8 minute read
Never Mind The Bollocks
Lewis Carr encourages us to rock the punk approach to learning
Corporate training is broken. Overly polished, compliance-driven, and unbearably dull. A bit like today’s music. Employees click through endless slides, mindlessly answering multiple-choice questions just to check a box. But what if we tore up the rulebook? What if online learning went full punk rock - raw, rebellious, and completely antiestablishment?
The Who, The Ramones and The Sex Pistols are before my time. I was more of a Greenday, Offspring, Bad Religion kinda guy. (Yes, I know they aren’t real punk bands compared to the 1970s). 70s Punk is all about anti-establishment, anti-status quo and is anti-institutional. They believed in anarchy, freedom of the people and destruction of tradition.
The Problem with Traditional E-Learning
For decades, corporate training has followed the same tired formula: top-down, dictated by L&D departments, and designed to meet regulatory requirements rather than inspire actual learning. I’ve waxed lyrical about this for the best part of my career. I’ve even been part of the problem by building this crap. I sold out. Corporate training is about risk mitigation, not growth. This approach breeds disengagement, resentment, and, most importantly…failure.
Enter the Punk Rock Learning Model
Punk rock was never about following the rules. It was about challenging norms, embracing imperfections, and doing things on your own terms. So just what could happen if we apply that ethos to online learning? Well, with the added risk of getting fired, quite a lot.
DIY Learning: Learner-Driven, Not Company-Mandated
Punk bands didn’t wait for record labels; they recorded and distributed their own music. Online learning should follow suit. Instead of mandatory, HR-imposed training modules, what if employees curated their own learning paths? What if they had access to real-world, user-generated content, peer-to-peer knowledge sharing, and decentralised learning communities? What if people actually wrote courses that told the truth? The intro to a punk rock version of an HR course would go something like this.
“Welcome to this boring as shit HR course. Where you will sit and read pages of pointless information on things that don’t actually matter and worse still, are not reflective of the workplace”.
Raw and Real, Not Polished and Pretentious
Corporate e-learning is overproduced and sterile. A punk rock approach would ditch the overly scripted, robotic voiceovers and embrace raw, unscripted learning. Think authentic video lessons, real employee stories, and rough-cut content that feels human, not manufactured.
We all know that the job we thought we had, isn’t really the job we ended up doing. We know that we might have to work late, deal with pain-in-the-neck clients, redo countless revisions of the same page, make someone’s logo smaller and chase invoices for the next 90 days until someone finally pays.
And you know what? What’s wrong with telling people how it really is? Why not just tell the truth? A 10-second TikTok video on where the fire meeting point is would be a million times better than watching Nigel show you on a PowerPoint for 2 hours. (Sorry Nigel but take your Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran albums elsewhere).
Learning by Doing, Not Clicking Through
Punk is all about action. Get up, pick up a guitar, and play. E-learning should be the same. Hands-on learning, problem-solving in real scenarios, and experimental approaches should replace passive content consumption. Employees should create, test, fail, and iterate in real-world conditions, not just answer quiz questions. This is how we can prepare people for real-world situations, by using real employee stories, and rough-cut content that feels human, not manufactured, like how The Ramones’ fast, imperfect, but passionate sound was more powerful than any overproduced arena rock of the same era. Gritty is better.
Challenge Authority: Let Employees Break the Rules
Most e-learning content assumes that employees are passive learners who need to be spoon-fed information. Punk rock learning treats employees like active participants who question the status quo. Why not let learners challenge training content, debate policies, and contribute their own insights to the learning process?
The reason we don’t is that this is too controversial. People would get fired for speaking the truth. Imagine if Dave from the warehouse wrote a course on “How we really work in the warehouse”. Or Sally from Marketing wrote the course, “Why Brand Guidelines are nonsense and limit creativity because marketing folk think their logo is the most important thing in the world, when it’s not!”
