LEARNSCAPE

The Project

Design a senior management driven initiative to create a learning organization

The Brief

Intellectual and emotional engagement of the managers in realizing a need to change and not just do things they do differently but also do different things as far as people dimensions are concerned.

Clarity of expectations from each level of managers with respect to people management and minimizing “toe crushing.”

The minimum levels of skills/intellect/interest/engagement of managers at Asian Paints is higher than what is normally prevalent in other organizations in India whether they are Indian or multi national organizations. Therefore answering the “whats” and “whys” of anything is far more critical than answering the “hows”.

The Intervention Stimulus

‘Mental Gym’, a top management workshop outcomes were translated and cascaded down to the junior management cadre. Further communication to the executive level was done by the internal trainers who receive on-going support through pre-training conference calls and feedback.

The first set of workshops designed for the M4s (senior level, functional managers) were designed to communicate the Leadership Pipeline framework, and the people management expectations from managers at that level. Since this was the beginning of the Learning initiative, lots of tools were provided for conversations with seniors in the organization, self discovery at the workshop and mandating action plans for themselves.

There followed a cascading of this communication to the M5s (managers of managers. The premise of the workshops remained unchanged. The tools to enable emulation and practice of skills were customized to meet the requirements of the M5 functions and role.

A train the trainer module was developed to uniformly communicate the Asian Paints Leadership Paradigm to all M6 (managing Self to managing others) managers.

Tooling

1. 1. Activities/games
2. 2. Self Assessment Likert Scale Questionnaires
3. 3. Group Discussion & Presentations
4. 4. Learning Outcomes

Mandatory pre workshop assignments facilitated the process of having dialogues with senior members of the team within the organization and gave a perspective of ‘what is new and desirable’ through conversation with leaders outside the organisation.

The engagement with the senior management team renewed its commitment to the intervention. A palpable excitement towards new learning and engagement at intellectual and emotional level is seen and felt across the organisation.