From Cost Center to Business Driver: Andrew Scivally on Rebranding L&D for Impact

If your learning team is still seen as a cost center, this episode will change how you show up.

Jacob sits down with Andrew Scivally, CEO of ELB Learning, to explore why L&D’s credibility is suffering—and what it takes to reposition the function as a performance-driven strategic partner.

Andrew has worked with Fortune 100s, led L&D at JPMorgan Chase and Zion’s Bank, and now helps learning teams stop building “fluff” and start driving results.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why traditional L&D metrics like completion rates and smile sheets are killing your team’s influence
• The language shift needed to earn a seat at the table with executives
• How to position L&D as a revenue generator, not just a training team
• What it looks like to build onboarding experiences that match your external brand promise
• How marketing principles can help you sell the value of learning internally
• Why learning professionals need to become business professionals with an expertise in human capital transformation
• The connection between needs assessment, strategic planning, and C-suite credibility that ELB is building next to support the future of AI-powered, performance-focused learning

💡 “If you want to be seen as strategic, stop calling yourself a learning team. Call yourself a performance team. That’s what the business actually cares about.”

This is a bold, practical, and energizing conversation for any L&D leader ready to step up and be seen as essential to business growth.

🎧 Listen now and get ready to transform how you lead learning:

👉 Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn

👉 Explore ELB Learning

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Transcript

0:00

Hey there and welcome back to Catalysts, the leaders shaping the future of learning and growth. I'm your host, Jacob Ratliff, and this is the show where we spotlight the bold thinkers, builders, and leaders who aren't just responding to change in our industry. They're actually the ones driving it. And today I'm really excited to be joined by Andrew Sivoli, who is the CEO of ELB Learning. Now, If you're in the learning space, you've probably heard, at least heard of ELB Learning. They're in fact trusted by 80 % of the Fortune 100 and are known for really helping organizations move beyond this model of outdated, kind of check the box training and more towards immersive, performance driven learning experiences. With over two decades in the learning tech space, spanning everything from instructional design to leading learning and development at JP Morgan Chase and Zion's Bank, Andrew really brings a unique perspective on what it takes to make learning a true business driver. And he's really passionate about helping L &D teams stop being seen as a cost center and to start owning their role as strategic partners in the business. So in this episode, we're going to dig into why traditional LND metrics are killing credibility, how to make learning measurable and meaningful, and what it takes to design onboarding that sticks. Andrew, thank you so much for joining me here today. I'm really excited to see what we get into together. Hey, hello, Jacob. So let's go ahead and dive in with one of the big questions that I just alluded to a moment ago, which is that you've said that L &D too often gets treated like a cost center. And for so many people in the L &D industry, that's probably not news to us. So my question for you is, why do you think that happens? And more importantly, what words of wisdom might you have for us in terms of how we can start shifting that narrative. Yeah, and let me give a shout out to one of your previous episodes. You had an episode with Keith Keating. And the episode was phenomenal. If you all haven't listened to it, do that. And he touched on a lot of this, and he's spot on. I mean, if you want to know why we've been treated as a cost center, it's because we've let ourselves be treated as a cost center, right? I mean, we did it to ourselves. I mean, let's be honest here. And so, you know, if, if, if we go a little bit back into history here, where this kind of came from, I believe, I've been in the learning space for over 20 years and early on, right. The learning corporate learning space was mostly filled from educators coming out of K-12 university settings, things like that, which is fine. Worried a lot about adult learning, education theories and all this kind of stuff. which is great, right? We need to know how we learn and how we can help others learn. And then we got caught up in this whole technology thing and all the tools came in, the technologists and our space just blossomed, right? With educational theory and the practice piece of it and all the technology and all that comes together. um And, but I think what we lost sight of is that we are in business. Like companies employ us and they employ us to move the needle, right? That's what it's all about. They don't just give us money just to make fluffy stuff and cool things. We have to move the needle. have to drive performance. And I think that we kind of forgot, we got distracted a bit by the adult learning theories and just all the cool fancy tools and bells and whistles. And we need to get back to driving business. Absolutely, and you know in my experience when I see an L &D team that is functioning exceptionally well and they are driving those business results, they're really operating as a true strategic partner to the business. uh Now I've seen several examples of that in practice, but I'm curious from your perspective what does it actually look like when a learning team is operating in that capacity? Yeah, and Maybe I'll say something a little controversial here, but maybe you should stop thinking of yourself as a learning team. Like, I'm sorry, but right now the word learning equals cost. And you should be a performance team, right? You should be a team that drives strategy. And