Nuts and Bolts: The Cargo Cult of Training

“In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. Duringthe war [WWII] they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and theywanted the same thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to imitate things likerunways, to put fires alongside the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man tosit in with 2 wooden pieces on his head like headphones, and bars of bamboosticking out like antennas. He’s the controller, and they wait for theairplanes to land. They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. Itlooks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanesland.” Richard Feynman, Cargo CultScience

Form without function*

Sound familiar? Think about thetime you were sent to a certain class, maybe something like new hireorientation or a safety update. Maybe compliance. Likely mandatory. The trainerwas an SME from the HR Department, or a presenter recruited because they were agood technical expert. Or maybe they even had the job title of “trainer.” Theyarranged tables and chairs. They created a PowerPoint show. They provided a copyof the slides. They did everything right, and perfectly mimicked what they’dseen other trainers do.

But no one learned anything.

This is Cargo Cult Training, inwhich the leader replicates what he saw teachers do, capturing the artifacts ofinstruction without understanding what’s underneath. Online? Same: Pick atemplate, load text onto slides, add a next button, and call it “eLearning.” Throwin a Jeopardy!—type board to supportrecall of content and claim you’ve “gamified” a course. But without an understandingof instructional design, or of the basics of game mechanics, or of how peoplelearn, all this is just a display of artifacts the creator has seen elsewhere. It’sadherence to form without regard to content. They’re lighting fires by runwaysand standing there with their wooden headsets waiting for the planes to land.

*I wish I could claim credit forthinking of this phrase, but I ran across it while researching this piece. Thanksto Steve Wittens for letting me reuse it.

The Cargo Cult is everywhere

Cargo Cult thinking has been widelydiscussed in other arenas. Richard Feynman wrote of it as a metaphor forcheating the scientific method, where we cherry-pick evidence that supports ourbeliefs and confuses that correlation and causation (for instance, believingthat “people learn more when training is fun” without understanding that itisn’t only about making an instructionalexperience fun). You’ve seen it around you:

• The bureaucratic organization that believesmeetings and documents will generate results.
• The “community” made up of a pretty discussionboard—with no one seeding conversations or nurturing interactions.
• The company that demands extended workdays becausethey heard Awesome Acme Company employees work a lot of hours—withoutunderstanding that the long hours are a byproduct of highly motivated employeeswho find a great deal of engagement and intrinsic reward in the work.
• The person who says Twitter is “worthless”because, “I followed 25 people and tweeted twice a day for a week but when Iasked for help no one responded.”
• The organization that goes through the motionsof an idea, claiming to be “agile” when it is anything but. I know of oneorganization in which the “agile” projects involve a designated “Scrum Master”who insists on firm deadlines months in advance (so he’s really still just a projectmanager, right?) and the word “scrum” has come to be synonymous with “meeting.”

And be honest: You’re in CargoCults. Do you, like me, look into a malfunctioning car engine as if it were ahuman brain, randomly shaking wires and twisting caps and whatnot because yousaw your dad do it? Ever been part of a document-laden, formalized-meeting,ritualistic mandated performance review process? Like the islanders, wesometimes believe going through the motions will result in magical outcomes.

So what to do?

Much of the writing on Cargo Cultstalks of the novice, and in L&D that can mean a literal novice—new in aninstructional job—or someone called out of their usual role. My organizationoffers a lot of support for this, and in fighting the “anybody can do it”mindset we’re careful to distinguish “presentation skills” from “trainingskills.” I spend a lot of my time talking about the different forms eLearningcan take, and helping SMEs see that sometimes instead of creating an “eReading”program we’re better off just sending the policy out.

• Include managers, and not just as links in anemail loop. Find a few who are really interested in workplace learning, makethem trainers, and send them to training skills or instructional designcourses. Involve them in actual design processes and delivery of programs. Helpthem see that we don’t need to just hire people who can use this authoring toolor that graphics program, but can demonstrate design that helps people learnand articulate what plays into that. And find ways to help managers understandthat “learning” doesn’t necessarily look like “school.”
• Get better examples in front of people. Show howthis scenario on this topic prepares a learner to perform better than themultiple-choice quiz will. Compare a great “harassment” or “ladder safety” or“Excel” course to a terrible one. Don’t just lecture on technicalities but taketime to explain rationale: I once got a lightbulb moment with an SME/designer/trainerwhen I said, “You know, we all read and hear at different speeds so when wenarrate every word in a program we’re basically splitting the learner’sattention. It can hurt learning because they aren’t really attending to eitherthing.”
• Help the organization find data. If you can’tconduct a full-blown evaluation of training impact, can you suggest means ofcollecting data—quantitative or qualitative—to get some feedback that helps yousee if you’re moving in the right direction? (See my piece on evaluating eLearning for more.)
• Offer a “let us help improve it” service, andremember to work out loud. When Craig Taylor was at Bupa International’s UKoffice as a learning technologies manager, one of his first tasks was helping adivision improve materials for client sales pitches. He found they employed avery traditional, bulleted, text-heavy style. But rather than just fix theslides and hand them back, Craig took the “working out loud” approach andrecorded what he was doing, and why. Talking over the slides in a recordedscreencast, he explained the problems with each and described—and showed—how tomake them better. He made this available to the workforce via the company’sinternal social platform. He ended up being in great demand. Craig notes thatthis was more than just a tutorial on “How to create better presentations.” Thematerial was addressed in context, moving beyond the pick-a-template-and-add-some-textmethod.

Which brings me to this: it’simportant to remember that Cargo Cult Training followers are not badlyintentioned. People mostly want to do a good job and are doing their best tofollow what they think is good practice. Encourage them to ask for help. Beavailable and kind when giving the help. Get better examples in front of them,and show how just presenting content isn’t “training.” Talk them through an eLearningprogram that works well, and why, rather than just criticize the one that doesn’t.Show the difference between a fun activity and an activity that results inskill development that also happens to be fun. Show them the elements that makeAngry Birds more than just another cute catapult game. Help people understandhow learning happens by making them more aware of it: ask, “How did you learnthat?” and, “What have you learned lately?” and, “Can you show me how to dothat?” Sometimes learning by experience just means copying bad ideas. Toconquer Cargo Cult Training we need to be the ones to provide examples ofbetter practice and offer support to those engaged, even if only on an ad-hocbasis, in that practice.

Want more?

Feynman, R. “Cargo Cult Science.” Engineering and Science, Volume 37:7, June, 1974.
Available at https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.pdf.

McConnell, S. Cargo Cult Software Engineering.” IEEE Software, p 11-13. 2000.
Available at https://sunnyday.mit.edu/16.355/cargo-cult.pdf.

Wittens, Steven. The Cargo Cult of Game Mechanics. September,2014.

Cargo Cult Programming (Wikipedia)

Craig Taylor anecdote is excerptedfrom Bozarth, J. Show Your Work: ThePayoffs and How-Tos of Working Out Loud. San Francisco: Wiley. 2014.

Thanks to Julie Dirksen for herhelp with this piece.

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