Serendipity and Learning

Yes, why do people scooters on the flyover? We have all seen it. Rental scooters are left on the flyovers. Actually they are left on many random places - on the footpath, in alleys, fallen on the side and I have often wondered, as have you, that, why are people so irresponsible? Few days back my kids asked me; when people leave the scooter in the middle of a flyover, where do they go after that? We made a few wild guesses, we laughed and then we forgot about it. Today evening, I had the pleasure of talking to Keerthi, a cab driver who drove us from the airport to home. And as the conversation progressed, we noticed a bunch of scooters parked in odd places like this and then he asked, "Sir, why do people leave scooters on the flyover?" "And I see a few scooters even in the middle of the airport flyovers. The others I can understand - it is a 200 hundred metres walk, but what about the airport flyover? Something must be there. Is there an incentive to leave it on th

2 years ago, I had started this project. It had no name. It was an Excel sheet with rows and columns. It  was a product of my frustration with not having a single tool that was Indian for my upcoming creativity workshop. Finally for the workshop, I purchased a couple of well known tools. And went on with it. But this idea did not die down. I worked with an illustrator and came up with a few concepts and then shared it with two others. They loved the concept, but told me that I was getting something wrong and offered to work with me on it. The idea became a collaboration and led into something slightly bigger than what I had in mind and evolved into a partnership and I am happy to have been part of the effort of making an Indian creativity toolset - using what is Indian. I wish I could say more, but wait for the official word on it... My views on creativity and innovation

Non Violent Communication - Rosenberg. I dipped into this book and dipped out of it. But is a promising read for sure, coming from a communicating with empathy standpoint. Trillion Dollar Coach - Eric Schmidt. A breezy read -the story of Bill Campbell who has mentored many in Silicon valley. Read it to know more about different coaching styles. Alchemy - Rory Sutherland This is a great read on market and customer insights and how much of customer behaviour is psychological. The Era of Baji Rao - Uday Kulkarni. A historical read on one of the lesser told and known stories of India. And of course, leadership. Banaras- City of Light by Diane Eck. This one is the best written book on one of the worlds oldest living cities. Written lovingly - I have never read any book on any city in India with such a comprehensive history. Blitzscaling - Reid Hoffmann. I picked this up with great expectations, but I did not find anything that stood out in particular. Atomic Habits - James Clear. Thi

This year with an exploration in new games. Azul -a very different tile mechanism - yet entertaining, fast and competitive (without being in your face). It was a runaway hit at home. Hive - a fast paced insect chess - if I had to give it a metaphor - really caught on. The game mechanics seemed simple to begin with but then we realised that it has a lot of dimensions and strategies. Its a game I dont win much, but each time it intrigues me. A pocket sized dynamo. 7 wonders - reviewers had warned that it was complex to begin with, but dont be put off by it - it is worth the persistence. And yes. The game is very simple -it just feels complicated. And to pack so many ways of winning technically using card randomization and yet leave space for strategy - we love this one. Usually, whenever a shorter version of a game is built, there is significant loss in game mechanics. Somehow, 7 wonders Duel has figured this out. How to make a good game better - making if faster, more dynamic, in

Kids learn by themselves. Especially when there is youtube. Earlier, we used to learn a board games instructions by reading through the instruction manual, playing and by trial and error. It was a little difficult and took us quite a few tries. Nowadays, the kids teach us the rules. They watch youtube where a gamer duly takes us through the rules and often addresses "between the lines" doubts. And what is surprising is that this is a way faster process. Welcome to the age of the autodidact... Recent skills learnt - Coding in python, decoupage, Arduino, Making slime etc etc. Earlier posts on Autodidacts: Here , here and here . 

Recently, I was part of a program where people had to choose time slots. Initially the off-take was low and people refused to sign up. After a few tries however, the slots magically began to get filled. The secret? It was transparent, visible. The more people saw that others had signed up, the sooner the rest signed up. So, as people signed up and saw the slots getting filled - there was both a 'sense of urgency' as well as 'social acceptance' - that I dont want to be the outlier. There was another thing that we did - every single person who was in this cohort, was spoken to by the Learning Head - individually. We believe this also contributed to the stickiness.

