Building a Learning Culture: Boost Employee Morale, Engagement & Performance

Many managers and leaders are intrigued by the idea of a learning culture. A culture that enables the organisation to adapt and change, or outpace the competition, or pivot based on customer demands. A learning culture also helps to improve the overall performance of the business, and it's a good thing to nurture for people too.

All in all, a learning culture is a positive aspect in a business.

Culture is behaviour

The first and foremost thing to consider is that culture is nothing more than group habit; its the sum of everyone's behaviours.

Therefore, if we wish to build a learning culture, we must focus on the behaviour of learning. Not just the "behaviour" collectively, but individual behaviours.

This is rarely done through training, which we'll come to in a minute. Training is an easy initiative to implement, learning is a behaviour to encourage. Training and learning are not the same thing. Knowing and doing are not the same thing either.

There is a place for training, but training is not the same as learning. We'll come on to that in a bit.

What follows are some methods and approaches I use to build a culture of learning in my own teams, companies and for those I consult with.

More school

I'm going to advocate for bringing more "school" into the workplace.

Bring more schooling back into work? Really Rob? You’ve gone mad? You want to go back to school? 

Well, actually, after many years of work I'd welcome the chance to go back to studying full time again. Anyway, back to the point.

I think we can learn a lot about building a learning culture from "school" - well, the original meaning of the word anyway.

Back in Ancient Greece the word skhole, from which school is derived, used to mean:

"spare time, leisure, rest, ease; idleness; that in which leisure is employed; learned discussion;" - Etymonline

In other words, school was about having leisure time, where this time was spent studying, developing our thinking, and discussing topics with others. This was of course, in a time before Netflix and orange coloured crisps.

Leisure time used to be spent bettering our minds and brains, at least in Ancient Greece. The stoics also believed in using leisure time to grow our knowledge.

Of course, schools now are a product of the industrial age, and depending on your political and philosophical leanings, they are either welcome, or need reform.

That aside, the original meaning of the word "school" was about learning and cultivating our minds in a leisurely way.

Now, I’m not going to suggest that we build a learning culture in work by hijacking people’s leisure time outside of work - but we can, and should, approach learning in a more equine, calm and easy way.

Ease, calm, idleness

In our corporate worlds, training and learning has become an industry in itself. We must train our people. We must provide access to training. We must therefore find ways to measure training (we'll come on to that in a minute).

Training has become something we expect in all companies. Corporate training, training budgets and training initiatives are high on many leaders agendas. Managers are often held to account regarding how many people they have trained.

But training and learning are not the same thing.

In a bid to industrialise corporate training, we sometimes lose sight of the goal of training - it's to learn something.

With this structured and rigid approach to company training, we have created an industry of technical solutions, generic training, scaleable solutions and metrics around training.

But true learning comes from a more equine, calm and idle approach. Learning is done for the pursuit of deeper knowledge. Learning is done for the joy of it and for the opportunities to make ourselves and the business better. Learning is done as needs arise and curiosity is piqued.

Have you ever worked with someone who has sat every training certificate in your industry and still can't do the job? Have you ever met someone who can spout theory and quotes, and sound intelligent, but cannot work well with others?

When we focus on training alone, devoid of the purpose of learning, we potentially create well qualified people but no improvement in ability and business results.

The origins of school were about the pursuit of knowledge, for the sake of becoming smarter. It wasn't forced, mandated, measured in a spreadsheet and scheduled once a quarter. Knowledge was gained by study, discourse and conversation.

I think we've lost a lot of that.

Maybe it's better to encourage frequent, ongoing, regular and open minded learning. Habits and behaviours of wanting to get better at our jobs and make the business better.

Learning that is done in the job itself. Learning from mistakes. Learning that is aligned to our goals and dreams. Learning that accentuates our strengths. Rather than learning that is generic, controlled, scheduled and mandated by people far removed from our needs and goals.

My approach to learning cultures has always been to make learning a core behaviour that is critical, weaved into the fabric of the business, relaxed and prioritised.

If we approach learning as something to be done to people, typically on-masse to reduce the costs, we are starting from the wrong footing. It may take longer to nudge, encourage and inspire people to want to learn as a core behaviour, but in the long run a culture of learning emerges.

Learning is not put on people, it is driven by people. There is a big difference.

Role model learning

As a leader or manager your actions always speak louder than words. 

