You don’t have an enablement problem. You have a commitment problem.
And that’s why it keeps getting reset, rebranded, or deprioritzed.
Over the past year, I’ve written a lot about enablement.
What it is, what it isn’t, why onboarding doesn’t stick, why SKOs rarely change behavior, why teams keep rebuilding the same assets over and over again… And the more I reflect on all of this, the clearer one thing becomes:
Most companies don’t struggle with enablement because they lack frameworks, content or talent. They struggle because they never fully commit to it.
Enablement isn’t broken: it’s treated as temporary
This pattern shows up again an again.
A new strategy is announced, enablement gets involved to “support the rollout”. There’s training, decks, workshops, sometimes even an academy. For a moment, everything feels aligned.
Then priorities shift. A new quarter starts. A new leader joins… And suddenly, enablement is back on the table - being reworked, rebranded, or quietly deprioritized.
Nothing was fundamentally wrong with what existed. It just wasn’t given the time to do its job.
That’s not a design issue: it’s a commitment issue.
We keep expecting enablement to work like a project
One this that keeps coming up, no matter the angle, is this expectation that enablement should work like a project.
We launch something, we train everyone, we move on.
We’ve seen how that plays out. One-off sessions don’t scale. Onboarding creates momentum, but not consistency. SKOs generate energy, but rarely change behavior beyond the first few weeks. Even well-designed programs lose impact when nothing reinforces them.
Each time, the conclusion is the same: the problem isn’t the idea itself. It’s what happens after.
Enablement keeps being treated as a moment in time, when in reality it’s a continuous motion. And when that motion stops, everything starts slipping back to the default.
Enablement only works when it becomes a system
The teams that actually get value from enablement don’t do more. They do it differently.
They start by creating clarity instead of assuming they already know where the gaps are. They pay attention to execution, not just intent. They involve managers early, knowing that reinforcement doesn’t happen in enablement sessions - it happens in 1:1s, pipeline reviews, and everyday conversations.
Most importantly, they don’t treat enablement as something to “roll out” once and move on from. They treat it as a system that needs to be run, adjusted, and reinforced over time.
The questions shifts from “have we launched this?” to “is this still being used the way we intended"?”
That’s when enablement stops feeling fragile and starts compounding.
Commitment doesn’t mean full agreement, and that’s why it works
One thing I learned early in my career is that commitment doesn’t require everyone to be 100% convinced.
You can disagree. You can have doubts. You can even think there might have been a better option. But once a strategy is agreed on, commitment means moving forward and executing on it, together.
That distinction matters a lot in enablement.
Too often, enablement fails not because the strategy was wrong, but because leadership never fully committed to make it work. They approved the initiative, but didn’t actively support it. They aligned on the direction, but didn’t reinforce it. They launched it, but didn’t drive adoption.
When it comes to enablement, commitment looks like leaders backing the strategy through execution - even when it’s uncomfortable, even when results take time, even when not everyone was initially convinced.
That’s the difference between enablement as a nice idea, and enablement as a real execution lever.
What to take into 2026
As you head into the next year, I’d encourage you to stop asking whether enablement is “working”.
Instead, ask:
have we given it enough time?
are managers reinforcing it consistently?
are we measuring adoption rather than attendance?
and are we willing to stick with it when it feels uncomfortable?
Because if enablement gets rebuilt every time things get hard, it will never deliver the results everyone expects.
And if there’s one thing this year of Scaling Smarter should leave behind, it’s this: the teams that win aren’t the ones with the most enablement. They are the ones that stay the course.
— Ambre
