How Poor Business Strategy Literacy Affects Employee Training Programs in 2025

I’ve sat in so many rooms where the conversation goes something like, “Our people need more training.” Cool. Training in what? Silence. Or worse — someone throws out a random skill because it sounds relevant. That’s when you know you’re dealing with an org that hasn’t done the strategic thinking first.

When people in charge of training don’t understand business strategy — or can’t translate it into practical development goals — you get chaos. Irrelevant courses. Skill gaps. Burnout. Zero ROI.

Let’s talk about what strategy literacy actually means, how the lack of it derails training efforts, and what you can do to fix it. Because throwing training dollars at the wrong problem doesn’t solve anything — it just creates more confusion.

What Is Business Strategy Literacy (and Why It Matters)

Okay, so first off: business strategy literacy isn’t just knowing how to use buzzwords like “scale,” “disruption,” or “synergy.” It means you actually understand:

• What the company is trying to achieve (vision and goals)
• How it plans to get there (strategic initiatives)
• And how that connects to everyday work (people, processes, and performance)

Sounds basic, right? But you’d be surprised how many department heads and HR leads can’t explain the difference between a strategy and a tactic.

If your leaders can’t see the connection between their department’s work and the company’s mission, how do you expect them to build a relevant training roadmap?

How Strategy Illiteracy Derails Training Programs

Let me give it to you straight — if your strategy is unclear, your training will be too.

I’ve worked with orgs that had beautiful LMS platforms and long lists of training modules… none of which actually helped employees do their jobs better. Why? Because nobody mapped training to strategic goals.

Here’s what usually happens:

• Someone rolls out a training just because it’s trendy (hello, emotional intelligence!)
• The L&D team builds courses without knowing where the company is going next
• People are trained on yesterday’s skills for a future they don’t understand

It’s not the training that’s broken. It’s the thinking behind it.

Common Signs of Poor Strategy Literacy in Organizations

You can usually spot it a mile away. Here are some red flags:

• Leadership talks in vague generalities: “Let’s just get better at everything.”
• No clear connection between business goals and development plans
• L&D teams operate in silos, separate from strategic planning
• Employees feel like they’re doing training just to check a box

If you ask “How will this training move us closer to our company goals?” and no one has a solid answer — that’s a problem. That’s a strategy literacy gap.

Real-World Consequences of Strategy-Training Misalignment

When strategy literacy is low, here’s what starts to happen:

• Low engagement: Employees start tuning out because they don’t see the value.
• High turnover: Top performers leave when they aren’t growing in the right direction.
• Wasted money: Training budgets disappear into programs that don’t move the needle.
• Missed goals: You end up with a team that’s “busy” but not effective.

And trust me, executives will blame HR or the training team — but the real issue is that no one’s clearly articulated the why behind development efforts.

Building Business Strategy Literacy Within Your Organization

This is where things get better — because you can fix it. Here’s what I’ve seen work:

• Run business strategy workshops for HR, L&D, and department managers
• Use tools like SWOT or Balanced Scorecard to connect planning with capability needs
• Set up regular strategy briefings that include L&D and HR leadership
• Train managers to speak the language of strategy and cascade it down

You don’t have to turn every manager into a strategist — but they do need to understand how their people contribute to the big picture.

Designing Training Programs with Strategic Alignment

Once you’ve raised the strategic IQ of your team, training becomes powerful.

Start with questions like:

• What are we trying to accomplish as a business in the next 12–18 months?
• What capabilities are missing right now?
• How can training close that gap?

Then you:

• Use gap analysis to define skill priorities
• Collaborate with managers to co-design relevant learning paths
• Define KPIs for training tied to business outcomes — not just course completion

When you design with strategy in mind, training isn’t an afterthought — it’s a growth engine.

Case Study: Fixing the Training Gap Through Strategy Literacy

I worked with a regional logistics company last year — decent budget, good people, but constant complaints about training being “a waste of time.”

Turns out, their leadership team couldn’t agree on the company’s top three priorities for the year. Each department was training for something different. One focused on speed, another on compliance, another on customer service.

We ran a strategy literacy bootcamp for their execs and managers. Just two days. In that time, they:

• Aligned on business objectives
• Created a shared capability roadmap
• Rebuilt their L&D strategy from the ground up

Within six months, they saw a 40% increase in training engagement and met 3 out of 4 of their strategic KPIs ahead of schedule.

Conclusion

Here’s the bottom line: You can’t build what you don’t understand. And you definitely can’t train people for the future if you don’t know what that future looks like.

Poor employee training programs aren’t always about bad content or lazy teams. They’re often the result of low business strategy literacy at the leadership level. If your leaders can’t articulate where the company is going and why — then your training programs are just noise.

👉 Take Action:
Ask your leadership team today: “What business problem is this training solving?” If the answer is unclear, start with strategy — not software.