For decades, organisations have approached Learning and Development as a service. A business identifies a skills gap, L&D designs or purchases a course, employees attend, feedback is collected and the cycle begins again. While this model has undoubtedly helped millions of people develop new capabilities, it raises an important question: why do so many organisations still struggle to create genuine learning cultures?
In a recent episode of Voices of The Learning Network Podcast, I interviewed Perry Timms, internationally recognised HR expert, organisational designer and author. As always, Perry challenged conventional thinking—not by arguing against formal learning, but by encouraging us to rethink the role learning should play inside modern organisations. Rather than viewing learning as something that is packaged, scheduled and delivered, Perry believes organisations should focus on creating the conditions in which learning naturally flourishes.
That distinction may sound subtle, but it has profound implications for the future of Learning and Development.
Moving Beyond the Course Catalogue
Many organisations continue to judge the success of L&D by the number of programmes delivered, the size of their course catalogue or the completion rates recorded by their learning platforms. Those metrics certainly demonstrate activity, but they don’t necessarily tell us whether people are becoming more capable, more adaptable or better equipped to solve emerging business challenges.
Perry argues that learning doesn’t happen because someone attends a workshop or completes an online module. Those activities may contribute to development, but they represent only a small part of a much richer learning experience. People develop through conversations with colleagues, experimentation, challenging assignments, observation, reflection, mentoring and solving real business problems. Formal learning has value, but it should complement these experiences rather than attempt to replace them.
The challenge for L&D, therefore, isn’t simply creating more content. It’s designing an environment where learning becomes woven into the everyday fabric of work.
The Learning Mosaic
One of the concepts that particularly resonated with me was Perry’s idea of the “learning mosaic.” Rather than imagining development as a fixed pathway where everyone progresses through the same sequence of courses, the learning mosaic recognises that every individual builds knowledge through a unique combination of experiences.
One employee may learn through mentoring relationships, another through leading cross-functional projects, while someone else develops by participating in professional communities or tackling difficult customer challenges. Each experience adds another tile to an individual’s personal mosaic, gradually creating a richer picture of their knowledge, confidence and capability.
Reflecting on my own career, I realised that many of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned never appeared in a training catalogue. They came through interviewing hundreds of business leaders, organising events, making mistakes, testing new ideas and engaging in conversations that challenged my own assumptions. Those experiences couldn’t have been replicated by a traditional course because they were shaped by context, curiosity and human interaction.
Curiosity as a Competitive Advantage
Throughout our conversation, Perry returned repeatedly to the importance of curiosity. Organisations often spend considerable time asking what people need to learn, yet far less time considering how they might encourage people to become more curious in the first place.
Curious employees don’t simply absorb information. They ask better questions, seek out different perspectives, connect ideas across disciplines and remain open to changing their minds. In an environment where technology, customer expectations and business models continue to evolve at unprecedented speed, that mindset may prove more valuable than mastery of any single technical skill.
Creating that kind of culture requires psychological safety. People must feel comfortable admitting they don’t know something, experimenting with new approaches and sharing lessons from failure without fear of criticism. Learning cultures are built as much through trust as they are through content.
Learning as Part of the Work
One of Perry’s strongest arguments is that organisations should stop thinking about learning as an activity that happens separately from work. Too often, employees step away from their day jobs to attend training before returning to the same routines and pressures that existed beforehand. Unsurprisingly, much of what they learned is quickly forgotten.
A healthier model embeds learning directly into everyday work. Team projects become opportunities to develop new capabilities. Customer interactions become moments for reflection. Communities of practice enable knowledge sharing across organisational boundaries. Managers become coaches who encourage experimentation rather than simply supervising performance. In this environment, learning isn’t an interruption to work—it becomes one of the ways work gets done.
This approach also makes organisations more agile. Rather than waiting for new programmes to be designed every time priorities shift, employees continually build their knowledge through experience, collaboration and reflection.
The Promise of Polymorphic Organisations
Our discussion also explored Perry’s vision of polymorphic organisations—businesses that continually adapt while preserving the strengths that made them successful in the first place. Instead of treating change as a series of large-scale transformation projects, these organisations evolve continuously, responding to new opportunities without losing their identity.
Learning sits at the heart of that adaptability. When curiosity is encouraged, experimentation is rewarded and knowledge flows freely between people, organisations become better equipped to navigate uncertainty. Change becomes less disruptive because continuous learning has already become part of the culture.
Rethinking the Role of L&D
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from my conversation with Perry is that Learning and Development has an opportunity to redefine its purpose. Rather than measuring success by the volume of content produced or courses delivered, L&D can become the function that helps organisations build thriving learning ecosystems.
That means designing environments where people naturally share knowledge, supporting leaders who model curiosity, creating opportunities for peer learning and ensuring development happens through meaningful work rather than alongside it. The future of learning may be less about classrooms and catalogues, and more about helping organisations cultivate cultures where learning is continuous, collaborative and deeply connected to everyday business challenges.
If organisations can make that shift, they won’t simply have better training programmes. They’ll have workforces that are better prepared to adapt, innovate and thrive in whatever the future brings.