The Learning Experience vs Earning Experience Gap

Keeping aside all sorts of statistics, I thought the Learning Experience vs Earning Experience gap was important to discuss and debate. If I start by putting myself in the shoes of the learner, then we obviously learn to feel powerful—and that power can be income power or knowledge power. For instance, meet my cats who are proactive knowledge seekers.

It is very essential, each day that they wander and sniff across my entire apartment complex to learn about every activity or every living creature that has occurred/existed in the last 24 hours. Only then can they come home and sleep soundly. The exercise of acquiring knowledge and the knowledge itself gives them tremendous satisfaction. Similarly, many of us, often, make an effort to acquire a similar ‘knowledge’ power. But Google has now taken over this space. If you seek knowledge, you can Google, yada yada yada boom badok bang…

Who remain are eager income seekers and this is the audience that educational institutes, training/eLearning are seeking to empower. And despite increased variety, increased access and an ever-increasing number of ‘proactive learners/participants’—the employee/student’s learning experience is questionable and the ‘earning’ experience for each learner is diverse, to say the least.

People continually train/learn to invest in themselves, and they expect to immediately monetize that learning. Each course might be bespoke, multi-device, socially-connected, localized, collaborative or mentor-led—yet it is becoming harder to earn from what has been learnt. I had recently joined a class to upgrade a certain skillset and met many mid-career executives who were in the same boat. One year later, most of us are yet to certify and start practicing what we learnt. This is how it often unfolds…

From the other perspective, as a trainer/instructional designer—I find myself creating the same courses over and over for different clients. And I find myself thinking, if so many people are learning this content, then how come this topic isn’t dead and over? Are we re-learning things because of our failure to monetize what we have learnt? Or is it that we are not unlearning first? Yes. There is a gap here.

I think this gap can be addressed by adding two essential elements to the learning-to-earning journey (L2EJ): design thinking and coaching. Design thinking goes beyond just learner audience understanding and bespoke content selection. It is about understanding your learner/participant’s L2EJ and using that data as input when creating course content. This means fierce involvement from HR, Marketing and a subgroup of the learners/participants themselves.

While adding design thinking will get you real world, practical, paradigmatic buy-in, there is the entire issue of learner motivation. What makes me change my behaviour? This impacts the L2EJ. It's not just about teaching soft skills, it is the general emotional maturity of your participant/learner that needs a boost. This is where coaching comes in: coaching is not mentoring. Breaking down internal resistance is important for anyone to absorb their learning. Coaching helps in ROI and closes the L2E gap.

Take these small steps today for your next learning design approach. They are not complicated if you are confident about, and committed to, including them. Tell me how it goes!

The VELD Technique: Step 1

The VELD Technique: Step 1


“I needed to tell a story with the data. I also, determined that it needed to be visually distinctive to for it to be memorable”, Randy Krum from his book Cool Infographics: Effective Communication with Data Visualization and Design. The VELD Technique recognizes that before there were words, there were pictures (take the example of Egyptian hieroglyphics). Check out The Best Data Visualizations of 2013.

 In fact, one of the earliest known visualizations is a map. The famous Lascaux caves in France contain paintings on their walls that date from the paleolithic period. One particular painting shows three bright stars (Vega, Deneb and Altair) known as the Summer Triangle. The images around them may suggest ideas of constellations, ways to help remember the star patterns and navigate.

The Lascaux caves example clearly shows a context that birthed the content, that was elaborated through a visual, and which ultimately enabled learning. This fits into the four layers of our Visualization Concentric. Now, when we look at context, as an instructional designer, you need to take a holistic view.


While simple maps and diagrams represent static visuals, in today’s age of multimedia, we learning designers are afforded the privilege of working with animated infographics, tables, graphs and charts. We can even create click and reveal screens, or customized animations for an immersive learning experience—which are high in visual content and low in text. Hmmm… but where do we draw the line so that the visual does not take away from the learning? Welcome to the VELD Process.


There are 4-steps, which form the backbone of the VELD Technique. They are non-negotiable and linear. To stay true to the learning experience (learner empathy is paramount), a good instructional designer always begins by repositioning the content. What do I mean by this?

It means that you must first, check the pulse of the content—what is the essence of what the text is talking about. Next, you must take ownership of the voiceover/content. To do this, you can shift sentences, re-read and rewrite until you are sure that the content flows with intensity and clarity. Think of this step as laying the bricks and concrete. If you do not position the bricks with maximum tightness, your entire house will develop cracks.

