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#38 May 1, 2015
Window for action loving PROFESSIONALS
Excellence is not a skill. It is an attitude. - Ralph Marston Grow your SKILLs
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Skills needed for Skills Development Conferences
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‘Skills for Seniors’ Quotes
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Dear Readers Greetings! 500 million people to be skilled in India by the year 2022. Not a mere statistical nightmare but a reality that is going to test the might of ABCDE – Academia, Business, Consulting, Development sector and the Enterprises. The Government can only make policies and contribute to the creation of some infrastructure. What else? We, the action loving professionals, have a lot to work towards. To begin with, spread the consciousness, enhance our own skills and contribute to the development and refinement of skills for people around us. Clarity begins at home… Y not! Cheers, Rajiv Khurana Editor rajiv@rajivkhurana.com 9810211256.
When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece. - John Ruskin
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Coaching Learning Advancing Sharpening Smartening ©
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Grow your
#38 May 1, 2015
Window for action loving PROFESSIONALS
SKILLs Rajiv Khurana, CMC, FIMC
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Stay focused Don’t start every pursuit together. Pick and choose. Focus with commitment and timeline.
Keep the right company
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You can’t learn cricket in the company of hockey players. Golfers stick to golfers. Who are your pals? Skills enhance when you hang with them and thrive.
Invest in ‘your feel good factors’
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The right mental framework can get nourished with your positive body language and projection. Invest in how you look. Dress well. Behave better.
Learn the right stuff in a right way
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Information and advise comes in plenty. Seek the help of a competent coach or a buddy. See the way others have improved. Create your niche.
Leverage, practice, share
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Your skill must move from the level of ‘conscious competence’ to ‘unconscious competence’. This will happen when you try to leverage it to every possible situation and practice hard. Seek feedback and improve. When people start benefitting from your skill and sharing, it is sign that you have mastered it. Acronym SKILL is the intellectual property of Rajiv Khurana
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Skills needed for Skills Development Conferences
#38 May 1, 2015
Window for action loving PROFESSIONALS
- Rajiv Khurana, CMC, FIMC
“Not again. Not me”, I reacted when my friend Sumit Chaudhuri suggested that we attend a national level workshop being organised by a premier industry association at a large security-paranoid venue in Delhi. For more than seven years, I have attended many such conferences and I have become sick and tired of the dull repetitiveness. Even some of the organisers have become sick of me for the pestering questions I ask. The law of devastatingly marginal returns has infected me. Sumit, being the pest he is, still bull-dozed me to tag along. It is tough to pretend attentiveness with ‘open eyed sleeping’. I galvanised my strengths to attend the conference. Conferences are generally a good place to satisfy my old urge and ailment of curiosity. I ask questions to quench my ‘un-ending learning-thirst’. Sometimes these questions do rub the speaker/s a wrong way as they hit their assumption of ‘audience is ignorant or ill informed’ stance. Conferences are expected to usher-in a discussion among participants who have an agreed serious topic. This indeed was a serious topic and I started looking forward to the enriching discussions that may follow.
Rituals of inauguration later, the race towards the end of session started. Seven speakers, each tried to outdo others by stretching the allotted 15 minutes to cover probably their 40 minutes content! The sarkaris and the MNC type speakers gloriously over-shooting with their vocal bullets. The audience kept quiet. I admire their perseverance to check WhatsApp, send emails, play candy crush, talk in whispers or have the courage of dozing-off in full defiance until the lunch breaks-us-apart.
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The word ‘conference’ became a big hit. It was hit by the monologues. And some more monologues. This is cheating. I felt like saying. You convene a conference and then make us all hear your same data, same ideas, same stories, same ‘junior’s made seniors present crappy PPTs…and same ‘no time to take any questions’ arrogance. I kept quiet. Lunch. Someone had paid for my free lunch. I respect the courtesy. I overlooked my contest.
