Using OD to shift from learning delivery to organizational impact

Traditional L&D approaches often focus on solving isolated skills or knowledge gaps. But what if the real barriers to performance sit elsewhere in the organization?

In this episode of Learning at Large, Chris Baldwin, founder of Performance Redesigned and organizational performance consultant, explores what L&D can borrow from organizational development (OD) practices to create more sustainable business impact. Drawing on his experience across both learning and organizational development, Chris explains why learning initiatives often fail when organizations aren’t ready to support them, and why systems thinking, organizational readiness, and leadership culture are becoming increasingly important for modern L&D teams.

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Top tips for bringing OD thinking into L&D

Don’t have time to listen now? Here’s a quick summary of what you’ll learn in this episode:

Stop treating learning as the solution to every problem – Many performance challenges are caused by systems, structures, or workflows rather than a lack of capability.
Use systems thinking to understand the bigger picture – Performance is shaped by interconnected parts of the organization, not single interventions.
Focus on organizational readiness before launching learning – Learning only works when leaders, culture, and priorities support behavior change.
Recognize the influence of leadership culture – Employees learn from leader behavior, not just formal training.
Build on the OD work already happening in L&D – Many teams already apply OD thinking without realizing it.

1. Stop treating learning as the solution to every problem

Chris explains that organizations often default to learning interventions when the real issue sits elsewhere in the business. In many cases, the barriers to performance are operational, structural, or environmental rather than a lack of skills or knowledge. He argues that L&D teams can increase their impact by taking a broader view of performance challenges and understanding the wider context surrounding the learner.

“I think that we sometimes look at learning as a solution when the problem isn’t skills or knowledge. It’s not necessarily because we haven’t been doing the right things. It’s because it’s been done in a difficult way.”

2. Use systems thinking to understand the bigger picture

A major theme throughout the conversation is systems thinking – understanding how different parts of an organization influence one another. Chris explains that improving performance often requires looking beyond individual learners and considering workflows, structures, communication systems, and organizational dynamics. Rather than treating learning as an isolated intervention, he encourages L&D teams to think about the ripple effects different systems and behaviors have across the wider business.

“Cultural change, understanding leadership, understanding how workflow happens, those are things that we work on already, but we don’t realize that they are borderline or moving into OD practice anyway. And some of the things are very similar in that they’re scientific, they’re evidence based, they’re people centered, but the OD side of things looks at how some of these things are more interconnected, the cause and effect, so the action reaction, and how that has an impact on what we’re doing, or more importantly, how it has an impact elsewhere in the business.”

3. Focus on organizational readiness before launching learning

Chris argues that learning initiatives often fail because organizations are not prepared to support the behaviors they’re trying to encourage. Leaders, policies, priorities, and culture all shape whether learning becomes sustainable in practice. He explains that before launching learning initiatives, organizations need to remove barriers, align expectations, and create an environment where new behaviors can realistically succeed.

“The organizational readiness bit is about understanding whether the organization in its current state, is it gonna naturally support the learning that we’re trying to ask people to put into practice, or is it gonna reject it?”

4. Recognize the influence of leadership culture

Leadership behavior has a huge impact on employee experience, culture, and performance. Chris discusses how people naturally copy the behaviors of influential leaders, making leadership culture a critical part of whether learning sticks. If leaders fail to model the behaviors organizations are trying to encourage, even well-designed learning initiatives can quickly lose momentum.

“What actually happens is we copy the behaviors of those who are more senior or more influential than us. So, there’s almost no point in expecting your junior managers to have decent feedback conversations. Because if your senior managers are not doing it, then that role modeling is not happening.”

5. Build on the OD work already happening in L&D

Chris explains that adopting organizational development practices doesn’t mean abandoning traditional L&D skills or completely retraining into a new discipline. Instead, many learning teams are already doing elements of OD work through leadership development, culture change, workflow analysis, and performance improvement – they just may not recognize it that way yet. He suggests that understanding these connections can help L&D teams become more strategic, more confident in challenging business problems, and more closely aligned to organizational performance.

“It’s about doing L&D with an OD mindset, not a complete reskill into a new practice. A lot of it will have been done already. A lot of L&D people, especially more senior L&D people, will already be doing this and thinking this way.”

About Chris

Chris is the founder of Performance Redesigned and a global learning leader and organizational performance consultant with experience across learning and organizational development. His work focuses on helping organizations improve performance by combining learning strategies with a broader understanding of systems, culture, leadership, and organizational readiness.

Chris is passionate about helping L&D teams move beyond isolated interventions and towards more strategic, business-aligned impact.

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn.

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