Open Field of Learning

While thinking of an imagery for learning environment my mind surprisingly went to the sports field. That is an odd choice for someone like me who is athletically challenged but nevertheless I find it a powerful analogy to the learning environments of tomorrow!

If you notice some public fields have a special feature: they have a section open for everyone to play on; young and old, skilled and unskilled all can come and enjoy and gain from the experience of playing the sport and alongside it is a section cordoned off with nets or posts and therein a coach trains a smaller set of athletes.

While the cordoned off field is structured with limited athletes playing and practising there, the open field tends to be chaotic with more players than the field can handle at time. And yet there is an energy and buzz on this side unmatched by the netted area.

In our organizations, management in all these years have stood for order and structure through the use of control. However, we have recently begun acknowledging the emergent and chaotic nature of management as well and the role it plays in shaping the organisation's culture. In that context, it seems natural to move away from the existing nomination based program-style training events and move towards a self explored, easily accessible intervention-styled learning journeys.

A learning environment where employees are given the full freedom to explore the content of their interest and need, where all are encouraged to reflect on the nuances of their skill gaps and where managers play a the role of talent architects for their team rather than leaders presiding on nomination choices.

Not only does that empower employees to take charge of their learning it also moves the Learning and Leadership teams to focus more on facilitation of groups towards right skills development, constructing unique learning journeys and engaging learners to apply their learning at work rather than worrying about program nominations, logistical arrangements and following up with  participants, managers and leaders.

So go ahead, open up your learning space to everyone and encourage people to manage their own learning journeys!

How Do You See Me?

I got a call from one of my colleagues one day, telling me they wanted to speak to me about something urgent. From the sound of it, it felt like something had gone horribly wrong and I thought it best to speak with the person right away. In a matter of minutes this person was down at my desk and we decided over a cup of coffee on what was trouble brewing. Immediately the person spoke about resignation. Actually the words were more like, "I guess you have already heard... I have put in my papers last week..."

While the conversation did continue on about matters related to resignation like work handover, last working day and dues settlement, I don't want to talk about those process matters here. What I do want to highlight here are a couple of other things the person said. The person mentioned that one was bored with the drudgery of daily work and that one was feeling this way for 6 months prior to this conversation. What amazed me was that I thought in my little head that I was a pretty good work friend of this person and that the person would share with me one's problems!

It is a known fact that many organizations do not have HR professionals and a majority of those who do are involved in operational and process-centric tasks. It is ironic but true that HR managers across organizations receive among the poorest client engagement scores from their clients (employees) as compared to business teams from the same organizations. While this may just be the nature of our never-ending journey in the function: that increased HR engagement scores result in increased Client engagement scores; it is also a reflection of the nature of our relationship with the business.

How do they see us? I remember while I was part of the business we viewed HR as this disdained entity that would not do anything more than peddle organizational processes and push organizational mandates while engaging only senior leadership in the unit to better business performance. We engineers on the other hand looked for a coach, a guide, a facilitator who could converse with us on our issues and work towards creative solutions for our talent challenges.

Sounds like a lot but if we think about it from Ulrich's model of HR professionals we play the roles of Admin Partner, Change Agent, Strategic Partner and Employee Champion if we aren't doing this what are we really doing as HR. And all of this is based on the foundations of any strong relationship: trust, communication and camaraderie.

It didn't take a lot for us to stop relying on HR for the support we needed and look internally for that support. Ironically, Human Resource Managers fell short of being decent People Managers while business managers filled that gap to their best capacities.

My own tryst with my colleague as an HR manager served as a wake-up call to be a more people's HR manager and not just a process HR practitioner.