Or what I learned through working at a casino

I was having an interesting conversation with a colleague the other day about how we use or should use principles, rules, and heuristics in learning and development.

It hadn’t occurred to me before this conversation that these probably should be identified and defined at the start of any learning/training process so that our learners understand the parameters for the information that is to follow.

Let me explain the difference between the three through a story….

In the early 2000s I taught various courses in human resource management, business management, training and development, and ethics, for the University of Connecticut system. In one of my training and development courses the students had an assignment to develop a short training lesson that included objectives, knowledge, skills, and behavioral outcomes. They then had to teach the lesson to the group.

To get real value from the assignment, the topic had to relate to their work.

One of the cool things about my job with the University was that, rather than teaching on the college campus, I was sent to businesses to teach the college’s courses to an intact group of employees who were working toward degrees. This particular client happened to be a casino.

As their final assignment, two of my students taught the rest of us how credit at a casino is determined and extended to gamblers who have run out of money. It is a very involved process which in the end comes down to a judgment call.

Principles: A fundamental truth that serves as the foundation for a belief, behavior, or for a chain of reasoning.

In practice: ALL casinos share credit information with one another. You cannot run out of money at one casino, borrow, run out of money again, and move on to another casino – every casino knows how much debt you are carrying and who you owe it to.

Rules: Official policies or regulations.

In practice:  Before a line of credit is determined and extended, the casino employee looks at credit scores, bank records, and the customer profile (based on their gambling history and use of credit in the past) to determine how “good” of a credit risk they are. It is incredibly difficult to get credit extended the first time because the gambler has no history of paying it back (unless, as noted above, they have used credit at a different casino).

Heuristic: A rule of thumb or an educated guess that allows you to make decisions efficiently.

In practice. Assuming the person applying for credit has a good history of using credit in the past, and their bank records and credit score don’t reflect anything alarming, they will be extended credit.

Here is the part of learning that cannot govern the final decision: the amount of credit extended is entirely up to the casino employee. Two different employees may come up with two different decisions. Neither one is “better,” and so long as both employees followed the process’ principles, rules, and heuristics both are right.

Now, your assignment: When designing or delivering workplace training, start by defining the principles, rules, and heuristics - it will help you to organize the content and help the learner to understand what processes are de facto vs. when and how they apply their own critical thought.