Push vs. Pull Learning

To push or to pull?  That is the question.  Whether tis nobler in the mind to impose a litany of mandated elearning modules and instructor-led workshops on  your already overstressed workers or chill, and make learning more discretionary, less formal, and available on demand, trusting that your workers will actually invest their time and effort into growing their skills.  That there is a self-directed learner in each of us is a proposition devoutly to be wished by many business leaders and talent development professionals.  

Let's take a closer look at the distinctions between push and pull learning.

The Case Against Push Learning

For years, the push approach to learning--where organizations force workers to go through pre-determined training curricula--has come under criticism for being a slow, rigid, and outdated approach that does little to help workers feel engaged and enthusiastic about their professional development. 

Indeed, with training curricula that are pushed, learner dropout rates tend to be high; learner satisfaction scores are so-so; and managers frequently complain that training has little impact on job performance.  Mandated elearning courses get completed but little knowledge is retained or used on the job.  Mandated workshops and webinars are attended but learners are frequently disengaged and distracted.  The training machine keeps pushing content out without leaders pausing to understand why training is having little impact on the organization.  In part due to push learning's lackluster results, many business leaders have stopped requesting formal training altogether; have pulled back from enrolling their employees in formal curricula; and have become increasingly unsupportive of training and development initiatives.

If we want training and development to have a positive impact, first and foremost, learners must be actively engaged in the process.  Adult learning research tells us that learner engagement is a product of the learner seeing relevance to a valued need--in other words, "what's in it for me?"--and exercising a choice.  When adults do not have a say in what they are learning and/or do not see the relevance of that learning to satisfying a need that is important to them, they will not be engaged in the learning process, no matter what.  While making training experiences more entertaining, game-like, snazzy, and fun can capture interest and attention briefly, it will not sustain engagement for lengthy skill-building efforts unless the learner sees relevance and chooses to learn. 

The Push for Pull Learning

Relevance and choice are the main catalysts behind the pull movement.  With pull strategies for learning, organizations build an ecosystem of on-demand learning resources, consisting of many different options for learners to choose from, then let learners decide what is relevant and useful for them at any given time. 

Think of this learning ecosystem as a magical universe containing all possible learning resources and activities--rather than the Internet of Things, it's the Internet of Learning.  It could include elearning modules, quizzes, and games that reside on your organization's Learning Management System (LMS) as well as videos from your streaming server; PDF documents from your SharePoint site; recorded webinars from your WebEx server; and any other learning resources you have laying about the organization.  The ecosystem also includes instructor-led training sessions--both classroom and virtual ones.  It includes mentors and experts in the organization who can impart know-how.  It can include all of your internal resources as well as third-party resources provided by external vendors.  It can also include public resources available on the world wide web, such as YouTube videos, Twitter feeds, and LinkedIn blog posts like this one.  The only limits on the learning ecosystem are the boundaries your organization places on it. 

By giving learners easy access to this ecosystem and a choice about what content to select, what format to consume it in (e.g., video, text, elearning, instructor-led), how to sequence it, and when to consume it, learners are made to feel more empowered and engaged in the learning.  As a result, they are more likely to retain, apply, and improve their skills and will generally feel better about their development, their job, and their employer, leading to better performance and greater employee engagement.  That's the hope, anyway.

What Prompts Someone to Pull?

This ecosystem contains learning resources that are just waiting to be pulled down by learners and consumed.  That raises the question: what prompts the learner to pull learning content? 

1. Curiosity: The learner's own curiosity can lead him/her to seek out answers about a wide variety of issues--some work related and some not. 

"I've heard soup dumplings are amazing: I wonder how they're made. Maybe we could make that the theme of our next office cook-off event."

2. Staying Relevant: The learner's interest in keeping up to date and on top of the latest thinking and innovations.  Without at least some minimal ongoing investment in learning, a professional's knowledge and skills become stale, dated, and sometimes irrelevant.

"This morning, I read a tweet that said performance appraisals are worthless.  New ways of approaching it are coming.  The blog post went on to say...."

3. Just-in-Time Need: The learner's need to ramp up quickly on a new technology, process, tool, or idea in order to accomplish a work task. 

"I was troubleshooting a publishing error with this new software and was able to resolve it quickly by posting a question to a discussion board."

4. Growth: The learner's innate desire to grow as a person and as a professional.

"Marshall Goldsmith's book opened up my eyes to some potential derailers that could hold me back in my career."

5. Credentialing: The learner's desire to attain a certification or badge that will help him/her compete for a certain type of job. 

When people see my CPT badge on LinkedIn, that enhances my reputation and credibility and leads to better projects. 

No Brainer, Right?

The flexibility and speed with which learners can access the right resources to help them address a given need make pull learning an increasingly popular method for developing talent.  Before you decide to make the switch, however, it's important to consider what's involved.

There's at least one major obstacle that stands in the way of pull learning strategies delivering on the promise of higher performance and engagement.  Pull learning relies on the learner taking the initiative and making good choices, characteristics that are consistent with the concept of a self-directed learner. 

In other words, a pull approach works best when the individual learner is:

• Self-motivated to acquire new knowledge and skills and to apply them in a way that leads to on-the-job change
• Self-aware enough to know where his/her own strengths and weaknesses are and where his/her knowledge and skill gaps lie
• Open to change enough to seek out new ideas and new ways of doing things
• Able to spend the time needed to search for relevant learning content, evaluate it to make a good selection, and organize it in a way that is chunked and sequenced optimally
• Confident and skilled in the art of self-directed learning, which requires reflection, self-critique, willingness to take chances, and the ability to learn from mistakes

Unfortunately, just as business acumen, tech savviness, emotional intelligence, and executive presence are in short supply in today's workforce, so is the competency of self-directedness. The traits of self-motivation, self-awareness, and openness to change are highly sought-after but still quite rare.  In many organizations, employees lack the discretionary time  needed to learn new skills and/or feel that taking time away from job tasks for development is shunned upon by their leaders. 

Are we over-relying on learners to be self-directed?  Pull strategies place a great deal of importance on putting learners in the driver's seat, but if our learners don't have the necessary skills and motivation, pull strategies can be just as ineffective as push strategies have been. 

In order to ensure the success of your training and development efforts, whether push or pull, you'll need to invest in three critical areas: creating feedback loops, curating the learning ecosystem, and providing guidance.  In my next post, I'll discuss these in detail. In the meanwhile, please share your own perspectives and experiences related to Push v Pull approaches.

Gus Prestera, PhD

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