There are no Learners

There are no learners.

There are no learners because there are no ‘breathers’ – that is to say we all learn and breathe, but we don’t talk about people as ‘breathers’ and we shouldn’t talk about people as ‘learners’ for the same reason.

Imagine someone says: ‘we really need to help breathers joining our organization – so we have set up two days of focused breathing’.

Would you be surprised if people said ‘I don’t have time for that – I’m too busy trying to do my new job’?

Another way of saying this is that people aren’t trying to learn – they are trying to get stuff done – learning is incidental. Learning is usually a last resort. Learning happens (like breathing) as a way of getting things done.

We keep failing in L&D because we keep focusing on learning rather than the things people are trying to do – we build courses when we should be building resources.

Let me give you an example: the Khan Academy. Great idea, right? Lots of learning content. How many times have you used it?

How many times have you used Google?

Is Google an Academy? Is it a learning library? Or does it just help you get stuff done- figure things out? Have you learned things from Google?

Please: stop building platforms of ‘learning content’ – they are useful only in an educational context. Instead, build platforms filled with useful content.

Learning is not in our hands; learning happens as people are trying to do things. There are only two things we can legitimately do. We can either

a) find out what people are trying to do and build useful stuff,

b) give them things to do.

Learning may happen in either case. In any event we really must stop trying to get people to memorize information and calling this ‘learning’ – it’s not learning, it’s just a peculiar ritual that arose in order to enable people to pass tests. 'Passing tests' was the thing we gave them to do, so they memorised stuff in order to pass a test and we called it ‘education’.

So if you have a room full of people, don’t think of them as ‘learners’ – that will invariably lead to you doing something pointless and ineffective – think of them as people, each with things they are trying to do. Understand what they are trying to do, and explore ways you might be able to help them do those things. Learning (and breathing) will happen as required.