The Eternal Romance Between L&D Professionals and Content Creation

In this article, we explore together the love story between L&D professionals and content creation. Why do they get so excited about building courses, guides, and videos? What makes it feel so satisfying—and where does it sometimes trip us up? We'll share a few ideas on how we can move beyond just creating content and start making a bigger impact on the business. Along the way, we’ll look at the hidden risks, the addiction to making, and practical ways to move from “content for content’s sake” to measurable outcomes that truly matter.

Here’s a secret: L&D professionals are storytellers in love with content.

Learning & Development (L&D) professionals are romantics at heart. Their great love story? Content creation. Whether it’s a slide deck, a training module, or a polished video, they pour themselves into it. And for good reason—content feels like proof of value, a legacy, a tangible outcome in a world where much of their work is invisible. But this romance, like all romances, has its bright side and its shadows.

Content as the Bridge Between Knowledge and Action

L&D professionals fall for content because it’s the bridge between what people know today and what they need to achieve tomorrow. A new guide or job aid feels like a seed of transformation—the moment a rep closes their first deal, or a manager resolves a tricky conflict, thanks to something L&D built. That connection is powerful and addictive.

The Craftsmanship Instinct

Content creation scratches a deeper itch: the desire to craft. Many in L&D are artists at heart—designing experiences, shaping messages, and fine-tuning flow. The thrill of seeing a polished module or beautifully branded resource is real. It feels like creating order in chaos. But that polish can also become a trap—shiny artifacts that look good but don’t always move the business forward.

The Illusion of Permanence

One reason L&D clings to content is that it lasts. Coaching conversations fade. Live workshops are forgotten. But a recorded video or a PDF guide? It sticks around. It’s evidence: I made this, and it mattered. Yet permanence doesn’t always equal relevance. By the time some content finally launches, the business need has already shifted.

Control in a Messy World

Workplaces are unpredictable—priorities change, managers pull in different directions, deadlines shift. Content creation, however, offers control. A course outline can be neatly structured, a guide carefully edited. It’s a safe space where chaos bends to order. But again, this safety can turn deceptive—content feels productive, while actual impact may lag behind.

When Love Turns Into Addiction

This is where the romance becomes risky. Too often, L&D’s passion for creating leads to endless libraries of content that nobody uses. The addiction to “making” overshadows the harder question: Did this actually help someone perform better? In those moments, content stops being an enabler and starts being an illusion of progress.

The Hidden Risk: Time to Consume

Today, with AI at our fingertips, creating content is not the real challenge anymore. The bottleneck isn’t production—it’s consumption. Every minute someone spends reading, watching, or clicking through slides is a minute not spent solving problems, serving customers, or selling. The real test of value is: How quickly does this content help someone complete a task or make progress? If the answer isn’t “fast,” then the content, however beautiful, has missed its mark.

From Consumption to Enablement: A New Path Forward

Shifting from content obsession to true enablement is not about building more—it’s about creating what actually moves the needle for the business. Here’s how L&D can pivot from romance to real impact:

1. Start With the Team’s Voice

It’s not about the content you think is missing—it’s about what the team actually needs to perform better. Stay close to the field. Continuously survey employees, run quick pulse checks, and ask managers where the biggest friction points are.

You’ll be surprised how often L&D creates content that ticks the internal boxes but helps no one in practice—either because the pain has already disappeared by the time the content is ready, or because the material simply doesn’t address what the user really needed in the first place.

2. Design for Workflows, Not Courses

Learners don’t wake up wanting to take a course—they want to get their job done. Focus on embedding help where the work happens: inside tools, systems, and daily workflows. A short checklist or in-app tip is often more valuable than a polished module.

3. Talk Outcomes, Not Outputs

Completion rates and quiz scores don’t mean much to the business. What matters is whether people are selling faster, resolving tickets quicker, or reducing errors. Frame every piece of enablement around the outcome it drives—and make sure leaders see that connection.

4. Focus on Adoption, Not Just Completion

Too often, L&D measures success by counting course completions, badge collections, or quiz scores. These metrics look neat on dashboards but don’t tell you whether learning made any real difference.

What matters is adoption in practice: did people actually use what they learned on the job? Did the objection-handling course improve conversion rates? Did the interpersonal skills workshop lead to smoother collaboration between teams?

Shift the measurement lens from “did they finish the content?” to “did this content help them finish the job better?” . That’s where true impact lives—and where L&D earns credibility across the business.

5. Build Playbooks That Get Used

Big libraries look impressive but often gather dust. Playbooks, on the other hand, get pulled off the shelf when real work needs to get done. Think in terms of quick-access, actionable guides that people can apply immediately, not encyclopedias of “good to know.”

6. Use Data to Find the Real Pains

Don’t rely only on intuition. Dive into data—support tickets, sales call transcripts, churn reasons, or performance dashboards. Patterns in the data will tell you where people are struggling long before someone fills out a survey. That’s where your enablement should hit first.

7. Protect Employee Time

Time is the scarcest resource in any business. Before creating anything, ask: How long will this take to consume? How quickly will it help them complete a task? If the answer isn’t “fast,” rethink it. The best L&D work saves time instead of stealing it.

8. Create Enablers, Not Just Content

Your biggest impact isn’t in how many courses you publish, but in how many people you empower to teach and guide others. Train managers to coach. Equip teams with self-assessment frameworks. Build a culture where learning is ongoing and doesn’t depend solely on you producing content.

💡 In summary: the true allure lies not in the creation itself, but in the effect it has on the business.