In this sense, UK leaders, when asked about how they choose to learn, have given a clear and unambiguous response. They are not particularly interested in how much effort their business puts into developing learning materials. What they are far more interested in is two things, when facing an unfamiliar challenge: ease of access to information and the speed of result they receive.

This will come as a great surprise to learning managers, who place so much emphasis on the quality of their output. This is just one of the fascinating and genuinely surprising insights provided by the GoodPractice/ComRes report written by Owen Ferguson and Justin Anderson in their white paper, "The Secret Learning Life of UK Managers".

In the report, the authors provide a series of recommendations that the UK learning-and-development community will find both useful and very practical. "The lack of balance between internal and external options is particularly interesting", noted author Justin Anderson. "We really welcome feedback on our findings from L&D professionals in the UK. I would love to know if our results mirror their day-to-day challenges."