Quote , Unquote !!!

"He who chooses the beginning of a road, also chooses its outcome." -  Unknown

So true, they say well begun is half done.  That's the other way to look at it. You start off on the wrong track and have to reverse the road travelled already.  Also it is good to remember that  the roughest roads make the best drivers, so you need not look at the rough one as the wrong road   

"Keep trying, It's only from the valley that the mountain seems high."  Zig Ziglar

So very true, its all about perspective. Raise your self above the problem and you see it in a different light.  That's the way it looks from the valley... all insurmountable, but once your reach somewhere at the top you feel you have conquered it all.   


"There is no limit to what can be achieved, when no one cares who gets the credit". - John Wooden, Coach

The team is sometimes the enemy of the goal.   So true that you have a goal and everyone understands it but in the quest to get name and credit the goal is side tracked.  You can always identify such people.  They will be playing ball on the sides,  send separate emails without including others who are relevant,  try calling out and dropping names and often the one's who try to take credit for others outputs.  These are missing in action but fully present at reward time. 


"Before we can properly handle a problem we must know all of the problem" - 

Einstein, once said, a problem can't be solved at the same level of understanding as that at which it was created.... he means you need a higher level of understanding.   That's why we say "Experience is the best teacher"  You can get to see various turns (understand the problem better or more in detail when you have experience.   Also it is about being wise with the worldly experiences and therefore able to handle problems as they say with grace and confidence.

The Quest for Delivering Lasting Change?

There is a saying that goes like this.... "Put a Changed Man Into an Unchanged Context and he eventually goes back to his old ways of doing things".  

 This is a paradox for trainers.  General quest for trainers is to see change come about. Their role is that of a change agent.  However the lasting change does not come by because of the above.   Which means... The trainers should understand the context from which the trainee (who you expected to change) came from and eventually went back to.  

Understanding the context and seeing that in light of the training is very important.  Therefore the role of the trainer is also to collaborate with the owner of the context (here it is the line manager)  to understand stumbling blocks as well as enablers for the desired change.  

For e.g. you wanted to make people more proactive through a training program.  However the situation on the ground once the trainee went back (here it is say one of the operations floor for customer X) was one where any hint at addressing something which was not raised as an issue by the client or any other stakeholder is not welcome and looked at with suspicion is a sure shot recipe for the trainee going back to old ways.   Why rake up issues, why search for embers to burn your feet... these are the kind of manifestations of feedback.

So what do you do?  Trainers can pass the baton to designers and say the context should be taken care of during design.  Yes but the product you create is what gets back to action in the context... (in example above it is the operations for Customer X) and it is in the trainers interest to work with the managers or leaders in the floor of operations for Customer X to see how people are encourage for being proactive.   The managers need to be sensitized that one has to encourage, reward, cajole people to be proactive just in case they have been so used to not being proactive and waiting for fires to be doused.

Operationally using Kurt Lewins - Force Field Analysis helps in identifying barriers to change and resisting forces and as a group the Trainers can work with leaders to eliminate the opposing forces.   Thereby it becomes a much easier task for trainers to achieve their goals of bringing about lasting change once the context issues have been addressed to facilitate changed behaviors.