Adoption Curve: Episode 24

What you'll learn

Executives value business metrics, not training metrics.
Executive buy-in starts with relationships and partnerships.
Learning teams must evolve from order-taker to strategic partner.

Meet our guest

Becky Willis is the Chief Learning Officer and Co-Founder of Tractus Learning. Becky’s career spans executive leadership roles in sales, marketing, and strategy at companies like Hewlett Packard and EdCast. That cross-functional experience gave her a rare perspective: she’s seen firsthand how executives evaluate investments — and why most training programs fail to make the case.

Her new book focuses on a critical challenge in the learning space today. engagement alone isn’t enough. Learning must prove business impact. That’s exactly where most L&D teams struggle.

Featuring

Becky Willins

Chief Learning Officer & CoFounder @ Tractus Learning

Connect

Episode Twenty Four

Why Executives Don’t Value Training (And How to Fix It)

Most L&D teams report success using metrics like:
• Course completions
• Attendance numbers
• Satisfaction surveys
• Hours of training delivered

But executives don’t run businesses on those metrics. They run businesses on:
• Revenue
• Productivity
• Retention
• Risk
• KPIs

And when learning teams fail to connect their work to those outcomes, executives simply don’t see the value.

“Leaders relate to financial data. They relate to retention, safety, quality — meeting KPIs.”

This disconnect isn’t about bad leadership. It’s about misaligned language.

Key Insight #1:
Training metrics don't translate to business value

One of Becky’s biggest observations is that L&D teams often measure activity instead of outcomes.

They report things like:
• How many people attended training
• How many courses were built
• What learners rated the class

But executives want to know something different. Did it move the business forward?

“If we’re not speaking their language… they don’t see the value.”

The shift is simple but powerful. Instead of reporting training delivered, report performance improved.

Key Insight #2:
Executive Buy-In starts with relationships

Many learning leaders try to earn credibility with dashboards and analytics.

But Becky suggests starting somewhere simpler. Conversation.

While working at HP, Becky realized she didn’t fully understand the financial metrics executives used to evaluate performance. So she reached out to someone who did.

“We started having lunch once a month, and it was Finance 101 for Becky.”

Those conversations helped her understand:
• how leaders think about budgets
• what metrics matter most
• how decisions actually get made

That knowledge transformed how she positioned learning initiatives internally. Because once you understand the business, you can design learning that supports it directly.

Key Insight #3:
Speak the Language of the Business

Sometimes the problem isn’t the training program. It’s the way the program is positioned.

When L&D teams pitch training, executives hear cost.
When they pitch performance improvement, executives hear investment.

Nothing here is broken. In fact, there’s good intent behind it. But impact is almost impossible when learning only responds to problems after they appear.

“Their goal is not necessarily training. Their goal is business results.”

That shift in framing can dramatically change how learning initiatives are received at the leadership level.

Instead of asking: “Can we launch a training program?”

Ask: “Can we improve this KPI?”