If you're the chief learning officer or chief talent development officer at your company, this issue is for you. Running a learning function is obviously different from being an individual contributor in the department—there are budgets to oversee, forecasts to make, high-level goals to meet, among other responsibilities.

You're also likely dealing with competing priorities. The cover story will help you stay on task. Author Nina M. Johnson presents guidance on keeping mission creep at bay so that the learning function doesn't get pulled in multiple directions that don't exactly align with its stated mission (tip: define your department's goals and priorities as they relate to organizational objectives). "Mission creep becomes the charismatic hitchhiker whose outstretched thumb is hard to resist," Johnson writes. "But resist we must."

With your focus properly calibrated, the department's value will shine. As Deadra Welcome writes in her article, one way to show the learning function's worth is to "maximize organizational learning opportunities for increased performance." I imagine that being high performing is all organizations' aim; Welcome explains that the learning function has a significant role in making that happen and outlines a framework learning executives can use.

Want more? Consider subscribing (it's free!) to CTDO, the Association for Talent Development's digital, quarterly magazine developed specifically for talent development executives. It provides a high-level look at the top trends in talent development and offers practical solutions to burning challenges in the field. The next issue publishes on June 17 in the ATD Publications app and online at www.td.org/ctdo.