so some of my thoughts recently have been, well, look, if I go back to my... Master's degree in instructional design, computer education, cognitive systems, whatever it is, right? um They talked about needs assessment. And it could be organizational, task, human performance, whatever, right? But the thing was, we were taught early on, and we forgot that at the end of the day, we have to drive performance. No one cares how we get there. It's about the outcome. um We got away from really assessing the need to be in that performance partner with the business. um But you what does a good performance team look like? What it looks like is you better know the business, right? It's ridiculous that a training team doesn't know the business just as well as the actual operators, the managers in that line of business or division or whatever it is. You have to know your strategic goals. You have to know what your CEO is talking about. And you have to be able to articulate how you fit into that. If you don't, you're a cost. You're not needed. At the end of the day, when times get tough, you're just a cost. Yeah, so I'm definitely hearing that really, you know, hearing you reiterate at the end of the day, it comes down to outcome. What are those, what are the tangible business outcomes that are happening? So, you know, I've heard you, yeah. the outcomes, but can you connect yourself to those? You have to sell yourself. You are in the business of marketing your performance team. And the COO, whoever's driving that business needs to be able to look at you and say, hmm, they are one of my tools to achieve my strategic goals this year. Not just, they're the training team. They're gonna give me some fluffy stuff. It can't be that. And we've known that for years, but we let ourselves get distracted. So let's talk about measuring that and actually how we connect those dots then because I've heard you say separately that traditional metrics are in some ways killing LND's credibility. So what are some of those quote unquote traditional metrics and really again more importantly, what should we be measuring instead? How do we start to connect those dots? Well, look, I know it's not easy, okay? So I'm trying to pretend like this is easy, but you know our old metrics, uh right? Butts and seats, number of learners that completed it, even the smile sheets, all these things, they did not do us any favors. uh No one cares. Even how many learners went through the course, how much time did they spend in it? Did they get an 80 % or better on the assessment in the end? None of that really mattered to the business. What matters is are they hitting whatever goals they need to hit that year. um So, I mean, how are you going to connect it? Well, I think first of all, you need to know what it is you're trying to accomplish. So I would say if you're working in a company, You need to know the strategic goals for the company. There's probably, what, three to five strategic goals for your organization this year. Your CEO, executive team have been talking about those. You need to have your strategic plan. If you don't know your strategic plan, how in the world are you ever going to be a performance partner or a strategy partner? You have to know the plan. That's what all this executive level is getting at. They're all held accountable to that, know the plan. And then you can come up proactively with ideas on how to help them achieve and accomplish that plan. Wouldn't that be brilliant if the training team, the learning team, whatever you want to call yourself, actually proactively comes to the table, says, I can help you here, here, and here. Here's a plan to do that. I think we need to get proactive. Yeah, that very much goes back to this idea of operating as a true strategic business partner. So how do we as learning and performance strategists kind of find our place at that table to be able to bring our ideas to the executives and frame them as a uh profit center? Yeah, mean, that's, it's all gonna come down to relationships, right? I mean, you somehow have to prove your credibility. um Businesses care, think at the end of the day, when you boil it all down, businesses care about a few buckets. So your employer is going to care about driving revenue and sales. At the end of the day, it is about top line revenue, sales is what drives that. and it's profit at the end of the day. That's what makes this whole world go around and that's what pays all of our salaries and all this kind of stuff. They care about revenue and sales. They care about reducing cost or managing costs and expenses. That could also be managing risk, right? Compliance, regulatory risk and all that. They care about things like increasing efficiency because that helps with the other pieces. That's what they care about, right? And, you know, I'm not trying to say it's a... It's a cold heartless world like that, but that is what makes business work. So if you want to get a seat at the table, figure out the strategic plans for your company. What are they trying to chase this year? How does that tie into driving sales revenue, reducing costs, increasing efficiency, mitigating risk, whatever it is right in there. And you need to come up with your strategic plan on how that connects to the business. And then you've got to go to those leaders and those business units and you need to show them your plan for how they can accomplish their goals. If you start showing that value, then they're going to start thinking, man, I need to bring this team to the table. You can't wait for them, right? It might be too late. They see you as a cost center. You need to get proactive and do that. um And you talked about how to measure it, Jacob. It's not easy. get it. um but look, when you're getting back to needs assessment, when you're looking at doing a training program of some kind, you better know what you're really trying to solve, what your true performance outcomes are. And you better know upfront how you're going to measure