Learning is All About Motivation

Sure, you can ‘Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime’. But what if he doesn’t want to learn? Or doesn’t even know he needs to?

Creating learning content is the least of our problems today.

In my blog entry, Learn Like The Wind, I wrote about how I used the web to learn how to repair my roof after the wind blew some shingles off. If you had tried to get me to learn that before my shingles were scattered around the yard, I’d have given you the brush-off. Once it happened, believe me, I was all ears. And I learned exactly what I needed to know for free in about 20 minutes.

Websites like www.lynda.com , www.ehow.com and even www.youtube.com offer cheap (often free) instructional content that caters to a variety of learning styles. Step-by-step instructions. Videos with narrations. Diagrams. Whatever you want is out there in a format to fit your needs.

Learning management system vendors now offer ‘software as a service’ complete with content authoring tools and shopping cart. Individuals can create courses on anything and offer them to the world via the web. The learning content created by people around the world is exploding. And prices start at ‘FREE!’.

E-learning suites offer hundreds of courses on hard and soft business skills. PowerPoint. XML programming. Active Listening. Giving Feedback. Each one available on your desktop and at your convenience.

There’s plenty of content out there. The question is: how do we motivate people to take advantage of it?

Teach Employees the Big Picture. It Makes Them Hungry for Details

At a recent business conference, I spoke about learning motivation and asked what the audience members taught their employees about how their businesses ran, why they were successful and how they made money.

NOT ONE person said they had taught this material.

‘Your Business 101’ is the stuff that primes the employee learning pump. As an Operations Director, I gave regular ‘5-Minute Business Lessons’ at our monthly all-employee meetings. I’d cover one topic; give an overview, how it affected us and answer questions.

After a couple of sessions, you could see the wheels turning. And, even better, people started to ask tough questions. “So, if capacity utilization is so important, why’d you buy that fourth machine? It sits idle most of the time.” A excellent (and embarrassing) question, Bob.

Are you missing a HUGE opportunity to get people excited about learning more about your company and building their skills to be successful? Teach employees at all levels the fundamentals of your business. Putting them into the big picture naturally will get them wanting to learn the tools and skills that contribute to it.

Check out The Great Game of Business by Jack Stack. Inspiring and practical, his company’s story is worth reading.

Let’s Ride!

Todd Hudson
Head Maverick
Ph: 303.819.6662
Todd@MaverickInstitute.com