As a trainer, one is always looking at ways to make “learning” fun while forgetting that much learning can take place while having fun.

I was watching “Her Majesty, Mrs Brown” recently on my lap-top. It is about Queen Victoria’s friendship with John Brown, soon after the death of her husband, Prince Albert.

While watching the movie, I ended up going online to read more about her reign, the prevailing political climate and her successors to the throne right down to Queen Elizabeth II. I am rarely tempted to look for a dictionary while reading a (physical) book.

It was an unintended lesson on British Monarchy while having fun.

Internet has indeed make learning much more pleasurable and accessible while reinforcing the ’stickiness of learning’ while having fun!

This article from Fortune makes good reading on how Apple succeeded:

The following includes extracts (in italics) from the article:

Compare the sales figures per square foot for the last 12 months of leading retailers (Source: Sanford C. Bernstein):

Saks: $362
Best Buy: $930
Tiffany & Co: $2,666
Apple: $4,032

How then did Apple, a novice retailer in 2001 succeed? What lessons does it hold for us?

1. To acknowledge the need to shift the approach in selling and then, to do something about it:

“The company was increasingly dependent on mega-retailers - companies that had little incentive, never mind training, to position Apple’s products as anything unique.” It was like, ‘We have to do something, or we’re going to be a victim of the plate tectonics. And we have to think different about this. We have to innovate here.’”

2. Search for the best, hire the experts:

“No. 1, I started asking who was the best retail executive at the time. Everybody said Mickey Drexler, who was running the Gap.”

Drexler joined Apple’s board. Jobs then hired Ron Johnson, who was then a merchandising chief at Target.

3. Build Prototypes:

‘Prototyping’ maybe an accepted practice in Design and Innovation. As Tom Kelley, in ‘the Art of Innovation’ says “Prototyping, brainstorming and observations. These are the fundamentals, the reading, writing and arithmetic of innovation.” Yet, how many companies do it across the organization.

Steve Jobs considered ‘Building a protype of the store’ as one the best pieces of advice he received.

“One of the best pieces of advice Mickey ever gave us was to go rent a warehouse and build a prototype of a store, and not, you know, just design it, go build 20 of them, then discover it didn’t work,” says Jobs.

In other words, design it as you would a product. (emphasis mine)

“Ron and I had a store all designed,” says Jobs, when they were stopped by an insight: The computer was evolving from a simple productivity tool to a “hub” for video, photography, music, information, and so forth. The sale, then, was less about the machine than what you could do with it. But looking at their store, they winced. The hardware was laid out by product category - in other words, by how the company was organized internally, not by how a customer might actually want to buy things. “We were like, ‘Oh, God, we’re screwed!’” says Jobs.

“So we redesigned it,” he says. “And it cost us, I don’t know, six, nine months. But it was the right decision by a million miles.” (emphasis mine)

How many organization give the required time while initiating projects? Most executives are fighting deadlines on multiple fronts!

4. Designing a store around consumer interests and not products

When the first store finally opened, in Tysons Corner, Va., only a quarter of it was about product. The rest was arranged around interests: along the right wall, photos, videos, kids; on the left, problems. A third area - the Genius Bar in the back - was Johnson’s brainstorm.

5. Set Standards with the “Best in the Industry”

“When we launched retail, I got this group together, people from a variety of walks of life,” says Johnson. “As an icebreaker, we said, ‘Tell us about the best service experience you’ve ever had.’” Of the 18 people, 16 said it was in a hotel. This was unexpected. But of course: The concierge desk at a hotel isn’t selling anything; it’s there to help. “We said, ‘Well, how do we create a store that has the friendliness of a Four Seasons Hotel?’” The answer: “Let’s put a bar in our stores. But instead of dispensing alcohol, we dispense advice.”

Can we do away with the obvious?

“Also missing, at the newest stores, anyway, is a checkout counter.”

“The system Apple developed, EasyPay, lets salespeople wander the floor with wireless credit-card readers and ask, “Would you like to pay for that?”

How many organizations are willing to experiment? To move away from the tried and tested?

Carl Lewis, an athlete I admire was in Singapore recently. He was quoted in the Straits Times:

?I was speaking to some coaches about how to train, and they told me: ‘Oh, that’s not how we train here’. I got mad because there shouldn’t be a way ‘we train’ or ‘they train.’ There’s only the right way to train and that’s universal. You have to think global and see how everyone else who is successful is training.”

We should apply the same advice in organizations too!

For example, an area where I am constantly confronted in this manner is in 360-degree feedback. I am often told, 360-degree feedback will not be effective in Asia. ?We Asians don’t like to confront; especially those in authority. It is not in our culture.?

Yet, should we not be judging whether it is a good practice. The relevant question is “Will the 360-degree feedback enable me to improve my performance as a manager?

