What It Takes to Build Enablement Functions (After Doing It 3x)

I’m currently in my third iteration of helping an organization build an enablement function from the ground up. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the challenges are always the same. No matter the company, the industry, or the stage of growth, standing up an enablement function means navigating the same friction points, over and over again.

And here’s the real kicker: you don’t solve these challenges. You don’t check a box and move on. You learn to work through them, continuously, because they never actually go away.

• Ambiguity is constant. What enablement owns, where it fits, and how it delivers value will always be evolving. The work isn’t about eliminating ambiguity—it’s about continuously bringing clarity. In every meeting, every initiative, every conversation, you’re making the unknown a little more known.
• Competing priorities are a given. Not because different teams want different things (though that's part of it), but because the business itself is always balancing multiple needs at once. There will never be a perfect roadmap, only trade-offs. The job isn’t to eliminate competing priorities—it’s to drive alignment so the business can focus on what matters most, when it matters most.
• Unfamiliarity is inevitable. New products, new markets, new hires. There will always be a learning curve, both for you and the people you support. Enablement isn’t about making everyone “get it” all at once—it’s about creating an environment where people can continuously learn, experiment, and figure things out.
• Skepticism is recurring. Every new leader, every first-time SDR, every experienced AE who’s seen ineffective training before—there will always be some level of doubt, and usually quite a bit. And they’re not wrong to be skeptical. Most corporate training is irrelevant, bloated, and disconnected from what people actually need. You don’t get trust by default. You have to build it. Every time. By proving that you not only care about their success, but that you can actually help them be successful.
• Scaling is never “done.” What worked for a team of 50 won’t work for 500. What worked for 500 won’t work for 5,000. Enablement isn’t about finding the perfect system—it’s about constantly adapting, evolving, and figuring out what works best for where you are right now.

None of this is easy. It’s ambiguous work. It’s iterative work. It's hard work .That’s why so many organizations try to simplify it—turning it into a checklist, a one-time initiative, or a set of predefined processes. But enablement doesn’t work that way. It’s not about building something static. It’s about learning how to navigate complexity, how to operate within constant change, and how to keep making things a little better, every single day.

But it's good to do hard things. This is the work that actually matters.