When we get trained on coaching, conversations veer towards emotions. The assumption being that there is a significant emotion driving the person. The assumption is valid, but the reality is that a lot of corporate coaching is still at a cognitive level and a coach, one has to see it from this practical lens. Therefore, the job of the coach may not (always) be to get to the emotional level, but to watch out for patterns, ask questions that provoke deep thought, encourage the coachee to see and acknowledge blind spots, and move them toward action, expand their own identity by getting to step out of comfort zones and in all this, ensure that they are still focused on their strengths and remain authentic... As I wrapped the year with a few of my coachees, here is what they typically said: Sounding board Enable me to see blind spots Keep me honest Push me to go beyond comfort zone Identify patterns Support Systems [Initial thoughts...need to expand]

Recently, we introduced a board game at our induction. The question was - 'How to give the new joinees an experiential immersion into the business'. The answer was to learn by doing - there is no other way that people can learn. As we searched for data that would enable us to create this 'game', we chanced upon a team that was running a similar digital challenge. And we used the basic structure of this game and made it into a board game. Predictably during the trial, the question came up - why dont you make it digital. Well for one, digital adds to costs, but more importantly, in the many weeks that we have trialled the game, it leads to greater interactions among the team that is playing it. There is debate, there is competition and there is also an element of surprise as they have to get the results from the facilitator each round (it has been configured this way). The idea is not to give a full fledged idea of the business (no simulation ever can), but to gi

We were listening to Girish Kulkarni, award winning actor/director and he said something that most of the audience pause and reflect. He said, cinema is all about moments. As the storyline goes on, there are points when the cinema captures a "moment" and those are "moments" that stay with you. And that set me thinking...what moments do we create in learning engagements? And having personally watched those aha moments - both personally and others getting them, I couldnt agree more. Though, I must admit, I never thought of them as moments. And what if we were to architect such moments...What if we planned learning journeys around it...

I love goofball ideas. I think I love most ideas. Though it has often gotten me into trouble - because chasing every random idea means a loss of focus somewhere else. But there are times it has really helped.

Recently, I was talking about Learning journeys and I realised that learning journeys are like a glider. Take off a cliff and then it goes down until it hits an updraft. And in learning journeys those periodic updrafts are necessary to be provided so that the journey is in place till the landing... Passing thought....

Many years ago, a senior leader was addressing a gathering of newbies. Email was relatively new then and people still diligently read forwards. And he shared an example of the General Motors and Ice-cream story. Needless to say, the audience did not clap, they went 'meh'. Why, because information is free. Once you have email - it is a matter of time before every known forward made its way to its inbox. Exactly the same way, you will notice that the same set of forwards keep circulating in all your whatsapp groups within a day.  So, if everybody has the internet (and we google and call it research) and you are picking stuff that everyone knows into training material, you have got something wrong.  So whats the answer? It is the same - there is space beyond this easy keyboard hunting...there is space beyond the obvious and beyond the crowded 'easy'

Everyone wants learning to go digital, but it just isn't sticky. What gives? Here is a graded summary of what works and what doesnt work as per my learning... Purely self motivated - I want to learn - works best. But it may or may not be relevant to organisations. While I might want to learn decoupage and might be supremely motivated, it may be irrelevant and even distracting to the organisation. If we could channel this and align the motivation of the employee to the organization needs - this is the place digital learning would work best. Thus, if your sales training is motivating enough for your sales team or if your analytics training is cool enough for your analytics team - it will work. You may want to add a social layer (sales cohort, analytics cohort), get the leader to lead or a gamification layer, but if you havent cracked the 'motivation' - the need - the social and gamification layer is a wasted effort. The leaders effort and inspiration wont help beyond a

After so many years, Ask versus Tell still remains my favourite conversation skill moment (Thanks Balaji for putting this in my head). Each time , each audience, each industry whereever we have gone over this, Ask versus Tell almost always creates a moment of pause from the audience. We all know this intuitively, but the fact that it highlights is that it is a difficult skill to build. Actually all skills are difficult to build. It takes time, deliberate practice and faltering before it becomes second nature...