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#38 May 1, 2015
Window for action loving PROFESSIONALS The lunch was a successful show of ‘total absence of culinary skills’. Yucky! Didn’t change anything further. The challenge began. One more big session. Seven more speakers. His Masters’ Voice in the garb of a conference. Tough time to fake the skills of attentiveness. Action Replay! Whatever was repeated in the first session was repeated again! “Where are the skills of speakers and organisers?” I enquired from Sumit, equally struggling to show-case a serious conference professional participant. With over thirty years of bearing out each other successfully, we can read each other’s looks. “Why do you take everything so seriously?” I read in his eyes and decided not to ask further. Disengaged, I finally started to jot down my points to write this article.
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I am not a sceptic. I know the big challenge ahead. Skilling 500 million people by 2022 is a daunting task. Every way to create a record of sorts. Seven more years to go and where have we reached? Nowhere on the right path! We are still contemplating our ways without understanding the ground realties. Having spoken with lakhs of youngsters in over 50 cities of India, I do have some minor grip over the problems we face. The reality is a pathetic mismatch of APSIRATION, INSPIRATION and PERSPIRATION resultantly choking the RESPIRATION of the future society we talk about in sometimes idealistic, sometimes scary and mostly demographical connotations.
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#38 May 1, 2015
Window for action loving PROFESSIONALS
Do these conferences help? Should be. That’s why they are held. They create some ripples, some data, some events and in most cases some recommendations that get created by some back-end innovative writers covering the conferences to cook up what is said and often left unsaid. These conferences are turning out to be a big industry to attract people to jump on to it. The task is too big and the toughness is getting bigger. How do we make them more meaningful? How do we translate Prime Minister’s dream of co-creating ‘Skill India’ from a mere gathering of thoughts to generate and add to ‘Bill India’? Do we need to introspect? Especially the organisers and the speakers. To start with, let’s ask ourselves some easy questions. •
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Why not plan a proper structure for the conference and tell the speakers in advance to stick to their ‘lakshman rekha’? Better still, give them some penetrative questions to answer from their domain instead of making motherhood statements and making macrotalks. Make the knowledge partners work harder to justify their logo on the backdrop. Why not invite speakers who have done some work closer to the ground and understand the realities instead of operating from their ivory towers? Why not invite the beneficiaries to share their experiences and expectations? These could be the past, current or probable students along with their parents, guardians, teachers etc. At least, we can understand the correct way to create alliance amongst the aspiration, inspiration and perspiration of the target audience.
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#38 May 1, 2015
Window for action loving PROFESSIONALS
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Why not think broader to include the members of the un-organised sector including MSMEs to contribute to the thought process? After all, they are going to absorb the large number of workforce with them – whether skilled or not. How can we afford to generally overlook them from MAKE IN INDIA and SKILL INDIA initiatives? This sector can only inspire people to turn to entrepreneurship with whichever skills they learn or enhance. Why not invite families [from middle and lower middle class background] who have gladly accepted these skilled people as prospective grooms for the daughters? It’s high time to have a reality bite on the dignity and acceptability of labour. We have woken up very late to inculcate this pride and dignity. We have a long way to go. Why not spend adequate time to the development of teachers and coaches to teach, train, motivate or groom young India on skills? Don’t forget to even find ways to improve their income. If you pay peanuts, you know what you get.
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#38 May 1, 2015
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Why not think broader to include the members of the unorganised sector including MSMEs to contribute to the thought process? After all, they are going to absorb the large number of workforce with them – whether skilled or not. How can we afford to generally overlook them from MAKE IN INDIA and SKILL INDIA initiatives? This sector can only inspire people to turn to entrepreneurship with whichever skills they learn or enhance. Why not invite families [from middle and lower middle class background] who have gladly accepted these skilled people as prospective grooms for the daughters? It’s high time to have a reality bite on the dignity and acceptability of labour. We have woken up very late to inculcate this pride and dignity. We have a long way to go. Why not spend adequate time to the development of teachers and coaches to teach, train, motivate or groom young India on skills? Don’t forget to even find ways to improve their income. If you pay peanuts, you know what you get.
