Training Is a Smart Investment: Why a Learning Strategy Makes It Pay Off

Written By Kate Vendemio

Executive summary: Training is essential, and it delivers the most value when it sits inside a learning ecosystem built for application and reinforcement. This blog explains the difference between training, learning, and development, why skills rarely stick when learning is treated as a series of one-off events, and what a modern learning strategy includes. If you want training dollars to translate into measurable performance and retention outcomes, you need a learning strategy that turns great workshops into durable capability.

Training Patterns

I am frequently asked by senior leaders and human resources (HR) executives to deliver a high-impact training on topics like workplace communication, trust, or conflict resolution. The request usually comes from a good place: a genuine desire to reduce friction in meetings, strengthen collaboration, and improve results.

Undoubtedly, here is what unfolds: Leadership approves the workshop. The energy is high during the training and reviews are glowing. Employees leave with a shared vocabulary and a few practical tools. Yet, a few weeks later, the same friction shows up in meetings, internal emails, and handoffs. In response, leadership might approve another training: perhaps on trust, feedback, or emotional intelligence.

This cycle is not a failure of training.

In fact, training is one of the most valuable tools in your performance toolkit. The issue arises when training is expected to carry the full weight of behavior change by itself, without the reinforcement systems that make learning stick. McKinsey & Company makes a similar point from a strategy angle: learning is most effective when it is aligned to business strategy and co-owned by Human Resources and the business, yet many organizations still struggle to connect learning investments to strategic objectives.

If you are investing real dollars in workforce development and still seeing slow, inconsistent behavior change, you likely do not have a training problem. You have a learning strategy gap.

Training vs. Learning

While often used interchangeably, training and learning serve different functions in a high-performance organization.

Training is a structured, time-bound intervention designed to close a specific performance gap or introduce a new capability. It is the tactical delivery of knowledge or skills through formal instruction, such as essential soft skills training or professional skills workshops. It acts as the intentional "spark" that provides the necessary tools and frameworks to initiate change.

Learning is the expansive, ongoing evolution of an employee’s mindset and habits. The Association for Talent Development (ATD) describes this as the shift from optimizing for a specific objective to creating a rich environment where employees grow over time.

Moving from a training culture to a learning culture occurs when you stop viewing growth as a series of isolated events and start treating it as a continuous learning journey.

When you build a learning strategy, your training investments become dramatically more effective because they are no longer expected to carry the entire weight of behavioral change. Instead, they serve as the high-impact catalyst within a larger, sustainable system.

Learning vs. Development

While they are often grouped together, learning and development serve two distinct but complementary purposes.

In the context of career progression, ATD states that learning is gaining new knowledge, and development is applying that knowledge to drive results and growth. A learning strategy connects the dots by designing the conditions that move people from “I understand” to “I do it consistently,” and then from “I do it” to “I can lead others through it.”

In a strategic ecosystem, learning leads to development.

The Modern Learning Framework

The 70-20-10 model is often described as a learning “split,” but it is more useful as a design principle: most learning transfer happens through experience and reinforcement, supported by formal training. McKinsey describes 70-20-10 as learning that occurs on the job, through interaction and collaboration, and through formal learning interventions.

However, as we look toward the future of work, the most successful organizations have stopped viewing these as separate slices of a pie. Instead, they treat them as a fluid, interconnected ecosystem.

In a strategic learning ecosystem:

  • The 10 Percent (Formal Training): This is the high-impact catalyst. It provides the workplace communication tools, conflict resolution frameworks, and soft skills necessary to navigate complex challenges.

  • The 20 Percent (Social Learning): This is the reinforcement layer. It is coaching, feedback, mentoring, peer practice, and accountability loops. Blanchard’s 2026 survey shows coaching and mentoring, along with communication, at the top of leadership competency priorities.

  • The 70 Percent (Experiential Learning): This is where the ROI lives. When training and coaching are aligned, employees can apply their new professional skills to real-world projects, turning knowledge into measurable business results.

The takeaway is not that training only matters 10 percent of the time. It is that your 10 percent (training) must be architected to power the other 90 percent.

LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning Report 2025 emphasizes that career progress is the number one motivation for employees to learn. When you build a strategy that connects these three layers, you aren't just "offering classes." You are building a career-driven learning culture that fuels your employee retention strategies and ensures your team is prepared for whatever disruption comes next.

From One-Off Events to Integrated Learning Ecosystem: A Tactical Comparison

To see how this distinction changes your organizational results, let’s look at two common requests we receive, and how outcomes change when training is treated as a lever inside a strategy.

Example 1: "We need a workshop to increase trust in the workplace."

  • Training As a Starting Point: A facilitated workshop on trust, collaboration, and psychological safety gives the team a shared language. Participants take an Everything DiSC assessment, which can accelerate insight by helping them understand differences in pace, preferences, and friction points.. Employees leave feeling understood, but without a roadmap for what happens next, the DiSC reports often end up filed away and forgotten.

  • The Learning Strategy Approach: The workshop and Everything DiSC assessment serve as the "spark" for self-awareness. However, they are intentionally followed by manager coaching prompts, 1:1 discussion guides, and specific feedback rituals. These tools ensure that trust-building behaviors are integrated into the daily rhythm of the team.

Example 2: "We need communication training."

  • Training As a Starting Point: A one-time session on workplace communication styles and active listening. While the content is excellent, it doesn’t address the root cause of why people aren't communicating in the first place.

  • The Learning Strategy Approach: We begin by partnering with you to diagnose the real constraint. Often, “communication problems” are symptoms of unclear decision rights, low trust, or weak knowledge sharing. Then the learning strategy addresses both capability and infrastructure: training, practice loops, manager coaching tools, and a knowledge management system that makes key guidance easy to find at the moment of need. When employees can quickly access conversation guides, escalation paths, and examples of “what good looks like,” performance improves without requiring another large training event.

What a Learning Strategy Actually Does for Your Business

A learning strategy is not a list of courses; it is a business system that answers:

  • Which capabilities matter most for our strategy right now?

  • Where are performance gaps showing up, and what is causing them?

  • Which interventions belong in training, coaching, workflow, and knowledge systems?

  • How will we reinforce learning through managers and teams?

  • How will we measure behavior change and outcomes that matter?

McKinsey also emphasizes that modern learning and development is moving away from stand-alone programs and toward learning journeys with reinforcement and transfer built in.

That is the core idea: you are not just delivering instruction. You are building a system that supports application.

How Mt. Vernon Consulting Helps: Strategy First, Then Training That Actually Sticks

This is the work we do as learning strategy experts.

Mt. Vernon Consulting provides consulting services that help organizations move beyond the training calendar to build systems that work.

We do not replace training. We make training more effective by building the ecosystem around it.

We help you:

  • Diagnose what is currently fragmented or missing in your learning culture.

  • Clarify priorities tied directly to your business goals.

  • Design a learning ecosystem that blends soft skills training with on-the-job application and coaching infrastructure.

  • Strengthen knowledge management and learning technology so resources are findable, pathways are clear, and reinforcement is easy.

  • Build measurement approaches that demonstrate behavior change and business outcomes, not only participation.

If your organization is investing in training and workshops but still experiencing communication breakdowns or leadership inconsistency, it is time to step back and design the system those trainings are meant to support.

Contact us to explore what a learning strategy can look like in your organization, and how we can help you turn high-quality training into sustainable capability.

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Kate Vendemio
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