching and what we are prioritizing."
Your learning calendar is your values statement in action.
If you say innovation matters but only train on compliance and process? Your people know what you actually value.
If you claim collaboration is essential but only offer individual skill workshops? Your culture reflects that disconnect.
The provocative question: What does your current L&D calendar reveal about your actual organizational priorities versus your stated values?
Kamaria distills her guidance into two imperatives for every L&D professional:
"It is so, so important that you have a clear understanding of the long-term strategies of your organization. And sometimes in the L&D space, we're not always privy to it."
This requires detective work:
"Whether you have to be a detective, you have to ask around, ask different leaders, build relationships with different points of the organization—all of that is extremely important."
You cannot align L&D with business strategy if you don't know what that strategy is. And if leadership isn't sharing it with you, that's a signal about L&D's current strategic positioning that needs to change.
"Stay ahead of it. Stay ahead of the trends. Try to incorporate them wherever you can into learning programming. That's how you're going to ensure the long-term success, the long-term relevance of your organization."
This isn't about chasing every shiny object. It's about strategic foresight.
When AI emerged as a transformative technology, organizations that had already built experimentation cultures and learning agility could adapt quickly. Those still operating on rigid annual training calendars? They're still trying to figure out their AI strategy while competitors are already implementing.
The pattern repeats with every major shift: platforms, technologies, methodologies, consumer behaviors.
Organizations that future-proof their workforce don't react to change. They anticipate it.
When asked about her most significant leadership lesson, Kamaria shared something that applies far beyond L&D:
"The biggest and most impactful thing that you can do is be a leader that owns it."
Own the failures. Own the victories. Own the miscommunications. Own the team's output.
"Having that type of responsible mindset has gone so far... It shows that I am human. It lets them know that we have an opportunity for us to improve together."
This builds credibility because people recognize authentic accountability: "This person takes responsibility for their work, not only for themselves and for others."
In L&D specifically, this means:
As Kamaria notes: "We have to be humble to understand when things change, when business goals evolve, when we need to pivot? When do we need to shift?"
The organizations that thrive aren't the ones with perfect L&D strategies. They're the ones whose L&D leaders own outcomes and adapt relentlessly.
If you're still operating on annual training calendars built around last year's performance reviews, you're already behind.
If you're measuring success primarily through completion rates and satisfaction scores, you're tracking the wrong metrics.
If you're waiting for perfect clarity on business strategy before building learning programs, you'll never start.
Here's what future-proofing actually requires:
Develop systematic approaches that address immediate performance needs while building adaptive capacity for emerging requirements. Don't choose between today and tomorrow, architect for both.
Implement learning labs where people can explore emerging technologies and methodologies without the pressure of immediate business deliverables. Psychological safety accelerates adoption.
Stop waiting for a strategy to be handed to you. Build relationships across functions. Ask questions. Understand competitive positioning. Make L&D indispensable by demonstrating a strategic business partnership.
Yes, quantifying human skill development is challenging. Do it anyway. Track momentum, culture shifts, team functionality, and long-term capability building—not just completion rates.
Stop pretending that one-off workshops create lasting transformation. Behavior change requires sustained investment, systematic reinforcement, and cultural accountability. Anything less is theater.
When training fails, own it. When engagement drops, own it. When you miss the strategic mark, own it. Then adapt. Credibility comes from accountability, not perfection.
The workforce you're developing today will face challenges you can't fully anticipate. Technologies will emerge that don't exist yet. Consumer behaviors will shift in unexpected directions. Business models will evolve or die.
Your L&D strategy must be simultaneously grounded and adaptive—rooted in systematic methodology while remaining agile enough to pivot when the landscape shifts.
As Kamaria powerfully concludes: "We have to ensure that we are preparing our organization to meet those goals. Because otherwise we will get left behind. There will be someone out there, another organization that's doing it better, faster, smarter, and you'll get left behind."
The question isn't whether your industry will transform. The question is whether your people will be ready when it does.
Kamaria Rutland leads Global Talent Development and DEIB at Kendo Brands, part of the LVMH family. Her career spans almost two decades at Marriott International, where she has built a range from hotel management to B2B sales to enterprise learning. Kamaria is known for pairing operational excellence with humanity, helping leaders unlock performance while strengthening culture.
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