Why Soft Skills Build Longevity in L&D
with Nick Borey of Best Buy
As artificial intelligence accelerates content creation and changes established workflows, learning and development teams face a larger strategic question: What makes their work valuable beyond producing training materials? In this episode of Learning Leader Spotlight, Nick Borey explains why effective L&D organizations combine practical technology skills with disciplined processes, business partnership, human judgment, and an enduring commitment to learning.
Nick Borey is the senior manager of learning, design, and technology at Best Buy, where he leads learning design for the company’s enterprise learning organization across the United States. His team of instructional designers, developers, and leaders creates learning in multiple modalities, including presentations, web-based training, e-learning, and video, for areas such as retail, services, advertising, compliance, and risk.
Nick entered dedicated L&D work at AdventHealth, initially serving as a medical and training simulation operations specialist before moving into learning technology as an instructional designer and developer. Supported by a mentor who encouraged him to pair creativity with evidence-based practice, he earned a master’s degree in instructional design technology and the Project Management Professional credential. He later moved into leadership and became a director of learning design technology for the enterprise before joining Best Buy.
His experience as a designer, developer, project leader, hiring manager, and enterprise learning leader gives him a broad view of what L&D professionals need to build credible, sustainable careers.
L&D must operate as a business partner, not a content factory
One of the clearest themes in Nick’s perspective is that learning teams produce their best work when the organization treats learning as a visible, strategic capability. Executive leaders must embrace learning, and employees should be able to access relevant support in the flow of work rather than encountering learning only through mandatory courses.
This positioning changes the relationship between L&D and its stakeholders. Instead of functioning as a “web-based training factory” or a team that cleans up presentations, learning professionals can help business partners define performance problems and select appropriate solutions. A request for a course becomes the beginning of a diagnostic conversation, not an automatic production order.
The distinction is significant because not every organizational challenge originates with a knowledge or skill gap. By participating earlier in the conversation, learning teams can clarify the problem, determine whether learning is an appropriate response, and connect proposed work to the needs of the business.
Business Metrics Every Instructional Designer Should Know
Sustainable agility requires the right amount of structure
Traditional development approaches that apply a full, lengthy process to every project may no longer match the speed at which organizations operate. Nick nevertheless cautions against interpreting agility as the absence of standards, processes, or operational discipline. He has not seen a lack of structure make teams more efficient, creative, or organized. As he observes, “simplicity isn’t necessarily sustainable.”
A well-designed intake process illustrates the balance he advocates. Intake should initiate a meaningful conversation about the performance or learning problem while also capturing enough information to route the request appropriately. Automation can accelerate routing, reduce unnecessary triage, and provide visibility into demand without removing the autonomy of designers or their partners.
Processes also generate the data that allows an L&D function to communicate its value. Leaders need to understand the amount of work being completed, the impact of that work, and the effectiveness of the resulting solutions. Without consistent intake, workflow, review, and measurement practices, assembling reliable evidence becomes much more difficult.
The objective, therefore, is not maximum process. It is purposeful structure that removes recurring friction, supports measurement, and protects the time required for creative and consultative work.
AI is a tool whose value depends on human judgment
Nick embraces artificial intelligence, but he rejects the idea that either enthusiasm or resistance should substitute for thoughtful application. In his view, weak AI-generated work is often the result of weak practice. When a person accepts an initial output without refining, validating, or improving it, the underlying problem is not simply the technology. Comparable quality problems can occur when people use presentation software, authoring tools, or video-editing applications without sufficient care.
AI proficiency therefore involves more than generating content. Professionals must learn when to use the technology, how to shape its output, and where human expertise must remain central. This includes reviewing results, applying context, making intentional design decisions, and ensuring the final product meets the needs of the audience and organization.
Nick also offers a nuanced view of AI’s relationship to creativity. A visual artist or another creative professional may not want to transfer the central expression of their craft to an AI system. That does not prevent the individual from using AI to automate intake administration, accelerate routine workflows, or reduce backend tasks. Applied in this way, the technology can create more time for original human work rather than replacing it.
This rejects a one-size-fits-all mandate. AI does not need to perform the same function for every employee or appear in every task. Its strategic contribution may be greatest where it removes low-value effort while preserving room for expertise, creativity, and judgment.
Corporate L&D increasingly rewards versatile professionals
Nick describes the modern corporate learning professional as a “jack of all trades and a master of some.” Deep expertise remains valuable, but narrow specialization can become a limitation when a role requires an individual to design a solution, build it, communicate with stakeholders, and manage the project through delivery.
This does not mean every practitioner must be an expert in every modality. It does mean professionals should be able to contribute at a minimum viable level across key activities while maintaining one or more areas of genuine strength. An instructional designer, for example, may specialize in learning strategy or curriculum architecture while still being capable of building a presentation, developing an e-learning experience, or working in tools such as Articulate.
Versatility becomes especially important as technology changes the division of labor. Tasks once separated among multiple specialized roles may now be completed by smaller teams or individuals supported by AI and other tools. The differentiator is not merely access to software, but the curiosity and willingness required to explore new capabilities and integrate them into effective practice.
