Let the Chickens Run the roost.

Panic in the Chicken Coop yesterday

I set a challenge on LinkedIn earlier. In a desire to pick up the pen and write (okay type) a new blog post I asked for a topic that anyone would like That Learning Dude to give some treatment to. It shouldn't have surprised me that one of the responders would stretch it a little .........and stretch he did........but the killer touch was still to come.......pick a movie I said...........he picked Chicken Run.......CHICKEN RUN !!!!!  I thought he was a mate......Okay so I have often said that you can make a connection between any two things regardless of source but Chicken Run with the thoughts around dynamic role profiles and L&D !!! stretching to say the least...............then I thought as i do........sit down at the back Brown !!!! There will be no running about headless today.

So the challenge was actually quite interesting, What if there was no such thing as a traditional role profile but just a bunch of skills and knowledge. Would an adaptive learning approach truly benefit a flexible approach to work........I think the term that was used was having free range staff........free range....FREE RANGE !!!! I get it now.......hey....that starts the ball rolling :-)

Okay.....time to set the scene. The traditional career path has in some respects been dwindling for a number of years and more often than not the one company career is a thing of the past. Not to say it doesn't happen but ambitions and desire to succeed does not always come quick enough for some and the next role is often seen elsewhere. In part when we dig deeper we find opportunity is restricted by role profiles which are very static and inflexible with development focused on improving performance rather than teaching new skills.

So how can we change the way we work or approach careers to better serve the business needs through learning and development?..............We can start with the coop.

If you have never watched Chicken Run the long and short of it is that there is a business that is seeking to improve profits. The egg business is not the cracking income generator it once was. A lot of this could be down to the fact the the business is run like a prison camp, restrictions are placed on the very freedom that the chickens desire and each chicken is responsible for some very challenging targets........wait is this the plot or real life?.............The role that the chickens play is under great threat and the owners of the coop have set their sights on a new direction, that of automation and Chicken Pies...no... it's no yolk !

The only chance the chickens have for survival is to escape and seek new challenges and fulfilment elsewhere but there is one sticking point, they can't just fly over the fence, for one...they can't fly and two.......nobody has ever taught them how to do it........all the training if it ever existed has pointed toward one thing.....laying eggs......the role profile says so....chickens must lay eggs....and the more they lay the higher the target goes and a dip in morale occurs.

Now teaching a chicken to get over a fence presents a challenge, it has never been done before and they can't fly so they have to come up with a plan and one night the unofficial leader of the chickens (Ginger) is amazed to see Rocky (a Rhode Island Red rooster if you must know) fly over the fence albeit before crash landing and breaking his wing, around the same time she finds a flyer with Rocky soaring over the skies and offers to hide him from the evil owners as long as he teaches them to fly. he reluctantly agrees because he knows the truth behind his skills but goes ahead and starts to teach the chickens some (pretty useless) exercises in preparation for the big escape. As the story goes on, it becomes one less of individual characters and one of collaboration and innovation as the team combine to sabotage the Chicken Pie machine, thwart the factory owners chicken pie enterprise and escape to freedom in a makeshift plane..........yes they build a plane.....what's so unusual about that?

Okay.....so that's Chicken Run.....but where does it stand alongside the original question? Well...... If we start of the thought around the lack of traditional role. More with less, that's what they say and the only truly way to have that is with an increase in "skills"flexibility and this can be gained through some sort of rapid knowledge intervention. There is no longer the requirement to read war and peace before taking on a task. All you need is bite size chunks of information to give you enough to start the task and the rest you can learn on the job as you go, gathering data, learning from mistakes running your role in an agile way. This flexible approach provides a new level to an organisation, one that is adaptive and responsive to business needs. Deploying the resource to meet demands. This approach will result in true collaboration between individuals. Given the pace of the workplace these days we need to come up with ways in learning and development to create our own Matrix chair, capable of deploying rapid interventions as and when required. All this should be done in a way that recognises that technology is no longer a thing, but a behaviour.

In the case of the chickens they needed a solution and Rocky brought a different dimension, sure he couldn't fly but his experience and knowledge of the other side of the fence helped them to see that there was a way out. Adding this to the skills of others they escaped in that plane ( big slingshot) to open their own chicken sanctuary, free to roam the range.