It’s not uncommon for those in charge to wax lyrical about the virtues of learning, feedback, improvement, knowledge and study. And then do absolutely none of this themselves. 

They don’t grow, study, embrace change or nudge their own behaviours, yet they often expect it from others. That’s not how it works. 

There are ideas and memes about "Leaders going last". That surely doesn't apply in all contexts? Certainly, when it comes to learning, Leaders and managers go first.

If you role model learning as a priority in your work as a leader and manager, others will mimic.

Your team will see that you don’t have it all figured out (which you don’t) and see that it’s OK to not know everything (which you don't).

They'll see that leaders need to keep learning too.

Leaders and managers should role model learning, education and personal growth. 

If you do provide training for the team (we'll come on to that later), go first with it.

It’s not “we don't need training but they do”. If you’re afraid of being seen as not knowing what you’re doing, then fight that urge; do the training. Even if you do know the subject, still attend.

Even better would be to sit the training with your team - together.

Don’t hide the fact you may not know all of the answers, show people you’re vulnerable and keen to learn.

If you are afraid of not knowing something in front of your team, you’ll send a message that it’s OK to hide weaknesses, or mistakes, or lack of knowledge, or ignorance of better ways of working. Your team will then do the same. Not a good start to building a learning culture. 

Role model attending conferences, reading books, learning on the job and studying how the business works.

Bring your insights back to the team and encourage them to experiment with new ideas. Attend conferences or talks or seminars with your team. Buy great books for the team. 

Bring in guest speakers, share interesting links to articles with your team and above all else, start to shift your behaviours as you learn more. 

Learning is about becoming smarter and more knowledgeable - so put what you learn to use by altering the way you do work, or the way you carry yourself, or the way you speak to others.

Learning without visible improvements in behaviours is merely information acquisition - worthy but incomplete.

As soon as a leader or manager thinks they are finished with their learning, the downward spiral of performance and culture starts. 

Show your peers you don’t know the answer to everything too. Ask for help. Even if others don’t do this and it’s frowned upon at the leadership table. Be brave.

What’s the alternative? You’re out of your depth all the time, you’re stressed, you’re frustrated, you’re resentful, you never grow and get better, you fail to deliver because you didn’t ask for help? 

This doesn’t sound like a positive role model for the team, nor a good way to deliver your results. or live your work life.

Ask questions, lots of questions. Questions show you're curious and you care. Questions show you want to learn more. Others will copy and mimic.

If you do some of the above, you’ll send a clear message that you’re always learning - always trying to get better. And trust me, others will follow suit. People will see that it's ok to not know everything. People will see that learning is something they are "allowed" to do.

After all, we should never expect people to know all of the answers, but we should expect people to learn.

Create time and space for learning

Learning is not a quick thing. At least deep learning of tricky subjects, or even how to make the business better. You’ll need to find time, space and energy to make this happen. 

This is precisely why I work towards achieving flow of work rather than merely filling up our “capacity” of people and hours.

If everyone’s working flat out on busy work, when will they find time to grow, or fix problems, or improve the business, or innovate? They will be too overwhelmed to make the business better. They will be too busy to learn how to be more effective.

Creative problem solving needs time and space, so does learning.

It’s your job as a manager to help people find that space by looking at what levers you can pull to improve the business, and find ways to help people to stop doing busy non-essential work.

When we focus on flow and not capacity, we get smoother and quicker at delivering business results and we also leave space for emergencies, pivots and learning. 

When we focus on flow and not capacity, we get the chance to leave some gaps, some slack, some space. 

This slack (assuming it’s not used up by emerging issues, problems and emergencies) could be used in a number of ways:

1. Studying and improving the business
2. Team training and learning
3. Individual learning
4. Creative sessions designed to tease out great ideas

I think there’s a place for all of these. 

If our teams (people) are not learning and developing we’ll struggle to remain competitive, to come up with new ideas, to improve the business in service of our ambitious strategy and to optimise how we work.

These new ideas could become the next big product or service. These ideas could become a 10x improvement on effectiveness.

We could use this space and time to improve the business greatly merely by taking time to learn how the business works and spot improvements.

Where is our next product or service, or improvement going to come from, if we barely have time for a toilet break as we grind away delivering?

We could take this time to develop more able people. Or devise new ways of doing work. We could use this space to bring the team together to share ideas for growth and learning.

