Invisible Learning

12 years back, I once told the Chief Executive of a large company that if he were to hire me because I can build a Corporate University, which essentially meant a fancy training-department those days in India, then I am not the go-to-person. The meeting ended abruptly. 2 weeks later, my HR liaison in the company called back and asked me to make a pitch to the CEO about why I should be hired, and for that I was given some basic information. My pitch essentially hovered around self-motivated learning which helps the learner become better in what one does... and has some visible & tangible outcomes so that the motivation to learn keeps getting reinforced.

I strongly believed that learning should be fluidic rather than piece-meal. I was hired after the presentation, and I walked into this organisation knowing 2 things... a) I had bitten more than I could chew, and b) My customers, both internal and external, did not know what they exactly wanted.

In the next 3 months as I settled down, I realised that because my internal & external customers weren't really aware as to what they wanted, I had some time to get my thoughts in place, and in the meanwhile we could start some initiatives which drive business results. I was an intrapreneur in this organisation. I have to release a minimal viable product 'without its bells & whistles', and involve my learners to evolve the offering and perfect the proposition.

Over the next couple of years, I was blessed with opportunities that allowed me to experiment and build the Corporate University wherein the foundation was based on lifelong learning and not training programs. We built low-tech solutions which befitted the technology available at that point of time viz., text message based learning and Jugalbandi (send me a private message to know more), and revolutionised learning in the financial-services space. I am proud of my team that worked hard to firstly unlearn, and then relearn & adapt quickly.

Well, those were the initial days of learning electronically, and the world has moved far ahead now. In developing economies like India, we have seen massive jumps in the kind of technological improvements and tht has suddenly opened an absolute new vista of learning delivery. The average telecom consumer today is almost constantly online and sort of checking one's social media accounts every two to three hours. As Karl Mehta, Co-Founder & CEO of EdCast says in one of his interviews, the learning structures today come from the Industrial Era, however, we are now in a Knowledge Economy... and I believe we have to change our frame of reference. I do not mean to say that schools are going to go obsolete, but as Karl says, to imagine that, in a fast-paced, ever-changing world, to expect a learner to learn everything that is required in one's life, in the first 24-25 years of one's existence... I believe is unfair. And today, with the advent of technology, if we have the learner motivated (by the value that one percieves) we could create a zillion opportunities for the learner to keep learning. With the world moving towards AI, this entire process become even more interesting. As the AI starts learning, the system starts curating knowledge that you need rather than knowledge that I need to dump. Learning, therefore, becomes a part of one's 'being'... it becomes invisible.

To add some spice to the authenticity of why this will work can be found in Indian mythology. If you remove the construct of Information Technology, and give a flesh & bones body to the AI, then how different was the lifelong learning association that got forged between 'guru' (coach & mentor) and the 'shishya' (learner) in the 'gurukul' (abode of the coach). The interesting thing is that a shishya would have multiple gurus in one's life... and it used to be a lifelong journey.

Coming to what we do currently in our Corporate University in Wadhwani Foundation, is also something on similar lines. As it was 12 years back, while we started with structured 'visible' learning processess, it is now moving towards becoming user-centred, and possibly over the next year or so, we would be able to push the learning process towards being invisible. I am blessed with a team that is in a constant state of unlearning & relearning... my job is to push them and to ensure that they do not break... I know they can create a superb best-in-class offering... and I am gunning for it.

So, what are we doing differently now? The first thing that we have done is to put the learner in the dead-centre of our entire strategy... as Dr. Ajay Kela, our President & CEO says, 'The learner is the Centre of our Universe'. We are now working on giving maximum control of one's learning in the hands of the learner. And while doing this, we realised that what learners want most is a control over their choices. 'Choice' is a hallmark of 'Freedom'. And if we are able to give the learners a choice, they will end up being far motivated to do what they need to do. Having said that, we shoud keep in mind that 'choice' does not mean 'laissez faire'... there is a structure, but there is now a choice to choose the path that one wants to take. To strngthen the learners' motivation, we are now finding innovative ways to incentivise them. Like in the case of most simple-to-use products, the back-end is quite complicated. Similarly, the instructional systems design approach for the various learning events is quite complicated and they are being designed keeping in mind the beneficiaries that we have in the 15 countries that we are operational in presently.

These are early days, and the team is working towards making learning invisible.