Yesterday evening, it was raining heavily in Kochi, and the roads were wet in the morning. I didn’t go for usual rigorous morning walk. Instead, took my iPad (with no internet connection, as I believe it will distract me from serious preparation) and chose to write this article. Hope you find it useful.
Extracting insights from complexity
In a high stimuli world, extracting insights from mountains of data, information and facts is a Himalayan task. Busy executives find it difficult to manage their time to acquire inputs which is almost essential to live in a world which is dramatically changing. GreenPepper is taking a huge responsibility by doing that job for you, using our breakthrough training programs for professionals. Our job is to give them concentrated wisdom of world’s best leaders, management experts, economists, market analysts, human resource managers and insights from latest books and journals including Harvard Business Review, Economist, Time and several others. Our team finds the job of gathering this pearls of wisdom and present to you in a manner you will find absolutely exciting. Learning will be fun. Not pain. We are internet savvy people, who understands information is available everywhere, but insights are rare. Making sense of this information and extracting meaning out of it is a tough job. We do it for you.
News and noise
Have you felt that the new age media is bombarding us with news which turns into noise and is much louder than ever before? Your feeling is true. It is disrupting our learning and it gives us a false sense of understanding and knowledge. We mistake news for insights. News is misleading and corrupts clarity of thinking. As a company who researches on how the brain functions and how learning occurs, we have realized that understanding neuroscience can help to solve the most complex organization problems you are facing as a leader. It is the fundamentals that matter.
Everything starts from the top
You need to constantly gather new ways of thinking and doing. Old ways of training executives is not serving the purpose. What are the anxieties of executives and professionals in a new world? As a learning facilitator, our job is to invent new ways of talent development using innovative learning tools. In many of the workshops, we closely observe leaders. They detach from learning and encourage their team members to attend the program seriously. We urge leaders to be part of the exercise and effectively gathers their lifetime experience into comprehensible modules and give it back to them in a format everybody enjoys. This has been a wildly successful activity. We are thrilled by the outcome. Our workshops constantly engage participants with thought provoking perspectives of this world, closer understanding of human behavior, organizational dynamics and what future holds for people who are committed to build skills.
We agree with you. You can’t add skills or change behavior with a one or two day workshops. We stimulate creative thinking and boost positive feelings. We excite them intellectually, connects emotionally.
Chance and choice
We discuss role of chance in our lives but we advocate focus on choices we make. We understand the effect of randomness of events in our lives, but we passionately tell people how process can help organization building.
Learning and development of people is leaders’ new age priority
Our experience of working with bootstrapped firms, venture funded start-ups, small, medium and large corporations has helped us to gather insights of what works and what doesn’t work. After talking to thousands of participants, we realize, it is time to change the direction of how we perceive learning. Learning is not just a HR activity, it should be leaders’ priority. In talent scarce markets, organizations need to invest significantly in their people to take them to expected levels. We have to stop worrying about attrition and market realities, instead proactively implement learning as a workplace differentiator.
Anxieties of new age organizations
Many leaders worry about people leaving the company after training. Imagine, if they are not trained, not leaving and doing a mediocre job. Companies now want lean teams. They don’t want fat on their belly. They want to be slim and run a marathon with their best people who are their assets. We work closely with founders of startups, CEOs of small companies, human resources leaders of medium and large companies, and understand that attracting, developing, engaging and retaining good people is one of their significant challenges.
In our training needs analysis session with leaders, we ask them 3 questions.
1) What are your major anxieties at workplace and life?
2) How do you deal with it now?
3) If you don’t deal with these effectively, what can happen, over 6 months, one year and beyond.
This triggers ideas, thoughts and an urge for them to act.
Intrinsic value
Many organizations are doing these programs as a matter of their process, as part of their learning and development initiatives. We push them to make it a creative exercise which can generate loads of workplace energies. People love it when it increases their intrinsic value.
About GreenPepper
Started in 2007, we have worked with 400+ companies in attracting and developing talent, across India, US and Middle East. Each client made us wiser. We are grateful to them.
At GreenPepper, we have 10 minute presentation by each team member everyday after lunch, on topics from sustainable growth to big data. That keeps us alive and kicking.
One of our co-founders came up with an interesting tagline for our company when we started. ‘Do what you enjoy, enjoy what you do.’ We trademarked it, but most importantly live by that principle, every day!
Good bye for now, and see you again! Cheers.
Krishna Kumar is Co-founder and CEO of GreenPepper Consulting India Private Limited, a leading human resources consulting company in India, based in Kochi.www.greenpepper.in
