Serendipity and Learning

 When was the last time you sat in a meeting that had vague objectives? The speaker started. The group nodded expecting it to go "never attend boring meetings". But the leader took a different direction.  He said, the Indian space program, missile program, IT industry - many such initiatives that are big toda started with an unclear objective, but the group worked through the vague objectives, sculpted them and worked on it bit and bit and then it became an overnight success.  Behind that overnight success is a lot of effort, but everything began with that single thought, that single meeting.  And therefore, as leaders your job is think long term. Go after those vague initiatives. Sure out of them some will succeed, some will fail, but never fail to dream big.  Personally this resonated a lot with me - having been part of a few projects that started with a vague idea...

Chandrayaan 3 has caught the imagination of Indian people. The power of the big idea. And not just that, even the Vande Bharat - has caught the imagination of the people. I can only imagine when the first RRTS and HSR are launched.  It is said that in 1962, when JFK made his speech about going to the moon , it fired the imagination of the country.  In India Chandrayaan 3 has caught the imagination of children - I remember how I used to be fascinated by NASA during the 80s. Imagine a whole generation of children growing up fascinated by space and dreaming great dreams. And this in our own country.  We have atleast 15 start ups working on space - this was unthinkable. I SRO is licensing its small satellite technology to the private sector.  I hope that the big idea inspires more people to take up STEM courses and advance the frontiers of science.  The last gap that needs to be filled is for the academic sector in India to get into research. We have done that i...

Its been a few months since the wordle craze took over. The beauty and the simplicity and the "limit" of the game and the sharing have all contributed to the popularity of the game. We all play it at home and share our scores - plus we share it with a few wordle friends.  And now there are clones of it - Nerdle, Stackle, Tamil Wordle, Worldle, Word master and so on and many others I dont know of. Where were these ideas till now? Probably in peoples heads - but ideas which never came out. And that is often how it is with ideas. One idea opens up the proverbial floodgates. On the other hand - in a limitless world of word games or other games that want you to do things endlessly - Wordle wants you to something in a limited way. Just one thing. Just once a day. And thats how the pendulum swings. 

 Sure, I am late for this story - but it so happened that the nephews were playing a tiny match somewhere in a small ground in a small suburb and he shared me a link to see the scores. And I was blown away and thats how I stumbled onto cricheroes.  Servicing a niche community via an app is nothing new - indeed almost every app serves a specific niche, but this one enables cricketers.  In their own words. " Today any team taking part in any cricket game anywhere in the world can score their games on the CricHeroes app. In any kind of match — school, community, corporate, with leather, tennis or any other kind of ball, from 24 Parganas to Zurich." [ Article here ] So imagine you are playing this obscure cricket match - you can share it with anyone and feel like a big player (among other things). A perfect way of understanding a tiny slice of the world and making something that all users (the entire ecosystem) loves.  

The value of jotting down an idea has been immense. Everybody knows this, but I realised another aspect of thinking. While working on a problem ( as I am at this given point in time), there are spaces of ideas, blockages, struggle, marination and flashes of insight. What I have felt is that unless the "current" idea/approach/thought is written down, expressed or captured in some form a new idea cannot flow, because this current idea is "blocking the way" in a manner of speaking. Like a traffic jam, unless the way is cleared by writing it, capturing it - the new idea cannot pass through. And it may disappear - as will that great idea that you got as an insight, but you thought no way you will forget it. So, jot them, clip them, write them, note them, snap them, whatever it takes... 

I attended two Diversity and Incusivity trainings in the space of about a year. Done by two different vendors. They were exactly the same. And if it had been by a third or a fourth person, it would still be exactly the same. Why? Why are these trainings exactly the same? Why are they unable to think beyond a certain set of topics? I believe it is because people are lazy and dont read enough. The second, perhaps more importantly, is that they believe so strongly in DnI that they believe their conviction will see the day through. And in the process, they end up sounding sanctimonious and all questions are answered with that sanctimoniousness than actual data. The examples that the esteemed people shared were what we read in whatsapp forward 5 years ago. #fail. The so called business case with riddled with fundamental data errors. They said colleges have a 50-50 ratio of men and women. Truth is most colleges dont. A simple google search gives you this data  for IIMs. MBA colleg...