Nick captures this mindset in a compact phrase: “To be that human element in an AI world, you’ve gotta be the geek.” The point is not technical identity for its own sake. It is an expectation that strong practitioners remain curious about new releases, experiment with unfamiliar features, and look for better ways to solve learning problems.
Long-term career value comes from credibility and adaptability
Technical skill can help a professional become a go-to resource, but Nick views communication, project management, change management, and leadership capability as essential to career longevity. The most valuable practitioners can explain the reasoning behind their design choices in language stakeholders understand while also providing reliable timelines, clear review cycles, and consistent delivery.
The quality of the stakeholder experience matters alongside the quality of the learning product. A visually impressive course loses some of its value if partners do not know when they will see a draft, what feedback is required, or whether the project will be delivered on time. Conversely, the professional who combines sound learning design with dependable execution becomes an expert partner rather than a transactional service provider.
Adaptability also requires professional honesty. Nick directs part of this discussion toward teachers transitioning into corporate L&D. Teaching provides meaningful transferable capabilities, but it does not eliminate the need to learn the practices, tools, and expectations of a different professional environment. He encourages candidates to represent their experience accurately, explain how they are building relevant skills, and acknowledge what they still need to learn.
This transparency can be an advantage rather than a weakness. Nick has hired teachers who became excellent team members, particularly when they communicated clearly about their current experience, transferable strengths, learning goals, and potential contribution.
Practical Takeaways for Learning Leaders
Position intake as diagnosis rather than order fulfillment
An intake process should capture operational information, but its more important purpose is to start a conversation about the underlying problem. L&D leaders can structure intake around the desired business outcome, the affected audience, current performance, available evidence, operational constraints, and the consequences of doing nothing.
Routing and notifications may be automated, but professional judgment should determine whether the response requires formal instruction, performance support, communication, process clarification, coaching, or another intervention. This helps prevent course requests from entering production before the problem has been sufficiently understood.
Design processes that produce both speed and evidence
Teams can examine each stage of their workflow and distinguish between steps that protect quality and steps that merely create delay. Standardized intake fields, automated routing, defined review windows, visible project status, and consistent completion criteria can create useful structure without dictating every creative decision.
The resulting workflow should also make measurement easier. L&D organizations need enough consistency to report demand, output, delivery performance, impact, and effectiveness. Process design becomes part of the function’s value strategy because it supplies the evidence leaders need when evaluating capacity, priorities, and investment.
Apply AI where it increases capacity without weakening accountability
Rather than issuing a broad requirement to use AI everywhere, leaders can evaluate work at the task level. Administrative intake, early brainstorming, content organization, workflow support, and repetitive backend activities may offer useful opportunities for acceleration.
Human review remains critical. Practitioners retain responsibility for accuracy, context, instructional quality, audience relevance, and the appropriateness of the final product. This framing encourages experimentation without implying that the presence of AI automatically improves an outcome.
Develop broad capability while preserving meaningful specialization
Capability models and development plans can reflect the expectation that practitioners possess both breadth and depth. Baseline capability may include needs analysis, instructional design, content development, facilitation awareness, project management, stakeholder communication, and familiarity with multiple delivery modalities.
Employees can then develop deeper mastery in areas such as e-learning development, video, learning technology, measurement, leadership development, or performance consulting. This “master of some” approach gives organizations greater flexibility while allowing employees to build distinctive expertise.
Hire for curiosity, transparency, and learning agility
Technical portfolios and prior experience provide important evidence, but Nick places considerable weight on less tangible qualities. Strong candidates demonstrate enthusiasm for the work, receptiveness to feedback, comfort with change, and an ongoing desire to learn from colleagues at every level.
For career transitioners, honest positioning is particularly important. A candidate does not need to claim an L&D title they have not held. A more credible presentation explains the experience they do have, the skills that transfer, the gaps they have identified, and the concrete work underway to close those gaps.
Build networks beyond organizational boundaries
Nick describes the L&D profession as a relatively close-knit community in which professionals frequently reconnect through LinkedIn, conferences, and industry relationships.
External networks help practitioners locate expertise, exchange ideas, and remain connected to changes in the profession. They also support career resilience. Organizations restructure, roles change, and priorities shift. Professionals who have established credibility both inside and outside their employer are better positioned to identify resources, connect others with expertise, and navigate an unexpected transition.
Resources and Tools Mentioned
- Articulate: Referenced as an example of an authoring platform practitioners should be willing to explore as new updates and AI capabilities become available.
- Project Management Professional credential: Nick earned the PMP to strengthen his tactical and project-management knowledge.
Closing Reflection
Nick’s perspective presents the future of L&D as neither purely technological nor purely creative. Sustainable value comes from combining versatile production skills with evidence-based practice, disciplined execution, stakeholder partnership, curiosity, and human judgment.
AI may accelerate the work, but it also raises the standard for what professionals contribute beyond the tool itself. The practitioners and learning organizations most likely to remain relevant will be those that use technology intentionally while strengthening the credibility, adaptability, and relationships that make learning a genuine business capability.
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