Enhance and Excel

In the articles so far, I discussed the learning process. Taking it forward in the coming set of articles, let me share some thoughts on specific situations that could provide opportunities to learn. The backdrop to this is a research project that I was involved in Tata Management Training Center – ‘Lessons of Experience’ , the data that I gathered about competency development of SME leaders as part of my PhD research, and also the information that I capture while interacting with participants who attend my workshops. The idea behind the upcoming articles is to explore the opportunities of learning, and the process of learning in these situations.  This set of articles will include learning through challenging assignments, learning through movement, the boss as a facilitator, learning through mistakes, triggering self-realization, learning through structured interventions, learning Business leadership, learning from family, learning about relationships, and more. But before I ...

  Welcome to the next article in the series ‘Why don’t people learn?’ We have reached the fourth step in the learning cycle. We may learn a theory from books, or we may have formed a theory based on experience. Now, we need to consider using it in real-life situations. If I have formed a theory about traffic signals, such as the one mentioned in my last article, how can I use it? I can consider changing my route, or the speed, or the travel time, or the vehicle. I can consider utilizing the time that I spend at a red light to do some useful work (such as catching up on the news!). Actually, implementing any such decision will start a new learning cycle of experience, observation, generalization etc. I have dealt with these three steps in my earlier articles. This leaves us to wonder why people don’t experiment and why they don’t learn from it. Application of any theory requires the presence of a problem, knowing the theory, applying the theory in a different situation and then ac...

Welcome back! So far, in this series of articles, I pondered over people going through experience and observing. But if you observe a lot of data, it is not necessarily going to lead to learning. In actuality, it depends on what do you want to do with that data, with that knowledge. When we see a pattern in the data, we can generalize and form our theory. On my way to work, I observe that the days on which I get stopped at the first traffic signal, I often get stopped at most of the following traffic signals. So, I arrive at various conclusions: most probably, the signals are badly synchronized, or this route has too many short lanes and it is not possible to catch the next green signal, and so on. All of us have some ability to discover such trends and analyze the data to arrive at conclusions. This can be called as ‘Cognitive Ability’. Although natural cognitive ability will differ from person to person, most of us have adequate ability to survive normal work-life demands. Even the...

In my last article, I discussed the blocks in learning from experience. As mentioned in Kolb’s learning cycle, even if we go through an experience but do not observe and analyze it, we are not going to learn anything from it. If we want to analyze, we will need to first observe, and then reflect. As I discussed, one does not need to go through every experience, but rather, observe or find out from someone who has learnt from experience and then go forward. When a professor shares a case study in class, or when people come together and discuss about “what happened when…” they are starting a learning cycle that begins with observation. That brings up the question – ‘Why don’t we observe or absorb properly?’ Why is that we don’t learn (for that matter, even gather knowledge) by such observation? There are probably many reasons. Let me share some that I observed within myself and in others. One reason is that I don’t observe to record, but I observe to prove myself right. We try to colle...

Hello! This is the next article in the series ‘Why don’t people learn?’. In my first article, I tried to put together some internal blocks that may be faced in acquiring knowledge. Another block that I want to share is ‘Gathering knowledge is a core activity during school and college days.’ Try to remember the last few weeks just before our last exam. All of us think ‘That’s it! No more exams or studying in my life. Do I have to read so much, mug up so much, write exams?’. Then we enter the work life and discover that now we need to apply what we learned while also continuously acquiring new knowledge. But are we ready for it? During our leadership development programs, many participants tell me that they find it hard to focus and read for a long time, which they were regularly doing during their college days. I think it is a matter of practice, and once you drive yourself to do it, you can start doing it. As mentioned earlier, in our work life, we are supposed to put whatever we kn...