The title should have a some in it, but then it isn't quite dramatic. I am part of multiple LnD forums and groupchats on Whatsapp - mostly. All day mostly they are looking for 'content' for a training program or for 'activities' for something. The other activities that happen are asking for a trainer or pointer to some topic or marketing their own work. What is not happening is debates on how to do things (better?) or what are the new advances and challenges. And even with that not happening, the best place to get content is google. And the worst. Because the laziest content seekers go with the first page on wikipedia or whatever else they can find. And if this is your idea of content, you are dead on arrival. Why not read yourself? Talk to people? Find out more? Go beyond google? Luckily, it is some people. The rest are doing a better job of it...

This is well known - the moment one talks about learning to say No - the most common road is 'assertiveness' skills. However, by and large assertiveness is not the issue. The issue is something else. The issue is that there is no greater yes that enables your no. The greater yes is the assertion that you need to say no, not the assertiveness as a skill. This was an old realization for me (nothing original - well researched, consultants know this, salespeople practice this and negotiators swear by it), but it came back while working on a short project. 

A few weeks ago, I got an innocuous request. Can you help a small team frame conversations with their stakeholders. I spoke with a couple of the stakeholders and heard them out in terms of the way the problem was framed. I was lost after the initial framing. This was a topic that they had dealt with in depth through two frameworks in 6 months and I was wondering how to take them through this. This was my uncertain territory where there is a search for a solution. I usually like this uncertainty because it results in some insight sooner or later. And sure enough thats what happened. I was able to break conversation skills into a few distinct parts, break it into what they are doing now (stakeholder inputs) and in doing so, what are they missing out on. The breaking in the parts was not a surprise for them or for me. The what they are doing now was also not a surprise. What was not obvious was the final framing of what are they really supposed to do (as opposed to what they are do

A few years back we were designing a learning program for a senior management team. And the partner I was working with came up with something - say, the SWOT analysis. And I said, well, that is too simple for a leadership team. They would have learnt in MBA, if not earlier. We need something complex was my reasoning. The partner did not agree - he gave a reasoned argument - which I was not fully convinced and I thought of fighting this battle some other day. But I saw this work in action - and the leaders struggled with the SWOT analysis - and the partner was able to pick it apart. They did not err in their SWOT - if thats what you think I am hinting at - but there were gaps in their framing, there were gaps in the way that they shared it with their team and so on. And the partner did not say anything - but I had learnt my lesson. When we go after explaining something complex - the audience is confused in the framing and will attribute gaps in the framing to the complexity of th

It is a pleasure to see a master at work. Years ago, I was in my coaching program and there was a master coach who was there to train us. I was the coach who was practicing. My 'client' came with an innocuous question - which I attempted to wrestle into a coaching style conversation. And in a few questions, I was lost. I had tied up myself in knots and raised my hands to ask the master coach to come in. The master coach started talking. She asked 2 questions and by the 4th question, my 'client' was in tears. I learnt Transactional Analysis with this master coach for 2 years and I saw her in action many a time during our sessions. Her ability to connect with people is just incredible. And some months later, I was in conversation with a senior executive with another person who I respect for such skills and as we walked outside, he was able to flip the conversation in a different frame  - only because he was alert to the possibility. As coaches, as learning profes

As a fan of Sherlock Holmes and its various interpretations over the years, it is fascinating to see the protagonist 'deduce' various things by looking at people, clues, crime scenes and so on. And while they are all in a sense, just well written stories, the fact of the matter is that Sherlock is a man of heightened sensitivities. He has hones this skill of his to perfection - perhaps magical levels. See this TED talk by Apollo Robbin s where he 'misdirects' - a story of heightened sensitivities. Or this classic TED talk by Keith Barry where he 'reads people'. What can a person with heightened sensitivities do? A conman can use it for evil purposes, a good person can use it for the common or individual good - we can all do it. And we do this in many of this do this in our own worlds as well. Salesmen hone their sensitivities. Coaches do the same. Detectives. Lawyers. All of us can do it - if we try. But we can do it. 