Often, project managers, will argue that “we should not touch the client’s content” or that “rewriting the content is not within the scope of the project”. However, this rookie oversight always shows up cracks during the alpha review. I have been through this cycle so many times that in the interest of the project, my reputation and in full empathy with my invisible learner—I always begin by editing out redundancies, illogical transitions and overly-descriptive text, making sure NOT to misinterpret the client’s original expression/vocabulary.


Let me give you a for instance here. I received content to do with a company’s mission and vision. The characteristics of the mission were listed and then the definition of a vision was shared, with examples. I immediately decided that, ‘vision’ comes before ‘mission’ (re-adjusting for logical flow of content), I added active voice for both screen titles (Creating an Effective Vision, Creating an Effective Mission) and edited the language for typos, errors and punctuation inconsistencies.

This article is the second part of a 4-part series detailing Shalini Gogia’s VELD Technique. Next Monday, we will explore the next 3 steps of the VELD process.

What is Coaching to Me?

When I first started out—researching and figuring out my interest in life coaching as a career alternative, I believed that coaching was going to give me a chance to apply my life experience and my knowledge to help someone. That made me feel that my audience would be very restricted as I’m not a traditionalist and if people with traditional goals came to me for advice—what could I really tell them? And was I sorted enough in my own life to advice anyone on theirs? This conflicted with the real evidence that people generally confided in me and came to me for advice. Everyone found me very open minded and non-judgemental. That was largely true but mostly because I believe my values are for me and not to judge others by.

Curious and determined, I signed on for a course with GrowMore. During my workshop, I realized that who I was in terms of personality, ideas and opinions—needed to be kept far away from my coaching technique as it would only hamper and not help. Giving answers did not make me a ‘star coach’ but it was about my asking the right questions and enabling the client to self-explore and self-discover—that is what made me a good coach. That immediately solved my first fear of a restricted audience. It also solved a related problem which I didn’t know I had (most of us don’t), that I was constantly judging myself. At a deeper level I was not non-judgmental. Now I have learnt to live judgement free and be neutral during a coaching session whether I am self-coaching or client-coaching.

And now I have a new definition of what ‘coaching means to me’.

Coaching is a systematic inquiry into any area of your life. It can be a very simple-minded issue or a complex one, but ultimately through a series of interconnected whole-brain provoking questions, you can figure out the real problem eating at your bedrock. It has happened with me several times through self and buddy coaching sessions. It keeps coming back to the same unresolved issue for me: a deficit in self-knowledge. So coaching is a process to me, and not a solution. There is no solution really but continual evolution. I would not even call it self-improvement because it’s a zero sum game. As you improve one area you lose track of another. So, in one coaching session, you can only focus on what you want to work on or ‘improve’ for now.

As a coach, I feel that coaching lets a person/the client become the star of their world. In regular life, a person is constantly surrounded by opinions that there is no space to air yourself without fear of being judged or gossiped about. People in your close circle either put you down, disagree with you, sometimes agree with you, or simply pamper you to shut you up. You don’t really explore what you are feeling at any great depth. Though you may do that sometimes in a quiet personal moment, but mostly all these avenues will cut you short. Because there is a fear of going to our internal dark place alone. We want someone to be with us when we make the more cruel self-discoveries.

But in a coaching session, I am able to create a space for the client where they are not interrupted or bombarded by other’s opinions; where they can air their thoughts freely. Only their thoughts matter and the universe is listening patiently. Not just the coach. As a coach I am an enabler. I bring a listening universe to the feet of the client in which they can step, dance, prance and unravel themselves. The environment is safe, confidential and supportive. There is a vacuum of external opinion because the only thoughts that count are that of the client. In this type of free-thinking environment, a client can see themselves transparently and self-discover boldly.

So, what I originally thought coaching was and what it has turned out to be in my evolved opinion—are quite different. On a personal level, being a neutral listener was a struggle for me because my loud, exaggerated, opinionated personality has never been switched off. I’m never shy or at a loss for words. And now after learning to be deeply non-judgemental and neutral, I actually get a break from my own personality when I am in coach mode and it’s refreshing. It allows me to be a better friend to my client. It allows me to grow and see a different side of myself. It also helps me chop down my superego, which has always found a sense of achievement in knowing it all and telling people what to do. Now I realize that being a heroine is not about knowing the answers but enabling others to find answers.

