What you'll learn
- From "Just Make a Course" to Strategic Partner: How to reframe misaligned training asks.
- Designing for Impact, Not Completion: Measuring what actually moves the needle.
- Borrow the Tools, Build the Case: What L&D can learn from marketing?
Meet our guest
Dr. Heidi Kirby is the founder of Useful Stuff, a consultancy that helps organizations build impactful learning solutions and supports L&D professionals and ed tech founders through resources, including the global Useful L&D Community and the BLOC Podcast.
With a PhD in Instructional Design and Technology, Heidi has extensive experience assessing needs, creating and developing learning programs, building and growing teams of L&D professionals, and evaluating solutions based on data companies and clients actually care about. Her work is driven by a focus on authenticity, simplicity, inclusivity, and measurable impact.
How to Say "No" and Still Be Trusted in L&D.
That jump happened because Heidi didn’t wait for permission. She started asking better questions. And when people noticed, they gave her more responsibility. Today, she teaches others to do the same.
🎤 "You can’t wait to be handed strategic work. You have to start doing it before you’re invited."— Heidi Kirby
Reframe the Ask
L&D pros are often given a solution before anyone defines the problem: "We need a 30-minute e-learning."
Heidi’s approach? Push back — not with a "no," but with a better idea. She once challenged a request for hiring training that didn’t make sense. The stakeholders wanted a course, but the training was only needed once per year. Instead of building the e-learning, she suggested a searchable knowledge base and walked them through an example on the spot.
🎤 "They didn't even know what a knowledge base was. I pulled one up live, and just said, Like this. Step-by-step, self-serve. This is what will actually help them in September when they’re hiring — not a course they take in May."— Heidi Kirby
The result: Stakeholders were sold. Heidi saved the team time, avoided wasted development, and delivered a solution that stuck.
Use the Data Hiding in Plain Sight
When asked how to prove the impact of L&D, Heidi doesn’t start with dashboards. She starts with what’s already there:
- Exit interviews
- IT Tickets
- Glassdoor Reviews
- Help Desk Volume
- Manager Feedback
"One stakeholder told me they didn’t have data. I asked, Then how do you know your managers are bad? And they said, Well, people mention it in exit interviews, and our engagement score for managers is low, and Glassdoor reviews mention it a lot. Perfect. That’s your data."— Heidi Kirby
Heidi calls this triangulation. It doesn’t have to be perfect — it has to be persuasive.
Completion is a Vanity Metric
Heidi doesn’t care if people finish the course. She wants to know if they solved their problem. That’s why she borrowed the video analytics tool from her marketing team instead of relying on LMS completions. This let her team measure:
- Where learners dropped off
- Where they rewatched content
- Which videos were most effective
"If they don’t need the whole thing, I want them to grab what they need and go. They shouldn’t have to complete anything to be successful."— Heidi Kirby
She also swears by the 80/20 rule:*"Just teach the 20% of the system people will use 80% of the time. The rest belongs in your knowledge base."
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