Adventures in India

Everyone offers programmes that are tailored to fit the organisation's requirements and the environment of work of the participants. So while all can say that we work to improve all factors, the truth is:

There are key areas of development that we keep encountering among desired outcomes and they often interlink with each other or branch out further.

Leadership skills: This also covers innovation, enthrepreneurship, communication, delegaion of authority, assertiveness, charisma ..

Planning: Strategy, time management, evaluation of resources, contingency planning, brainstorming, creativity, creation of unique factors..

Execution under pressure: Communication, stress management, time management, cricis management, timesaving improvisations..

Creativity: divergent thinking, open attitude, brainstorming associative elaboration, ..

The words flow easily from habit and new o­nes get created along the way - out of habit as well, but what does all this really mean? Can we say that a company that wants leadership skills is not really bothered about creativity or empathy?

Or the sales guys need not focus o­n innovation or crisis management?

I have yet to see a situation like this. Yet we speak of specific focus. So WHAT IS THAT?

A company's needs could be as varied as an overall 'tweak' to polish key management procedures, or something as specific as improving sales performances of a team working to a deadline, what does it mean to the guys out there o­n the field? How far does the learning 'stick'?

As professional, we see a steady procession of companies undergoing outbound training, and every programme has a 'standard' pattern for employees to express their learnings.

"We should have planned better"

"No o­ne from our team was monitoring the time"

"We abandoned plan A and shifted to plan B and that helped us succeed!"

Once in a while, I come across something really unique and thought-provoking, but most of the time, I am haunted by words a participant lazily threw into the conversation.

"When we go back, how many of us are going to actually share with the team the tip that the boss gave us? How much communication do we apply and when?"

When we set-up simulations, we often set-up an ideal world, which often cannot replicate real life pressures and circumstances. In our world, the future of your kids is not affected by how many times you win or lose and we can all be great team-workers and everyone lives happily ever after.

Outstanding training that I see continually tries to go beyond these invisible, but very real 'fences'. Just deriving learnings is not sufficient as we routinely see when participants are asked how they plan to apply these back home or at work.

The most common answer continues to be an uncomfortable and collective pause followed by tentative and immediate parallels between activities and opportunitites to demonstrate them at work. Very few answers break the box.

"When the wife is pissed with me, I will first ask her how the day went" said with a sheepish grin, but a genuine attempt at finding an application.

"I will carefully observe Ronnie's (the owner of a small business) mood before I suggest my change of supplier"

A group o­nce made a collective decision to NOT leave used disposable glasses and other litter around, as their company was suffering from some maintainence crisis that meant a lot of extra work for the poor janitors

I have seen entire sales plans being worked out under a mango tree, drawing inspiration from an activity just completed, and at the closure, a short thank-you speech thanked us for 'an enjoyable experience'!!! - Sales was their job and not our business, but they enjoyed the programme more, because they achieved a difficult solution? Were they speaking about the activities we conducted?

Where does inspiration, action, motivation come from? I cannot say I can create it. I can o­nly say that in a workshop, I can try and create triggers for it and highlight them to "see if they hit".

As professionals, we can work out innovative designs to bring the principles into practice. we focus o­n the objectives of the programme as specified after careful consideration in a pre-programme meeting with the HR department. The important part is to stick to that plan and work out a strategy, so that the learnings are long lasting

Article by Vidyut Kale