The Indian Microsoft wont be a Microsoft (that we think of - like an MSOffice) in all likelihood. Slowly but surely we are realising that all our data/tech/capability, private, personal, corporate is all based in a foreign land or in a foreign corporate. China has got this, we still havent. Therefore, the Indian tech giant wont be a giant the way we know it. It will be something else. It better be something else...

What is the purpose of tech in HR.. Very often those who oppose tech think the purpose of tech is to dehumanise, but in reality it is otherwise. That means instead of seeing tech as a threat to our job and existence think how can it make life easier for our stakeholders? For instance... Ensuring candidates get replies on time, enabling the right people to apply, building a metric for team capability and by ensuring small interactions are done well, build greater empathy in the system How does tech increase empathy? Instead of sending an email to someone and that someone doesnt respond for whatever reason, having a bot, simply makes the job more painless. Think of a bank. Back in the day, we had to go to the bank for every trivial thing. Now, by having a portal/app - you dont have to go and all your work is getting done. Isnt that better? The question to ask therefore is what problem of the user are we solving for? Sometimes, we put that on us and try to solve our problem - w

Those who wanted the service industry to create a Microsoft or an Adobe in India miss the point that it is an ecosystem that creates, not exhortations. Along the way that Indias services industry was floundering or stumbling and bumbling along, a company named Flipkart was formed. It seemed innocuous enough - after it was an Amazon clone - started by selling books, went onto sell many other things. The market that was India was lucrative enough for Amazon itself to come onboard. Flipkart itself spawned a host of me-too brands. And it gobbled up Myntra.com - which remains a premier fashion destination online in India. The Paypal mafia had a similar clone in India - the Flipkart mafia. Demonetization led to a surge in digital payments. GST led to more digital transactions. And an entire tech ecosystem emerged to meet the demands of new India. Slowly but surely, the tide turned. Engineers did not want services jobs anymore and instead wanted meatier tech jobs,  wanted to solve real p

The late 90s to early 2000s were all part of Indias service economy boom. Everybody who was anybody became an engineer. Every engineer from mining to petrochemical became interested in IT services. If not anything, it offered a steady income for an aspirational country. But this interest in services also came at a cost. In my own experience, I found people thinking purely of work as a service, devoid of too much initiative or risk and spending their lives as it were on a spec sheet and clients orders. It also de-skilled people - unless they were careful about building a skill - it was an instant road of managerial anonymity and a career devoid of any skills. Along the way, for those who are familiar, were lamentations from people that all these services are not enabling India is not producing the next Microsoft or even a web browser. There were IT services giants, but they were not producing any products. And such it went that people argued that services was an industry while others

Of late, Bangalore has seen quite a few bike sharing companies. They have tried it a while back, but this time Yulu seems to be getting some traction just as Pedl gave up. I never got a chance to try it, but being somewhat of a cyclist myself, I was always in favour of it. And then they launched the Yulu miracle. Stuck as I was between two bus points - I wanted some option and spotted a Miracle there. Decided to take it. And I must admit, I enjoyed the ride. It was slow - any amateur who can balance can ride it - the brake was a bit iffy though. The road was a bit scary given fast motorcycles that zoomed past. But I hope that it reaches a good enough adoption rate for people to be able to use it - both the cycles and the Miracles. And I wish, somehow we could build cycle paths into the current ecosystem (seems impossible I know, but well) PS: Given Bangalores weather, we need more walkways and cycle paths - and that will solve half our commute problems. Given current commute con

Being in Learning and Development has its side benefits. Recently attended a kitchen meeting in preparation for an assignment. And it turned out to be a education for me....about the world of gastronomy. Well no, it was like someone opened a door into a library room into the size of a stadium and closed it fast before I could read a page... Here is a sample... Jambalaya versus Gumbo - which is what? Not that I particularly know or can recognize one from the other, but one is a rice dish and one is a stew. What is Sambal ? I learnt this word as well :) I thought it had an Indian origin, but similar to Jambalaya I was wrong. How about Gallo pinto? Surely Goan? Naah, see for yourself . And apparently all this can be easily found in the worlds greatest culinary book - Larousse Gastronomy .