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. 

In the last few months, many LnD providers have changed their stripes. Many years ago, I read this article. I don't remember the context, but the time was when Indias superstar Amitabh Bachchan decided to play his age. And a writer had written - The scripts he is getting are somewhat on the lines of "There was this old man who was angry because...Meaning the script provided for Amitabh to act his age for maybe 20 minutes and then takes him into flashback mode so he can be young again. Likewise, almost learning service providers have an app. Why, because everyone else has an app and the market wants the app (or so you think). Net result is a proliferation of apps that do the same thing - or profess to do something different, but do the same thing in a different way. The true potential of Amitabhs age change was unlocked when the script writers were not bound by this limitation of having a young Amitabh in the movie. And in the same way, the true potential of learning a...

Creating a tool or a game or an aid for presentation skills has been on my mind for a long time now. As someone who has developed, designed and delivered many versions of presentation skills and slide making skills, this has been a question in my mind. And I thought of something fairly obvious - a deck of cards (Yes, I am a huge fan of card and board games) to help people as they work on their presentation. But when I looked this up, there seemed to be a few products that serve this need. And so it went. There did not seem to be any new value addition that I could bring. And a few weeks ago, I attended a session where we had to evaluate a speaker and there was no feedback for the speaker. The insight for me was that many a time giving feedback is 'difficult' I suppose. The issue with feedback is - that most often the only way to do it at the 'Point of Presentation' is with paper - And many a time, people just cursorily fill out the sheets with any random number...

India is a unique country. With 122 odd major languages and 1599 other languages. And yet, the languages available in schools is dependent on many factors - like demand, availability of teachers and so on. So, on the one hand, there are a range of options of choose from, on the other hand it is not uniform. Here is where the power of the internet can be used. If for every language, the government made courses available online with tests and practice lessons - anybody can learn any language at home. Without having to depend on the quality of teachers, number of students and suchlike. All they need is a standard question paper that gets delivered (and this can be automated from a huge question bank) to do the tests. Wonder if something like this is already available? The truth is also that schools with non English mediums of instructions are closing down in urban areas - slowly but surely. And English is the language of opportunities, the other languages deserve to be learnt -...

For anybody in any service type of function - be it Human Resources, Training, PMO - there are always two ways to do the role. One is to take that little black book, a pencil and ask, at every table, "Sir, what can I get you?" (Yes, it is exactly what it sounds like - but notice, I did not mention the uniform.) The slightly sophisticated method around the above is to use some really cool digital stuff to take those orders - like they do in fancy restaurants - where they use blackberry (then) or tablets (now) and that sends the order right into the kitchen. And sometimes they give you these buzzing thingies that even buzz when your order is ready (how cool is that). (But yes, again, it is exactly what it sounds like.) Variants of the above include when the customer says, there is too much salt in my salad - to take it back and fix it immediately. Or when the customer says, the room is too hot, apologize profusely and talk about other things and hope that works. Or, as...

Stumbled upon this beautiful representation of the solar system . It is quite difficult to explain the size of the solar system - it is clearly beyond comprehension for most ordinary people - leave alone kids. This beautiful representation shows how to make it comprehensible. Things like this make one go a-ha. The best thumbrule for most ideas is "Why did I not think of that" and this one gets there, by a mile.

As we drove on the Mysore road yesterday, there was a traffic jam - for some reason traffic slowed down to almost one lane on the busy highway. Perhaps some sort of a police checkpost we thought. Or perhaps a random accident. Or some vehicle has broken down in the middle of the road. As the traffic inched its way forward, we saw banners of Toyota Logistics Kishor Limited warning about the dangers of drunk driving, and a set up of an accident. A biker with blood on his face, bike fallen down and the person (an actor) lying still in that pose. And a messaging. I thought it was a novel way to create awareness. Accidents are never there nor meant to be seen, but then creating a live scene like this was a fantastic idea for people to realize the gruesomeness and the seriousness of the whole situation. Sure, they created a traffic jam, but this was for a great cause and with both the banners and the actual visual depiction (which, crosses language barriers) that made it like a street pl...

