Learning: The Two Perspectives To Assess Learning Needs

Yesterday when half the world was busy with final match of ICC Champions Trophy between India and Pakistan, I had two aspiring entrepreneurs in my Kolkata apartment to discuss the future of their business.

It was informal chat with samosa and Ice Tea

Background

Both love to design clothes, have quite a few dedicated clients who trust their fashion sense that they use in their creations to maintain exclusivity. 

Both are open to providing (A) only designer services and (B) sourcing to provide finished products

Both cater to local market as of now and find this very limiting. 

Both have a full time job to cater to while they are keen to pursue this seriously and keep it as a pet project. 

Financial back up is not strong and they can operate with limited cash flow.

The Solution

Apparently it looks like one can provide the same solution to both as the nature of concern is more or less similar. 

Imagine, both these designers attend a training program or a coaching session on sales or  marketing.

Learning Road map 

 This is where a BECKON Consultant will explore multiple intelligence level of each participant to create a road map to address learning gaps. 

Most coaches consider target audience needs and individual needs as same while designing programs.

Now I will provide additional inputs on each participant to enable a consultant to draw that map, based on multiple intelligence parameters, preferences, life style choices etc.

Key Assumptions:

Parameters	Participant 1	Participant 2
Academic/ Mental	Topper in studies Graduate Occupation: Teacher Computer Literacy: Good	Average Possibly some college Occupation: Retail Store Computer Literacy: None
Emotional	Grand world / worm view of things in life	Grand world view/ worm view of things in life
Financial	Dual income stream	Single income
Social	Not very active in Facebook Limited to work life contacts	Active in Facebook Many acquaintances outside work life
Spiritual	Not inclined to practice	Inclined by faith Not inclined to practice
Other interests	Recycled stuff	Loves to travel and is part of different groups Try new recipe
Other information	Leonine traits Head held high	Capricorn nature Extremely dedicated to immediate and extended family

The more inputs you receive about participants the more it becomes obvious to a coach how a single session on marketing and sales will not be effective as every member in class room training/ webinar has different levels of existing knowledge and degree of motivation.

And yet the same feedback is rolled out by the end of training session to rate the program, rate the trainer, rate the infrastructure regardless of what the participant could make of that learning in real life?

AltLearn Ventures is keen to publish case studies and success stories with measurable outcomes adopting a certain learning / coaching approach. 

Write to advocating.outcomes@gmail.com as that is the qualifying criteria to be a BECKON Coach  

1] Have you learnt something new this year?

2] Can you measure the impact of that learning on self or environment, purely in numbers?

3] Have you coached anyone with a new skill?

4] Can you measure the impact of what you taught purely in numbers?