Some days ago, the fellow stumbled upon Morse code. And from then on it has been a flurry of investigation on Morse code and finally he found a Morse code keyboard on the phone. Whoever? Whyever? But it is fascinating how the internet can set you off on such serendipitious paths - some interesting, some positively not (like a few weeks back when he wanted to memorise the first 100 digits of pi and insisted on reciting it to unsuspecting listeners). The Morse code is an interesting path. The Lego puzzle box another interesting one - that led to multiple smaller inventions in the fray - some of which saw light of day some that did not. 

One of the things we actively do is calling people who are trying out new things. In the past few months we have met people who are trying to push the envelope on many things - from game based assessments to AR driven trainings to technology learning companies to a bunch of other things. Learning things from interviews. Learning things from people in different industries. Learning things from books. Learning from leaders. And of course, trying out some of it. Trying out something new. With a hint of curiosity. With a bit of knowledge of reversible and irreversible decisions. Falling a bit, failing a bit, tweaking a bit... Realising that there is indeed, so much to learn...

The internet is a world of information. In an age of information everything is but a google search away. Take the example of science. When I was studying, if my textbook said water froze at 0 degrees, we took at as the truth. We did not have a doubt. Today, the internet is a great doubt clearing machine and ever so often when the kids come up with a doubt, we google and get an answer (or sometimes more confused). Apart from this, I am a huge fan of serendipity and believe it builds my divergent thinking muscle. The other day I was at an office and noticed a book called 'The Lego Architect' and bought it on Amazon. This book, while it is about Lego and architecture, taught me many words which I had no idea existed. Brutalism, for example. Leaded windows. How does water behave at 0 degrees (trust me the answer will surprise you) How to install CustomRom on a phone (yes, he got the bright idea that he can do it - luckily I dissuaded him). We dismantled an old mechanical

Over the last few weeks, I have got rid of Facebook, Instagram from my phone and leaving only Twitter and LinkedIn as Social media. And of course, Whatsapp because it has become a default communication medium. What I realised that much time was being spent in meaningless scrolling and the best part is that I am not missing it. And that there are better things one can do with the internet in your pocket! What are those better things? Well, one is serendipity (post coming soon). The other is to use the time saved for better things and ideas. And of course, save your eyes.

This is a question I often ask in my interviews and expect to be asked whenever either I go for an interview (or equally first time meeting with a potential client). What I answer you will know when we meet, but on the other side, very often there is no answer to this question - what's new in the OD space or tell me something new. For me this question is important because it means you as a practitioner are thinking about new things. Second, it means, you are not content with status quo and you are trying to push the envelope. The trick here is to not fall into the usual trap of 'what is supposed to be cool'. So, pushing jargons here is a sure disaster - like digital detox, micro learning or the so called problem of millennials and attention span (guess why this is wrong). One of the issues with 'new' is also that the learning and OD space still has a lot of old research - most of which is quite relevant and pertinent and that has become a comfort zone of sorts

When it comes to creating learning experiences creating the context is very important. That might sound obvious, but it is often not. This is perhaps one of my oldest thoughts but I had not quite figured out two things. One, that creating context, especially when you are a consultant is tough - because it goes beyond knowing the jargon - and goes into knowing the industry and requires a significant of contextual knowledge while at the same time have the humility of knowing that you are not the domain expert. This we were able to do successfully in a couple of projects to good effect. The second part of building context is the time and energy it takes to do so. And most companies either do not have the time or the money or both to do so. There is a neglected third element that many learning consultants wrongly believe that their work is beyond context - it is not - not by a long shot. But think about it - if you can build in greater context, your learning experiences are that

This bright green book with a yellow title has always caught my attention, but I had never read it.  Imagine my surprise that when I finally picked it up as part of a preparation for a workshop that it was such a fantastic book. Playing to win by Alan Lafley and Roger Martin is one of those books that is up there when it comes to learning about how strategy can be crafted and implemented in real business. There is much in the book - and unlike other books - this book is really a leaf out of P&G, but with frameworks and models that can be applied anywhere. Image from here . It is these 5 questions played in a loop (well, iteratively) that are the juiciest part of the book and as simple and obvious as they are, it is this place where the strategy play happens. So, yes, simply put a great book to be read by anyone who is anywhere close to strategy...

