Introduction

I’ve had a, roughly, 20-year career centered largely around technology learning. I’ve presented at technology conferences, written more than 60 technology books on varying topics, designed and written numerous classroom guides for instructor-led training, and produced hundreds of hours of e-learning materials. Throughout that career, I’ve connected with tens of thousands of learners, most of whom were employed in the information technology field. And in many cases, I’ve met and worked with those learners’ managers and employers, who often spend thousands of dollars a year, per employee, on technology education.

A common theme across those employers is how to build a culture of learning. It’s a phrase used so commonly that Google produces over a billion results when you search for it; turning up everything from scholarly treatises to “6 Ways to Build” clickbait-style blog articles on the subject. There are, in fact, many excellent pieces on the topic, which begs the question: why another? Why this book?

I’ve read dozens, if not hundreds, of those pieces and found many of them to be practical, actionable, and, in most cases, fairly concise. But I think too many of them focus exclusively on why you’d want a culture of learning or precisely how they recommend you build one. Few attempt to concisely tackle the underlying question, though: what, exactly, is a culture of learning?

I feel that understanding the answer to that question actually unlocks the how and why for you. Understanding that answer is what really “changes your brain,” in a way that makes all the other answers obvious. Understanding that big, underlying answer also helps you really grasp the full scope of what a culture of learning is, and can be, to an organization. It highlights the real breadth and depth of the topic and shows you how it can–and should–pervade everything your organization does. That’s what this book is about.

Let’s begin.