I am now the queen of questioning—an enabler and a friend and not an advisor with fixed solutions in mind. In fact, the field that I currently work in (instructional design) deals with such close-ended content for which objectives and answers are very clear cut, that coaching is a new opportunity for me to work with dynamic content. It makes it so much more interesting for me from a sociological and psychological perspective—dealing with new issues and real time, bespoke solutions rather than mass-customized, pre-decided outcomes. Coaching is not training and that is important. Though both have their uses and cannot replace each other—they very much complement each other.

Coaching resonates with me at another level too. I’ve always believed in the ‘power of one’ and not the ‘power of all’. I think united we stand is just propaganda. And interestingly, the coaching process also focuses on individual potential and self-discovery by helping a client understanding her/his unique path and unique combination of SWOTs. And I think it helps to work with a coach from time to time, not to become dependent on a coach but to work with a coach and push your self-discovery an inch further, like you would work with a yoga teacher to keep progressing to more difficult asanas. Similarly, with a coach you can work to tackle more and more complex issues that come to you in your dreams or nightmares, or won’t leave your home or office.

They follow us like shadows, right? Questions of all sorts, not just problems or issues. Curiosity, intuition, observations—all this makes us question who we are. In fact, the questions we ask ourselves form more of our identity than the answers we find. To get to an answer, you need at least 50,000 questions that lead up to it. Anything short of that and you will achieve a half-answer that you are never going to implement. Through the coaching process and through systematic inquiry, you can ask all the necessary questions and self-discover a new level of understanding. You can enjoy a self-dialog in the presence of the coach/universe.

In my 10-July coaching workshop session, a thought came to me:

What we learn from each other’s subconscious minds during a coaching session, is so much more powerful than when you connect to another human being’s conscious mind. The conscious mind in each one of us is so vary, filtered and fragmented. It plays a dual role of gatekeeper and thinker, well mostly gatekeeper, which stops you from deriving at true knowledge or enjoying a true Socratic dialectic. But a subconscious unravelling is a joyful and earthy dialectic that allows for tremendous self-growth for both—the unraveller and her/his audience (that is, the client and the coach). 

So through connecting with each other’s subconscious minds there is true evolution in knowledge via non-layered ‘aha moments’ or breakthroughs. It is in the presence of this type of knowledge that I feel most strengthened. And the coaching process helps create many such moments for both the client and the coach. So, coaching to me, thus far is a guided unravelling. At first, the coach is the enabling light for the client’s ‘guided unraveling’. For other parts, s/he is just a witness—an audience that is hanging on your every word, with no identity of their own. And for the last bit, s/he is the darkness that allows the client to glow as the only light. I believe this is the note that the client needs to end each session on.

Is there a universal right path? Or is the ‘universal right’ to enable individual self-discovery and to find individual paths, which are unique to each one of us? Do we believe as individual’s that everyone must choose their own path? Do we create a space or opportunity for everyone to do that? I believe coaching allows this space to be created. It enables individualism. It does not preach universal right or wrong but excites unique viewpoints and healing. The dialogs I have had with myself in complete privacy have been more honest once I started using the coaching process. This is what I want to bring to all my clients: honest, bold dialog.

To me, coaching allows us to exercise our intuition and perspectives. There are other spiritual and logical paths in life too that act as a mental bench press, and perhaps coaching is just one of them. I truly believe that self-knowledge is the only knowledge we all need and any path that helps us access our pool of self-knowledge is a true path for us. You might not need a coach on your path with you every step of the way because obviously there is no space for two people on one person’s unique path, but at a crossroad, a coach can be a good partner and help you decide which direction your next step should be in—in your words, through your introspection and in your best interest.

For me, a coach provokes and evokes but does not propel.

What’s in it for me to become a life coach?

I’m actually very excited about practicing as a certified GrowMore life coach and then adding an ICF credential to that title. Over the years I’ve had many such mentoring conversations with people but it’s been loaded with judgement and personality, but I always wondered how I could turn that skill to reach a wider audience. Coaching has given me that avenue by honing my existing skills and helping me develop new ones.

So, what is coaching to me? It is a fresh start as a career, as a perception and as a process! 

When Rhetoric Keeps us Where we Are

Slicing crime from a gender perspective is the output of an immature society. The entire act of violence against women in this country is being wrongly blamed on men. Most men we know are warm, loving creatures, struggling as hard as us women to find happiness in career, home and hobby. Most are toiling and the best of them are often being bullied by the women in their family. So, when we say we need men to change so that rape is no longer a social burden, we are wrong. Most men do need to change. They need to evolve, just as women, society, nature evolves and adapts. It is cyclical, it’s systemic and it’s cohesive. What needs to change is the way we analyse rape; the way we distribute blame.

