How to Organize L&D for Clarity and Impact with Guus van Deelen

As L&D leaders, we’re often tasked with delivering measurable business impact. But too many teams are held back by disorganization, unclear positioning, and a lack of strategic focus. In a recent episode of The Learning & Development Podcast, I sat down with Guus van Deelen to unpack a practical approach to transforming how L&D functions operate from the inside out.

In his book Organising L&D for Results, Guus draws on both research and hands-on experience to explain why traditional L&D structures so often fall short, how context shapes what “good” looks like, and why it’s essential for L&D to move closer to the business. Our conversation explored the benefits of structured experimentation, the realities of reporting-line trade-offs, and the shift required for L&D to move from being a reactive service provider to a proactive, credible performance partner.

If you’re looking to bring more clarity, structure, and business relevance to your L&D function, this conversation is packed with timely insights and actionable takeaways.

Listen to the episode in full below, or keep reading for five key takeaways. 

How L&D teams fall into order-taking mode

Despite our best intentions, the vast majority of L&D departments are expected to simply deliver requested training courses to other teams. So what are some of the most common reasons for this inconvenient truth?

Guus says “the first is lack of clarity. You have a senior leadership team that wants to get the strategy right, line managers that want to fix a problem today, an HR department that wants to push something to employees via your channels, and then employees who want to develop in areas they’re excited about. 

“Before we even know it, we start serving whichever team shouts the loudest for attention.”

The second issue, says Guus, is the vague assignment of responsibilities. “Where does the VP of HR sit in this whole cycle? When do they hand over to an L&D advisor? We rely on a lot of vagueness and implicit agreements about roles and responsibilities. We quickly start complaining about others, and end up in conflicts.”

The final issue, and a theme we came to over and over during our conversation, was the constant pull of operational work. “Back-office activities keep pulling our attention away. Manual enrollment, registration, evaluation, booking rooms—all of these are Band-Aid solutions. You can’t become a strategic business partner while doing all this.”

Choose consciously where you put your energy

To avoid falling into that order-taking mode, we need to be more intentional about the projects we devote time to. As Guus explains, “the vast majority of projects we work on fall into one of these five boxes:

• Compliance: mandatory training and legal requirements
• Functional skills: the things people need to perform their current role right now
• Professional development: investments in employees to help them grow into future roles
• Performance improvement: fixing issues to make tangible business gains, like boosting sales or promoting products
• Change and strategy: the huge objectives in an organization which will never be solved with learning alone, but where L&D should play a part

“We need to recognize which boxes we want to keep filling, versus those which are way too empty.”

If you’re pigeon-holed as the training team, it’s probably because you over-index in compliance and professional development. “That’s a result of the way you behave,” says Guus. “If you’re a reactive service desk, fielding requests, you’ll end up with endless day-to-day tasks. If you want to be more strategic, you need to get out there and meet the VPs and executives.” 

“Crucially, if you do nothing, the first two boxes will fill themselves automatically. And you’ll be too busy to work on the other boxes at all.” At that point, you’re simply not seen as a trusted resource to help improve business performance.

Fix the back office as soon as possible

Manual, low-value tasks add up quickly for L&D teams. But there’s simply no need to do them anymore. We can easily automate all of that busywork, including much of the course delivery we’re always being asked for.

“AI lets us automate these things. Constant process optimization of your back office is essential. If you don’t deal with it, it keeps drawing all your time and attention. And you’re stuck in firefighting mode.”

We’re being ground down by messiness and the invention of tasks, and it can take an outsider to recognize this. “Somebody needs to sit between the advisory people and the back office people, and think beyond the tickets. How is it possible that the same issues occur week after week? How can we solve this, forever? 

“You need someone with a lean mindset who understands continuous improvement. This is nobody’s responsibility, and that’s the reason it simply doesn’t happen.”

Build a deeper business understanding

To position your L&D function as a strategic asset requires real business knowledge. This goes beyond a broad entrepreneurial mindset; you need deep organizational understanding that doesn’t necessarily travel with you from role to role.

“Being an L&D advisor in a supermarket chain and a banking organization is fundamentally different,” says Guus. “There are a few variables:

• The size of the organization
• The sector you operate in
• Maturity (often measured with the “Greiner Curve”)
• The strategic objectives you’ve defined as an organization

“These things should be the starting point—the reason for existence—for your L&D department. It’s not about having a great library. It’s about understanding the business, knowing other teams’ challenges, and getting agreement with senior leadership on the problems you need to solve together.”

The opposite end of the spectrum is a purely operational, delivery-oriented mindset. “Some L&D professionals jump from one organization to another as jacks-of-all-trades. They don’t see the need to fully understand each business and speak the language.” 

There’s a difference between providing learning and adding impact. Providing learning is easy—we’ve got 25 years of learning content, curriculums, and training programs. But skills gaps are growing, and nobody is asking the L&D department to help close them, because we don’t have a track record of doing it. 

Go out and gain context

Guus offers an even more hands-on way to gain deeper business understanding: spend time on the front lines. 

“When I was working at a huge dairy organization, I spent two days per year on the factory floor. That really gave me credibility in the factory environment. And I learned so much about the language they were using, the complexities they were dealing with, and heard the conversations in the lunch room.”

For busy L&D leaders, taking time away from your desk may seem near-impossible. And it was the same for Guus. “Every time the day arrived, I felt I was too busy. But I never regretted it after the fact. It’s your responsibility to go into the organization once or twice per year. That’s the only sincere way to know the root causes of issues and what’s going on.

“It’s easy to do what’s expected or what you’re asked for. But not to thoroughly understand what your organization actually needs, and then to proactively and strategically set up your L&D function so that you’re part of the right conversations, setting the right objectives, and delivering the right services.”

About Guus

Guus van Deelen is a seasoned L&D leader, consultant, speaker, and author. He began his career leading L&D teams at major multinational organizations such as FrieslandCampina, ProRail and SHV.

For the past six years, Guus has been an independent consultant to over 100 L&D departments in government, retail, industry, financial services, and other sectors. He guides organizations through the (re)positioning of their L&D functions—helping teams define governance, structure, and strategy to drive measurable business impact.

His book Organising L&D for Results offers a robust model and actionable methods, including the L&D Quick Scan and the five strategic “chessboards”, that L&D leaders can use to build teams that are credible, aligned, and structured for scale.