So What Do You Do?

Imagine this scene – I am sitting in what could be described as the best Chinese restaurant in town. Its lunch time and I have been invited by the chairman of the company I work in. There is great food on the table. But I can’t eat. I can’t eat because I am stumped by the conversation that is happening. “So what do you do Nitin?” “Sir, I look after the training function in the company”. “Oh, then how do you fill up all the free time that you have?”

 Let me rewind a little. It all started when I reached office one Wednesday morning. My business Head called me to his office. “Nitin, the Chairman has invited you to have lunch with him.”  The Chairman inviting me for lunch! Recognition for some great work that I had done perhaps… Even a promotion perhaps!! But these visions were quickly dispelled by the business head. “This is his way of keeping in touch with the management team. His office picks a name every month. This month it’s your turn.

 Mr. G, the Chairman was over 70 years of age. He had started the company nearly 50 years ago in a small way and had grown it into a sizeable profit making organization. I had heard many stories about his down to earth hands on approach. Although now he had passed the reigns to the next generation, he still liked to keep in touch with the events in the company.

 So at 1 o’clock sharp I entered the restaurant. Mr. G was already there. Preliminary introductions over, we ordered food. Of course he did the ordering. I merely nodded my head to each suggestion. Once that was over, the conversation started.

“So what do you do?”

“Sir I look after the training function in the company.”
“Oh, then how do you fill up all the free time that you have?”

 There must have been a very perplexed look on my face. Free time? What free time? I rarely managed to leave office before 7.00 p.m. Sometimes I even came to office on weekends. So what’s he talking about?

“How much training could you possibly do in a month?”

“We try to target 4 man-days of training per employee per annum”
“How many people do you have in your team?”
“There are six people in the team, Sir”

 He took out a pen and a small notebook from his pocket and started doing some calculations.

 “With 1200 employees that we have, that accounts for 86 days of work for each one of you. So what do you do with the balance free time?”

What do I tell him? How do I explain the amount of time that goes in coordinating with business heads and ensuring that the nominees attend the training sessions? And that did not include the time spent in building content for the workshops.  I had to try to explain. And try I did. He cut me short.

 

“Do you know that we all work for approximately 220 days in a year. Do you mean to tell me that you spend 134 days to prepare for 86 days of training? That’s almost 5 days of preparation for each day of training!”

 The way he expressed it, it sounded unreasonably high. I kept quiet. But he didn’t. The main bombshell was yet to come.

 “And what difference do your training sessions make to the business of the company?” “I’d like to think that they do make a difference in a positive manner. If we are able to improve the skills and behaviour of employees, it will certainly impact the business”, I countered. “What you think is not important. Can you support your claim with any data?”

Here I would like to point out that while the words were sounding pretty threatening, the voice was not. It was quite warm, soft and friendly. Like a grandfather talking to his favourite grandson. That made it all the more ominous. I had no answer to his question. So I decided to keep silent. The food was quite forgotten by now.

 “Nitin, all of us work for a living. And to earn that living, we spend a major amount of our productive time at workplace. All human beings want growth, intellectually, emotionally and financially.  And since we spend most of our lives at workplace, it is only natural that maximum opportunities of growth should be at the workplace. Now you can’t give growth to people. They should want it for themselves and they should want to put in the effort. Most of us get caught up in the mundane aspects of our lives. It is your job as the training head to shift the focus back on growth. This involves changing the way people think about themselves and their lives. If you are able to do that, you will never need another training workshop. And if you are able to do that with even one person in the organization, you will have justified the salary that this company is paying you.”

 I would love to know what the expression on my face was at that moment. No one had ever given this perspective about the Training function. So simple and yet so profound and so obvious. I would have looked quite dumbstruck. I do remember that I was staring at him. He just smiled back with a twinkle in his eye and said,

“Now finish your noodles. They are getting cold..”