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The 20-year veteran in HR and L&D explained at Transform Talent Hong Kong that learning should focus on shifting human behaviour rather than merely making things stick.
As new technologies continue to evolve at an unprecedented pace, the relevance of a skill today may diminish by tomorrow. This raises a provocative question: will learning still matter?
“Learning won't matter. Capability will,” declared Saurav Atri, Group Head of Leadership Development, DFI Retail Group, provoking fellow attendees to reflect on this hard-hitting statement during the recent debut Transform Talent Hong Kong conference.
Kicking off his case study session, Atri conducted a live demonstration using a no-code website builder. Remarkably, participating delegates – most of whom had no prior web development experience – were able to create functioning websites within minutes.
This exercise highlighted a powerful shift. “The world has changed. Knowledge, skills, and learning may not always be prerequisite for capabilities,” stated Atri.
"You didn’t have the knowledge, skill, or experience, yet you were able to achieve the outcome, the capability of doing something.”
He then clarified the distinctions among knowledge, skill, and capability:
- Knowledge refers to learned information that comes from the outside in.
- Skill is information plus practice.
- Capability is the consistent application of skills to produce successful outcomes. And a new definition in the modern world is awareness of AI tools and knowing how to apply them.
Given the shrinking lifespan of skills, Atri prompted attendees to ask the right question: “Don’t ask what will change. Ask what will not change.”
He encouraged attendees to identify timeless skills – those that will remain relevant over the next decade, and invest in mastering them.
He went on to share real-world examples from DFI’s programmes for leaders, and outlined key priorities of these initiatives:
- Define success: Clearly articulate the outcomes aimed to achieve and the decisions necessary to reach them. Then identity the capabilities to develop in these leaders and design a growth experience to help them succeed.
- Hyper personalisation: Tailor growth experiences to individual strengths.
- Connection: Create memorable, human-centered experiences.
- Build confidence: Cultivate respect and relevance.
To achieve these, he emphasised the importance of:
- Conducting thorough research and groundwork to gain clarity.
- Securing stakeholder buy-in early.
- Focusing on specific goals and avoiding diluting impact with too many things on the plate.
- Adding a personal touch, and starting the experience before it starts. Respect, personalisation, and emotional connection can transform the learning experience and elevate engagement.
- Emphasising social learning, belonging, and group work as keys to growth.
- Promoting cross-collaboration.
Atri concluded: “The purpose of learning is to make a shift in human behaviour. That is what we are trying to achieve in learning.
“For this shift to happen, three things are necessary: mindset needs to be shifted; emotion needs to be shifted as people should be confident in applying that skill and knowledge; and then behaviour needs to shift. And we will purely focus on these three shifts in designing a training programme.”
Lead image / HRO
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