Serendipity and Learning

 Elearning is one of those niches that does not deserve to exist. Yes, it was a novelty 20 years ago, but not now. It cannot exist. But somehow it does. Disclaimer: I used to head a content team once upon a time. And I used to ask those whom I hired - tell me the last thing you learnt from an e-learning. The answer is - pretty much nothing (and this is a good decade ago).  Why?  If you want to learn a recipe, you go to Youtube, or Reels or something like that. If you are terribly old fashioned - as in, you read - then you go to a website and read the recipe and make it.  Most other things you learn by doing or learning on the job or asking an expert.  If you have to learn something in depth, then there are other ways.  So, where does e-learning fit in all this? E-learning is one of those products that the customer hates, but has no choice, because someone has decided it is the best way. For instance, you have to learn a new CRM or some other product - you w...

 Future of L&D only, nothing more.  What will never change for employees? (Inspired the book Same as ever - by Morgan Housel )  Employees will want to learn - to grow, to deepen expertise, to stretch, to prove a point - many "humann" reasons. Employees will want to grow - laterally, vertically, monetarily, mentally etc etc. Almost always, growth will be accompanied by learning and many a time learning will be a pre-requisite to growth.  Learning will always be required - the mode might change, but learning will be required.  Multiple modes of learning will co-exist Whatever else happens, Human intelligence will need to be sharpened. Call it soft skills or call it real skills (I love this term), this will always need to be sharpened. And then there is raw intelligence, visioning, strategising - another set of skills. Every willing to be sharpened by technological aids.  So learning, growth, human skills will always be valuable.  Now within real ski...

 Two decades or so ago, blogging was a big thing. This blog was started in 2011 - 13 years ago to this month. Blogging was great, because now suddenly everybody got a place to write and you read thinkers off the mainstream and hear their raw thoughts. Among others, Seth Godin, Marginal Revolution and several others and quite a few in India as well. And I started off a blog in 2004 and wrote it till 2014. Parallely, I started this blog in 2011 and it continues.  But over the years, as twitter appeared, blogging disappeared and it became micro blogs and slowly blogging and bloggers disappeared.  But as it happens, it has made a rather lovely comeback - initially via medium - and now via substack. And we can read entrepreneurs, writers and their thoughts on substack.  So, one patterns repeat and two, on the internet, there will always be space for good content!

 I have written a bit here , but perhaps it calls for a slightly longer post. Recently, I was at a panel discussion and the question of future of work came up. While the other panelists gave a typical view of work, as the last speaker, I was tempted to bring in a different point of view (because why have a panel where everybody is saying the same thing).  So, I shared this dystopian view of work.  In the future, work will happen via long mails, slack (or any other messenger) conversations. The great integration of all communication will happen. And not because of anyone else - because of AI. And you will have a situation where emails are talking to each other via co-pilots, documents are being reviewd, feedback is being taken and given, it is being incorporated. The net result is that work is happening in the background. And none of these co-pilot owners talk to other - atleast not with the articulation and empathy of a human conversation.  In that case, why do we ne...

Whenever you read articles on the future of L&D, there is a sense of deja vu. You know you have read it somewhere else. That's because we have been talking about the same things year on year.  But at the root of L&D what is it? L&D is only and only about behaviour change. As you move up the corporate ladder, this is the only thing you will be working on is to work on yourself.  There might be skill components in L&D where you learn frameworks on strategy or new theories on management, but that will boil down to practice. And practice in most contexts will require you to change behaviour (else why be trained in the first place), be vulnerable and be a role model. Now, regardless of your position on the ladder, you have to do this.  You learn new skills  The process of learning is fraught with vulnerability Then you learn to apply those skills Then those skills become second nature Somewhere along the way, you also train others So, you learn to coach. W...

Incident 1: I was talking to someone who is an expert in psychology and he told me about the way he remembers certain things. And I asked him, how does he remember so many things about so many people? And he said, it just happens.  Incident 2: I am in the process of learning the basics of Upanishads from someone who is an expert on the topic and he said there is a certain way of how certain things come to him in the middle of a lecture. He would have prepared, but there is always a something special.  That is intuition.  When your brain spends time with something - whether you are a psychology expert or Upanishad Vidwan or you are a faclitator or a coach, the information is stored by your brain and at the right moment, that information is retreived - the information which you dont know you need at that moment, but it presents itself. It is not information. Sometimes it is information, sometimes it is an idea, sometimes it is two dots that were always there, but never join...

A library gives me goosebumps. I dont know why that is so, but every time I visit a library, I am transfixed at the possibilities. One of my earliest photos has me with a book on my lap (and I distinctly remember the smell of the book). I cannot recall when I first visited a library - but I was hooked. It was a ramshackle set of shelves and some books falling off, but that was enough. The shelf in my native village that had old books with their pages falling off was enough. The municipal library that was hardy a library was good enough. And then as I went to college - those libraries were just so amazing. One of them was housed in an art deco old building and had archaic rules to issue books, but that made it all the more fun. The next was in a new building but had a good collection of books. One of the companies where I worked for a project had a voluminous library where I spent most of my Saturdays. One of the companies where I worked had spent a lot of money to make a huge libr...

At a recent discussion between friends - we wondered how the world is changing and how we cannot, ever, predict which way the future will go. (That was quite obvious, was it not). Will the future belong to technology - as much as the temptation is to say yes, it will - a friend gave a different perspective - of how a coffee costs as much as a well engineered electrical plug and wondered if, as technology automates everything - what will humans contribute in the future? And if technical skill - valued as it is - becomes more and more commoditised what does that mean? Will the future belong to the arts? Or to science? Or a mix of everything? Is the future one modeled on consumption the only way to go? Or is there a more, self sufficient manner of living - like in the ancient times. Where each craftsman worked on her craft, provided for a community and made a living. Where there was no rush to grow, where greed did not fuel the next step, where an increment was not expected next ...