Serendipity and Learning

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...

Pathless Path by Paul Millerd is a book that, as the title suggests encourages you to get off the beaten path.  What worked for me? The break down of the journey, what might one encounter, what are the freedoms one experiences and how to make the most it. What I liked about it was that I have experienced almost everything the author talks about during the time I pursued the pathless path. My frustrations, my coming to terms with it, my realising that I need to change my success parameters and finally to the point when I realised what I could do with it. Every single experience of mine resonated - and I feel proud in some way to have undertaken the journey, continue to undertake in some shape or form. This breakdown is something I have not seen anywhere else.  What did not work for me? It is a bit too self indulgent - the author talks a lot about himself and moving from a developed country to Asia is well, not exactly off the beaten path considering the hippies did it decades a...