Serendipity and Learning

Certain events have an effect on the psyche of a country or a place or even a company. 17 million people watched PV Sindhu fight Carolina Marin for the Olympic Gold in badminton . Sindhu may have lost gold, but she won a billion hearts. And all around us today - we see children play badminton - atleast in Bangalore everywhere. This is a moment to cherish - as children grow up they will be inspired by this moment. And I hope that India becomes a force to reckon with in badminton. For our generation, India winning the Cricket World Cup in 1983 was a huge inspiration. I am sure, many of us have such moments to inspire ourselves. Many companies have moments they cherish and replay and revisit as part of inspiring their teams. True, as a company one cannot have such moments every quarter to inspire the workforce - but what if they used one such great moment to pivot themselves into a different orbit. What if such a moment energised the workforce, generated learning opportunities?...

I recently had the good fortune to meet a number of people who are the pioneers in their fields. As part of this, I met someone who is working on some pioneering things in gamification. And maybe gamification is a buzzword today like social media was yesterday and web 2.0 was the day before, but meeting with this person was an absolutely inspiring meeting. I call these meetings, neuron firing meetings. You come away with the neurons in the brain firing on full capacity. What happens? One, they discover a common passion Two, the passion for a particular idea is passed on from one person to another. Three, one person says one thing, the other builds on it and like building blocks, they keep building on and on until something emerges. Four, the conversation moves forward, relentlessly. Five, there are no barriers in sharing - like this is my idea I cannot share it and so on. Six, contrary to the above, there is a lot of sharing of ideas, potential and 'change the world'...

Ever so often, the little ones come up to their appa (father) (me) and say, "Can we make something with this?" The 'this' could be an empty soap packaging, a paper cup, a satin ribbon or a huge piece of cardboard or thermocol from leftover packaging. Sometimes, the asks are specific - like- can you make a house for me? But mostly, it is an open question. Earlier, the ideas would come from me, but over time, the ideation is outsourced to them - think what you think you can make with this. Reject the first, obvious idea and think what else you can do with it. The results have been fantastic - not necessarily with the outcome, but with the thinking process. Sometimes, the answer is not apparent and that point it goes into a collection box - which is emptied once in a while - and stays there until an idea or boredom happens. This has resulted in a little bit of collection of junk - but we call it recycling. A few days back, the question was posed to me once again ...

Mahatma Gandhi once said, Stone walls do not a prison make, nor do iron bars a cage. He was probably talking about human imagination that cannot be shackled. Thats why bad ideas like thought policing will never survive, even though there are societies where there are, quite literally, thought police! To Gandhis quote, I might add, A cape makes you superman, fly all you want. As you might have seen, children need just a small straw to clutch at and leap into the clouds of imagination. A few days back it was "Superman" . All they need is a cape to leap into the wonderous land of imagination. The cape gives them superpowers to leap over buildings, climb over mountains and do things that they never thought possible in their "human" avatar. These days, the little one sleeps with the said "cape" one so that she continues to be "superman" in her dreams as well. Whats your cape? Wheres your cape? Why are you not wearing it often and leaping off a ...

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo . Via Brainpicker