Ronaldo's training habits have been described publicly by teammates and coaches across four clubs and two decades. Patrice Evra's much-repeated account of a 'lunch' at Ronaldo's house that turned into a training session is the version most people know. Whatever the embellishments, the pattern is consistent enough to treat as documented: he trained beyond what was scheduled for him.
Most companies say they want exactly that behaviour, and have built systems that quietly make it impossible.
The people question this raises
Self-directed development cannot be mandated. It can only be made possible or made impossible. If growth in your organisation means waiting for the learning calendar, a budget approval and a manager's spare attention, you have chosen impossible without ever deciding to.
The research is fairly settled on why this matters. Self-determination theory identifies autonomy, competence and relatedness as the conditions under which motivation becomes self-sustaining rather than dependent on supervision. LinkedIn's workplace learning reporting has repeatedly found that opportunity to learn and grow is among the strongest stated drivers of staying at a company. And CIPD's guidance on learning cultures makes the practical version of the point: learning that is not connected to the actual work does not survive contact with a busy quarter.
Where this shows up at work
- Utilisation or ticket targets are set at 100% of available hours, so any practice happens on personal time or not at all.
- The training budget requires three approvals and a business case, and then expires unspent at year end — which the finance report reads as low demand.
- Nobody who improved a skill on their own initiative was ever recognised for it in a review, so the behaviour has no return.
- There is no written description of what the next level looks like, so self-direction has no direction.
- Internal experts are too busy to teach, because teaching counts for nothing in their own objectives.
Conditions that produce ownership
- 1Protected timeA recurring, defended block — even two hours a fortnight — that appears in capacity planning. If it is not in the plan, it is the first thing sacrificed, every time.
- 2A visible skill mapPeople cannot self-direct toward a standard they have never seen written down. One page per role, naming the behaviours that distinguish each level, does more for development than any course catalogue.
- 3Access without gatekeepingA small pre-approved amount — a book, a course, a certification — that anyone can spend without a business case. The administrative cost of approval usually exceeds the sum being approved.
- 4Recognition for initiativeMake self-driven growth an explicit input to reviews and promotion cases, with examples. Otherwise it stays invisible and therefore optional.
| What the company says | What the system does | What to change |
|---|---|---|
| "We support continuous learning" | No hours are allocated to it in any plan | Put learning hours in capacity planning as a named line |
| "Take ownership of your growth" | No written picture of the next level exists | Publish a one-page skill map per role |
| "We have a generous training budget" | Approval takes three weeks and a business case | Pre-approve a small per-person amount, no case required |
| "We value mentoring" | Mentoring appears in nobody's objectives | Add a teaching objective for senior staff and review it |
| "Learning is celebrated here" | Only delivery is mentioned in reviews | Require one development evidence item in every review |
A worked example
A 25-person agency complained that nobody upskilled. Its billable target was 90% of working hours. The fix was structural rather than motivational: the target moved to 85%, and the recovered half-day a fortnight became a named 'craft block' in the scheduling tool. A one-page skill map was written for three roles. Each person got a small annual allowance they could spend without asking. In reviews, one slide now covers what you learned and what changed because of it. Within two quarters, four people had completed certifications the agency had previously assumed nobody wanted. Nothing about the people had changed.
Elite individual standards become something else entirely when applied as an expectation across a whole workforce. Ownership is voluntary and resourced. If it is compulsory and unresourced, it is unpaid overtime with an inspirational caption — and the people it hurts most are those with caring responsibilities or health constraints.
What readers often get wrong about this
- Ownership is not a personality test. The most common reason people do not develop themselves at work is that the system charges them for it — in time, money or political risk.
- Extra hours are not the point. Deliberate practice inside working hours beats unstructured effort outside them, for results and for retention.
- A learning platform licence is not a learning culture. Usage data on an unused platform measures your system, not your people's curiosity.
- The athlete comparison has a real limit: professional football is a single, full-time craft with daily coaching and public weekly measurement. Most employees juggle several roles with none of those feedback loops.
Interpretation, not established fact: the leap from an athlete's training regime to workplace learning design is mine. The two situations are not equivalent, and treating them as equivalent is how this genre of advice usually goes wrong.
First 30 days
- Ask three people what would need to change for them to spend two hours a fortnight improving a skill. Their answers are your actual barriers.
- Check whether your training budget was fully spent last year, and why not.
- Write one skill map for one role, and share it for comment rather than approval.
- Add a named learning block to the next capacity plan and defend it once, visibly, when it is challenged.
- In your next review round, ask every person for one example of something they chose to learn and what changed as a result.
Common questions
We genuinely cannot spare the hours. What is the minimum that works?
Two hours a fortnight, protected, with a named skill and a monthly conversation about it. Below that the practice is too sparse to change behaviour, and you are better off being honest that development is paused than running a plan that produces nothing.
How do I stop this becoming a perk for the already-ambitious?
Publish the skill map and the allowance so access does not depend on asking well, and check the uptake by team and level after two quarters. If the same profile of person is using it, the barrier is social rather than administrative.
What if someone develops skills and then leaves?
Some will, and that is the cost of a real development offer. The alternative — people who stay and stop growing — is more expensive and much harder to reverse. The better retention lever is making the next step visible internally, so growth has somewhere to go here.
- Self-determination theory: autonomy, competence, relatedness — Center for Self-Determination Theory
- Workplace Learning Report — LinkedIn Learning
- Learning cultures: factsheet — CIPD
- Why you should give employees time to learn — Harvard Business Review
Over to you
If someone on your team decided tomorrow to build a new skill, what exactly would stop them — and which of those obstacles did your organisation build on purpose?