The Conditions for Growth

Learning Is Not a Spare-Time Activity

We often think development is a resource problem.

Give people a budget, access to courses (and books, platforms, and learning tools etc) and they'll learn.

But people don’t act on resources. They act on conditions. And money is just one condition.

Time

Permission, and

Structure matter just as much.

I recently heard a leader say he allocates €1,000 per employee for development. But only about half his people actually use it. So he budgets for that reality.

But that’s not really a utilisation problem. It’s a design problem.

Because development rarely happens in leftover time. It happens in protected time.

If learning is always expected to happen after the “real work” is done, then development becomes optional. And optional things are easily postponed.

We don’t just need development budgets. We need organisations that create the conditions for development to actually happen.

Block the time.

Protect the space.

Signal that growth matters.

Measure it like it matters too.

So if you are an employee with a learning budget:

• Put development time in your calendar before the week fills up

• Treat learning time like a client meeting or leadership meeting

• Tell your manager what you are learning and why it matters

• Share insights back with the team so development becomes visible

• Start small: 30–60 minutes consistently beats waiting for a free day

• Pair learning with application. Ask: “Where will I use this this week?”

For managers:

Explicitly tell your team development time is real work

Avoid scheduling over protected learning blocks unless genuinely urgent

Ask about development progress in 1:1s, not just delivery updates

Publicly recognise people who are investing in growth

Share your own learning habits and development goals visibly

Measure not just budget usage, but learning application and behavioural change