In the era of e-learning, hand held gadgets were still
gaining their edge in display and memory. The Blackberry was the equivalent of
the underground bestseller then. Ranjan Acharya, my boss was aghast when vendors
were pushing for content on platforms such as the handheld to address Leadership
Development. For him, the blur between convenience and essential learning was a
corruptible blind spot for the learning function. In characteristic wit, he
asked us “So, would you get Transformational Leadership in 5 minutes, just
because you have a Blackberry?”
In 2017, the visual design experience has reduced substance
to mere labels on handheld devices. So, even if you are the cover of the book,
the market models for data on handhelds has conditioned you to short attention
spans. You can afford longer attentiveness however. E.g. Someone like the Chief
Minister of an Indian State can still opt for and will attend a 10 days
Vipassana Retreat.
The corresponding map on social media now features
caricatures, apparently trying to explain away laborious text in visual
graphics. So, the trumped-up logic is the power of the visual. Sure; but is
there one living example of Transformational Leadership from the latest Daniel
Pink like animation?
So today, we have lampoon like artists among L&D professionals
who provide stylized caricatures and flow diagram connectors to provide alibis
for requisite depth in learning and development constructs. They are enthused
by Television Rating Points (TRPS) forms of adulation, or at the very least by frequent
boosts to their hedonistic intents. Their patience to watch, observe or commit
to see a learner transform, would be as thin or meagre as the intervals between
their deprived pleasures of virtual media posts.
The mirage of outcomes is then obfuscated by the next
variant stimulus online, depriving the learner of essential transformations. Then
like the proverbial opiate, the senses are invited to bursts of non-sustainable
energies. Sensibility itself becomes the casualty. Reductionist symbolism, has
its value nonetheless. It provides means of quick attention, requiring minimal
effort. The shadow of such labourless pursuit of human development then raises
its ugly head. The toxic manager, the petulant new employee and the dysfunctional
team are ubiquitous. They are less featured on new media though. I am pretty
sure you know what light to expect on contemporary media, instead.
The individual, team and organization has thus new
manifestations of systems that maintain their behaviours. Their thresholds of
perception are provoked by instant stimuli, although what they need are
wholesome transformations. The medium and the message are awfully at odds. The
penury of clarity in calling this out is stark among L&D professionals. So
employees suffer ennui, and organizations shy from real and yet non-discussable
truths.
In their anxiety to seem arrived on new platforms, L&D
professionals have frittered away their raison d’etre in organizations to
technology aided platforms. Disembodied from critical phenomena, they’re unable
to influence their host paradigms, or to specify relevant outcomes in the new interactions
between the numbed corporate citizen and the commerce of learning content.
Like the economy of nations, led by social media hungry
leaders, the exasperation in seeing disappearing effect burgeons in
organizational decline. That’s not the picture that you were presented with on
the pushed content of the animation, was it? So, what would you look for and
how would you go about it, if you’ve realized it is time to get out of your
mind and come to your senses? May sensibility prevail!