that. Cause if not, I mean, it's pointless. Like why are you doing it you can't measure it? Like no one's going to care. And in hard times, they're not going to care about that. And they're going to get rid of you. uh So, a few thoughts there. yeah, thank you so much. And so I'm thinking, all right, if we take this approach and we kind of move in this direction, what pitfalls or obstacles do you think we could anticipate um in term and how could we overcome those in that process? I think some, and I believe this was mentioned on a few of your other episodes, which is kind of nice. I hear a recurring theme. um We need to rebrand. We need to change our language, I believe, in learning. We need to use the language of business, not just the language of learning theory or the L&D language. That's fine to use internally in our world, but business has a language. We need to speak that language if we want to sit at their table. That's just how it works. um If you want to be seen strategic and you're talking about business transformation, human capital, transformation, digital adoption, whatever it is, you need to use that language. Be consultative in your approach. Do not sit back and let them just give you things and give you like an order taker. You can't, we just can't be that anymore. um And so I think it's changing your language, changing the marketing of yourself, being proactive and going out there and connecting and saying, this is what we can do for you. I think those are big things that we really need to focus on. Excellent, and I'm wondering if you could, if there's a story or example that comes to mind as we're having this conversation that you could share to help illustrate some of these ideas in practice just from what you've experienced. Yeah, um... So this one maybe encompasses a few different things that maybe learning teams aren't thinking about. um Look, we can be innovative and not just how we create things, but we can come up with actual new things to help the business. So for example, um there's a large association that we work with. And associations, um as many people know, how they make their money is through membership dues. That's fine. In hard times, membership dues seem to decline, right? It might be a nice to have thing. Well, they need new ways to create revenue. Associations or companies have lots of internal knowledge that they could monetize and do something else with that. em So, you know, as we're working with, even as a learning company, as we're working with this association and thinking through what is your IP? your intellectual property, what do you do better than others? What is it that you know that others might actually want to know and be willing to pay to know? And being able to look through that knowledge and help them understand that you could productize these, right? You could create new revenue, and businesses care about revenue and sales, you could create more revenue through that. And being able to give them a plan that says, here's all the information and knowledge you have, here's how you could productize that. And then guess what? By the way, we can do that. Because turning all that content into chunks and knowledge that you can consume and all that, that's just learning development at that point, right? But it's just that extra piece on top that was consultative and strategic in nature and thinking like a business owner. That's what allowed us to get the learning and development component of that. We need to think outside of that box and help businesses again, drive revenue and sales, reduce risk, become more efficient, control their costs, all that kind of stuff. That is such an excellent example, because I'm sure so many people listening to you share that, or initially, know, like, uh how is that actually a learning issue? I don't see how that's a learning issue, but you're spot on. It totally is. And right. It just takes that, like you said, that for that top piece to really then be able to drill down and being able to think outside of, you know, what we might consider to be the norm of a quote unquote learning and development project. For sure, that's why maybe we, again, we have to stop thinking of ourselves as a learning team and more of a performance team or a success team or a strategy team or whatever it is. uh But think about this, Jacob. There are companies out there that have really figured out how to build up training programs that they give to their customers that they actually monetize, right? So the training team became a product development team. The end of the day, was all just training development. um So there's lots of ways for the learning and performance teams to reinvent themselves, think differently about themselves, and to step outside of that box. Think about how could we help drive revenue. If you're driving revenue, they're not going to cut your budget. You're making them money. That's what companies need. Exactly. And so I want to shift and chat a little bit about one of the elements that almost every learning and development professional uh engages with at some point, which is onboarding processes. Right. So it's one of these areas where it's easy for an organization to default to maybe a one size fits all uh approach to onboarding. What What do you see as the challenges or even potential costs of approaching onboarding in such a way? And let me actually add on really quickly, more importantly, what does great onboarding look like when it's done right? So I think onboarding has a big challenge. And what that is is that there is an outward-facing marketing brand on companies. So when you join a company, if you join, let's say, Amazon or Meta or McDonald's or Coca-Cola or whatever it is, there is some brand in the world that you associate with that company. And you're like, if I work at Phil and the Plank Company, this is what it must be like, because that's the brand I interact with. you have some expectation of what that company is. You take that with you into your