Never too old to learn more .....

“LIFELONG LEARNING” is a phrase very common this days and continuing what I posted before, some organizations  may not seem to treasure or adhere to the notion.  According to a recent survey in US, a management-development firm, the number of professionals taking part in formal corporate training drops rapidly after the age of 55. Are these old horns being overlooked or the younger ones being overly taken care of ??

It maybe tempting to conclude that older executives are "falling victim" to age discrimination, as firms focus resources on younger talent and letting them swim in the deep with expensive lesson being not quickly learnt as they could lack the foresight and most important, past experiences accrued over the years by these older staff and executives.

It seems conventional training simply no longer serves the needs of the older executives. Formal programmes are often seen as a repetition of lessons already learned and become increasingly irrelevant in the light of experience and expertise. Depending on what kind of training material and they must be specially tailored to fit the needs of the organization they run and ability to see the day-to-day business event and what are the problems facing them,etc..... The resulting repetitive and bored programme will tend to cause “training fatigue” and is resistant to most incentives.

This doesn’t mean that more seasoned executives have completely abandoned the idea of personal and career development. Instead some of these groups prefer a do-it-yourself approach, conducting their own research and swapping war stories with their peers rather than take a place at business school. Such self-taught approach carries some potential drawbacks. FIrstly is that a wealth of knowledge and experience is lost from the classroom, which reduces the value of the training for everyone else. But non-participation may also be the beginning of a process of detachment from the organisation, its aims and aspirations, which in time will damage both parties. Furthermore, as executives start to stretch their careers into their fifties or more, education makes even more sense for this group.

One solution is to throw money at the problem. When senior managers are offered the chance to mix with their peers at a top business school, rather than a bog-standard institution, they seem to be quickly won over. IMD  in Switzerland ( famous for its MBA school ), for example, maintains that it does not see any drop in the number of older managers on its programmes, and goes on to say that it has actually witnessed organisations investing heavily in them throughout the downturn.

Few organisations could afford to put all of their veteran managers through the sort of prestigious programmes which is costly. But firms do need to engage those managers below the C-suite—what one management consultant describes as the “magnificent middle”—because these are the front-liners who make things happen within any business and who carry around in their heads the secrets of how the organisation works.

One way in which this can be done is to make training less about abstract theory and more about the actual workplace. This means steering clear of the case studies that business schools are so fond of and instead relating new ideas directly to what is happening on a day-to-day basis within the organisation. To accomplish this, training should be delivered in short, sharp bursts so that executives can take a lesson, put it into practice, assess its effectiveness and then return to shape it further in light of this “trial by fire”.

Henry Mintzberg from McGill University in Canada, a high-profile champion of the middle manager, takes this approach one step further. He believes the best way to win over this group is to get them to train themselves. His “Coaching Ourselves” organisation brings experienced executives together for 90 minutes at a time. Managers are supplied with learning guides but not teachers. They discuss and reflect on how the topic impacts on them.  The managers  learn from each other and, most crucially, develop actions for their workplaces.”

Whatever approach an organisation takes to embrace its veterans, an ageing population means that it must do something, or else face the much more serious problem of how to replace them and their valuable knowledge in the near future. 

To be continued........ 

To be happier and merrier come 2010........

If you can, give more away than you can take. “Research shows it really doesn’t make people happy to spend money on themselves,” one professor Michael Norton tells Harvard magazine. “It’s not how much you give, it’s that you give…. If you have an extra $20, it’s better to spend it on someone else than on yourself.” In a range of experiments, the researchers found that those who give to others —particularly those who give regularly — report higher levels of happiness.


Do not look back and regret; indulge from time to time. Do heed and not ignore your needs and desires. People can sometimes live too much for the future. We all know that people can be too impulsive and yield to temptation. Our argument is that people can also be too farsighted and over confident. As a result, they have wistful regrets of missing out on life’s pleasures when they look back.
Go for ‘content and satisfaction'. Aspire to become the richest, the brightest, the most talented, the best in class— might not guarantee lasting happiness. Let us look at our limits, professors Laura Nash and Howard Stevenson write in Just Enough: Tools for Creating Success in Your Work and Life.

If life were lived in a fixed time frame, where success was measured only in the instant you hit the peak, maximized measures would work. But the only fixed time frame we know for sure is death. Everything else is subject to moving targets. If you wish to live with a continually renewing sense of success that really seems worthwhile and lasting on all your success targets, you probably have to give up aspiring to be in the standard of the "Rich & Famous".
Live life happier by: using your resources to help others, living your life without regret and not look back on what you missed. Embracing limits as a way to slow down and gauge your life’s progress.

Will you be happier now from 2010 onwards?

Lifelong learning

http://www.kepcorp.com/ekeppelite/view.article.asp?A=3642&C=7&Y=2009&M=10

September 2009....

Meanwhile, Choong Kim Whye, Senior Manager, Engineering (Mechanical) at Keppel FELS, pursued a Master of Science in Marine Technology (International) programme. This course is designed to provide full-time engineers with enhanced technical and managerial techniques applicable to the offshore and marine industry.

He says, “I hope to be a good role model to other Keppelites and inspire them to practise lifelong learning with my experiences.”

In reference to some sites, "Lifelong learning" is basically about:

- acquiring and updating all kinds of abilities, interests, knowledge and qualifications from the pre-school years to post-retirement. It promotes the development of knowledge and competences that will enable each individual to adapt to the knowledge-based working environment and actively participate in all areas of social, technological and economical life, taking more control of his or her future.

- valuing all forms of learning, including: formal learning, such as a degree or post-degree courses at university; non-formal learning, such as vocational skills acquired at the workplace or on-the-job training; and informal learning, such as inter-generational learning, for example where parents learn to use ICT through their children, or learning how to play an instrument together with friends.

Learning opportunities should be available to all on an ongoing basis. In practice this should mean that each have individual learning pathways, suitable to their needs and interests at all stages of their working lives. The content of learning, the way learning is accessed, and where it takes place may vary depending on the learner and their learning requirements. In some major organisations, learning could be done ad-hoc or tailored through the Human Resource Training center identifying each employee of their learning needs, which could be on yearly basis.

Lifelong learning is also about providing "second chances" to update basic skills and also offering learning opportunities at more advanced levels, as in some companies, requiring staff to be highly trained in certain specialised knowledge skills. All this means that formal systems of provision need to become much more open and flexible, so that such opportunities can truly be tailored to the needs of the learner, or indeed the potential learner.