If we did go all punk, then management would not be happy. We can’t really tell people what it’s like to work here, can we? I hate to say it, but if there ever were an office fire, I would grab my coat, car keys and bag on the way out. It would literally be a 2-second thing on the way out, there’s no way in hell I’m leaving my MacBook to melt when I can simply cradle it in my arms and carry it with me in one swift movement as I stand up. You see, that’s punk rock right there. And you know what, you would do the same if you were being completely honest.
I’ll give you another example. Cybersecurity Training vs. Real Scams - employees are trained to spot phishing emails using textbook-perfect examples. But actual scams are far more sophisticated, mimicking real messages from their bosses or IT departments. No slideshow can prepare them for the subtlety of a well-crafted cyberattack. I’m not talking about those fake Royal Mail text messages that take you to a fake website, I’m talking about those boss-level ones that take down banks.
Here’s another one: Customer Service Scripts vs. Real Conversations – many customer service reps are trained using rigid scripts, but customers don’t follow a script. Real interactions require adaptability, emotional intelligence, and problem-solving skills that aren’t learned from clicking through a training module. You can have the best flowcharts in the world, but sometimes you have to think on your feet. Just because you completed your Storyline course on customer service skills does not mean you’re ready to face Beryl, the 70-year-old lady from Glasgow who grew up listening to The Ramones. She will take you down.
Do you know what, F*ck it, here’s another one whilst I’m ranting (see I’ve gone all punk). Time Management Training vs. Workplace Pressures - employees are trained on productivity techniques like “time blocking” and “prioritisation.” Then they return to work and are immediately bombarded with urgent emails, last-minute meetings, and unrealistic deadlines, rendering the training useless in practice. You can shove your Pomodoro Tomato-shaped timer up your ass. And whilst you’re at it, take your Gantt chart and wipe with it because projects do go to hell. I live in the real world, and I can tell you, nothing stings more when a client signs off on something and then changes their mind towards the end of the project. No training in the world can stop this. As Johnny Rotten once famously sang, “God save the client, she ain’t no human being!!!!!”
Short, Loud, and Unapologetic
Just like punk songs are short, fast, and straight to the point, e-learning should ditch the bloated, hour-long courses in favour of fast, high-impact content. Think no-BS learning that respects people’s time and intelligence. The Greenday line, “Do you have the time, to listen to me whine?” is a perfect fit here. We live in a world where a meeting could have been a quick email. People drag out Zoom meetings to make them feel worthwhile. Online courses are bloated with text to fill the page, when a single sentence would have been more than enough. It’s all done to make things seem more important. When in reality, they are not. So let’s stop the BS, let’s deliver a two-slide course, let’s actually create learning that reflects what really goes on at work.
Go Punk or Go Home
We’re seeing the early signs of this movement already. Companies are adopting more informal learning communities, leveraging TikTok-style videos, and encouraging peer-led knowledge sharing. The future belongs to organisations that embrace a punk mindset and those willing to scrap the old ways and build something that actually works.
We should also apply the same ethos to LMS platform design and websites. Every goddamn Moodle site looks the same, every Articulate Rise course is a clone, every WordPress site is the same as the next. And now, with AI, all learning content is sounding the same. It’s like today’s music; it all sounds the same to me. AI-generated crap, repetitive drum loops and auto-tuned voices. Modern music sucks. E-learning sucks, that’s why it’s the strapline for our magazine. So if you actually give a monkey’s, why not take a leaf out of our book and go all punk. What’s the worst that could happen? Apart from being fired. But you would go down as a legend.
So if your L&D strategy feels more like an ‘80s power ballad rather than a three-chord punk anthem, maybe it’s time to shake things up. Burn the rulebook. Smash the guitars, put explosives in the drum kit. Let’s make learning something worth caring about. I hope you had the time of your life.
Lewis Carr Founder. Moodle Wizard. Digital Nomad. Lewis wears many hats but his most comfortable is his Dirtyword beanie. Connect wth him here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ lewiscarrlearning/