The first few minutes when you meet someone as a consultant are vital. The person on the other side is evaluating you. Whether you are in a meeting or in a consulting discussion or in facilitation, those first few minutes are vital. How this happens is the people on the other side ask a question and watch how you respond. Depending on how you respond, the conversation goes uphill or downhill. It is important to handle this well. How does one do it? One, by listening fully, being curious, asking the right questions. But this alone wont work - neither will purely paraphrasing - at this stage, they are very likely looking for specific answers. If you dont give specific answers or vacillate - it will also put you in a slot - from where escaping may be difficult. Take a cricket analogy for this. When you are new to the crease, the bowler tries you out by bowling a few interesting balls and sees how you react. Depending on how you react/stand up/perform the next steps happen. Take any

Atomic Habits by James Clear takes off where The power of habit by Charles Duhigg leaves off. It takes a behavioural route to building good ideas as opposed to a more checklist oriented approach. It has some interesting propositions - creating a 1% increment, building a stack of ideas, making desirable ideas easy and attractive while at the same time making undesirable ideas difficult and unattractive among other things. The power of compounding as attached to habits is what creates a superpower. You work out each day and in 6 months, it compounds. You read each day and in a few years, it compounds many times over. This is the part which resonated with me because my reading habit is a good example of how it is a well developed superpower - I wish I could say the same about my writing as well. And that is how skills are built - a bit each time. The book was recommended to me by a number of people and it lives up to expectations. 

Many years ago, India was primarily a third party services ecosystem. There were a dime a dozen third party IT service companies and BPOs. This wave ran out of steam soon enough,  leaving in its wake unemployable skills and managers. And all around us were complaining op-eds on how India does not have any products and has only services. Cut to today. Whether we have products from India or we dont, we have start-ups.  We have had them for a few years now, but what this ecosystem has created or led to creation is some really cool tech talent. This kind of talent either did not exist or was hidden, but the start up ecosystem has made this the talent very desirable. Start ups are formed, many fall by the wayside, some become big - the ones that fall by the wayside try again, the ones who are big enable many people to make money some of when pour that back into an idea that they are passionate about and every single such action leads to creating an ecosystem. Thoughts as I interacted

A conference is a place where there are sages on stages giving you gyan. Notorious among them are certain types of conferences where the same topics is discussed year on year. So, the net result is that conferences are places where people go, not to really get any knowledge, but to network. I had a chance to be a part of a 'Flipped' conference - Transformation Dialogues, where the audience asks questions and the panels go based on audience questions - under the larger umbrella of the topic. The topic at hand was strategy and every table worked (seriously) using the given framework and got their questions answered (by and large). It was fun to be a table facilitator and take the audience through the process, answer their questions and guide them through the framework. More power to the Flipped conference. PS: the flipside of the flipped conference is a ton of background work, so beware...

India has so many monuments that one spend a lifetime seeing them and still have a few left to see. Monuments, temples, sites, geographical wonders - there is a rich treasure trove for anyone willing to explore. This one is about Aurangabad - Ajanta and Ellora to be specific. We started with Ajanta - which is a spectacular sight whether you see it from the view point on the top or you go cave by cave and wonder at both the genius, artistry and rigor of the humans who did this for hundreds of years. Going over the caves, takes the good part of a day at a leisurely pace and it is a place one can spend weeks getting into nuances. And this - after a significant level of destruction. One can just about visualize what the original works might have looked like. And if Ajanta blows your mind away, Ellora takes you to another level. Specifically the Kailasnath temple. Imagine that someone decided to carve down (yes, down) a mountain - from the top and imagined a temple while carving it dow