Shared Passions: Learnings, Learners & Reflections
Encouraged by the constant support, and the rich bonds we’re forging with our learning partners, I am delighted to be starting a new ritual – a once-in-six-weeks update about progress and ideas that is keeping us busy at Harappa, as well as some reflections on all our shared passion: the art and science of learning, and its challenges and disappointments too!
What’s New at Harappa
1. Thriversity Launch: Undoubtedly, the most exciting progress for us in the last few weeks has been launching Thriversity, our effort to create a learning platform that is of India, and for India. We’re proud to be the only Indian learning institution for enterprises that has set out to create its own library. In the work that we do with 150+ marquee enterprises, we’ve seen a clear preference for cohort-based learning programs with healthy doses of live faculty interactions – we love them at Harappa too: they have immense learning benefits and strong outcomes. But for mid to large companies, it’s as essential, if not more, to have a sustained effort towards learning that is more scaled up and reaches more employees. After all, the principle of tipping point, made popular by the bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell, lays out that collective change happens only when ideas and behaviors cross a threshold tip, and become unstoppable. It’s true of enterprise learning as well – real benefits accrue when a substantial share of the company learns the right skills together. I do realize that the so-far dispiriting levels of engagement might make many of you wary of self-paced learning libraries: but the first generation of learning libraries didn’t focus on engagement. Their mission was access to content. Thriversity improves on that mission: our big, hairy, audacious goal – and confident commitment – is to drive adoption, engagement and application metrics that are thus far from unseen. If you want to know more about Thriversity, here’s the link.
2. Thrive Bootcamps: In keeping with our unique ability to deliver cohort-based blended learning journeys, we are adding to our repertoire of such offerings with the launch of Thrive Bootcamps. There's a lot to choose from here: the 10-hour learning time makes for just the right immersion for high-priority skills you need your teams to develop immediately. Each Bootcamp brings together our signature high-quality content, inspiring faculty interactions and unmatched completion rates (nearly 90%)! I know I am not supposed to have favorites but the Powerful Presence Bootcamp and Championing Inclusion Bootcamp are special!
3. India Diversity Forum: In April, we participated in the India Diversity Forum in Mumbai. It was the first in-person conference I was attending after a while – and I loved the familiar rush of holding fort at a booth. What stayed with me from that event was the genuine pursuit of solutions to nurture inclusion. At Harappa, diversity and inclusion, is part of our DNA. Our Women’s Leadership Program holds pride of place in our offerings, and in the last six weeks alone, I have interacted with multiple cohorts of high-potential women professionals, including a global cohort where more than 20 countries were represented! We’ll continue to do more to bring new learning-based solutions for your D&I efforts. If you are looking for programs that are urgently needed to meet your diversity, equity and inclusion mandates, do tell us. We’re developing a framework for a Diversity & Inclusion Dashboard – it’s built around the 5Cs (Courage, Conviction, Consensus, Confidentiality & Celebration). I’ll cue it up for my next email update.
Do watch these two behavior experiments we launched round the issue of women and inclusion, one for International Women’s Day, and the other for Mother’s Day. They left me with goosebumps – what do you think?
An Idea I Have Been Thinking About
The Misplaced Value of Effortlessness: Where would we be if other learning custodians – our parents, teachers, and tutors – had given up on us? And why do we expect (or worse, desire) learning to be easy, especially when it is, and should be, a cognitively effortful activity. We reached 100% completion on an enterprise cohort recently, that too on self-paced courses, yet were left feeling worried! Find out why. I write about it here.
Think You’ll Like This Recommendation Too
ASU + GSV: I am not sure how many of you have heard about the annual jamboree of edtech and learning in San Diego. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be there this year, although I was scheduled to speak at a session. But, my colleague, Nikhil Gumbhir, made the trek and pointed me to this must-watch session on the timeless issue of Achieving ROI Through Workforce Learning: the panel deep dives several topics and most interestingly, poses a provocative question: is L&D going the way of marketing automation, rich in full-cycle data and evidence-based decision-making? Here’s the link.
Thanks for your time: I loved writing these reflections and updates, and so hope you found something of value to you.