Establishing a Growth Culture

When I tell people I spend 10 to 20% of my work time learning new things, they're surprised. Sometimes shocked. They spend their days fighting fires and chasing deadlines. Learning feels like a luxury they can't afford.

But here's what I've learned: it's precisely that time—exploring adjacent domains, pairing cross-functionally, following curiosity—that compounds into the big wins. The fires keep burning because nobody ever steps back to understand the system.

Most teams don't have a growth culture. Not because people don't want to grow—because the system has trained them that delivery is the only thing that counts. Learning isn't deprioritized. It's not on the list at all or something for the HR department.

Establishing growth culture means breaking that pattern deliberately. It means telling people—explicitly—that 10% of their time belongs to curiosity. That pairing with someone from another function isn't slacking, it's the job. That following a thread into unfamiliar territory is expected, not indulgent.

Here's what kills it every time: urgency. The moment everything becomes urgent, learning stops. Nobody pairs during a fire. Nobody explores when the sprint is packed. If urgency is your default mode, growth will never happen—no matter what your values doc says.

So the first job is protecting the time. Not as a perk. As a non-negotiable. This requires serenity—the kind that comes from actually having your priorities straight, not from pretending the pressure isn't real.

The second job is accountability. You create the conditions—time, permission, encouragement. But growth isn't optional. When someone has a knowledge gap that's hurting outcomes, you name it. When they know about it and still don't address it, you name that too. Growth culture isn't a free pass. It's a contract: we give you the space, you do the work.

Cross-functional pairing slows you down before it speeds you up. Protected learning time looks inefficient on paper. You have to believe that range compounds—and hold the line when someone pushes back with "we don't have time."

Growth culture isn't declared. It's defended.