Significance of Learning by Doing

With the explosion of technological possibilities, it appears that 21st century human beings are smarter than the earlier generations. It is not so. They (even the prehistoric tribes) were equally intelligent like us and have faced day today challenges as we do.  The only difference could be that the content of our issues/challenges are different.

We boast of knowledge accumulation in various fields. But, what is that hinders business growth when there is plenty of knowledge and information around? The converging answer is; rarely do people set out for executing an action or applying knowledge. The corollary of the statement is rarely we gather knowledge by doing.

In our business facilitation, we follow the principle of 'being aware before doing before knowing'. We propose to suspend knowledge until you do (while tackling wicked problems). We are struggling to cajole our clients to take action on the insights we generate during our workshops. Everybody agrees about the insights and the desired destiny, but no one takes initiatives, even the simple ones.    

The essence of learning is that those who are aware of the exact here-and-now issues and the farther impact of the action, are likely to take action. Raising such an awareness among the key members of the organisation is not easy. We need to design or perhaps invent methodologies to bring out a collective awareness about the common goal. In the end, we console ourselves that, we are getting better  and moving towards gaining shared understanding and execution among our client's team. Perfection is yet to be reached.  

We constantly take efforts to install a culture in the organization  for taking action on the insights developed, and  create opportunities to reflect  and review on their actions. Doing with awareness and reflecting on the actions, promises an ability to adapt, cope with, manage and prepare for uncertainties and change. Our focus on 'doing before knowing' also ensures that the organisational members complete learning cycles by doing, reflecting, re-framing and applying on the business issues. One of the pioneering practitioner once said " there is no learning without doing and no action without learning". How true it is?

contributed by Sasikanth R Prabhu

Hopes Alive in Change Management

Through our strategy workshops we try to unite people in action (build social capital).  We are able to do that, but we find it difficult to sustain the initiatives undertaken as part of the program (especially the customer visits and new market identification). People have

a tendency to relapse into their individualistic approach to jobs, and they remain operations focused than business focused.  We are very much aware that a poorly led change initiative can inflict disorder on a business unit or the entire company. Sluggish initiatives can breed sarcasm and damage the top management’s and our credibility, and can jeopardize future change initiatives. We are very concerned in preventing change failures. 

Failed initiatives have happened in some of our facilitation midway. As we are a research based consulting, we delved deep into the issues related to initiatives and improved our delivery systems to overcome the inertia of change. In the process of analyzing the cause for change-initiative failures, we also recognized that the business leader’s courage matters most in making the change successful.  There is no substitute for this ingredient, and we have to depend on the leadership level of the client company. Places where we have strong leadership at the top, our strategy facilitation is smoother.   Resilience, patience and trying out until the goal is reached, are the three attributes we expect or want from the top team to implement changes in business strategy.  We are constantly working on developing and nurturing these characteristics in our client’s team.  Even a small breakthrough in change management can give tremendous outcomes.  . We recognize that  leading initiatives is not easy,  but we have identified a few effective principles, that change initiatives stand to  survive the most common vulnerabilities. That is emerging as our strength. 

Contributed by Sasikanth R Prabhu, Marg Atreya

Focus and Strategy

From visits to various organisations, we have observed that many organisations are like alcoholics..... Alcoholics find it difficult to leave their drinking habits. Similarly, organisations too cannot leave their habits of clinging to operational silos. Daily urgencies and crisis are expected, attended and promoted than the important activities of business. Business connection is lost in many the organisations.  Operations are meant to drive business, but operations, in course of time, engulfs business and the very purpose of business is hijacked. We bring this anomaly to the notice of the key players of business. Even being aware of this predicament , the people in the organisation cannot get out of their habit of fighting daily urgencies and crisis.

Many say we need to form business strategy, but there is no time. they often say ... Let us finish this project and then we shall sit for forming business strategy. Most business owners and key players fail to take action on strategy but keep on continuing their operational routines.

Second factor that hinder the wished growth is the lack of clarity about overall strategy We have lost count of cases in which well-intentioned project managers waste their time and energy on initiatives that senior managers felt, this is not our priority, even when the same senior persons have approved the initiatives.

Still another observation is that ,  lot of good companies waste enormous amounts o resources on too many projects that had too little focus.

Our business facilitation workshops attempts to overcome these problems by establishing shared awareness and focus of the business. 

Lasting change through crisis

Prevention of crisis is much advised and of course we must do everything to prevent it. But if it occurs, we need preparation to gain from it. Many families, young couples, close friends, colleagues etc have reported  that their past crisis, very deep ones, have helped then to form deeper bonds with each other  Attempting to contain or overcome a crisis brings people together. That is one of the positive value of crisis.

This phenomenon is equally good for business teams too.  The teams that have found ways to overcome crisis and worked together to get over it have found to be having better working relationships and bonding. Crisis gives an opportunity to know each other at deeper levels and to lean to adjust with each other.

Crisis also gives us an opportunity to break from the outdated habits, renew our perspectives and learn new courses of actions.

We facilitate to create conflicts and crisis in our business facilitation services that the team of key players emerge strong and are clear about the strategy. Though we provoke to create conflicts , we are competent to avoid unhealthy interpersonal rub offs and lead to healthy and long lasting outputs.

Experiencing conflicts and resolving it is the stepping stones to growth.


contributed by Sasikanth Prabhu