interview process and all this stuff, and then you get hired and your first day on the job, you're expecting that brand to kind of match up. And I think many times they don't match. So the onboarding brand experience doesn't match the outward facing experience you had maybe as a consumer or as in the interview process. I think that's part of the challenge. You have a letdown at that point. and you feel like, man, thought Coca-Cola would have this whole thing figured out. I'm just saying Coca-Cola, like as an example of something bad, I don't really know how they onboard. But you get it, right? It has a brand. And so I think the onboarding experience is a multi-month experience. It is not a put them in the classroom, put them on an online program for X number of days and hours. It can't be that. It has to be multifaceted. It needs to be multi-month. There need to be check in experiences with that cohort. I believe there needs to be a guide or some type of, uh whether it's a mentor or whether it's a program manager, whatever you want to call it, but someone that's moving that multi-month experience along and can be that one that can help connect that new hire into whatever it is they're trying to figure out or whatever issues they're This is such a great point you have here and I want to kind of highlight something that I want to make sure I understand this and I want to make sure our listeners understand it, which is we have this outward perception of a brand, what we think of Coca-Cola, and then there's what we experience when we're actually day one working there. And it's not even, if I understand this right, not just about making those two. sure those two things match or align 100 % but really also bridging the gap because there are going to be differences between that perception between which experience on day one. it's bridging that gap. and you know before I got into learning and development I was a marketer by trade and so much of what we're talking about today of course is either just straight-up marketing or marketing adjacent and if you ever been on Facebook or Instagram and you clicked on an ad because it intrigued you and it takes you to a web page that looks nothing like the ad doesn't use any of the same language on the ad it might be the same product but it's totally different disconnected right that lacks what we what we in marketing call absent right there's this difference between what you've been sold via an advertisement and what you're then seeing once you take that action. I'm seeing just so many parallels there to that, because what do you do when you get to that landing page and it's different? It's that same kind of letdown. uh So I just, know I was a little... you're right. mean, it's. For many, many years, I've been saying that learning and our training programs and all that should take a lot of lessons from marketing, right? Because marketing knows that everything needs to look amazing. It needs to work, it needs to be on point, the messaging and all this. You're trying to get people's attention and you have like a couple seconds to do that. Training is the same way. It needs to look amazing because they're making a judgment. on the outward, know, visible, the outward look of your content. mean, right away, they're gonna look at that and say, eh, looks terrible, must not be good. Well, they haven't even read it yet. Some of this, so many parallels between marketing and training development and learning. um But it's the big thing, right? If you get a job at Amazon and you go to Amazon's onboarding, you're going to expect certain things from that, right? There's a certain feel you're like, hey, it's probably going to be techie. It's probably going to be a little bit maybe on the nerdy side, like again, techie. it's, brands draw certain types of people into their company. And so you're right. There just needs to be a connection there. And I think our teams really need to think about that when they're building out new hire onboarding is what does someone expect when they come to my company? Like what is this external baggage they're bringing from my marketing team? And uh they should make sure those connect. And I'm going to ask the obvious question here, which is, how do we find out what it is that people are expecting and what it is we need to create for them? Well, I think that if you went to your marketing team and you said, can I have um your strategic branding guidelines? Can I have your, um like, what is the vision of the business, right? What is the purpose of our company? What are the, like in marketing, what are the messages that you're pushing to the market? What is the feel that you're pushing? Are there certain words that you're trying to get associated with our business? Like if you knew really what's in the head of your marketing, like leadership, then I think you could have a really good idea of. Again, what feel and connection they're trying to make with their customers. Chances are a lot of your customers are going to become employees someday. I mean, just how it works. mean, even in our space and our business, and we're small, right? Compared to these huge companies. A lot of times people we work with and interact with, end up becoming employees at some point. And they have an expectation of what we are. So think go talk to your marketing team and get to know what they're actually doing. And that will... I think that would be a good place to start. Yeah, use their playbook. Right? At the end of the day, it's just a good practice. And so we've identified a couple of really big opportunities and future shifts and shifts that are even happening right now in our space. We've talked about this. move towards how we position ourselves and how we engage in an organization. Talked about this marketing side of things, right? How so much of what we as LLD practitioners are facing is a marketing problem. But what other opportunities are you seeing for transformation in the learning and development space, say