We could shine a light on great work and ask those involved to share what they’re doing, and why it’s worth others doing the same. 

We could even assign a period of time each week for individual learning pursuits. With this approach we could even still operate in a capacity model knowing that a part of everyone’s week is carved out for personal growth. 

You could send people to conferences, or maybe the whole team to a local meet up or training event. You could bring guest speakers in to share what they know. 

I’ve done all of the above in various teams with the single goal of making it crystal clear - learning is essential and it’s a priority. Maybe not above delivering business results, because without any value being delivered we don’t have a business, but learning is a high priority for sure. 

There are so many viable learning options that you could implement or encourage as a leader or manager. So many. It’s really over to you to see what would be best for your team and your business. 

If we don’t invest in learning, growth and development we’ll soon be facing competition from a company that is. We’ll lose people to companies that do value personal growth for employees, or are more effective, or have a culture of growth. People always want to feel like the job is developing them.

We may lose market share as other companies have new products, services or ways of working that are better than ours. We’ll face a never ending slow down of delivery as we face more systemic problems that we could have solved, if we’d carved out time. Wicked problems will be everywhere, and they need new knowledge and creativity to solve them.

Without time and space for learning, we will make it hard for people to do their work and, in my view, be squandering the human potential we have in our business. And that’s a huge shame.

It’s important to carve out time, energy and attention for learning.

Don’t let the administrators take over

I’m always impressed when I see leaders and managers encouraging personal learning that is not tracked, measured or boiled down to a number. 

Sure, we want to measure the effectiveness of learning through changes in behaviour. We want people to have coaching plans. But we don't have to boil that down to a "training number".

We want to study behaviours to be sure our learning initiatives are effective. We may want to track how much we're spending on formalised training. But we're not in the habit of boiling learning outcomes down to a number.

As soon as we start to “administer” training and learning, we will need numbers to track it. If we’re administering something, we’re looking to control it, or at least report on it. And that, in most organisations, means boiling something down to a number. 

• How many people did we train?
• How many people sat the course?
• How many courses do we have?
• How many hours did people spend learning?

Now, there likely will be this kind of “training and tracking” in place already in your organisation - and some of the training delivered may be very helpful indeed.

But this kind of “training and tracking” is typically scheduled, global, generic, scalable, classroom based learning.

It's the mistake many leaders make when they focus on "capability" over "ability". They assume that because 50% of people have attended a training course on "strategy" that they have 50% of people able to do that kind of work. It doesn't work like that.

Attending a training course and exhibiting the right behaviours are not always linked. Knowing and doing are not the same thing. Information and action are two different things.

I’m talking about consistent relaxed learning and growth done in the pursuit of educating ourselves, and seeing the improvements in our work, our behaviours and improvements in the business.

Learning as a habit and behaviour that is part of our rhythm and fabric as a team, not an event to stick in your calendar and a number in a list somewhere. 

As soon as we boil learning down to a number we tend to only care about the number, not whether that number was well considered, useful, accurate or meaningful, and more important, we often don't check that behaviours changed because of the training.

Numbers tend to need controlling, reporting, measuring, tracking and ultimately they end up with a boss somewhere. 

If you’re lucky, you’re the one who holds these numbers - and you can play the learning numbers game. You can report on them and ensure people sit the courses, then ignore the numbers and focus on learning as a behaviour, a behaviour that grows the ability and competency of individuals.

Therefore, you can meet the learning needs of people and the business, not just meet a quota.

If you don't control those numbers, its likely someone else will be chasing the numbers, and pretty soon, you’ll be doing initiatives and training to meet the numbers, rather than embracing learning as something to be done for the pursuit of getting smarter, better and more effective. That's if you're not careful.

I’ve worked with countless people who have every certification under the sun and still couldn’t do their job properly. I've worked in ineffective organisations where people are in training courses every month and still not getting better.

We want learning to be a habit and core behaviour developed on-the-job, through a personal desire to learn, by putting information into action and ultimately, seeing a change in behaviours related to the learning people are doing.

We're looking for learning to improve business results and behaviours, not a number in a spreadsheet.

We're learning because we want to get better, not to meet a quota in a report.

Don’t always expect a return for learning (but you should for training)

In one of my early jobs every employee was given a reasonable amount of money per year to spend on personal learning outside of work. This was in addition to a company training budget.

