Measuring What Actually Matters in L&D
🎧 Listen to Measuring What Actually Matters in L&D – with Brooke Ludwig, Director of Learning and Development at Arete
L&D professionals are under growing pressure to prove the value of their work. In a world where budgets are tighter and business goals are shifting constantly, it’s no longer enough to offer great training. Today, the true measure of success is whether learning drives behavior change, performance, and growth.
In this episode of The Intelligence Amplifiers, host Marko Gargenta sits down with Brooke Ludwig, Director of Learning and Development at Arete, to explore how L&D can become a strategic business partner in even the most complex and technical environments.
From her early days designing leadership development programs for aerospace engineers and military teams to building learning systems at a fast-growing cybersecurity startup, Brooke shares a grounded, real-world perspective on how to scale learning that actually sticks.
If you’re rethinking your learning strategy or looking to move beyond surface-level metrics, this conversation is packed with valuable takeaways.
🔍 What You’ll Learn About Measuring Impact in L&D
âś… Why Behavior Change Is the Only Real KPI
For Brooke, training only matters if it leads to meaningful change. That’s why she starts with the question: What should people be doing differently after this program? Whether it’s manager development or onboarding, she believes behavior change—not attendance or satisfaction—should be the primary success metric.
She also shares how she uses feedback loops, 360 assessments, and real business data to demonstrate learning effectiveness. As she puts it, “Training without behavior change is just expensive entertainment.”
âś… How to Scale L&D in Technical Environments
Brooke has worked with some of the most technically skilled teams in the world, including aerospace engineers and cybersecurity experts. Her secret to success comes from partnering with internal subject matter experts and treating them as co-creators rather than just content sources.
She explains how to earn their trust, extract their knowledge, and package it in ways that others can absorb without overwhelming them or diminishing their credibility.
âś… Enabling Subject Matter Experts as Teachers
In complex organizations, the most valuable knowledge often lives in the heads of individual contributors. Brooke breaks down how to activate this internal expertise by teaching SMEs how to teach, offering structured support, and creating psychological safety so people feel confident sharing what they know.
This approach does more than scale knowledge. It builds a culture of learning from within.
âś… Lessons from the Enterprise to Startup Shift
Moving from a large defense contractor to a lean startup required Brooke to adjust everything from her tools to her mindset. She shares how she introduced structure without bureaucracy, built an LMS where none existed, and implemented scalable systems for tracking compliance, performance, and upskilling.
If you’re navigating a similar shift from enterprise to growth-stage, Brooke’s experience offers a practical roadmap.
âś… Building Trust with Engineers and Technical Teams
Brooke also talks about what it takes to work effectively with engineers, scientists, and highly analytical learners. She found that framing soft skills like communication and leadership in terms of process, logic, and repeatability made them much more accessible and more widely adopted.
Whether through role-play, formulas, or simulations, she shares techniques for helping technical teams embrace the “people” side of leadership.
âś… Rethinking Culture Fit and Learning Measurement
One of Brooke’s most powerful points is about culture. Instead of vague “fit” criteria, she co-developed an Excellence Model at Arete to define and measure cultural behaviors. This gave the organization a shared language around values and allowed L&D to support those behaviors directly.
She also explains how she tracks the effectiveness of learning programs over time, from promotions and internal mobility to engagement scores and performance reviews.
🎧 Listen to the Full Episode
If you’re building an L&D strategy that needs to show real results, or you’re enabling learning in a technical, high-performance environment, this episode with Brooke Ludwig offers a practical and inspiring guide.
From surfacing internal expertise to proving ROI through behavior change, this conversation will challenge the way you think about measurement in learning.
🎧 Listen to Measuring What Actually Matters in L&D
Connect with Brooke Ludwig
LinkedIn: Brooke Ludwig
Connect with Marko Gargenta
LinkedIn: Marko Gargenta
