Free the learners!

March 11th, 2007 | general

This afternoon I cooked an omelet with “cage-free” eggs.

This brought to mind trainers who scoff at my call for Free-Range Learners, as if I were some kind of anarchist.

True, I wish we had schools that weren’t walled off from their communities, and I believe that learning should be part of work, not something you do outside of work.

People ask how to track informal learning in their LMS; my response is don’t. But how will we know if they are learning? I reply that it’s the same way we always do: check afterward to see if they’re performing up to expectation.

But my boss would not allow the workers to do this without being monitored, they tell me. Why? The workers might goof off instead of learning. They might waste time. They might do nothing at all.

The boss’s attitude is no more than ill-founded lack of trust. Ill-founded because…

Most workers live up (or down) to the expectations one has for them.
People work (and learn) better when they are self-motivated than when they are monitored.
Given freedom of action, workers yearn to do the best they can, to excel, and to take pride in their work.

The free-range chickens that laid my cage-free eggs aren’t going to abuse their freedom by hightailing it for the Mexican border. They may be free but they are also fenced in.

Workers are not going to fly to Puerto Vallarta when they’re supposed to be mastering a new skill. They are fenced in, too. When someone’s behavior is out of bounds, you fire them. Furthermore, psychological fences are stronger than physical ones.

Long-established managers are facing a tough time now. The old order is crumbling. Organizations are becoming open, transparent, and egalitarian. The manager’s former job of watching the ~~chickens~~ workers is no longer so important. Making connections has taken center stage. When a manager is connected to her people, micro-managing their behavior or thinking she controls them is ludicrous.

I belatedly found Harold’s suggestion for a free-range learning logo.

7 comments ↓

#1 Tom Haskins on 03.12.07 at 10:43 am

These are great insights Jay! It never occurred to me that old line managers wanted to use an LMS to control all learning. Hopefully there will be an asylum for them to work through their unresolved power issues — after they no longer have opportunities to tyrannize employees. When I’ve consulted public school districts, I raised the “fear of evacuation” issue that locks down schools into tight conformity and control. I assumed the fear was based on the students immaturity. Now that you point out many managers’ fear of a “flight to the border”, I’m realizing the issue is independent of the learner’s age or maturity - it’s about the control freak’s need to dominate. As for what you say about empowering employees to do their best, YES!. I’ll vote for you when you run for President!
Tom ;-)

#2 JQ on 03.28.07 at 6:32 pm

A couple of weeks ago, a team in our grad school presented implementing Covey’s 8th Habit. When asked if the company should make the classes mandatory to Covey, the reasonable answer is “no.” For one, Covey’s idea is empowering the employee, so why disempower them by forcing them to take a class. Second, do you think that an employee will learn if they don’t want to learn? Doubtful. As a former teacher, my experience tells me that learning is an openness to ideas, a desire, and convincing through dialogue that learning is important.

#3 Mike Berta on 03.30.07 at 6:29 am

Jay, it has been some time, but still reading right along. I just had a conversation with a potential business client that touted her LMS and the extensive monitoring needed to measure “seat time”. All I could think was “assess in classes”. Seat time does not equate to learning, the sooner the corporate training unprofessionals get to this point, the sooner employees will learn and perform. Your words about expectation are very true and a struggle I’ve had for sometime with management.

Additionally, I listened to a podcast about blogging in academia. It was an interesting discourse on the topic of informal exploration and use in the academy. I laughed as one academic talked about the dangers of opening knowledge up beyond the faculty. The thought that some schools feel they need to limit knowledge to retain value is archaic and outmoded.

#4 Fortress, Gated Community, and Free-range Learning at Sims Learning Connections on 03.30.07 at 4:32 pm

[...] More recently the metaphor went to the animals; for example with Tom Haskin’s: Free range chickens, Feasibility of offering the free range and Back to the barnyard (February and March 2007) and Jay’s Free the learners! (March 2007). [...]

#5 教育中文翻译 » 堡垒，有大门的社区和自由自在式学习 on 04.23.07 at 9:25 am