How can you model learning to address different organizational needs?
The new world of Learning - panel discussion series
We see there is this need-based learning wherein there is a particular problem and you want to solve those problems. You put 10 people on the job, train them and get that problem solved. The other approach is more a leadership type of training, which is more transient in nature. You identify potential leaders, mentor them for a longer period of time. What are the challenges you see in these contrasting scenarios – a more behavioral way of learning and a more task-based learning environments?
Kaiser Masood
If you are talking about challenges, I think the reference you made is to leadership kind of training and learning which is spread over a larger period of time. I think when we say that it is spread over a larger period of time, what it is giving you is a horizon and therefore this is where you need to move. It provides you the direction. But indeed all learning, the steps in that journey are need-based. So, if I am going to do learning on cost which is something you are going to look at three years from now. Even in that longer-term context you are going to attend it you might appreciate it if it was fun and if it opened your mind to certain things. But eventually what you are going to value most is what is relevant to your present situation and your present job. So, that is the kind of learning which we need to provide and that is where the whole study of roles and requirements comes in.
Now, apart from that I might be not able to give you such a specific learning intervention for a certain problem that you are facing this morning. So that is where I at least need to know where I can get some of this information. That is where I think technology where I can reach out to peers about something I am working on will help. For instance, I have a challenge with the technology I am working with and right now I can't reach out to my peer who is sitting just in the next cubicle because he is busy with something else. I should be able to go online and probably be able to discuss this somewhere else. So, I think one sits into the other and it is not like juxtaposed.
Dr. Srinivas Padmanabhuni
I just want to bring out one concern, especially in the corporate learning scenario. All these – open learning, participative approaches are fine. But one element we have got to understand very clearly in this is the control element, namely about intellectual property issues and legal concerns. These are very important elements; especially in the open environment when you are throwing open this whole wide world of blogging and blogger sphere. We have to be very careful about putting the right controls in place, and it is not just about control from the top down, but it is also about self-discipline which you have to educate people on. You can’t just impose control from the top and tell people that they can't write this or do that, it wouldn’t work. It has to be a bottom-up, self-governance kind of an approach, which is going to be required for you to give the right flavor to what you are going to write and what you are going to share.
Infosys’ Learning Services recently conducted a panel discussion on the topic “ The new world of Learning “. We are running a series of questions that the audience posed. The panelists were - Srikantan Moorthy, Vice President and Head - Education and Research; Dr. Srinivas Padmanabhuni, Principal Researcher- SETLabs and Kaiser Masood, Principal Consultant, Infosys Leadership Institute.
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