Are women in no way responsible for the recurring social crime we call rape? I’m not talking about the woman who has been viciously violated at the centre of it all. I am talking about the women that nurture and raise, or forget to nurture or raise a rapist. Why are these women suddenly invisible when their son or brother is brutally attacking others? Why is it only that the police, the government, and strangers—these social pillars are being blamed and motivated to solve such crime? Why not go directly to the source? Because it is a vicious cycle we cannot seem to break out of socially.

We cannot imagine that the emotional anger, sexual frustration, and idle, unemployed state of mind of a rapist could be the product of being surrounded by misogynistic women.  

We find comfort in our clichés; that women are feminists and men are chauvinistic. But examine people closely, connect with them, talk to them and you will find that it’s not gender but personality that determines who they chose to be in moment of passion—evil or heroic. It’s not gender. It’s not caste, nor age, not education or exposure—it’s a decision made in the conscience, which no civilized, social ritual can influence. But if we need to blame, then we need to distribute the blame across everyone who has created the rapist and allowed the crime to occur. And to do that, we need to break out of stereotypical gender-based thinking and attack the divisive misogynistic views that are held by men and women in our society.

Every woman does not care for the betterment of women just as every man does not see women as disposable objects of sexual gratification. Stop saying that men need to change. It is the perspective that needs to change. This is why today, we are protecting an offender just because we socially consider him juvenile, but we find zero guilt in protecting the girl child who is being viciously trampled upon by misogynistic thinking.

Stand Up: Bollywood on Security

How can any spokesperson of Bollywood accuse anyone of bad lifestyle practices (that is what intolerance would fall into categorically). A vastly socially irresponsible industry that breathes/promotes nepotism, racism, plagiarism, gender bias and socially negative stereotypes for profit—why do they get interviewed and applauded? Is there a dearth of creative filmmakers in India and a dearth of real actors that we turn to Bollywood for entertainment and guidance? It’s sickening that young children lip sync to Bollywood music. Have you heard the lyrics? What type of mental development are we expecting in our kids?  

When Bollywood endorses fairness creams are they concerned with the liberation and rights of young impressionable girls across the millions of villages in India? Or are they willing to exploit the social pressure our sisters face just to fill their coffers? I’ve said it earlier and I will say it again. The effects of so-called current Bollywood on the Indian social fabric is worse than any terrorist outfit. Are we culturally so void that we need low quality, Bollywood output as a filler? A kernel of creativity that can only be sustained by a self-created commercially-viable cloud of terror. Maybe the people aren’t bad but they system they gain their strength from is a monster. One which they have created. One which creates far worse insecurity in the minds of the average Indian. 

So, Aamir, since you are born-and-bred Bollywood--you thrive and drive insecurity and inequality. Maybe it's not India you want to run away from, just the ugliness in yourself. 

Going Spalatial--Big Ideas for Small Bathrooms

There was a time when Cleopatra enviously enjoyed therapeutic bathing rituals. Now every person can—in their own home. Replace the word ‘bath’ with ‘shower’. Prefix the words ‘rain’ or ‘multiple massage flow’ to it and what you turn on in your bathroom is no longer a low pressure trickle of lukewarm water but an avalanche of high pressure raindrops—at varying temperatures and speeds. Yes, it’s that simple—hydrotherapy in the home at the flick of a switch.

Welcome to your home spa!

Top 10 Online Instructional Design Courses in the World

Rains, pregnancies, sabbaticals, spiritual journeys, or rising petrol prices, these are a few reasons  why we may want to stay home—quit our fulltime job—and work part time from our terrace or garden. One of the best work-from-home opportunities is offered by the eLearning industry—the role of an instructional design consultant (IDC). To excel at this role, a person needs to be a strong communicator (verbal and written), have an excellent command over the English language (US and UK-English depending on the client), understand instructional design theories and models and follow rules of multimedia engagement and spacial visualization.

Tampons Talk

It was 5:30 am. Sia was jet lagged and roaming in the dark. Should I use this time to unpack she wondered as she passed her suitcase, which lazily resting against the back of the living room couch. Sia went into the kitchen and made a cold smoked cheddar sandwich and then sat cross legged in front of the suitcase, staring at it as she took a big bite.