The above titled book by William Rosen (and I am still reading it) has set me thinking. As it goes through the industrial revolution (rather, the beginning of it) - it explores as to why the industrial revolution happened when it happened. Rather, how a lot of factors came to play in making it happen. For that alone this book is worth a read. It is worth reading how a 'dotcom' kind of ecosystem existed in England with the combination of tinkerers, rich patrons, correspondence and of course, the right kind of institutions. When one studies engineering, or even science, what we hear are the rock star stories. For instance, we know that Archimedes had a 'Eureka' moment. Likewise, in this book, I realized how a 'Eureka' moment helped James Watt resolve the problematic steam engine into a workable design. While it is very romantic to believe that discoveries happen accidentally, the fact remains that somebody like a James Watt (or others) slogged through many man...

Over the last few weeks, while working on creation of various learning workshops, I think I am in a position to formulate the thumb rules of creating an immersive learning experience. a) Create original content b) Touch different learning styles c) Use metaphors both as examples, but also as activities d) Connect, ruthlessly and relentlessly to the work e) Bring in a 'lateral' learning experience f) Ask, ask, ask. Tell little. g) Share your passion on the subject (corollary: let your trainer have passion on the subject) h) Create a 'learning atmosphere' in the room i) Create competition j) Get people to work in groups Developing thought...

Ever so often, I hear parents complain about how their kid is watching too much TV. Well, most often you will find that the answer is that others in the house are spending a lot of time watching TV. The similar reasoning will be seen around a kid who reads a lot. Ditto for the internet. The trouble with the internet is that, it is very easy to get into the consumption oriented part of the internet - watch videos, play games and suchlike. Because it resembles what you have seen as media - TV, newspaper - they are all one sided - pure consumption. The internet is a medium that will work for you the way you want it to work. Take youtube for instance. You can watch movie songs or you can watch it for seeing 'things to do/make' or perhaps upload what you made in the form of a video. Which do you think the kids will enjoy? The current generation that is growing up today, has perhaps the best resources off the web yet. The trick, perhaps is to not keep yourself (and your c...

Often, when a new technology becomes available, people try to use it as much like the technology it replaced. In general. Preferring to skim over the technology and use it with the limited functionality of the outgoing technology until at some point, someone shows them how to use the breakthrough functionality. The first time I experienced this was while I tried to make a debtors report at my first job. And the report was maintained in xls – but no better than a ‘physical register’. It took us a few weeks to clean it up to use it like an xl sheet with group, sort, sub-totals and such like. Digital cameras are another thing. I read somewhere that nowadays a photograph is very unlikely not to be digitally retouched – and the possibilities are endless. Earlier, that was reserved only for magazine covers and portfolio shoots – but now anyone can do it. And while on that, do see this commercial on Adobe Photoshop. And that brings to my latest idea – that newspa...

The original quote goes Birds of a feather, flock together, but when you think it is true for a ideas as well. Take any thought process and you will find a remarkable similarity across ideas in a particular generation. This struck me as particularly obvious as part of our ongoing googling on car designs, something struck me as quite amazing. When you see car designs over a period, say the 50's, 60's or any other period - the majority of cars look similar. When I say similar, I mean that their overall structure, proportions, shape and lines are similar. There are variations in engine, accessories, interior layout and so on, but by and large they do appear same. In the sense, if you picked out a particular car it is easy even an untrained eye to observe the, quite obvious, similarity. This was something I knew intuitively as a "car watcher", but the fact that this has repeated consistently over many eras was quite something. There is an explanation for why this i...

I saw this post yesterday at The Domino Project on a new e-book - they are giving away for free named Flinch. More than the name, the cover made me curious. What the hell is this about. The preview on Amazon was superb. (It resonated with something I was doing!) And instead of me expounding it, go download this glorious ebook on Kindle - Flinch which does it so well . For some strange reason, it is free. So, dont waste your time and go download and read it (it works in India as well). I have started reading it and the book is lively and punchy!