Gurukool - The beginning

Gurukool: A system of education in ancient India where in students lived with their teacher during the period of education. The bond thus created between the students and their teacher wend beyond the conventional relationship.

 By now readers of this blog will have concluded that though being part of the function, I have always viewed training with a (un) healthy amount of cynicism and scepticism. And rightly so. However there is one instance which forced me to abandon my cynical approach and actually see the power that a properly designed and executed development initiative can unleash. A development initiative called Gurukool.

 As I sit down to write about Gurukool, I am experiencing a block. Writing about the events that led to creation and execution of this initiative is fairly simple. But how does one write about the emotional upheavals that we as the training team went through? How does one describe the personal growth that the facilitators experienced when delivering the workshop?  It was indeed a rollercoaster for we practically participated in lives of more than a thousand people in the three years we ran the program.

 It is also difficult to write about Gurukool in one single blog. The events, experiences, realizations and associated learning are too many to fit in a single article. I have therefore divided the entire experience in three parts. How it all began, how the design was created and lastly about conducting the workshops. While writing I also realize that it will be impossible for me to convey all my thoughts and feelings related to Gurukool. I accept this limitation and ask you, the reader to please bear with me.

 It all began with annual business review in the company I was working for. Ours was a retail organization with a large number of frontline sales personnel. In fact these sales people constituted nearly 70% of the total workforce in the company. Typically they were high school pass outs in the age group of 18-24 years. Unable to continue further education due to family reasons, economic and otherwise, they found this as an opportunity for gainful employment as the job required no particular prior skills or experience. We provided them with on-the-job training for about a month before putting them on the shop floor.

 One of the issues that was discussed in that review was to do with high turnover and poor service delivery among the frontline staff. All kinds of retention and performance bonuses had been announced, but they didn’t seem to work. Very often the sales employees just didn’t turn up for work leaving the poor manager completely clueless about manpower deployment and work planning.

Discussion on the issue was like a hockey game. “This is serious. You need to find a solution to this problem.” said the managing director, as he passed it to the business head. The business head did not keep it with himself for long, as he deftly deflected it to the HR Head. “You need to come up with some plan to solve this problem”. The HR Head was equally adept at the game. She passed it on to the recruitment head, “Is proper staffing an issue?” The recruitment head expertly deflected it back. “No, there is no problem with recruitment and staffing. The issue seems to be of retention.” Back to HR head, who now passed it to where there would be no comeback. “I think we need to find a solution to this problem through training.” “I agree”, concurred the managing director looking at me. “Nitin, please come up with a development plan to address this issue.” Every one nodded. The issue had been discussed to every ones satisfaction.

Every one’s except mine. I was upset and angry. How come such issues always seem to land at my doorstep? If it works, it’s someone else’s great idea. If it doesn’t, well, training didn’t do a good job. And it was with this frame of mind I met my team of eight trainers (T1, T2, T3……….. T8) the next day. After I had explained the situation, the conversation went something like this:

T1: I don’t understand… what are WE supposed to do?

Me: Find a solution to the employee turnover and service quality issues
T3: We could do service training, but what can we do about employee turnover?
T4: Yes that’s an HR problem. Why has it come to us?
Me: Doesn’t matter whose problem it should be. It’s our problem now. So let’s have some suggestions
T3: We first need to find out why the problem exists
Me: Great! So how do we do that?
T6: We should conduct an employee engagement survey
T2: That will only tell us what is the level of engagement, but it will not answer the why.
T5: We will have to do some kind of research to find the root cause of the problem
T6: What kind of research?
T5: I don’t know… there must be something
T4: Why us? It’s not our issue!
T1: Because someone out there hates us…

 We weren’t making any headway. And then T8, the newest member of the team came up with an idea

 T8: Why don’t we go out and find out?

 Everyone looked at her incredulously.

T2: And how are we going to do that?

T8: We are eight of us. So we can cover eight cities. Let’s spend time with the frontline staff and find out from them
T3: And what makes you think they will answer our questions?
T8: I wasn’t thinking of asking them… more in terms of working with them.

 Total silence. Work with them? No one had done that before. But it made a whole lot of sense. So at the end of some resistance and further discussions it was decided that they would spend a week on the shop floor in different cities. I was to hold fort at office. At that time I was not sure what would come out of it. But I was certainly sure of one thing. At that moment, T8 was definitely the most unpopular member of the team.

 One week later

 We met in office on Monday morning. Something was different. Everyone was subdued. No bantering or jokes, as was usual in our meetings. I waited for them to open up, but there was silence. I had to prod them.

Me: So how was it?

T2: (After a long pause) It was different.
Me: How so?
T2: I don’t know how to explain… but it was different
Me: And how has it been for the rest?
(All together): Different!
Me: Have you people discussed this before coming in?
T3: No, we just met in office
Me: But you all will have to tell me more about this ‘different’. Just saying it was different doesn’t help!

Another long pause

 T4: Let me try and explain what I felt. I felt that all things that I worry about, everything that I get stressed about are so meaningless.

Me: Please elaborate…
T4: These youngsters are fighters. They have such a tough life, and yet they manage to laugh and smile…
Me: Anything else?
T1: The  most amazing thing for me was that in spite of their origins, they have dreams to better their lot. And in spite of hardships they are not willing to give up their dreams.
T2: But it’s sad to see them get bogged down with their day-to-day struggles. Some of them are intelligent enough to be in the top colleges.
Me: Anything else?

I knew I was provoking them While they were sharing their feelings and emotions, I was sounding like an emotionless b*****d. But I was doing it on purpose. I somehow knew that the answer was in the feelings that they were sharing, and not the experiences themselves.

 T4: One customer came in with his wife and son. They wanted to shop for their son’s birthday. After they left, this sales guy cane to me and said, ”you know they spent more in 15 minutes than what I earn by slogging for a month.” It was heart-breaking.

 Aha! The first clue was here.

 T7: I went with one sales girl to her home. The entire family of five people live in just one room. They don’t have much, but they made me feel so welcome. I doubt if I can ever match their hospitality.

Here was the second clue..

It went on for some time. Finally I had to conclude.

 Me: I hear three things. One, dreams, and a desire to rise above origins. Second reconciliation with the fact that they work in an environment where people are spending more money in minutes than they earn in a month and third, adjustment to the reality of working in an environment which is more luxurious than where they live. Have I missed something?

T4: No that about sums it up.
Me: So now can we work on an initiative that can address all these three issues?

Normally when we designed any development initiative, there always was a certain amount of excitement. But this time it was different. It was almost like a missionary zeal. It was like suddenly they had an opportunity to do something about a situation which till then they had just helplessly observed. This time the excitement and energy was unbelievable. I guess each one of them had also grown through the experience.

Our Gurukool journey had thus begun.

 To be continued