How should speakers prepare and improve? Their preparation needs to polish some S-K-I-L-L-I-N-G. S – Stay focussed. Both in terms of time and content. The audience is interested in your thoughts and not your greater glories and the power behind your organisation’s name. K – Keep jargons at bay. Please express. Don’t impress with your heavy duty words and abbreviations that audience may be ignorant about won’t admit or oppose. By the way, words like, “Strategy, Value proposition, Out of the box etc., etc.” are all becoming stale due to over usage and under impact. Try something different. Something simple. Talk ‘dil se’. I – Introspect deeply and prepare. Integrate your thoughts with entrepreneurship, selfemployment, arts and craft etc. instead of talking about jobs alone. India can’t create so many jobs. People will have to fend for themselves especially in the surroundings they live in. Animal husbandry, fisheries, handlooms and power looms etc. make more sense.
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#38 May 1, 2015
Window for action loving PROFESSIONALS
L – Link with the aspirations of the students and parents. Having written career columns for over 12 years, I broadly know what parents generally force their kids to do. Be a doctor, engineer or civil servant. Period. How do we make the aam janta see the change? How do we convince them that there could be better careers as a self-employed electrician or a plumber instead of a thirdrated qualified engineer? How do we encourage the creation of a society that respects people engaged in jobs or careers hitherto looked down upon? L – Leverage stories of success. Nothing beats some true stories. If the person can’t be present, show pictures or better still some multi-media clippings. This can be inspiring and trendsetting. I – Improve your presentation skills. If you must show your PowerPoint skills, work on it. Avoid showing a slide made out of your office document or report. Ensure that the font sizes are big enough to be read in a large conference hall, the colour scheme is good and pictures are sharp. Avoid graphs, tables and full paragraphs. The slide is not a presentation. It’s a tool. You are the presentation. Work hard. Don’t rely on CPT – Cut & Past Technology. This is the luxury of the lazy MNC executives who show the busy slides, mumble some data while the audience tries to discern some meaning out of it before giving up. N – Neutralize babudom in thinking and sharing. Negate boredom in the audience. Nurture optimism. The challenge is big. The preparation needs to be bigger. We cannot deal with tomorrow through yesterday’s mind set, preparedness and actions. Project ‘managing from tomorrow’. We know 500 million people to be skilled by 2022. State your roadmap for 2015 and 2016 clearly and precisely.
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#38 May 1, 2015
Window for action loving PROFESSIONALS
G – Give audience a chance to interact with you. They may have ideas you might have overlooked. They may probe you further with some penetrative questions. Open the two ways street. Tell them what you want to tell them. Learn from them. Ask the organisers to plan for such interactive time. Or else, refuse to go and speak. Learning from the audience could be more rewarding than the memento you receive. Try it.
Coming back to the conference. It’s an old saying, “Meeting is a place where minutes are kept and hours are lost.” What do we call a conference? “A meeting place where post conclusion reports get generated by cooking up something out of nothing said or understood. The reports reaching somewhere to be left on the back burner without gas.” How mean of me! Sorry, but I mean it. I wish there was an RTI on the conferences conducted on SKILL INDIA and the recommendations adopted and implemented. I would love to understand the ROI. I still dread the likelihood of attending a similar such conference. Mercy, my friend!
Rajiv Khurana CMC, FIMC
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International Management Trainer, Consultant, Coach, Author, Venture Mentor, Photography Enthusiast
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Skills for Seniors
#38 May 1, 2015
Window for action loving PROFESSIONALS
Communication is a skill that you can learn. It's like riding a bicycle or typing. If you're willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of every part of your life. ~Brian Tracy It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill. ~Wilbur Wright I really believe that everyone has a talent, ability, or skill that he can mine to support himself and to succeed in life. ~Dean Koontz
Creative thinking - in terms of idea creativity - is not a mystical talent. It is a skill that can be practised and nurtured. ~Edward de Bono The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed. ~Henry Ford Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level. ~Peter Drucker Only those who have patience to do simple things perfectly ever acquire the skill to do difficult things easily. ~James J. Corbett
Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation. ~John Ruskin 10
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