Skip to main content

Fly on the wall

Recently, I was a fly on the wall on a couple of discussions by a gathering of LnD associates. Yes, I admit, it was a boring event, but instead of feeling bored, I switched roles to that of someone who observes dispassionately, and here is what I gathered (this is tongue in cheek of course)

1. LnD people run the business. They do more than the business teams, founders, top level leaders and everybody else. Without them, there would be savages and philistines running the company.
2. Lnd people are therapists, counsellors, coaches, psychologists and conscience keepers rolled into one. It is a pity they are paid the salary of one person only.
3. LnD people believe they know everything. Including and not limited to the "Theory of everything". Just that nobody asked them. Else, the Nobels would have been ours people - seemed to be a collective feeling.
4. Any more navel gazing, and they would be Buddhas with the luminosity of their high salaries as the halo around their head.
5. They cant believe that their great meal (Michelin star ratings learning equivalents top rated) of trainings is being left untouched by the masses. The masses must be wrong the talking heads say. They always are, arent they? They dont get it. They dont have evolved tastes - those Netflix chomping, Whatsapp gazing masses.
6. LnD people know the future of work so well, they have been discussing this for 15 years now. And yet online courses remain the same bland thing you saw when Windows3.11 was running on computers. They whined that the rest of the organization isnt seeing the future.
7. Despite using Blockchain and paying with Bitcoin, the training experiences are poor, they lamented
8. But they are sure that ML and AI with a spot of AR and VR will solve all their problems, exactly the same way Microlearning and 702010 did 3 and 7 years ago respectively
9. These consultants are ohsobad, they said - and we can never get good consultants despite paying by the hour and dollars at that.
10. They buy the best content, but it is never good enough - sigh.
11. They all read the same books, if at all they do (and it is a very narrow set of them, if you have any doubts. The same TED talk gang that keeps referring each other in their books)
12. They research a lot, by typing keywords into Google - but nowadays quality of Google output is also poor it seems
13. 30 years, later, they are still figuring out the ROI of training. This must be the longest unsolved problem on earth just after the Theory of everything.
14. Gamification is the next new old big thing - apparently everything has to have accompanying badges and stars. They nodded.
15. Blended is the way to go. Phygital. Microlearning - everybody was sure.
16. What about right brain they ask the left brainers. And the opposite question to the others. They themselves are circular brains. This alone deserved the Ignobel.

My potential recruiters and potential clients, if you are reading this, please judge me on this and I will guarantee you better answers than this. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Be Civil. Make nice!

Popular posts from this blog

The man who saved Pumpelsdrop

This was a story we had in college if I am not mistaken. Perhaps it was in school, but a delightful story it was. The story goes somewhat like this ( reproduced from here ), but the college version we had was slightly different from this.  I t was a dull, gloomy and a depressing morning in a town named Pumpelsdrop in northern England. The Great Depression had brought all the businesses to a standstill. The bored automobile dealer was spending time alone, as usual. But, this seems to be an unusual morning as an odd entity (customer) appeared on the horizon. A man in a bright suit walks up to the dealer and says, "I need to buy a Rolls Royce Phantom II. We have a business conference coming up and I need to impress my customers". Then proceeds to pay 10% of the deal with a single check for 2000 pounds. The rest he says will pay when he takes the delivery.   The auto dealer was stunned. He was delighted to hear that someone is holding a business conference of some kind and ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Zero to One

Zero to One by Peter Thiel is a nice read. (Yes - if I sit down to write a book review - the book has to be worth it - and usually good - so most of my book reviews are about good books.You can stop here if that's the information you seek.) Where this book scores is in contrarian thoughts and contrarian questions that make you think. It starts with a four big lessons learned from the 90s dot-com crash that is, Make incremental advances, Stay lean and flexible, Improve on the competition and Focus on product, not sales. Just as you warm up to it, he says, the opposite rules are more correct - which are: It is better to risk boldness than triviality. A bad plan is better than no plan. Competitive markets destroy profits. Sales matters just as much as products. And finally leaves with a simple definition of contrarianism - it is not to oppose the crowd (or follow a smaller or newer or older crowd) but to think for yourself. "All happy companies are different"...
Post a Comment
Read more

Staying contemporary II

So, if that is not the way to training people on customer service what is? I have not crystallized on an idea right away, but there are some formative thoughts. But more than that, as a trainer, it is important that a training deliver cutting edge stuff to you. Especially when it comes to senior managers. Usually companies have a culture of service (by and large) - when you train frontline management it is important that we reinforce the culture (how do you do it - therein lies a later post). But as you go higher up, what does one do? What do they expect out of it? What can we give them that we already dont know? Most senior managers would be well read in those usual suspects - the HBRs, the McKinseys and other magazines. So, giving them anything out of any of these publications would be a waste of time for them. And mind you, most of these publications are not necessarily ahead of the curve as much as they are on the curve. So, what constitutes your trainings? How do you get them?...
3 comments
Read more