Serendipity and Learning

Anyone can build a castle in the air. But to build a real livable castle on the ground, on time, within budget, with all the approvals and still create a wow factor - that is something. And that is the reality of any environment. Whether it is building a house or organizing an event or building a training. Creativity within constraints is where the ability of the really creative people come out. How can one do a truly outstanding job with the constraints at hand. But there are times when one sees this creativity in action delivering something truly out of the box and yet very relevant. What can one do as a leader? Push the team to think harder. Just that little bit. Like the challenge for the learners in the previous post - pushing the team to think a little more works. (How and when you do it is the secret sauce.) What can do one do as a person? This is trickier. Because, for one, creativity may or may not be appreciated. Second, the stakeholder may or may not want ...

Many years ago as I worked with a process training team I asked to be shown through the content. This was new to the team since they never expected their manager to actually look at the content they had put together. Not that it was needed, but since I was newbie in training, they proudly took me through the content they had put together. It was mostly Death by Powerpoint for me, but they said they had some activity. On investigation it was found to be that mostly the activities were about circling words or finding words or joining words. Apart from that, they had one activity that they were justifiably proud of. This activity was called jeopardy. The slide looked like this: And on clicking any of the boxes, a question opened and the participants had to open it and answer it. This was the activity that they were proud of. (There are templates available on this on the net I suppose). And I thought, well not bad. Turned out, this activity was the most used across all the...

Once upon a time the Indian cricket team was going through a crisis and if I remember right, this was around the 2003 World Cup - and they started getting into a huddle before every match . In sport , a huddle is an action of a team gathering together, usually in a tight circle, to strategise, motivate or celebrate. It is a popular strategy for keeping opponents insulated from sensitive information, and acts as a form of insulation when the level of noise in the venue is such that normal on-field communication is difficult. Commonly the leader of the huddle is the team captain and it is the captain who will try to inspire his fellow team members to achieve success. Similarly after an event a huddle may take place to congratulate one another for the teams success, or to commiserate a defeat. The term "huddle" can be used as a verb as in "huddling up". ( wikipedia ) This is recognized as a universal strategy. I have seen this in manufacturing industrie...

How does one build a team? And ensures that it performs? We all know Tuckmans four stages of teams - Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing.  But ever so often, you will find that in teams that there are some who do not contribute as much as they should. Or as much as they had all committed to at the outset when they were selected or self selected into the team. In my view, what works in building effective things are these things: Get commitment from the team early on about the goal and what they will do in order to make it happen. At this stage, it is necessary to give people a choice about whether they want to be part of the goal at all. If not, find options for them to support the main team with what they can do - if there is scope to do that. Once that goal level commitment is established, get the tactical level commitment - if it means showing up each day without making excuses and so on and so forth. At this stage, again, it is important for all the team members to ...

Imagine you have a choice of trainings. One is a training format with teams competing against each other in predetermined subjects in a league format. Each team "owner" gets to select a captain, coach and then they build their team from there on. From that point on, it is the teams responsibility to build their skills so that they could win the competition. The members of the team were purely volunteers - so there was no conscription. Contrast this with a training where you attend as individuals, show up for classes and a stick hanging over your head in case you miss a class. The mode of instruction is classes - normal facilitator led sessions spread over a few days. At the end you give an exam which decided if you pass or fail. Imagine that both of these have a spread of about 6-8 weeks. Which one would you choose and why? Sure, the same commitment is required for both and the people who are committed in one will also be committed to the other. But dont you think...