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...

 Seth Godin nails it.    Lets call soft skills, real skills he says.  We give too little respect to the other skills  when we call them “soft”  and imply that they’re optional.  What actually separates thriving organizations from struggling ones are the difficult-to-measure attitudes, processes and perceptions of the people who do the work. Vocational skills can be taught: You’re not born knowing engineering or copywriting or even graphic design, therefore they must be something we can teach. But we let ourselves off the hook when it comes to decision-making, eager participation, dancing with fear, speaking with authority,  working in teams , seeing the truth, speaking the truth, inspiring others, doing more than we’re asked, caring and being willing to change things. We underinvest in this training, fearful that these things are innate and can’t be taught. Perhaps they’re talents. And so we downplay them, calling them soft skills, making it easy ...

Perhaps too early to say, but curated content for which you have to pay through your nose is probably dead.  For one, most content creators have bloated content. A typical course is broken into so many videos (yes, in theory, all are short), but there is still too much noise. Getting to the core of the course is difficult.  Second, most course creators create their own framework - and with good reason because it is their brain at work and is based off their experience (and sometimes, common frameworks are probably copyrighted or just too common). As a company, those frameworks may not work for you because you may not like that framework or you may have an alternate framework in use.  Third, people (atleast in startups) and leaders (everywhere) have no time, so the overall usage of this content is quite low.  Fourth, for the most part, searching for good content is like searching for something to watch on Netflix - impossible to know if any course is good, unless you ...

 The Indian YouTuber meme is famous and if that is an indicator, looks like Indian YouTube is supporting faltering education systems the world over. I chanced upon this article about it is enabling engineering students in, hold your breath, Nigeria .  And this is something I have wondered. Why isn't YouTube eating other content providers for lunch? It can.  There are crazy niche courses/channels on YouTube that make tons of money by finding the right niche of customers. Competitive exams is an ever giving machine. 

Continuing from the previous series  How does all this translate into a corporate learning scenario? Does online work?  Short answer yes, if your participants are motivated enough and the technology infrastructure is good. If they are not motivated (My boss asked me to attend- I am not here of my own volition), this will be a painful experience regardless of technology.  If your participants are not motivated, as a facilitator you can move heaven and earth, nothing will work. They will get sucked into work - all if requires is one email ping and they will disappear.  And if they dont turn on video, then rest assured, you are screaming at a screen (honourable exceptions will remain) And so, we have completely stopped virtual trainings unless there is no other way to do it.  Second, we conduct trainings only when there is a need and the manager and their employees are bought into it.  What about Hybrid trainings? Hybrid trainings require good digital infrastr...