Serendipity and Learning

Everyone wants learning to go digital, but it just isn't sticky. What gives? Here is a graded summary of what works and what doesnt work as per my learning... Purely self motivated - I want to learn - works best. But it may or may not be relevant to organisations. While I might want to learn decoupage and might be supremely motivated, it may be irrelevant and even distracting to the organisation. If we could channel this and align the motivation of the employee to the organization needs - this is the place digital learning would work best. Thus, if your sales training is motivating enough for your sales team or if your analytics training is cool enough for your analytics team - it will work. You may want to add a social layer (sales cohort, analytics cohort), get the leader to lead or a gamification layer, but if you havent cracked the 'motivation' - the need - the social and gamification layer is a wasted effort. The leaders effort and inspiration wont help beyond a...

It is a pleasure to see a master at work. Years ago, I was in my coaching program and there was a master coach who was there to train us. I was the coach who was practicing. My 'client' came with an innocuous question - which I attempted to wrestle into a coaching style conversation. And in a few questions, I was lost. I had tied up myself in knots and raised my hands to ask the master coach to come in. The master coach started talking. She asked 2 questions and by the 4th question, my 'client' was in tears. I learnt Transactional Analysis with this master coach for 2 years and I saw her in action many a time during our sessions. Her ability to connect with people is just incredible. And some months later, I was in conversation with a senior executive with another person who I respect for such skills and as we walked outside, he was able to flip the conversation in a different frame  - only because he was alert to the possibility. As coaches, as learning profes...

As a fan of Sherlock Holmes and its various interpretations over the years, it is fascinating to see the protagonist 'deduce' various things by looking at people, clues, crime scenes and so on. And while they are all in a sense, just well written stories, the fact of the matter is that Sherlock is a man of heightened sensitivities. He has hones this skill of his to perfection - perhaps magical levels. See this TED talk by Apollo Robbin s where he 'misdirects' - a story of heightened sensitivities. Or this classic TED talk by Keith Barry where he 'reads people'. What can a person with heightened sensitivities do? A conman can use it for evil purposes, a good person can use it for the common or individual good - we can all do it. And we do this in many of this do this in our own worlds as well. Salesmen hone their sensitivities. Coaches do the same. Detectives. Lawyers. All of us can do it - if we try. But we can do it. 

A few days back as I walked out from a place, I saw this man standing. Unassuming - like any other person - but he had a ring of familiarity about him. I smiled at him, he smiled back - but the difference was that only I knew him - he did not know me. It took my mind a few seconds to register who he was - but in that split second - I am sure he sees many people look at him and take that second to recognise him. The smile was from a 40 plus male to another 40 plus male - perhaps therein ends the similarity. One who has conquered all there is and yet remains simple and humble. Years ago, I have watched him on TV deliver for the country - on television. In sports. He is known to be a gentleman player - the finest of the lot - someone who stands for the highest values, totally unaffected by stardom, a man who plays for the team, a man for him his skill is his highest temple of worship, a man who to paraphrase Kipling - can hold his head when all around him are losing theirs, a nam...

One question I always ask people I interview is "How do you keep yourself up to date." And the answers are very interesting. I have been taught many things which I had no idea about. Websites, blogs, communities, books (no, not so much). Sometimes, while talking they talk about something and I note them for looking up. So, an interview becomes a two way process. Where I get to learn something from those who I meet and hopefully, they go back with a nugget or two (and I try to ensure that they takeaway something - hopefully useful). But over a while now, through the interviewing process, while there are people learning from Linkedin, HBR (and similar ones), blogs, courses, Articulate - the number of people who mention Twitter (as a learning mechanism) has been zero - which is quite surprising for me. Also, very few people seem to mention books as a source. Thankfully, nobody has mentioned Facebook so far. Though on balance, people generally mention "internet...

Often we ask how people learn. And that there are adult learning theories and child learning theories. But I think the fundamental question is really less about how people learn but more about why people learn? And the simple answer to that is, people learn when they want to. Whether it is adults or children. That want can be a function of passion or fear. It may start from curiosity (I want to know that because I want to know, or because it is cool or because my friends are doing it or it is new or something like that...) or coercion (This is important for my job, for my goals, for my survival - think army as an extreme example, I need to pass, my parents will get angry, whatever). Anything that a adult or child wants to learn out of their own self interest - they will learn. And if you can get to this point (preferably on the curiosity side, but the other side is effective as well though I prefer the former to the latter, competition also works), you can keep aside all learnin...