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Building Learning Organizations

Abhijit Bhaduri — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 03:25:19 +0000

Times of India invites practitioners to have a webchat at Timesjobs.com. It was my turn to answer questions on 1st Feb 2012. I wish there was a way to have a “conversation” and not a Q&A. On second thoughts that may be hard to do with 2500 people at the same time. Several people had difficulty signing on and the server was down for a while during the chat. These technical hassles apart, this was fun.

Raghavendra: What is a learning organization?

Abhijit : Hi Raghavendra – a learning organization is one that has the capability to continuously learn to adapt to internal and external changes.

Neha: What essential things should be kept in mind while building a learning organization?

Abhijit : Hi Neha – The organization does this by creating processes and systems that encourage people to calibrate the assumptions that govern business and people. Every assumption is a hypothesis that can be tested. That can be something pertaining to customers, the product or service or its employees… It can be anything.

Rati: Which organizational functions are responsible for turning an organization into a learning one?

Abhijit : Rati – The onus is on every employee. Each function plays a role in keeping the organization nimble. Unless every function brings in their expertise, one part of the company will fall behind.

Ratikanta: My question would be what is the key attribute of a learning organization? How do we measure the transformation?

Abhijit : The attribute would be how tuned in the organization is to the shifts in business opportunities, the environment, the skills needed etc. The ability to ask the right questions is the first sign of learning. Transformation would be measured in the long run. Today many organizations are notoriously short-lived.

Satish: What are the challenges/issues/problems in creating a learning organization?

Abhijit : Hi Satish, success is the biggest enemy. When an organization is successful, it is hard for them to question their assumptions. Successful organizations progressively become inward looking that makes it hard for new ideas to take root. It is hard for people coming in from other companies to be heard. The old culture acts like a filter.

Mithun: Would a learning organisation provide benefits on a global scale?

Abhijit : A learning organization has the ability to succeed on a global scale because they can navigate the new markets better. They will know which learnings from their old world can apply in the new country and what wont.

Ranjan: Hi, I run a start-up. Continuous upgradation of the human resource to make a learning organization involves too much of cost. How can I optimize the process?

Abhijit : : Ranjan – Continuous upgradation has more to do with the mindset than with resources and the least of all – with training programs. MIT makes its courseware available to everyone for free. In the same way there are links one can follow on twitter. This keeps people tuned to what is happening. Within the organization create a culture where people can speak their mind and bring in new ideas. Get the younger/ least experienced/ newcomers to speak first in any meeting. Above all you can be a role model.

Eilesh: Hi, How important is it to have dedicated learning department in organizations?

Abhijit : Eilesh – A dedicated learning department helps in getting some resources across. But I believe that a learning organization uses learning outside of a classroom as much as it does its training program. Learning from peers and novices is as important as learning from experts. Play is as important a form of learning as studying. All it needs is someone who has a curious mind. (Ranjan – also an answer to your question)

Rimjhim: What are the challenges for a company like Wipro? How does learning play into meeting those challenges? How does learning play into helping Wipro?

Abhijit : Rimjhim – We have to continuously unlearn what made us successful. That is always hard. It is hard to let go of the very assumptions that have made us so successful in the past. So learning is a challenge for everyone. The ability to remain relevant to every stakeholder is the best measure of where we are doing well and where we need to improve.

Mithun:Hi Abhijit, Is building a learning organisation structured or does it evolve with the way business is conducted?

Abhijit : Mithun – I believe that the biggest challenge organizations face is to question the very ideas that they have worked with over the years and succeeded in the market place. For example: Even after research has shown that ulcers are caused by bacteria, (A nobel prize has been given for that discovery as well), we still believe that they are caused by stress or spicy food.

Shantanu: Why do companies not find employee training & learning critical and spend little when compared to spends on other areas?

Abhijit : Shantanu – Today we live in a time when we have more resources available to us as individuals than ever before. With a cell phone and a broadband connection the world is at your command. What we need to do is to stop thinking of a classroom as the only place where we learn. So stop waiting to be sent to a training program. When people learnt to play the guitar in college – so many learnt it by asking their friends and peers to teach them. Today you have thousands of sites that will teach you anything… I mean anything and for free. We need to find the time and the persistence to see it through.

