A learning culture that works
Most organisations fundamentally misunderstand what a learning culture actually is. They think it's about training courses and development budgets, ticking boxes on annual performance reviews, and investing in the latest learning management systems. Yet in reality it is more than that. It’s an embedded behaviour - driven from the top of the organisation - to continually improve the way work gets done.
35 years ago author Peter Senge wrote about the five disciplines of a learning organisation model: personal mastery, mental models, building shared vision, team learning through dialogue, and systems thinking. However, recent research suggests we need to add two more elements to make this work in today's reality: knowledge generation/sharing, and organisational behaviour.
Why? Because learning isn't just about the individual, it's about the collective. Also, it's not just about knowledge acquisition, it's about creating it, sharing it, and embedding it into how you actually work on a day-to-day basis.
Generationally, the expectation is that information on how to work more effectively isn’t retained for the benefit of one or two individuals. It should be used to enhance the conditions for all.
Google has embedded this into their four-pillar approach. Learning is a process (not an event), learning happens in real life (not just classrooms), learning is personal (tailored to individual needs), and learning is social (collaborative by design).
What’s brilliant about this approach is that it recognises that learning happens everywhere in an organisation; from everyday conversations to project debriefs to customer interactions, and yes, sometimes in formal training too.
However, the key ingredient that most organisations miss is psychological safety. People won't admit what they don't know, won't ask questions, and certainly won't share their mistakes if they fear ridicule or retribution.
Psychological safety isn't just nice-to-have, it's the bedrock upon which everything else is built. Without it, expensive learning platforms become digital dust collectors (I’ve seen many of these in my time!), and development programmes become box-ticking exercises (and these!).
So how do you actually create this culture? Start with these three foundations:
Normalise not knowing. Leaders need to model curiosity and admit when they're learning something new. Make "I don't know, let's find out together" an acceptable (even celebrated) response
Create systems for knowledge sharing. This isn't about databases, it's about building sharing into your regular operational and rituals, where teams share what didn't work and what they learned
Measure learning, not just performance. Track how quickly teams adapt to change, how effectively knowledge spreads across departments, how many creative solutions emerge from the ground up
An effective learning culture isn't created solely by training budgets or fancy platforms, it's created by leaders who understand that in a rapidly changing world, the ability to learn faster than your competitors might be your only sustainable competitive advantage.
Does your organisation have a learning culture?