When I first joined, I assumed this money was to be spent on work related learning in my own time, or at least learning to support my personal growth related to my job.

After chatting to HR it turned out I could spend this money on anything - as long as it was considered “learning”. 

One person joined a local gardening course to learn how to grow vegetables. Someone else took guitar lessons. One person bought as many books as they could with the money. One person spent it on an advanced driving course. I spent mine on Tai Chi lessons. 

This was, and is, a wonderful scheme and one I advocate. 

I asked the HR manager why they implemented this. 

Was there some motive behind it? Was it about staff retention? Did they expect higher levels of engagement and productivity?

Did they secretly hope people would feel guilty not spending the money on work related learning - and therefore spend it on getting better at their jobs outside of work time?

Nope. The head of HR told me the origin story.

It turned out the CEO was a classic car fan. He had many nice cars and would often bring them to work.

One morning an employee was chatting to him about cars. The employee mentioned that he had an old MG but didn’t know how to restore the bodywork on it. The CEO suggested he take a local college course on bodywork restoration. The employee, in a moment of bravery, said he couldn’t afford the course.

Don’t we all want to work for people like this? The CEO went straight to his office, looked up how much a local course on bodywork repair was, and asked HR (and finance I guess) to allocate that same amount of money to every single employee to spend on anything they like - as long as it was personal learning. 

Wow.

I’ll be honest, this company was a damn fine company to work for. I enjoyed my time there a lot. I only left because the commute was killing me!

Something even more remarkable happened over the next year.  

Even though the CEO (and exec team) didn’t set out to build a learning culture, they succeeded. 

After launching this initiative, everyone believed the leadership cared deeply about learning (above the standard corporate “training and tracking” stuff that was in place).

Employees felt that the leaders wanted learning to be foundational to everything in the company. As such, people brought this enthusiasm of learning into their work. 

Without any nudging from leaders and managers, various teams started brown-bag learning lunches. They were called this because management agreed to fund a free packed-lunch for everyone who attended - and those lunches were in brown bags. 

People started to bring in books to share with others, and pretty soon an impressive (but scattered) library was starting to form. The guy who spent his “personal learning money” on books brought them all in and added them to the library too.

Leaders and managers started using some of their internal training budget to buy books for the scattered library too. HR bought some nice sofas and chairs and collected all of the books together to create a learning library corner in the office. 

Someone invited a guest speaker in for a lunchtime talk. Word got out about this talk and it was standing room only. After hearing about this, the CEO invited some of his high-flying executive friends to do fireside chats too. 

What the heck was happening? 

What started as a free gift to everyone based on the price of a car repair course, slowly, but surely, grew into a learning movement across the business. 

People started to study and learn how they could make the business better. The leaders, at first reluctantly (remember, they didn’t set out to build a learning culture), created a space in the main atrium for people to post business improvement opportunities. Sure, some were stupid and hostile, but many were genuine business improvements. 

The CEO asked his leadership team to own the good initiatives and make them happen. Space was carved out to make the business better. Revenue went up, the quality of output went up and you could feel the energy rippling through the business. 

Pretty soon the majority of the organisation were engaged in studying, learning and improving themselves and the business - all of which was never mandated.

There was no expectation from that first "personal learning" initiative that anything else would happen. There was no return expected from the personal learning initiative. It was learning for the sake of learning.

It created a focus on learning that morphed behaviours, attention and energy. It was a remarkable thing to see. And it was never planned. 

Yet, today, in many organisations learning initiatives are implemented for a more direct and obvious return; more money, more productivity, more more more.

Some companies will even charge employees the cost of any training they sit, if they leave the company within a year of completing it. WTF? 

Training is seen as something an organisation must do, but training and learning are two different things.

There’s more training available to many employees than I can recall ever before. We can be certified, qualified and trained all day if we wish. There is no end to the scale of training available now.

And yet, we’re still struggling with low engagement, quiet quitting, wasteful systems of work and ineffective organisations. 

We have highly “qualified” and "trained" people who can’t do the basics.

“Never confuse education with intelligence, you can have a PhD and still be an idiot.” ― Richard P. Feynman

When we administer training we give up control to bosses and numbers and quotas. It’s therefore much easier to send people on training courses and then measure attendance, than it is to do the hard work of making learning a fundamental behaviour within our teams. 

It's easier to boil learning down to training and attendance numbers, than it is to measure whether what's being trained is being actioned in the workplace.