Sambhavna:Mention some new-age ways, methods and techniques to build a learning organization?

Abhijit : Create immersion experiences. For instance to teach a group of our business leaders the art of storytelling we went to the Jaipur Lit Fest to give them an immersion experience to learn from the masters. Ask employees to create the course content – maybe apps for the phone that allow people to learn new stuff. Ask people who do not know the subject (novices) to advice the experts – reverse roles. I have seen that the novices can give simple solutions that elude experts because they simply know too much LOL! It costs nothing to have people who are curious. And everyone is naturally curious. Organizations have to learn to get out of the way of people’s ability to learn naturally from informal sources. Too much emphasis is placed on formal training programs. Time to break that mould – peer learning, social learning, leveraging social media eg twitter, slideshare is the key. When I read something on twitter that I find useful, I pass on the link to others. You are welcome to join me @abhijitbhaduri or try slideshare.net for presentations on any topic. For that matter wikipedia is getting better and better as experts spend their time improving the contents. Learning is no longer about having access to resources. It is about being able to have a curious mind and to filter the information that is gushing all around us. So we must learn how to sift the information and contextualize it.

Shreeyash: What is the major difference between “Training & Development function” and “Learning & Development function” in an organization?

Abhijit : Shreeyash – Training focuses on telling people the single correct answer. Learning is about helping people to ask the right questions.

Aditi: What do you suggest organizations should resort to: internal training & development programmes to enrich their human resources or external workshops and seminars? Which of the two is more effective and cost efficient?

Abhijit : Aditi – I believe that we need to get the inputs from the external world. Calibrate it with our own internal research and then create learning around that model. Sending people to generic training programs without a specific learning goal in mind is of limited value. Either case that is not something that can be scaled. Giving people regular feedback is an underutilized tool. That in itself can improve learning.

Richa: Hi, how can one transform the manual working L&D organization to process oriented, as employees show lot of reluctance to change?

Abhijit : Change is equally hard for everyone. We often try to change one part of the organization without looking at how to create the supporting adjacencies that will make the change stick. The L&D department needs to leverage technology to make learning fun, easy and accessible. Renaming a training department to calling it L&D deptt does nothing unless the approach to learning is changed.

Prashant: How do you build up a learning organisation – is it a top down approach or a bottom up approach?

Abhijit : Leaders need to be role models of the behavior. The junior employees should be leveraged to examine the organization from a fresh pair of eyes. The organization has to celebrate people who are able to help the others calibrate themselves with the changes in the external world. Also if people use learnings on the job and feel the difference it acts as a motivator to keep learning. Applying learnings is the very key.

Varnika: Why there is a gap in individual and team learning as organization’s size gets larger?

Abhijit : Hi Varnika – It is for the same reason that a fat person finds it harder to exercise. As the organization grows larger, it is important to continuously check if the processes are making it hard to listen to the signals from the field (or customers/ consumers). Does the organization have processes to check for the external trends?

Rimjhim: Hi Sir, In Indian companies top management often ask human resource Department about the ‘return on investment on learning – show me the money’. what will be a chief learning officer’s response?

Abhijit : Rimjhim: It is easy to show the return on skill training. So that’s an easy one to answer. But when you are looking at learning, it is harder to show the learning. I have a link to suggest to you for this http://abhijitbhaduri.com/2011/03/roi-of-leadership-development/. But when do we say that learning is effective? When we learn it or when we use it? Or when we combine what we learnt with what we knew and blend it with suggestions from others. So it is harder to do ROI calculations for learning.

Sambhavna: Should employee learning and receptivity to better ideas be linked to their performance?

Abhijit : Sambhavna: There are two conditions to be met: One is that I should learn something. The second condition is that I should have an opportunity to use it (assuming the problem can be solved by whatever I have learnt). If I have learnt to drive well, I should be able to drive in heavy traffic. But then I have seen the best of drivers get flummoxed when they have to drive in a country where they drive on the other side of the road. Learning is about being alive to possibilities. So it should improve performance.

