MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Learning for a Living

Even though we want to learn and companies need us to, it’s hard, and we get little space for it. Part of the problem, I have found, is that we often think of learning as something that happens at work or alongside it. We seldom acknowledge that learning is work — work that, paradoxically, gets harder in successful careers and organizations, where shame is most unwelcome.

So how can employers make space for learning, and how can we as individuals tackle the work of learning, especially the sort of learning that transforms careers and organizations? Both endeavors require understanding that learning is plural. There is more than one kind, and each kind needs its own space and challenges us in different ways.