Is it time for a BYOL (Bring Your Own Learning) strategy in your organization? #BYOL
My previous blog post that revealed that around 70% of respondents in my recent survey found training (including e-learning) “unimportant” or only “somewhat important” has generated quite a bit of interest.
A number of comments focused on how we now need to make training/e-learning more “engaging” or “effective” to recapture the interest of these people. But I think this is rather like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted; it’s just too late. An increasing number of the workforce – smart, social, autonomous workers – are already doing their own thing and solving their own learning and performance problems much more quickly and more easily by using their own tools and devices. (In April 2011 Forrester Research estimated that 47% of users were self-provisioning technology and expected the number to rise to 60% by end 2011, and Jensen & Kline (around the same time) estimated that between 1/3 and 2/3 of employees were meeting their needs by working around L&D)
So just as some IT departments have realised the futility of banning personal devices in the workplace and are now beginning to adopt BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) strategies, L&D departments might also want to adopt a BYOL (Bring Your Own Learning) strategy and embrace all the learning that is taking place outside of training. As it is, they will never again be able to keep up with the fast speed of business and provide everything everyone needs to know in a timely fashion, so it makes good commonsense to do so. Furthermore, as Dan Pink has shown us in Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us, autonomy is a highly motivating factor within an organization:
“Control leads to compliance, autonomy leads to engagement.”
Adopting a BYOL strategy will however require a different approach to learning and development. It will not be about designing personalised training nor managing people’s learning for them, but rather supporting their own personal learning strategies. For some people, this may simply mean getting out of their way; for others it may involve providing some guidance and assistance on how to be an effective BYOLearner.