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Read the full chat transcript here <click here>

Kailash Kher

Abhijit Bhaduri — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:01:03 +0000

I was at the Kailash Kher concert at the IIM-Bangalore grounds on 29th Jan 2012. This is a fabulous time of the year for music. From October to February as the weather cools down across India, it has been the tradition to get the musicians to strut their wares. This is show time folks. From Indian classical music concerts that start in the evening and end up in the wee hours of the morning, these concerts have seen the launch (and demise) of many a musical career. Some of the conferences like the Dover Lane Music Conference has a cult following. Chennai has its famous Kutcheri circuit where each year the maestros rub shoulders with the young artistes who are unafraid to experiment with form and structure of what has been the traditional definition of Classical music. There are Jazz fests, the universities have their share of rock concerts as part of the cultural festivals. All in all it is a happy time to be around.

I have had the opportunity to hear Kailash Kher live during a concert of AR Rahman in Nov 2007. (Read about it here). During these four years Kailash Kher has become a lot more established as a singer. Thanks to all the Reality TV shows we have seen him on prime time. His band Kailasa has some talented musicians. Kailash is releasing his fourth album Rangeeley (colorful). Watch him do an acoustic version of the song with the two Kamath brothers (Naresh & Paresh) who play rhythm and bass guitar for Kher’s band and do the back up vocals.

Kailash Kher has a few hits to his credit. Saiyyan is certainly one of them. I like the music but I don’t think much of the lyrics of the song. He sings passionately and has an awesome range especially when he hits the high notes he does a great job.

Kailash certainly sounds better in the recorded and mixed tracks that have been processed in the studio than during a stage performance. He has a unique sound. So where is the catch? I think he is a good singer and a poor performer. Every great singer is not necessarily a great performer. Performers have the ability to take the audience along with them. They speak to them, they laugh, they respond to the catcall… it is all of that.

Kailash Kher is awkward to say the least. He switches between the language that he can communicate in ie Hindi to one which thinks he OUGHT to communicate with ie English. He is awkward in English. His humor is puerile and all this takes away from the performance. A performer may have a pre-determined list of songs that he/she intends to perform. If the crowd requests for a specific song, a performer will rework their own sequence. The humor of a performer is spontaneous. Singers tend to use canned humor and it inevitably fails. Kailash struggled to connect with the audience. At the IIM-B concert he tried to and tried too hard but hit the false notes in trying to make up his mind between being a good singer and being a performer. Performers have charisma. They have attitude. They are not afraid to speak their mind. They are not afraid to lead. This is what Kailash Kher lacks.

Lata Mangeshkar is a great singer but she is not a performer. She is an amazingly gifted singer. Three generations of Indians have grown up with her voice. Her sister Asha Bhosle is a natural performer. Asha B will narrate anecdotes, crack jokes, share amusing insights and quirks about her co-singers, pull the leg of other artistes on stage and even mimic her elder sister Lata-didi’s style of singing. Sonu Nigam is a performer. His ever evolving hair style moves from cool to crazy every month while his wardrobe could be the envy of a clotheshorse. That he is an awesome singer makes him a performer par excellence. The other performer is Shreya Ghoshal. I am fan of her voice. It also helps that she is edgy in her views and stylish – all of which makes her much more than a singer. The tabla player was always supposed to be in the background with the sarangi player or harmonium player who accompanied the classical singer or instrument player. That was the case until Zakir Hussain came along. He is a performer par excellence. He brought up the stature of the tabla and moved it from the backdrop to one that got as much of the audience attention as the main artiste. That is what a performer can do to an instrument.

What should a singer do to become a performer? Be unafraid to experiment and have a point of view. I think … for starters.

The Ruskin Bond Interview

Abhijit Bhaduri — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 15:06:34 +0000

Ruskin Bond’s first novel, The Room on the Roof, written when he was seventeen, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written over 500 short stories, novellas, poems and articles that have appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993 and the Padma Shri in 1999. His short stories “The Night Train at Deoli”, “Time Stops at Shamli”, and “Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra” have been part of the school text books in India.

His story A Flight of Pigeons was about the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 and was made into a film by Shyam Benegal with the title Junoon. Vishal Bharadwaj made films based on his stories The Blue Umbrella and more recently the film Saat Khoon Maaf was based Ruskin Bond’s short story “Susanna’s Seven Husbands”. Read my review of Saat Khoon Maaf <click here>. I ask him if he is planning to go to the Jaipur Literary Fest 2012 starting the next day? He laughs and says that writers of children’s books are perhaps not invited. Jaipur’s loss is my gain for sure.

