Who was B.B. King?

B.B. King was the Mississippi-born “King of the Blues,” famed for his expressive singing, single-note guitar style with a distinctive vibrato, and hits like “The Thrill Is Gone.”

“The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.”— B.B. King

The quote frames learning as an asset the learner owns, not something the organisation holds. That challenges a few common L&D assumptions:

• Portability: Skills and knowledge travel with the person. That’s a retention risk for employers, but also the strongest argument for investing in people anyway.
• Ownership: If learning can’t be taken away, it should be learner-driven, not just compliance-driven or tied to a single role or system.
• Durability: Unlike job titles, tools or processes, which change, the capacity to learn is the one thing that compounds over a career.
• Measurement: Completion rates and course hours track what the organisation delivered, not what the learner now owns.

If learning is something no one can take away from an employee, should L&D design programs for the organisation’s needs today, or for the employee’s capability long after they’ve left, and how would your strategy change if you chose the second?

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We would love to hear your answer in the comments.

If you have any Learning & Development quotes you’d like to share, please send them to enquiries@flmtraining.com.au.

Our Sponsors:

The Australian Learning & Development Network’s events and resources are available free of charge to our members due to the generous support of our sponsors. As such, if you’re looking for any externally provided capability development services, we kindly ask that you contact them to discuss your needs.

• Frontline Management Training Australia – Purpose-Built Leadership and Management Training for Frontline Managers and Staff
• Australian Public Sector Training – Leadership and Management Training Specifically for People Working in Public Sector Organisations
• Executive Development Australia – Inspiring Executive Excellence