Rain and Drain
(This is from Edition 58 of The Upleveler, our weekly smartletter)
When it rains, it pours...
It's been an exceedingly wet monsoon for all of us at CTQ Central. Pune rains have traditionally been of the drip-drip-drip kind, but this year (2019), it reminded us of the approach that conventional, 'unthinking' organisations take about "learning".
Been to Pune or Mumbai in the last two weeks? You'd have seen water-logged roads. The rainwater is like the constant learning push Chief Learning Officers and L&D units direct at hapless employees. When faced with the next wave of trends, they let loose.
But there is a limit to how much water the ground can absorb. The first rains are always welcome – the smell, the poetry it inspires, the change it signifies and so on. But over time, it can lead to gloom, despair, and frustration. "Will this rain ever stop?", you wonder. But saying so aloud isn't quite kosher. Someone is likely to admonish you: "Don’t say you don’t need learning...oops rains. If there are no rains, you won't survive."
Then there are metrics. All that we track is the storage capacity of the dams. If the dams get filled to capacity, everyone assumes everything's hunky dory. We track the dams' storage numbers like we track run-rates in cricket or KPIs of L&D teams. Everyone's happy now that we see some numbers in the quarterly update.
But each year, as we approach peak summer, people actually need more water. The consumption rate goes up along with the evaporation levels. The plight of the learner is the same. When you actually need all that knowledge, you have forgotten what you learned. You are unable to summon the skills you thought you had learned. And you start worrying about when it will rain next.
Countries like Israel have shown the wonders that drip irrigation systems can do. However, this system doesn't offer too many vanity metrics. You can almost miss the soil getting watered: there's no drama, no headline, no grand numbers. You also need to be thoughtful and deliberate about which crops you choose. You need to invest time and money to lay the groundwork and pipelines. You'll need experts to operationalise the system. To better manage water in cities, you'll need to create aquifers and replenish the water table. To influence culture, you'll need to share stories of how citizens are responding to these changes.
When it comes to learning, our preferred approach is like this drip irrigation system. This takes time but is less painful for the target audience. There is less wastage of resources (time, content, attention of everyone involved). Most importantly, there's a very good chance of impact. Call it 'learning on tap'.
Does your organization approach learning the way our cities manage our water? Do you drink from the tap only when you are flooded with it? Do you have a system that continuously, relentlessly, and sufficiently reinforces what you learn? Tell us in the comments section.
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