Abhijit: You have been a prolific writer. Have you ever experienced the dreaded Writer’s Block?

Ruskin Bond: Yes I have occasionally abandoned a manuscript. I write a story in my head. I see the story like a movie. So writing that out is relatively simple. When I write I just keep a waste paper basket handy in case I am experiencing a block. I mostly write short stories. They are best written in a continuous creative process. You have a feel of immediacy. When you write a novel you have to live with the characters for a long time. So I prefer short stories. I never wrote anything more than 250 pages. Your novel is 261 pages. You just managed to beat me . I can’t ever see myself writing something like A Suitable Boy or Mediocre But Arrogant!

Abhijit: Where do you find triggers for your stories?

Ruskin Bond: They could be about people or incidents that have happened to you or to others. A lot of my stories are portraits of people.

Abhijit: Is nostalgia a better trigger for you than the reality of today?

Ruskin Bond: I was nostalgic even as a young man. Preferred listening to Opera not Bing Crossby. I read Hugh Walpole, Jack London, Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, Evelyn Waugh, Richard Jefferies and Louise Imogen Guineyas a young man. I watched a lot of movies. I was deeply influenced by movies. I was in Dehradoon with my mother and step father. Neither had much interest in what I did.

Abhijit Bhaduri: Do you feel unhappy when you see your stories on celluloid?

Ruskin Bond: Film is a different medium. So you have to change settings, characters etc to suit the medium. Sometimes the ending may have to be different. Junoon was very close to what I had in mind. So was Blue Umbrella. Saat Khoon Maaf was a black comedy. Not sure if the comedy through.

Abhijit Bhaduri: Do introverts make better writers than extroverts?

Ruskin Bond: There are two kinds of authors – subjective and objective. Introverts are more inward looking. Emily Bronte, Virginia Woolf etc wrote from within themselves. Poets like Keats or Shelley were introverts. On the other hand John Grisham would be my example of an objective writer. Frederick Forsyth is an example of an objective storyteller. They are extroverts.

Abhijit Bhaduri: How would you describe yourself?

Ruskin Bond: I am a storyteller from a personal viewpoint. When I run out of people I invent ghosts. (chuckles) I don’t believe in ghosts. Never saw one.

Abhijit Bhaduri: How has the Indian literary scene changed over the last few years?

Ruskin Bond: There were no lit fests and launches in India till the eighties when we had the first World Book Fair. In the ’50s and ’60s newspapers also published fiction especially short stories. So I wrote short stories. We did not have many publishers. But many writers have been forgotten – like Kamala Markandeya, Mulgaonkar or Mulk Raj Anand.

Abhijit Bhaduri: Should a writer experiment with different genres of writing?

Ruskin Bond: Readers want more of the same from you. So stick to one genre. Chetan Bhagat has got five novels of a similar nature. Not sure if would want to write an autobiography or a travel book etc.

Abhijit Bhaduri: Advice for aspiring writers…?

Ruskin Bond: The more you write, the better you will write! So – keep at it!

Coaching Classes for Parents

Abhijit Bhaduri — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:50:17 +0000

The Bollywood film Taare Zameen Par was perhaps a coaching class that the nation attended, on understanding, how to deal with a kid with dyslexia. It showed us the frustration that parents encounter because of their ignorance of the child’s condition. They believe that their son is plain lazy and is shirking work in school. The movie brought awareness of learning disabilities and jolted the audience to ask whether they were being just as unreasonable with their children as the father in the film. They realized that the father’s tyrannical behavior was driven by ignorance of his child’s disability.

Parenting is a complex task. Parents use information and put it in the framework of their family values as they bring up their young ones. While values remain relatively stable, information keeps changing rapidly. New information makes us question our own assumptions, world view and beliefs. New information changes the conversation between parents and children. Handling someone who is thirteen needs very different parenting skills than someone who is nineteen though both maybe clubbed in the common category called teenagers. Handling a teenager today is very different from someone who brought up their children in the seventies or eighties. That is because the parent and progeny both have new information about the world and this impacts their behavior and choices.

