Vatsal Singh
India
dit profiel is niet in het nederlands beschikbaar
Building organisational learning cultures
Past
During my masters, I met many students working in the corporate sector and heard about the problems they were facing. The main problem is that for businesses in India is that it’s hard to find good people. Once they have hired them, they are so afraid they leave again that they do not provide for learning and development initiatives which might help them to move on to other organisations. This creates frustration for employees who want to learn. They don’t feel heard and appreciated and may become unmotivated. I decided that this is where I wanted to make a contribution: building organisations that are based on trust, partnership, learning and mutual respect.
To me, these values all come together in the concept of organisational learning culture. Therefore, for my PHD in…, I wanted to understand how organisational change takes place and how learning as a value facilitates this organisational change. I found that making the match between the organisational learning culture and individual learning orientations is crucial for an organisation’s productivity.
Present
The focus on building organisational learning cultures has stayed with me in my work for Kessels & Smit. An important element in building organisational learning cultures you need to understand perceptions towards learning and people’s motivation for self-development and then work on that. For example by asking people the question what they want to continue in their organisation, what they want to discontinue and what new ideas they have. In one organisation I worked with, groups of people then started working on specific challenges to organisational learning. For example ‘how to build transparency?’ or ‘what HR policies fit to this organisation?’ Involving people from all levels and from different departments brings down the walls between those departments and creates a sense of ownership for the organisation. So the process of finding solutions to complicated questions itself already brings learning.
Next to my work as an advisor and facilitator of organisational learning processes, I teach at the University. This teaching is essential for my own development. I learn so much by sharing with the students in my class and bring this with me in my work as an advisor. And vice versa, I can teach the students about actual dilemma’s in the corporate sector.
Future
In the future I would like to broaden our network of Kessels & Smit in India. I feel that our approach and focus on learning can bring something to Indian organisations that other consultancy firms can’t. What is also important to me is to stimulate entrepreneurship in my students. I am starting to coach them in exploring their passion and potential to create a difference in the corporate world. My third aim for the future is creating links between research and practice. I want to build a platform where researchers and people from NGO and corporate sectors can connect to eachother to develop solutions to actual problems in companies, NGOs and society at large.