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