Taare Zameen Par

For example, if parents do not understand the meaning of rating symbols on the video games they buy for their children they may be unwittingly exposing their children to inappropriate content. Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) ratings are designed to provide information about the content in computer and video games so consumers, especially parents, can make an informed purchase decision. When this information is held against the family values, the parents can take the decision whether their child should be exposed to the violence level that the game contains.

Chances are that your parents never took lessons on parenting. You might argue that they did a fine job without taking lessons. That was a world where information was changing gently and therefore the parents’ world had a very large degree of overlap and similarity with the child’s. Exposure to the family values through parents was enough to ensure that the children would be confident enough to carve their own path.

The customs and childrearing practices and the caretaker psychology have a profound influence on the child’s development. Parents need to have the same information that their children are exposed to, so that they can have meaningful talks at the dining table. Today this information gap reduces the effectiveness of parents.

We have coaching classes to learn languages, to get into colleges and even some on how to win reality shows on television. But we do not have classes that help parents become well informed. I suggest coaching classes to help parents get in sync with the world their children live in. These classes could possibly help in getting parents to realign their own assumptions to current realities. Why not have experts who can update parents and help parents be more effective today.

Every parent wishes the best and nothing but the best for their progeny. That means learning, unlearning and preparing themselves actively. Parenting is an ever evolving role. Parents pass on the values that they model through their behavior. That cannot be taught by anyone else.
Should we only depend on popular cinema to educate people on parenting? Think about it.

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Watch the film Taare Zameen Par here <click here>

Being Unreasonable and Impractical

Abhijit Bhaduri — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 00:55:26 +0000

This is the season for making resolutions. Everyone is making them. As I make up my mind about what resolution I should make, a little voice tells me that in order for me to achieve what I set out to; I must do what is practical and what is realistic. Being practical is defined as “likely to succeed or be effective in real circumstances; feasible.” Being realistic is defined as “expressing an awareness of things as they really are.” The pay off for doing what is likely to succeed and as close to the way they really are is the best way to make sure that your resolution will not raise any eyebrows. It will be a safe option.
When Dr Devi Shetty, dreamt of making sophisticated healthcare available to all irrespective of their economic situation or geographic location, it would have been an impractical and unrealistic idea. Today it does not sound so farfetched. Today his network of hospitals performs 32 heart surgeries a day and sixty percent of the treatments are provided below cost or for free.
When someone sets up a company to explore renewable sources of energy based on a sustainable development model for alleviation of poverty, creating new employment opportunities and reducing green house gases, the idea seems too big for someone to go after. Especially when you learn that Kumar Ankit is a 24 years old MBA who could have chosen to be in a high paying job instead of sweating it out in the rural areas. His dream sounds so impractical and unrealistic. Breakthrough ideas will always start off being impractical and unrealistic.
What comes in the way of dreaming big? It is the fear of failure. Psychologists tell us that when we miss a goal by a whisker, the regret that we experience is deeper than what we feel when we miss a goal by a wide margin. So why not leverage this opportunity to dream on a large canvas. At worst, we will miss it and not have much regret since it was too lofty to begin with.
Your dream must be unrealistic and impractical. Only then will it be lofty enough to inspire. Look around and you will see that there are people who are dreaming of audacious goals that are way too complicated to be done in a lifetime. They don’t care about how difficult it will be to achieve their dream.
When someone dreams of raising money to run schools for slum dwellers, it instantly smacks of being unrealistic and impractical. So is the desire to find a cure for a disease that kills our loved ones. It could be a dream of finding something to conquer inside of us – learning to fight our own monsters. Learning to challenge our own abilities and what we think of as our limits can be the most impractical and unrealistic wish we may set out to fulfill.
Let this be the year when you dreamt of something impossible. You know you will falter as you chase this dream. Let me tell you that impractical and unrealistic people are not deterred by setbacks. They develop the ability to pick themselves up and go right back to where they had left. A dream that is unreal and impractical has the ability to generate resilience like nothing else. Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life said Sophia Loren. I would wholeheartedly endorse that philosophy. Let the fear of not achieving the dream not come in the way of our desire to dream of something grand.
This year why don’t we all do something that is impractical and unrealistic? Think about it.

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