As soon as our learning initiatives become only about profit, retention, productivity, expectations of training and growth, or merely hitting certain easy to measure quotas, I’d argue we may well have lost sight of what learning is.

Training and learning are not the same.

Learning does not have to have an end goal. Learning does not have to have a return. Learning is something to be done for the joy of it. Learning is something to be done as a habit and behaviour. Learning is something to be done to get better.

All learning, no matter the subject, will help individuals grow in some way.

Learning is a habit and behaviour. Training is a single spot event. There is a big difference.

We're not trying to build a training culture. We're trying to build a learning culture.

Any training course provided that is not needed, or does not shift behaviours, is actually a waste of money and time. Encouraging learning though, is a gift to the individual, and the business.

Ask learning based questions

When something goes wrong, instead of chasing blame and pointing the finger, ask “How could we avoid this again?” or “What could we learn from this?”.

When someone objects, or argues, or presents alternative views, we could listen and ask “Do you have evidence to support this?” or “How did you get to this conclusion?”.

When someone states an absolute we could ask “Is there ever a time when that is not true?” or “If this absolute is true, then the opposite must be false right?” or “Is this always the case?” - critical thinking in action.

If someone doesn’t know the answer to something we could ask “Why not take some time to look into this and come back with some potential next steps?” instead of merely giving them the answer. 

When we’re coming together in meetings, or around work, we could ask “What problem are we trying to solve?”. Or “How do we know this is a problem?” or “Is this a problem worth solving?”

And everyday we could ask “How could we make the business better?”

Good questions keep a business alive and spark curiosity.

Managers and leaders are often too quick to provide answers or direction, without asking questions. There is learning potential in letting people find their own way, or challenging long-held beliefs, or opening up a topic for discussion.

Discussion is the essence of the ancient Greek word for school.

Polite, direct discussions about facts, insights and data, and opinions. Discussions that allow people to challenge without repercussions. Discussions where different voices are heard. 

Questions allow the opportunity for discussions. 

Sometimes, of course, when an impending problem is about to hit, you may need to take control, and direct, and lead, and steer, to avoid a disaster. But more often than not, there’s room and time to ask some deeply curious questions; to get other people thinking and curious; to create a chance for a discussion.

Questions often lead to richer insights. Richer insights lead to learning. The more we ask intelligent questions, the more we encourage learning.

Collective Intelligence

You have to trust the collective intelligence of the organisation. Synergy as Buckminster Fuller would call it. 

The whole is often more intelligent than the sum of its parts. It’s made even better if people have the habit and behaviours of being curious, of asking questions and of being keen to learn.

I remember after we’d got the startup to a flowing, consistent way of operating and growth was happening, I looked up from my desk at the team.

As I sat there looking across the room at hundreds of people, I had a moment of panic.

• How the hell are this many people all working together?
• How does it work (even though I’d helped build it)?
• How is it not falling apart every day?

But it did work, and it continued to work.

If you’ve hired the right people, set high standards of behaviours, are nudging these behaviours in the right way, role modelled learning, and have provided clarity and alignment, then the right action happens.

Problems are solved nearest to the problem. Decisions are made by people you trust, nearest to the work itself. Escalations are infrequent. People come to work and actually work - and have fun too. 

It’s not easy to get to this point but a lot of it comes down to ensuring you have a culture (behaviours) of learning. 

When individuals are learning and looking for ways to grow, improve and learn for the sake of learning, they bring this behaviour to everything they do.

• Is there a better way of doing this?
• Could we stop that mistake from happening again?
• Did I show up as the best version of myself in this meeting? 
• What skills do I need now, that I don't have?

As each person embraces learning as a behaviour, and sees learning as something to be enjoyed, swam with, embraced and weaved into the very fabric of who they are, then you’ll see that the collective intelligence takes over.

I don’t know when, or how, but you’ll see your team or organisation striving to improve, to learn, to get better. 

I believe this is only possible when leaders and managers role model learning, find time and space for learning to happen, encourage it, support it, don’t turn learning into numbers, and allow individuals to grow their strengths.

Collectively, people know what needs to be done (because you have a strategy). They know what behaviours are acceptable (because you’ve been role modelling and giving feedback in all aspects of behaviours).

People know how far they can push each other. People know they can try new things carefully, because you’ve role modelled how to do this. People know they can ask for help, because they’ve seen lots of other people do this, including yourself.

