Every day, you may have to face tougher and tougher challenges. Perhaps, you set yourself or your team on to greater challenges or targets as soon as you achieve a particular target. I do not think this is unnatural. But you must keep in mind that boosting your and the team’s capacity or ability to meet new challenges is very important for better performance.

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Bridging the Gap between Learning and Performance!
Every day, you may have to face tougher and tougher challenges. Perhaps, you set yourself or your team
on to greater challenges or targets as soon as you achieve a particular target. I do not think this is
unnatural. But you must keep in mind that boosting your and the team’s capacity or ability to meet new
challenges is very important for better performance.
If the gap between the present capacity and the required capacity to fulfill the target widens, it will cost
you and your team dearly. It will drain your team’s energy as your team members will have to expend
extra energy to cope with the new requirement. If this continues for long, it can adversely affect your
team’s productivity.
Here are a few tips to be able to rise to challenges seamlessly:
Analyze Learning Needs: When you know what is required, you can find better ways to fulfill your
tasks. Therefore, analyze existing skill set and plan a learning program.
Insist on Skill-Oriented Learning Programs: Often, learning programs fail because they focus on
knowledge acquisition rather than skill development. Hence, it will create confusion among individual
learners as to what they are expected to do. So, have a categorical objective in the learning activity and
communicate the same to the learners.
Have a Well-Planned follow-up Program: If learning is the input, performance is the output. Unless
you measure the output, you cannot manage it. So, have some performance measures in terms of project
outcomes and check whether these outcomes are the result of your learning activities. This gives you a
better idea on how to conduct learning sessions with a view to improve future performances of your team.
Involve your Managers: Change always comes from the top. Managers can have greater influence on
their immediate reports. If they treat learning programs merely as tools to gain new knowledge, change
their attitude first.
The relationship between learning and performance is cyclical. With learning, you achieve a certain level of
performance. With this comes the need to learn new skills either to improve the existing performance or
meet tougher targets. You need to constantly bridge this gap to keep the balance between the existing
capacity and the required capacity.
So the effective way to smoothly maintain this transition from one challenge to greater challenges is
through learning. Learning enables you to acquire new or better skills that enhance your capacity to meet
tough challenges. And your performance will improve. Thus, ensure that all your learning programs work
towards bridging any performance gaps.
Do share your thoughts on the same.
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