The L&D Academy: One Year On — And Just Getting Started
- Matt Williams
- Feb 18
- 2 min read
Twelve months ago, I launched the TwentyOne Leadership L&D Academy with a clear focus.
It’s for L&D teams and professionals who want to shape direction, not just deliver solutions.
After thirty years in Learning & Development, I had seen the same pattern play out across organisations and sectors. Talented L&D professionals. Hardworking L&D teams. Full calendars. But too often operating at the edge of the real strategic conversation.
Busy delivering. Rarely directing.
The Academy was created to change that.
Why the Academy Exists
I didn’t begin my career in L&D. I started in the 90s selling insurance at Zurich. Coaching wasn’t part of my role, but I volunteered anyway. That decision shaped everything that followed.
Across three decades in corporate L&D roles and consultancy, I learned something important. The organisations that outperform are not the ones with the most training. They are the ones where L&D has influence.
Influence over priorities. Influence over performance conversations. Influence over what actually moves the dial.
Yet too often, L&D waits to be asked.
The Academy exists to help L&D professionals move from delivery to direction. To build diagnostic capability, commercial judgement and the confidence to challenge when training is not the answer.
Less activity. More influence. More impact.
What We’ve Seen This Year
Over the past twelve months, I’ve worked with L&D teams across housing, healthcare, leisure & entertainment and finance.
Across sectors, the themes are remarkably consistent.
L&D teams want to be more strategic. They want to challenge more confidently. They want to be in the room earlier. They want a stronger voice.
What they often lack is not commitment or intelligence. It is commercial sharpness. Diagnostic discipline. The confidence to reframe a conversation.
Through the Academy, I’ve seen professionals change how they show up. Stakeholder conversations become braver. Questions become sharper. Performance discussions become more outcome-focused.
They stop simply delivering requests.
They start directing thinking.
The Real Question
If you lead an L&D team, or you are an L&D professional, are you genuinely shaping outcomes in your organisation?
Or are you responding to them?
Are you present when priorities are defined, or invited in once solutions have already been chosen?
Are you seen as helpful, or essential?
The bar for L&D has moved. Expectations are higher. Budgets are tighter. Leaders want measurable impact, not beautifully designed programmes that do not shift performance.
The question is simple.
Are you ready to move from delivery to direction?
The Invitation
The TwentyOne Leadership L&D Academy is designed for experienced professionals and team leaders who know they are capable of more influence and want the structure, challenge and peer thinking to achieve it.
If you want your L&D function shaping business performance rather than simply delivering programmes, the Academy is built for you.
Move from delivery to direction.
Visit the Academy to see what we are building next:
Or contact me directly at matt@twentyoneleadership.com
Because L&D does not earn influence by being helpful.
It earns influence by being essential.