over the next three to five years? Well, um... I think learning teams are fundamentally changing right now. You've had an interesting last couple of years, right? Right when AI really came out big is the same time that learning teams started taking a big hit. when the economy gets a bit soft and companies are cutting budgets and all this kind of stuff and sales are trying to plateau for certain industries, uh That was the same time that AI hit big. you see kind of they go the separate directions. And so that gap, what's happening is there's you have to do something with all your AI, all this technology stacks and all these things that are happening that takes money to do that. You get money from revenue and sales, right? And so if companies are struggling on their top line, that means they have less cash to go figure out product development and adopt the new type of technology and figure all this out. you're seeing AI kind of came at a, I don't know if it's a good or bad time for us in the industry, but it at a time where companies are like, Man, we got to save money. right, like, unfortunately, like the number one use case for generative AI is to create content. And it's learning content as well. And so companies are trying to figure out, man, well, can I use this right now? Budgets are tight. Is it good enough? Is it not good enough? You know, they're going through that whole process. I think a lot of realizing I can't just type something in and just magically happens. So they're, they're coming back and trying to figure it out. But we are changing as an industry. Our tools are changing, right? The tech that we use to build out learning content, the expectations on us have increased tremendously. oh Our expectations of our tools have increased tremendously. And we're coming into a time, we're in a time right now where businesses need us to be more performance and success focused. And so I think this whole shift, we're going to be more consultative as teams. or focus on strategic goals. How do we drive business? How do we care about what the business cares about? Meanwhile, all of our technology is changing and we're going to have to dig through that to figure out how do we use that to actually drive performance and then tie it all together and what do we track? How do we get that data? Again, we've got to get to the point where we are thinking like business professionals. I don't think we can just think of ourselves as learning professionals anymore. It's got to be business professionals with an expertise in human capital transformation. Absolutely. And I think to moving towards wrapping us up for the day, what I'm thinking about now and what I'm curious about is what is exciting you most right now about what your firm ELB Learning is currently working on right now and how is that going to support this big shift that we as an industry are undergoing? Yeah, it's on two sides for us. Some on the services, professional services side, and then some on the product tech. You know, the product side, it's exciting and it's challenging, Jacob. At times it might be faster to just throw away all your old tools and build them from scratch now, just with how quickly development has changed. um But you can't do that. You have a lot of customers to support and you'd have to figure out migration and all Um, but it's fun to see all the new, um, ways that we can create things and how quickly we can create certain things. And, so we've, we've had a lot of fun with our teams, um, exploring the new AI types of opportunities and, um, trying to think what will these. Authoring tools look like in the future. I think pricing models will change. It's not about the number of authors anymore, right? The beauty of AI tools is. You don't need as many authors, but there is AI consumption, right? There's this consumption model. uh So trying to figure out how will that change? uh On the services side though, again, we have pushed massively into what I would call solution, maybe slash practice areas that aren't really going up to your traditional L and DHR types of customers anymore. uh We're doing a lot in sales transformation and enablement, technology adoption. uh Think about this, your AI rollouts. You're rolling out AI technology to your company. Completely forgot that humans need to adopt this into their lives. That's a training issue, right? So we're moving big time into that, a lot of operational effectiveness, leadership, and believe it or not, classroom learning, I believe, is making a resurgence. really is, yep. I'm definitely seeing that too. So, you know, we're excited about all of that. but L and D, you better be transforming your, how you operate right now and how you think about learning and everything that you've been doing over the past, you know, 10, 15 years, you need to rethink that and really start to focus on what your business, what your employer cares about. And, um, it's an exciting time, but Change is exciting for some and change is scary for some. And it is a time of commotion and chaos. Yes, and that change is happening either way, whether or not it's feeling exciting. It is coming! It is coming and no one will stop it. Andrew, thank you so much for joining me today. uh For folks who want to stay connected or follow your work, where's the best place to find you and to find ELB online? The place to find me is on LinkedIn. So I do a lot on LinkedIn and message me there, connect with me there, and for sure you will get a hold of me. Thank you again for joining me. This has been such a great conversation and these are exactly the type of conversations that I started this show to spotlight. For everyone listening, if you enjoyed this episode be sure to subscribe and feel free to connect with me as well on LinkedIn. I'll put the link to my LinkedIn as well as Andrew's in the show notes so you can find it pretty quickly. So like I said, make sure to subscribe. Andrew, thank you so much for joining me and we'll see you next time on Catalysts.