Structured Learning Experience – 3P Model

 

Of all the inspiring quotes that I have seen during the COVID situation, this one struck in my mind. It is indeed true and applies to the vast majority of the people who have the luxury of time working from home in “new-normal” saving at least 30 min of their daily routine in commuting to office and it could be much more for many (may be up to 6 hours). Although this model is not intended only during COVID times, there is no better time than now in banking on this opportunity.

 

There are different ways to attain discipline, but before going into details of my own experience, let’s look at most widely seen zones of learning. Most of us would have gone through this or struggling to reach learning zone and thereafter growth zone. If you are the one who is thinking that everything is hunky-dory and feel safe about what you have then you are in comfort zone, you better come out of complacency sooner rather than later. But if you are thinking and have an initial fear or confusion coupled with lack of confidence, finding excuses like “I don’t have time” or affected by opinions like “what you would do by learning this skill” “It’s all theory we can’t implement it” “I don’t think this skill has future” etc., then you need some structured approach to your learning to seamlessly traverse through into growth zone.

I have found my own model to this structured learning experience which I called it as 3P model: Plan, Practice and Process. Let’s look at each of them in detail.

Plan

If we want to come out of the fear zone and gain confidence on our learning process, we need to have proper planning. I have described 4 components which I found are essential in planning phase:

Initial Steer: It is very important to have an initial steer which can give structure and very strong foundation to plan your learning. Some of the ways we can get this initial steer is by enrolling into a program for self-development or looking for mentor or taking various sources for guidance like TEDx any other online courses that can help us devise a plan. These will give direction on what we want to achieve and if we are in right path.

Set your Goals: If we understood want we want to achieve, next stage is setting up goals: short term and long term. Follow the SMART principle for effective goal setting: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Time bound.

Write down and review: Writing down our goals and reviewing it with a mentor or guide has more effect than goals set in mind without any plan on progress. It is advisable to have a training and individual development plans for better progress and monitoring.

Know your day: Once we have written our goals, in order to achieve them with some actionable progress we need to know our day and find a slot that is without any interruption to plan for our learning. It would be more effective if possible to keep same time pattern every day like sleeping routine but otherwise at least some part of the day in case if you have very unpredictable routine.

Practice

Once we have the plan it gives us confidence with a blue print of what we want to achieve, how we want to achieve, how to track progress and how to measure it; fantastic we are progressing towards learning zone crossing the fear zone. To put plan into practice I have 2 simple steps which are very effective and worked for me splendidly:

Habits:

Start with baby steps to build habits. Every one of us have some mode of learning that works better: reading books, listening to videos, audible content or reading digital content. Finding our own mode is key to create that interest initially in building a habit. If you are spending too much time on social media keep a 15/30 min dismiss alerts and shift your 10-15 min of daily social media time to professional reading or on useful mediums like LinkedIn and other learning portals. Once you have that uninterrupted 15-30 minutes of learning daily be consistent for 21 days.

Life Style: Habits are good and give us method that something is achievable but we will be still pushing ourselves to put those efforts in that phase. If we want learning to be natural part of our routines as a life style without any extra push like doing bath or taking breakfast, we need to understand what changes are needed on our routine. If we understand those changes we would automatically adjust and integrate learning to our daily routine. I have written about Habitsand Life Style earlier and one of my teammate has given an interesting reference of the book "The 5AM Club" and short video talk by author Robin Sharma. Here in this video the author explains 3 stages: Destruction (22 days), Confusion (22 days) and Integration (22 days) to install habit and make it as routine and attain automaticity to free up will power.

Process

 

With Practice we can master learning zone by acquiring new skills and deal with problems and challenges confidently and progress towards Growth Zone. Once we acquired knowledge and new skills, to grow further we need to process our learning by validating with the objectives, sharing, finding the purpose of learning and reflect to set next goals.

Validate your objectives: We need to validate the goals set in Plan phase to see if we have achieved the desired objective. More often we don’t get to use the new skills in immediate future, so it is essential to process that knowledge by doing hands on where possible, validating with peers, experts etc., If we have learnt any behavioural skill, put that into test in day-to-day life. For instance if we have learnt emotional intelligence, then compare how we were before the learning and after in dealing with people and circumstances that push buttons to test our Emotional Quotient (EQ).