PS: Carl Lewis blogs here

Business Week has some articles on how organizations respond to failures and what successful people learnt from failures:

This one is from Jeffrey R. Immelt, Chairman and CEO, General Electric

“In 1992, I was running all the commercial operations for the plastics business at GE. We had a product called Nuvel, which was a sheet product that would go over wood to try to create the poor man’s Corian countertops. Turns out the thing just didn’t work. Any time you dropped a coin on it, it would leave a mark that you couldn’t get out unless you buffed it with sandpaper. It was a classic case of just not asking the right questions up front.”

“It made me learn about listening better. I’m more disciplined on the upfront stuff now than I was then. I wanted to do something big and exciting, and I wanted to do it now rather than wait a year.”

Though he does add on: “You’re never allowed in GE to make the same mistake twice. You’re allowed to make the mistake once. If you try something and it fails, but you went about it the right way and you learned from it, that’s not a bad thing.”

Read his complete story and others such as Jim Goodnight,CEO, SAS Institute and E. Neville Isdell
CEO, Coca-Cola
here

How organizations handle failures is here

It includes Virgin Atlantic Airways and its sleeper seats in business class, Jet Blue Airways inflight snack mix among others.

According to the wikipedia , the term “cognition (Latin: cognoscere, ‘to know’) is used in several loosely-related ways to refer to a facility for the human like processing of information, applying knowledge and changing preferences.”

Here are some interesting links that you might like to explore:

You can view some of the experiments carried out by Daniel Simons and Chris Chabris in the area of visual cognition here.

Here is an example of Change Blindness. According to the site, ‘naive observers notice such changes about 30 percent of the time’ (Naive - I take it, means an average observor!)

Another great site on Cognitive Psychology is maintained by Dave Munger and Margaret P. Munger.

From our current issue of HR News and Views:

It is based on Paul Dolan’s book “True to Our Roots: Fermenting a Business Revolution” and my conversation with Paul Dolan. The book is about his incredible journey which reaffirms the highest values that all sustainable businesses can and should embody.

Paul Dolan’s journey of change and transformation begins when he felt the impact of chemicals on the environment in general and on the grapes in particular, first hand at the Fetzer Vineyards in 1987. Paul Dolan, then the head wine maker recalls the difference in tastes between two blocks of vines a few feet apart. One “infused with lush, creamy flavours of ripe figs and melon, perfect for Sauvignon Blanc” and the other “less flavourful and less expressive”. The first block of vines was a part of an experiment to farm some of the vineyards organically.

The book offers the guiding principles and his personal story of how he and his team built Fetzer Vineyards as one of the largest brands in the United States in the premium wines category, making nearly four million cases of wine each year. They farm organically all the vineyards they own. They have increased earnings on an average 15% each year through the 1990’s while keeping their environmental and social responsibilities as top priorities.

One of the guiding principles in creating the future you want is

From this month’s issue of HR News and Views

Part II: Future Trends at the workplace

With careers spanning from 20 to 70, organizations will see two distinct groups at the workplace, namely those below 50 and those over 50. Peter Drucker believes that longevity will be one of the reasons for the split in the job market. ?A 50-year working life?unprecedented in human history?is simply too long for one kind of work.? It means that organizations need to recognize that those over 50 will be in good physical and mental shape to contribute as knowledge workers. It would also mean that women who will form a significant percentage of the knowledge workforce will be in a position to take time off to be with their children over a significant period and still be able to return to the workforce.

To read the complete issue, click
here

From this month’s HR News and Views:

Part I: The knowledge worker of today; the new capitalist!

The biggest challenge for knowledge workers; a word first coined by Peter Drucker is to stay relevant. Knowledge, unlike skills makes itself obsolete and changes very rapidly.

The knowledge we start with when starting our careers is not adequate for a fifty years work span! It will become increasingly important to reinvent ourselves, find ways of staying relevant, keeping our interests and energies high and continuing to be effective. As Drucker says, “If you haven’t learned how to learn, you’ll have a hard time. Knowing how to learn is partly curiosity. But it’s also a discipline.”

The following guidelines are some of the ways in which he believes Knowledge workers can continue to be effective executives; a characteristic that is very learnable.

“I have not come across a single ‘natural’: an executive who was born effective. All the effective ones had to learn how to be effective. And all of them then had to practice effectiveness until it became a habit. Effectiveness can be learned - and also it has to be learned.”

To read the complete issue, click
here

This month?s HR News and Views on Seven ways to stay updated: An essential aspect of your Professional Life

Being current with the latest information in our area of work is a necessity rather than a luxury in today’s workplace. Yet, with the information deluge, we often don’t seem to have the time to read what we should be reading let along keeping up with what we’d like to read!

Did we ever think that computers would help make our jobs more efficient, give us more time to pursue our interests, have more time for ourselves!

As Jonathan Schwartz, President and CEO, Sun Microsystems put it succintly, “You are not about to send fewer email messages, watch fewer movies, or download fewer songs. Demand is unceasing. It is up to us to meet it.”

In this issue, I have tried to explore some efficient ways of keeping oneself updated using the web. While I never think of myself as an embracer of technology, the ‘opportunities to learn’ made possible because of technology continue to amaze and enchant me!

Read the Seven Ways to stay updated
here

Just after I finished sending out the ezine, I came across the following resources:

• Deepa