It’s become quite apparent that what may have propelled HR, Learning and Talent leaders to the top won’t make you successful in the AI-driven future.
As organizational priorities shift and AI transforms work, successful people leaders must evolve beyond operational excellence to become true strategic partners. This collection of Brandon Hall Group’s top management tips reveals how to develop the strategic thinking capabilities that bridge the gap between traditional HR functions and business leadership.
Whether you’re navigating AI implementation, simplifying your talent approach or demonstrating clear ROI on people initiatives, these practices will help you transform from process guardian to strategic business catalyst — and ensure your voice shapes your organization’s future.
Demonstrate Your Strategic Impact
When executives request more strategic contributions from L&D and HR functions, view it as an opportunity to elevate your team’s visibility and impact. Here’s how to make your strategic value evident:
- Translate learning outcomes into business results. Drop the instinct to focus on completion rates and satisfaction scores. Use data visualization and storytelling to show how learning initiatives directly impact business KPIs like productivity, retention and customer satisfaction. Concrete connections between development programs and business outcomes make your strategic contributions tangible.
- Adopt people-centered frameworks. Replace function-centered language with stakeholder-focused terminology. Instead of discussing “L&D strategy” or “recruitment strategy,” frame conversations around improving employee capabilities, hiring the best talent, or retaining top performers.
- Create cross-functional alignment opportunities. Facilitate discussions that connect people initiatives to business goals. Help operational leaders understand how talent development supports their objectives by asking questions like, “How might our leadership development program accelerate your department’s digital transformation goals?”
Ask Questions That Elevate People Functions
Learning, Talent Management, and HR leaders who ask powerful questions can guide their organizations through complexity and change. Consider these five question types when developing people strategies:
- Investigative: What capabilities matter most? Before launching any new initiative, clarify which skills and competencies will drive your organization’s competitive advantage. What capabilities must your workforce develop to execute the business strategy successfully?
- Speculative: What if we reimagined this process? Challenge traditional approaches by exploring alternatives. For example, “What if we eliminated annual performance reviews and implemented continuous feedback instead?” These questions help you break free from legacy HR practices.
- Productive: How should we allocate our development resources? Assess where your limited budget, time and attention will get the most bang for the buck. For example, “Should we invest more heavily in developing frontline managers or senior executives?”
- Interpretive: What does this talent trend mean for us? When you observe patterns in recruitment, engagement or retention data, dig deeper to understand their implications for your organization’s future.
- Subjective: What biases might be influencing our talent decisions? Acknowledge the unspoken assumptions that could be limiting diversity, innovation or performance in your organization.
Build Partnerships Around AI
As AI transforms organizations, leaders must develop new strategic competencies. Here’s how to build your strategic muscle for effective cross-departmental AI collaboration:
- Cultivate technology acumen. Develop a working understanding of AI capabilities and limitations specific to learning and people functions. Identify use cases where AI can automate administrative tasks, personalize learning experiences or provide talent insights. Share these possibilities with IT and business leaders to build strategic partnerships.
- Allocate transformation resources. Make informed trade-offs between maintaining legacy systems and investing in new AI-powered solutions. Align your technology roadmap with organizational priorities and be prepared to reallocate resources as learnings emerge.
- Lead collaborative implementation. Success with AI requires cooperation across functions. Improve your communication and collaboration with technical and business teams, understanding their perspectives and concerns. Create cross-functional working groups with representatives from IT, compliance and operations to address implementation challenges together.
Simplify Your People Strategy
Many L&D, Talent and HR teams develop complex strategies that fragment attention and resources. Make people strategies easy to digest:
- Separate strategic direction from tactical plans. Your strategy should articulate how your organization will attract, develop and retain the talent needed to achieve business goals — not detail every task required. Maintain this distinction to keep stakeholders focused on the big picture.
- Align with business needs first. Before developing any learning or talent initiative, thoroughly understand the business strategy and challenges. Ask: “What capabilities does our organization need to execute its strategy?” and “What talent approaches will create competitive advantage?” Then design your people strategy to directly address these needs.
Know When — and How — to Pivot
In rapidly changing environments, L&D, Talent and HR leaders face pressure to constantly revise their approach. Before pivoting your strategy, consider:
- Is execution the real issue? Assess whether your strategy is fundamentally sound but suffering from implementation challenges. Do your HR business partners and learning specialists have the skills and resources needed to deliver on your strategic vision? Sometimes, improving execution is more valuable than changing direction.
- Are you responding to technology hype? New HR technologies constantly emerge, from AI-powered recruitment tools to virtual reality training. Before pursuing these innovations, evaluate whether they truly advance your strategic objectives or merely create interesting distractions.
- Are you listening to the right voices? Balance input from executives, employees and external sources. Pressure from senior leaders might push you toward short-term fixes, while frontline feedback might reveal deeper systemic issues requiring strategic shifts.
Make Strategic Thinking a Daily Habit
Exceptional leaders of people functions incorporate strategic thinking into their everyday work through these practices:
- Connect daily work to workforce outcomes. Regularly assess how your team’s activities contribute to building critical organizational capabilities. Ask: “How does this learning program enhance our innovation capacity?” or “Will this talent process help us achieve our diversity goals?”
- Address systemic people challenges. Look beyond individual cases to identify patterns requiring strategic intervention. For example, if multiple managers struggle with similar performance issues, consider whether your leadership development strategy needs adjustment.
- Create cross-functional learning opportunities. Regularly collaborate with operations, IT and finance leaders to understand their challenges. Shadow business meetings to identify how people solutions could accelerate strategic initiatives. These insights help you elevate people functions from service providers to strategic enablers.
- Develop ethical AI governance skills. As AI applications in HR and learning grow, strategic leaders must balance innovation with responsible use. Develop frameworks for evaluating AI tools against ethical principles, regulatory requirements and organizational values.
By incorporating these practices into your approach, you’ll transform how executives perceive Learning, Talent Management, and HR functions — shifting from cost centers to strategic enablers of organizational success.
