Do your learning and development (L&D) investments align with your business strategy? Only a third of organizations report that they do, according to a 2022 Statista survey. Given that the L&D market has reached over $300 billion in the past few years, this lack of alignment translates to a devastating amount of wasted dollars and resources.

In my 30-plus years of experience in the L&D space, I’ve noticed that most L&D dollars and resources are misspent on old-school, “check-the-box” training. Yes, training has its place — skill-building is necessary — but standard training programs won’t develop talent and leaders in ways that will allow organizations to succeed in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environment.

Studies reveal that the current rate of change and disruption simply outpaces most leaders’ ability to prepare or respond. For instance, nearly half of the respondents in Deloitte’s 2023 Human Capital Trends survey report that leaders “are struggling to identify what to prioritize because they are overwhelmed by the number and frequency of disruptive shifts occurring.”

It’s clear that the traditional training companies have relied on for the past century, also known as horizontal development, has not and cannot prepare leaders for constant change and disruption. Instead, organizations must make a massive shift toward a vertical development approach to build capabilities and capacity.

Horizontal and Vertical Development: What’s the Difference?

Most people are familiar with horizontal development, whether they realize it or not. It’s skill-building typically achieved through training. At its core, horizontal development equips workers with the basics to perform daily tasks.

Through horizontal development, a project manager can learn the tools, processes and systems needed to perform on the job. Likewise, scrum masters can learn the various roles, disciplines and processes they need to deliver results.

Horizontal development remains popular because it’s easy to do. Organizations can develop large groups of employees with a single training session, learning module or subscription to an eLearning platform. It’s also easy to measure through tests and assessments (although most knowledge gained through training is lost in a few days).

Horizontal development has its place. We need a skilled workforce, but without vertical development, these skills are only useful in static, unchanging environments. When was the last time your company faced a challenge where the solution was clearly defined or there was a 100% guarantee that external forces wouldn’t disrupt your day-to-day business? Not likely very recently, if ever.

The problem with horizontal development is that it largely ignores the context in which the skills it builds will be used. There’s no personalization and little, if any, contextualization of the individual’s role or the organization. As Sherryl Dimitry, Ph.D. said, horizontal development helps build “new concepts that might help [talent] rethink current perspectives, but it won’t help to internalize and act on them.”

I witnessed this firsthand in the earliest days of my career. When I was a corporate trainer, people would approach me after a training session and say, “These skills are great, but how do I actually use them?” What was missing, and continues to be missing from most L&D programs, was the development of capacity — the ability to know when and how to apply skills, knowledge and capabilities effectively within the context of the organization, the leader’s role and identity, and the current situation.

To make horizontal development truly effective, it needs to be paired with vertical development. Though horizontal development won’t develop capabilities, it’s the foundation upon which vertical development can occur.

Vertical Development Builds Capacity

If horizontal development is about acquiring skills, then vertical development is about building capacity. An emerging form of L&D, vertical development focuses on shifting mindsets, allowing for more complex and sophisticated ways of thinking. It shapes how a person interprets and interacts with their environment and enables them to apply skills in contextually relevant ways.

Vertical development works to increase capacity through disruption. It interrupts a person’s instinctual or habitual way of operating and challenges them to reflect and question their behavior and the biases, thoughts and assumptions that lead to that behavior.

Through exposure to outside and often differing perspectives, vertical development increases a person’s self-awareness and ability to seek new and better ways of operating. Imagine being more flexible and agile, recognizing patterns and dramatically improving your strategic thinking and decision-making. That’s what vertical development offers.

How Can Organizations Foster Vertical Development?

Vertical development can only happen through one-on-one development. It requires individualization and contextualization. That can’t happen with predetermined lesson plans found in traditional training programs. Without contextualization, employees only learn formulaic responses that don’t transfer to daily work life.

The best approach is for employees to engage with “thinking partners” who can act as objective outsiders, asking and provoking questions that disrupt employees’ ingrained mindsets and behaviors.

Leadership coaches provide this type of relationship. Coaches partner with leaders to change their ways of thinking, belief systems, mindsets and perspectives — or, rather, coaches help coachees find their way to making those changes themselves.

As a recent Sounding Board coachee said, “[My coach] challenges my assumptions and encourages me to think differently. They’re a great sounding board that I can bounce ideas off of without worry about internal politics.”

For example, I often ask my leadership coaching clients, ”What have you done differently since the last time we talked?” It’s a deceptively simple question, but it forces the coachee to first reflect on how they typically interact within their environment and evaluate how impactful those actions are toward the goals they want to achieve. Then, it challenges them to think of new ways of operating.

Sponsors, mentors and allies can also take on this role; the key is to have a thinking partner who can disrupt patterns of thinking and behavior. Without that thinking partner, employees risk falling into the trap of doing things the way they’ve always done, regardless of how much has changed around them.

Make L&D a Strategic Asset

Vertical development will ensure your L&D program fully aligns with your organization’s business strategy. Rather than a check-the-box, one-size-fits-all administrative task, L&D becomes a critical strategic asset.

So, what will you do differently with your L&D budget? Will you continue to do what you’ve always done, too?