I once worked in an ICT development section for a large London council. There was a certain spirit of co-operation encouraged and fostered which meant that it was a good environment to learn a lot of core and peripheral knowledge about the job. I now work mainly from home; or when I am office based it’s temporary and with a set of people I’ve not met before. Issues such as trust, credibility, patience take time to develop (someone has to trust that you are not wasting their time). It is much harder to learn in isolation.

Makes me realise that although everyone complains about ‘meetings’ if they are structured and organised properly, they are the key way in which people learn in organisations. So too the informal chat in the canteen or at the desktop. I used to find the best way to learn was to read as much about a subject as I could and then ask someone a few questions who I knew had much deeper and more extensive knowledge about it than myself.