463rd on Training Day

The 463rd publication carried out by the leading daily of India, The Indian Express, dated 25th March 2010, presents a snap shot of Training and its Significance for an organization.Organizations today are putting less emphasis on training and development and that is understandable especially when the recently subsided recession(in parts of the globe, sans Europe and Americas completely.The organizations which aren't following a myopic approach are spending more or less the same amount in T&D as they know once the opportunities springs up they have to leverage the same through their manpower and therefore it is better to sharpen their axe before they move out to the woods.The organizations in the emerging economies knows this proposition pretty well and are therefore leaving no stones unturned so as to train their human capital.Companies are also trying to innovate so as to devise new methodologies which can not only reduce the cost, but also help in increasing the training effectiveness.Technologies like E-Learning, Blended Methodologies are coming to the rescue of the training department during these trying times.

My article on 'Blending Hard Skills with Soft Skills in Academic Delivery'

My 399th Publication is an article published in the leading knowledge portal of The Sultanate of Oman, www.knowledgeoman.com. The article talks about the significance of blending hard skills with soft skills especially when the challenges being faced by the corporate world and industries globally are witnessing these sudden eruptions only because the decision makers lacked the perfect blend of the both.This is even more significant when one considers the fresh graduates of different disciplines knocking at the doors of the competitive world of jobs and careers.

This is solely being written by yours truly on the basis of the first hand experiences gained and observations made while training college/university students and working executives in India, Australia, The UAE and The Sultanate of Oman.

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Shifting from the Down-under to the Middle East

It was indeed to start my professional training and consultancy career in India, have a small stint in the gulf, enhance my skills in Australia and now I am back to the Middle East. The reason for this change is not difficult to find.I would like to get maximum exposure in the training and consultancy domain and voila, now when I sit back and go through my memories of training target audiences and consulting clients in three different parts of the world, I feel I am not only more informative, but I also possess a plethora of training and consulting tools.It is primarily because my first hand experience in grooming Indian trainees, in all parts of India, followed by my stint in the United Arab Emirates, subsequently in Australasia, followed by the Middle East again, albeit in a different country, has provided me new insights in management training and consultancy. As far as training is concerned, chalk and talk, white board only, simulation,blended learning approach, outdoor-indoor collaboration, domain-wise collaborative approach,learning by doing, case based training, operation workout and live projects based learning, soft-skills with hard skills approach, training through movies and videos to name a few has undergone a complete metamorphosis.This is because the same tool while applied in a different setting targetting different audiences calls for last minute changes and customization.However, these evolutionary approach not only gave me a refined tool, but also enabled me to have different variant of the same management training tool.
The same holds true even for management consultancy.

Different environment, different techniques-Whats new?However,..........

Different surrounding calls for different techniques. What is new in that?That is what I have realized while mentoring students in trainees in India, Sultanate of Oman and Australia. One sizie fits all like in any other service industry is a strict no-no even in the training and consultancy domain. In India, trainees/students were more interested in knowing about developments from a national perspective, where a chunk would prefer jargons. In UAE, however, jargons had to be mixed with synonyms, often by quoting local examples of corporations like Nakeel, Dubai World, Mall of Emirates, Burj Dubai to name a few. Australia called for localization from the perspective of the Australasia, which needed adequate understanding of the organizational cultures of companies like Rio Tinto, Qantas, brands like XXXX Beer to name a few. Oman called for empathy and simplicity, where jargon would be the last thing and if used, has to be complimented with meanings.Here also the emphasis of explaining through local corporations like Bank Muscat, Bank Dhofar, Bank Sohar, Oman Air, Gulfar, Renaissance,Oman UAE Xchange to name a few goes a long way in reinforcing the knowledge to the masses.

A blend of localization and GLOCALIZATION holds the key to the success of a management and soft skills trainer