Learning Culture Isn’t Just a Leadership Priority. It’s a Design Challenge.

It hit me while flipping through an old leadership book I’ve read more times than I’d like to admit.

The author, a well-known CEO, described their role not as a decision-maker or strategist, but as a curator of culture. That word stuck with me.

Curator.

Not builder. Not enforcer. Not even leader.

Curator.

It reframed everything.

Because curators don’t create the art. They shape the experience. They decide what stories get told, what ideas get emphasized, and what environments help people linger, reflect, and maybe even see things differently.

And if that’s true of CEOs, then here’s the part no one talks about.

L&D isn’t just supporting the culture. We’re designing the exhibit.

Culture Isn’t a Vibe. It’s a System.

Most people talk about culture like it’s a feeling. A general atmosphere. A shared mood. But here’s the thing.

Culture isn’t how people feel about your company.

It’s how they behave when no one’s watching.

Systems, symbols, and stories shape it.

And that’s precisely where L&D comes in.

Every touchpoint we create, every onboarding plan, every workshop, every debrief template, every coaching conversation is a lever we can pull to either reinforce the culture or slowly erode it.

Three Questions Every Culture Designer Should Be Asking

1. What behaviours are we rewarding (explicitly or implicitly)?

If you value collaboration but reward individual heroics, you’re teaching people what really matters. L&D can help bridge that gap by designing learning experiences that model collaboration, like cross-functional simulations or peer-led learning labs.

2. Where are we making learning visible?

Culture is reinforced by what gets noticed and repeated. If no one sees their leaders learning in public, admitting mistakes, evolving their thinking, or asking better questions, then we’re not modelling a growth mindset. What rituals can L&D introduce to make learning something we see and celebrate?

3. Are we solving problems people actually care about?

No one wants “training for training’s sake.” An authentic learning culture meets people where they are. What’s frustrating them right now? What knowledge gaps are slowing them down? Start there. Then build learning around their real context, not abstract business goals alone.

From Order-Taker to Environment Architect

A lot of L&D teams operate like short-order cooks.

"Need sales training?" Coming right up.

"New compliance module?" We’ll whip something together.

It’s efficient, but it’s reactive. And reactive L&D never shifts culture.

If we want to shape the culture, we need to stop thinking like course creators and start thinking like environment designers.

Ask yourself:

Are we making it easier for people to ask questions?

Are we designing learning to happen in the flow of work, not just in structured events?

Are we giving managers the tools to coach, reflect, and model curiosity?

Are we helping teams normalize iteration, feedback, and failure as part of the journey?

That’s the exhibit. That’s the environment.

Three Pillars of Culture-Curated L&D

Here’s a framework I’ve been testing in my own work. It’s still evolving, but it’s helped me move from just building content to actually shaping context.

1. Rituals → What people do regularly

Design recurring behaviours that reinforce learning.

For example:

A five-minute "What I Learned This Week" roundtable in team huddles

A monthly story share from leaders about something they got wrong and what they learned

Slack or Teams, or whatever application your org uses, channels where people post lessons learned from customer interactions

2. Language → What people say and how they say it

Language shapes reality. If your company still says things like “rockstar,” “fast learners,” or “natural talent,” you’re reinforcing a fixed mindset. L&D can help shift language toward growth by introducing shared terms, framing tools, and success stories rooted in effort and iteration.

3. Signals → What gets rewarded or spotlighted

Are you only recognizing outcomes? Or are you also recognizing the process, the effort, the experiment, the learning? Showcase teams that tried something new, learned from failure, or helped others level up. Culture shifts when people start seeing new things as normal.

A Culture Audit for L&D Pros

Want a gut check on how intentional your L&D strategy really is?

Here’s a simple audit to reflect on:

What L&D Can Do Right Now

Let’s get practical. If you want to move beyond “training provider” and step into your role as a culture designer, here’s where to start:

Facilitate a culture conversation. Sit down with leaders and ask, “What kind of culture are we really creating through our systems, language, and rituals?” Not what’s in the values deck—what’s real.

Run an experiment. Choose one team. Design a small learning experience that builds shared context. Maybe it’s a story-based onboarding session. Maybe it’s a retrospective ritual. See what shifts.

Tell a better story. When communicating learning initiatives, stop focusing on what people will learn and talk about how it will shape who they become. People engage when the story is about them.

Final Thought

Anyone can assign a course.

But designing culture? That’s craft.

It takes intention. It takes courage. And it takes a shift in how we see ourselves as L&D leaders.

Not as support teams. But as curators of possibility. As designers of context. As quiet but powerful voices shaping how people grow, connect, and contribute.

So if the CEO is the culture curator…

Then we, in L&D, are the exhibition designers.

Let’s own that role.

Let’s build exhibits worth walking through.

Let’s make learning feel like part of the environment, not just a checkbox in it.

— G