Enhance and Excel

"The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing." - John Powell The articles so far were talking about experiences that posed a change, challenge, a positive stroke.  B ut the truth is we all learn not just by what went right but also by what went wrong. If we meet someone who has not committed any mistake, then he is a liar or he is a lifeless stone that is lying on the curb doing nothing. When we try and do something is when we commit mistakes. First of all, I want to differentiate among mistakes, errors and mishaps.   All of these 'harm' a person directly or indirectly. Learning is about analysing what led to the harm and how to minimize it. In physical sciences, error is due to limitations of the measuring instrument, or   computational accuracy, something that can not be avoided in the given circumstances. You can only try to minimize it.   The tennis player gets a fraction of second to decide how he wants to return the ball. Based on the s...

Ever since childhood, we want imitate the elders we adore. It could be a parent, teacher or sibling. That imitation provides an opportunity to learn. As we enter work life, we encounter seniors who are closely associated with our work. While imitating them, we develop technical skills as well as skills about how to interact with people, how to report progress, and how to get work done in the organizational context. There maybe significant mentors/coaches/influencers, but the ‘boss’ has a distinct role to play. Here when I mean boss, it may be boss or 'super boss' i.e. someone further up in the hierarchy. During my research, I observed that a significant number of leaders quoted events where the boss initiated or influenced the development of the leader. And in the case of SME leaders, it was observed that SME owners miss out this channel of learning as they don’t have such a boss. In this research, I also observed the role of external seniors such as a 'consultant' or ...

In the last article I pondered over challenging experiences that tickle learning. The research 'Lessons of Experience' [1] highlighted 'relocation' or movement as one experience that often-triggered learning. As a child I remember learning a small verse in Marathi which translates as, “If you travel to a new country, if you become friends with the learned or if you move around in intellectual gatherings, you become witty". Movement is natural to us. Birds and animals migrate. Some communities migrate seasonally to cope with harsh situations, like the shepherds of Maharashtra migrating towards the Sahayadris  at the onset of summer. (We used to often cross such herds while commuting a few years back. But I have not seen one in the recent past). That movement is to cope with the harsh external environment. But the advantage of movement is felt even otherwise. Almost every community, every religion has the concept of “pilgrimage”. I have personally met people who wal...

In the study “How Indian Leaders Learn” [1] where I had an opportunity to participate and explore, quite a few leaders shared events that were of the nature of 'going through a challenging assignment'. In the study, leaders talked about various assignments where they learnt important lessons that helped them grow as a business leader. Typical examples of such assignments were a 'change of role' i.e. being nominated at a leadership position for the first time, a 'fix it' situation – getting into a seriously troublesome situation and bringing it back to order,  an 'assignment which had many adverse conditions', 'green field' assignments i.e. assignments where you are starting from scratch. Naturally, the lessons learnt would be different based on the situation, but some themes are common. So in this article I am exploring these themes, my impressions about the themes and what could block learning in such cases. One pertinent thing that I observe...