Identifying that learning is the bottleneck in software development gives insight on how to optimize team efficiency. I know this is true on my teams, everyone wants to try something new all the time rather than just crank it out in the simple and often the maintainable way. I can appreciate developers want things the best or right way. Try to spend as much effort on good enough as you do the best way. In no way am I advocating quick fix or hack, I am more referring to big picture project development and architectures.
As you personally move to a higher level of responsibility such as a lead or architect, results become very important. I can argue they are important at all levels. Achieving increased results frequently comes by reducing learning time, which means do something you already know how to do. I am not saying stick with COBOL :), but lean to get your team to spend a significant portion of time getting something done as compared so much time learning. Here is the article that inspired this thought.
http://www.infoq.com/articles/learning_is_the_bottleneck
