Stop asking for a seat at the table. Bring evidence instead.

The advice everyone gives (and nobody explains)

I hear the argument that Learning & Development should have a 'seat at the table' quite a lot in industry circles. That L&D should be strategic, part of business conversations early. That training should be prepared and assigned for when changes happen — not always reacting in a rushed fashion to get something out quickly, almost always resulting in poor outcomes.

I agree with all of these points. Completely.

What I rarely hear in these discussions is how that actually happens. Outside of wishful thinking and hopes that will realistically never materialise in most organisations, nobody tells you what to do on Monday morning.

This article is what you do on Monday morning.

How L&D ended up here

For too long, L&D has been reactive order-takers. People come to L&D with a course they need built quickly, having done very little investigation into what the actual problem is or who should advise on the needs.

This history has left L&D in a sour place in the organisational structure — under constant risk of redundancies, despite being a growing industry.

The frustrating part is that businesses genuinely need people development. Businesses are composed of people doing tasks that move the business closer to its goals, and those people need support and training on how to do those tasks in the best and most efficient ways possible.

So we have a growth industry, sitting in a sour place in business structures, with a poor history of showcasing the value it provides. And yet the discussion stays fixed on needing that 'seat at the table', as if the seat comes first and the evidence comes later.

It's the wrong way round. The vast majority of learning developers aren't in a position to be analysing business metrics to pinpoint the impact of their work. They don't have the influence, or the skills, to do so. Yet.

The question that changed my approach

So the question I found myself asking was: how do you start building those skills and that influence?

This question is what started my journey to create my three-level measurement framework — now called The L&D Credibility Toolkit. The intention was to build a system that could show the impact my work was having on the company, starting at the 'lowest' level of analysis: Level 1, simple feedback analysis on the learning we were already producing.

I didn't need new permissions or access to business metrics I would never get. Just structured analysis of data that was already within reach.

What happened when we actually did it

Over the months that followed, myself and the focus group that formed around this question turned our team of 18 developers from one team in the wider people development department into the team that spearheaded the movement to bring our impact on the end user directly in front of senior leadership.

Just using Level 1 of the toolkit.

The members of that focus group and I won internal awards from a market-leading company in its sector for this work. It spring-boarded us into a multi-departmental collaboration effort that expanded the scope of Level 1 to tens of thousands of learners.

I want to point out what matters here: influence, collaboration, attention, and skills can be built from scratch. I was just one of many developers at that point. Simple feedback analysis and measurement systems, utilised and presented well, to the right people, did the rest.

We weren't at a seat yet, but we were proactive and brought evidence, and we got attention.

What you do on Monday morning

You don't need a mandate, a budget, or a title to start. You need one course and one week.

1. Pick one piece of learning you already own. Choose something with a steady flow of learners — you want feedback volume, not prestige.
2. Collect feedback in a structured way. Not "any comments?" at the end of a session. Ask consistent, specific questions about whether the learning helped people do their job differently. The consistency is what turns opinions into data.
3. Analyse it simply. Look for patterns, not perfection. What's landing? What isn't? What are learners saying they still can't do? You are building the habit of evidence, not a PhD thesis.
4. Present it one level higher than you normally would. This is the step most people skip, and it's the one that builds influence. A one-page summary with three findings and one recommendation, put in front of someone who doesn't usually see L&D data, does more for your credibility than a quarter of quiet good work.
5. Repeat it until it's expected. The first report is a curiosity. The third is a habit. By the fifth, people start asking for it — and asking for your input earlier. That's what a seat at the table actually looks like when it arrives.

The seat follows the evidence

L&D doesn't have an importance problem. It has an evidence problem. The businesses we work in need people development — they just have very little proof of what our work changes.

Stop asking for the seat. Start building the case. The table has a way of finding room for people who arrive with evidence.