You will never look at an egg again in the same way :-)

That Learning Dude

@LearningXDude

Dirk the Daring taught us more than you think.....or did he?

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It's 1983 and an Orwellian future is only a matter of months away from where big brother would be watching.....but instead it is us that is watching...videos....lots of videos, probably a rental every couple of days and I am in the video store in my home town.

As a spotty teenager I was there for one thing and one thing alone........nope....not what you are thinking, I am not interested in the videos behind the counter in brown paper, or the display cases and ex rental for sale bin.

I am interested in the big gun......a laser disc....one encased in a cabinet of joy and the one they call. Dragons Lair. Oh yeah did I deposit a coin or two in that thing !! Dragons Lair was created by ex Disney Animator Don Bluth and revolved around the central character of Dirk The Daring and his quest to save the princess from a badass dragon. It didn't matter that it took ages to load between scenes, or how frustrating it was getting off that falling disc at the wrong level but this was just a beautiful piece of storytelling which let you learn from your mistakes and master the right moves to progress......okay it was fairly simple stuff....left, left....up...right...jump......but it was fun and engaging yet still click = next.

Fly on 10 years and I am working as a video games buyer for HMV, shipping games for the next generation (oh and they were) of consoles such as the Sega CD and the 3DO.......oh yeah next generation retro heaven.. The latter being the brainchild of EA Games founder Trip Hawkins. The concept was great for this system, it was really about opening up development to designers but while some titles were highly regarded it had its fair share of dead ducks because most of them were effectively just interactive movies with the same kind of game play used in Dragons Lair which as I had come to realise was pretty awful and so did the consumer as the console and its titles bit the dust.

The main reason behind this was that while the technology made it possible to create the experience it was badly produced and actually a good example of how video should not be used. If they had spent half as much time on the game play rather than trying to recreate a Hollywood epic then perhaps it would have evolved.....but it didn't and soon video was confined to rare appearances in special editions do trivial pursuit (p.s. Unless you are really, really......REALLY into Lord of The Rings never buy that version) and yay it came to pass that gaming and video didn't have any where to go......Dragons Lair is holed up in a garage somewhere and anyone with a 3DO etc is just waiting for Antiques roadshow in 2093 to bring it out of retirement..

So why am I on this subject, as fascinating as it is.......no it is !!

Well the other month at Learning Technologies I was all excited to see the next big thing but have to admit I walked away a little disheartened...again. You see for all the leaps and bounds that video and games have come on over the years what is still  missing is the experience that something like dragons lair gave you. It was connecting memory to action, it was feeling accomplished. So many companies are looking at video again and now games as a way of adding something else to learning but is it enough?

Games and gamification are adding something new, but .....and it is an opinion........but.....the first few examples I have seen just talk to the compliance hand and say "hey......want to add something exciting to your compliance training?.....want to make it more interactive?" Eh.....No I don't. I want Risk functions and the Regulators to wake up and admit to everything we have ever known  about mandatory training in that it adds nothing. At best a tick in the box at worst every reason that everyone has ever used that says eLearning is boring, dull, click, next and does nothing but numb minds........wooooo controversial??? Nope not really. 

Games do present a massive opportunity in learning but within the workflow. What if.....a game never ended. What if we created a manager second life which grows in line with a managers own personal development? What if a talent development programme had a game which tracked success, set challenges and awarded points as well as linking with a global network, pitting yourself against other leaders in other countries? Strategy games for directors, virtual contact centres set up in a call of duty type environment.....? Okay scratch that last one.....that's only when they ask you three simple "market research" questions about how many windows and doors you have in your house!!! 

Okay....so I am borderline ranting now....so I will get back to the point.......we need to stop thinking about games as an additional dimension to learning....that is why those interactive movie games never worked. You can't bolt a game engine on the side of a compliance module and think it makes a blind bit of difference. You have to build a game...that is all, do it well and people will learn from without being blatant about it.

Now who wants to build that leadership game?

That learning Dude

@LearningXDude