People know they don’t need to have all of the answers, but they are expected to learn, because you've role modelled and encouraged that too. 

People know what other people are good at, and what their own weaknesses are. Collectively, they come together to get stuff done, each person capitalising on their strengths, and mitigating each other's weaknesses.

If you get this right, they have a lot of fun too.

I credit almost all of the successes I’ve had down to a simple thing; learning how to get better and encouraging others to do the same.

Learning, I believe, is the foundational aspect of building amazing companies filled with amazing people.

• How can we get better?
• What could we do differently?
• How can we creatively overcome this obstacle?
• What problem are we trying to solve?
• Are there ways to make this work more enjoyable?
• How can I leverage this opportunity to grow?

This, when done by people in your organisation, is collective intelligence.

As you build teams, you’re going to need this. If you don’t encourage learning, growth and education, you’ll need to be involved in everything - every decision, every problem, every challenge. And that’s not possible, nor desirable, nor fun. 

I realised that collective intelligence was taking over when I looked at the team that day.

They were solving problems, collectively working on delivering value, escalating only when needed. And this, I believe, was due to a value, habit and behaviour we’d spent 2 years building; learning.

Here are a couple of the actual company values we operated by:

1. If you see something that isn’t right, make it right
2. Better is a beautiful word - how can we make things better?
3. A mistake is an opportunity to make ourselves, and the business, better
4. If the problem keeps popping up then we clearly haven’t solved it
5. What do you need to know now, that you don't? How can you fix this gap?

All of these are learning orientated.

Collective intelligence is about individuals coming together to capitalise on the broader human potential of all involved. It pays then to focus on the individual when it comes to learning, not the "collective".

Training is often directed towards the collective. Scalable, generic, superficial, numbers based training for everyone. Learning is a personal, and individual, behaviour, aimed at helping them grow their strengths and solve the problems they currently face.

As a side note:

There’s a reason people get riled about school class sizes here in the UK - it’s harder to teach the individual what they specifically need when there are 35 + kids in a class. Someone will always need to be left behind.

I was speaking with a teacher friend of mine who said, because of the targets and numbers driven measurement culture, and the class sizes, they have something called the bubble.

They essential draw a circle around the middle-third of the class in terms of results to date - and focus there.

The top third will get decent results with no extra support - and meet the targets. The bottom third, even with some focus may still not achieve great results, and likely won't meet the targets.

But, if they focus on the middle third, they can lift this group's results higher, thereby meeting targets and quotas.

I understand why this happens, but it's quite disheartening. What about the even greater potential the "top" third could achieve? Why would we ignore the "bottom" third? This is a by-product of focusing on targets, around easily quantifiable "teaching", typically focussed on a few core academic subjects.

In many organisations we do something all together more frustrating.

We take the whole and bung them into a quantifiable training course - and expect everyone to come out knowing the subject. It doesn't work that way.

• There’s a reason that I advocate for on-the-job training in the workplace - it’s about the individual learning from someone who is already capable. 
• There’s a reason I insist every single person has a tailored coaching plan in place - development has to be about the individual. 
• There’s a reason I encourage everyone to learn how to study - we all learn in unique ways. 
• There’s a reason I encourage people to explore their own personal knowledge management system - it’s personal. 
• There's a reason I always ensure people know their strengths, communication preferences and the things that bring them happiness. (The Trinity of Career Development) - why would we attend training that doesn't build our strengths?

Collective intelligence is leveraging each individual who, when working with other individuals, achieves more than they could on their own. Together they broaden the businesses ability to solve wicked problems, get more work done and make the business better.

As I sat there looking at the team, I saw diversity, expertise, egos, personalities, ambition, drive; individuals coming together to get stuff done. All of them enthused with the behaviour of learning. Everyone coming together to create a collective intelligence.

It all came from a focus on learning.

That focus on learning needs to be modelled by leaders and managers, encouraged at all levels in the organisation and not boiled down to a number. Learning is a behaviour, not a number. Learning is how to keep the business alive, and thrive in your career too.

And yes, learning doesn't always have to be about work related topics. Classic car repairs training triggered an explosion of learning, and tai chi really helped me focus my mind.

They may not seem to be related to business results, but they are related to learning - and learning should underpin the very fabric of your business.

When it does - you absolutely have a learning culture - a behaviour of learning.