Why global commercial growth slows down. And how eLearning can fix it

“Global growth has never been a strategy problem. It’s an execution problem,” says Michael Gullan, CEO of G&G Advocacy and e-learning consultancy that helps global organisations to develop high-performing teams across regions.

As organisations expand into new regions, there’s often an assumption that what worked in one market will work everywhere else. The strategy is sound. The ambition is there. But performance inevitably drifts. Sales conversations begin to vary. Value propositions lose their meaning. What once felt like strong momentum becomes patchy across regions.

Many organisations look to eLearning to close gaps, hoping it will be a panacea for disappointing growth. Gullan argues that eLearning, when used properly, can become a genuine commercial advantage.

The Problem With ELearning

For years, corporate learning was on the sidelines. Useful, yes. Necessary, absolutely. But not seen as a growth driver. Courses are launched. Content is consumed. Completion rates look healthy. Yet commercial performance often remains unchanged.

Gullan proposes a different view of eLearning that goes beyond knowledge transfer to improving decision-making in the flow of work, especially for sales teams, managers, and leaders.

“Learning only matters when it changes behaviour,” says Gullan. “That’s when it starts impacting results.”

Gullan’s insights align with broader research. A global study by McKinsey & Company found that organisations that link capability building directly to day-to-day work are 2.4 times more likely to outperform their peers than those relying on standalone training programmes.1

The Challenge With Scale

As organisations grow their markets, their execution challenges are rarely about talent. More often, they stem from inconsistency and misalignment. People interpret strategy differently. Managers coach based on personal experience. Successful approaches remain locked within local teams, while the same mistakes are repeated elsewhere.

Over time, this creates fragmentation. eLearning can only help when commercial logic is shared across the organisation.

“We’re not talking about living the brand, processes or slogans. But proven ways of thinking about customers, value, and growth,” said Gullan.

Consistency isn’t about saying the same thing everywhere. It’s about solving similar challenges in the same way that’s proven to work.

Global Direction. Local Reality

Effective global learning strategies avoid the trap of choosing between global consistency and local flexibility. Instead, they establish a strong global foundation with clear commercial principles, value frameworks, and priorities, while giving regions the freedom to apply them locally.

This approach allows organisations to scale insight without ignoring cultural nuance or market dynamics. When learning spreads faster than organisational growth, execution becomes more stable and predictable.

Learning Works Best When People Talk

One of the biggest mistakes organisations make is separating learning from everyday work.

“When learning lives only in course content, it fades. When it lives in conversation, it sticks,” shared Gullan.

That’s why many global organisations keep learning teams working closely with strategy and growth leaders. When insights are shared, individual understanding can be converted into collective capability.

Case In Point2

The Coca-Cola Company operates across hundreds of markets, with vastly different customer behaviours, routes to market, and sales environments. As the business expanded, it faced a familiar challenge: maintaining consistent commercial capability while empowering local teams to operate autonomously.

The company invested in global eLearning with a key focus on commercial growth, sales capability and leadership development, closely linked to real-world selling situations rather than generic training content. All programmes reinforced proven commercial principles, while allowing regional teams to contextualise the material.

The results: Improved sales execution. Greater consistency across regions. Faster onboarding of commercial talent. Stronger alignment between global strategy and local market activity.

“The key insight for me isn’t that Coca-Cola used eLearning, but how they used it,” said Gullan. “Learning was designed to improve judgment and decision-making, empowering commercial teams to perform in the field.”

When Growth Follows Learning

For business leaders, the value of eLearning shouldn’t be only assessed by engagement scores and completion rates, but by whether:

Onboarding accelerates across regions. Performance gaps close. Commercial KPIs improve.

When this happens, learning stops being a cost centre and becomes a performance lever for scale and growth.

The Leadership Opportunity

Global organisations need more than a strong strategy. They also need aligned execution across all regions under real-world pressures. When eLearning supports that goal, it stops being a costly support function and becomes a leadership tool that drives commercial success.