The enablement identity crisis: are we Revenue, Readiness, or Ops?
Let’s be honest: most companies don’t actually know what Enablement is. They know they need “someone to fix sales” or “onboard new reps” or “train the team on the new pitch.” So they hire… us. 🫠
And then it begins.
Suddenly you're owning a dashboard here, updating a Notion doc there, joining QBR prep, and being looped into a customer meeting where no one can explain why you’re there. Sound familiar?
If you’ve ever felt like Enablement has no clearly defined home—don’t worry, it’s not just you. We’ve been floating somewhere between revenue, readiness, and operations for years. And now, in a world of leaner orgs and AI-everything, the stakes of that ambiguity are higher than ever.
So what is Enablement really?
🧩 The three faces of Enablement
After some years in Enablement, I’ve seen most companies default to one of three models - each with its own strengths and traps.
The Readiness Team: Enablement = training. You’re running onboarding, launching LMS content, hosting update calls. This is often where the function begins—and let’s be honest, it’s important. But if you stay in this lane too long, you risk becoming the internal university with no seat at the revenue table.
The Revenue Multiplier: Enablement = pipeline acceleration. You're in deal reviews, building sales assets, coaching managers, and aligning on win rates. This ties back to what we explored in “Sales Enablement vs GTM Enablement” - when Enablement operates beyond just the sales floor and becomes embedded in the entire customer journey, it starts driving real business outcomes. But it’s also one that comes with high expectations and visibility, especially when performance dips.
The Shadow Ops Team: Enablement = everything that doesn’t clearly belong to someone else. Suddenly you're “owning” tools you didn’t choose, running adoption campaigns for platforms you’ve never used, and becoming the unofficial Help Desk for the GTM team. High involvement, low strategic clarity - and a fast track to burnout.
🧭 Why definitions matter
The way your company defines Enablement shapes everything:
Who you report to
How your success is measured
What your roadmap looks like
Whether you're seen as a cost center or a growth engine
In the “From Chaos to Clarity” edition, we talked about creating structured plans based on business impact. But here’s the twist: without a strong identity, even the best plan can get diluted.
Enablement can’t be all things to all people. But it can be the right thing - if you choose and protect your scope.
🛠️ Think like a strategist: define your scope
Imagine a blank canvas with four boxes: ownership - strategic alignment - stakeholders - boundaries
Now try filling them in for your Enablement function. If you struggle to answer clearly, you’re not alone. But that lack of clarity? It’s costing you influence.
This isn’t about creating a fancy diagram for your next offsite (though… feel free 😉). It’s about asking the hard questions before someone else decides for you.
Because once Enablement becomes the dumping ground for “everything GTM,” it’s hard to climb out.
💬 Final thought
We don’t need more Enablement job descriptions. We need more Enablement definitions—crafted by us, not inherited from someone else’s idea of “training.”
Because if you don’t define your scope, someone else will. And it’s rarely the one that gets headcount or budget.
PS: Enablement in 2025 is a bit like riding the U8 on a Sunday morning: Chaotic, oddly inspiring, and no one’s quite sure where the boundaries are. (If you know, you know. And if you don’t—just ask a Berliner.)