Share your Knowledge: Sharing the knowledge we possess helps us articulate better, understand more about what we know and amplify it by starting a conversation and learn something new. Each time after sharing the knowledge, feedback we receive positive or negative, helps us prepare and present better next time, so it gives us authority in that subject and increase our professional value. We can share in different ways by writing articles, blogs, taking webinars, mentoring, training people, sharing with experts etc.,

Finding the purpose: Ultimately the end goal is finding the purpose of the learning experience. Growth always does not mean monetary gains, promotion or new role but the satisfaction and whole journey of learning and sharing to benefit more people help achieve their goals or at least how we conduct ourselves better or how we put the new skill into better use. How curious we are and how enthusiastic we are in that learning process, and if we ask ourselves on why we are doing this because “we want to do it” or “we have to do it”, if the answer is “we want to do” then we have found our purpose and compassionate about this journey.

Reflect and set Next Goal: Finally, It is important to reflect on how the 3P model has been, is the pace right, is the validation correct, is there anything to adjust and change etc., The learnings from the previous experience should be taken into next set of goals to keep the journey continuing until we have achieved our dream of what we want to be in next few years.

My Experience:

I was fortunate enough to enrol into 18^th month leadership development program called STRATA in my organisation which has eased my efforts on planning with foundation and structure. 3 out of 4 components in Plan phase was readily available with best in class techniques, only thing I had to do was last component “Know your day”. This was challenging given the role I have in 24*7 operations management, but then I focused my efforts on understanding my day and where the efforts were spent. I understood that a lot of tasks were kept to myself which need not be, I then started looking at leadership skills with effective delegation courses. Although I was aware of 3D rather 4D of delegation: Do it, Drop it, Delegate it and Delay it, I wanted to have simple and effective way of delegation with useful tips. I found “Effective Delegation for New Managers” in Udemy which has 3 stages: before, during and after delegation with useful steps in each stage. This course has helped me to offload some of my work to my direct reporting leadership team and I have empowered them with little guidance to take ownership of certain key activities. This has freed up my time after office hours for learning as I started to build next level leaders who can drive even in my absence now. 

For Practice phase, I have started with baby steps in spending at least 30 min on one of learning platforms, initially I attained 21 days badge for continuous miles in Fresco Play. I kept continuing this learning habit to make it part of my routine and eventually integrated into my life style. I don’t use any force or will power to learn now but keep it open minded to learn from anyone, any situation and find different ways of learning daily. I do at least 15-30 min professional reading on articles, subjects of my interest daily with reduced time spent on social media platforms. Even on the days when working hours stretch 12 to 16 hours due to COVID impacts, I find ways to relax myself and listen to TEDx, useful videos to keep the learning going. One such Video on TEDx was “Great leadership starts with self-leadership” where the speaker quotes “If you want to lead, invest at least 40% of your time in leading yourself” and talks about 3S: Self Aware, Self-Reflect and Self Regulate with useful tools for each stage. Similarly I explored different subjects in leadership like “Emotional Intelligence at Work: Learn from Your Emotions” in Udemy and “Influencing Others” in LinkedIn Learning.

It is not just about completing a new course or skill but how we put that into practice is very important. For all the behavioural learnings, I take key tips, useful steps and put them into practice and test it to see how I performed and reflect on each day to see if I had any opportunity to improve. Resolving conflicts, navigating through ambiguity, maintaining calmness and composure by keeping emotions at check, clarity in thought with right priorities, keeping myself in others position are some of the traits that I have seen clear improvements. I have expanded my scope of learning with basic understanding of Business 4.0 tenants: Robotics, Cloud, DevOps, and AI navigating through best of learning platforms and started understanding the telecom domain better. Most of all I find the journey satisfying and experience enjoyable by learning and sharing, I keep talking to the team on importance of learning and guide them to improve their learning habits. 

All the pillars in STRATA program are helping to keep myself motivated and get inspired from the leaders and their interactions. Thanks to STARTA, I am doing things that are closest to my heart regularly now: writing blogs, sharing knowledge. I have shared this Structured Learning Experience with 135 member offshore team in my project and 15 of my onshore team in 2 sessions and there was a very good response. Some have mentioned Habits and Life Style part was good, some mentioned the zones and using 3Ps to overcome them were good, some have asked for mentoring and some posed curious questions. I would like to mention one such curious question: “Given the challenges we have in 24*7 production support how can we stick to the deadlines of the goals and it will lead to stressful situation and guilt of not completing on time”. My response was “Every person know themselves better than anyone else on the pace of learning, time required for completing certain goals, so be realistic in setting up goals using SMART principle and start with smaller goals. Also even after planning there are chances that goals cannot be completed on time in certain cases, but what matters most in those scenarios is the journey and keeping the practice of learning kicking in and whatever % is learnt put that into practice or test it to feel satisfied on processing of the knowledge”

That’s my 3P model for Structured Learning Experience, what’s yours? Please comment, feedback and share your thoughts to keep the conversation going.