An interview with Pavan Bakshi, CEO of Prime Meridian Consulting, India
ALEAS Simulations, Inc. California, the producer of the FLIGBY concept recognizes the importance of supporting the multinational and multi-cultural nature of global business through global representation and delivery. FLIGBY certified partner consultants work with ambitious leaders and their organizations to bring about sustainable transformation in performance, both at an organizational and personal level. With 40 consultants deployed worldwide our services are available globally.
Now FLIGBY has a local partner also in India. Prime Meridian Consulting India Private Limited (PM Consulting) is an end-to-end leadership development and human transformation consulting service company providing learning, training and consulting to corporate bodies and academic institutions.
Our goal is to combine FLIGBY’s award winning game-based people-analytics and PM Consulting’s onsite programs and coaching services to provide the most comprehensive leadership development solutions for all of our Indian customers. We’re looking forward to working with Pavan’s great team. May the Flow be with you,
Prof. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
(see the full text of Prof. Csikszentmihalyi’s announcing letter here: announcing_partnership_with_pmconsulting_india_22febr2018_v1.0-SIGNED)
In the following interview, the head of PM Consulting, Pavan Bakshi, Chief Facilitator and Executive Coach shares his insights regarding Flow, serious gaming and the Indian leadership mindset.
flowleadership.org: What are the current trends of leadership development in India? How open is the Indian market to serious gaming?
Pavan Bakshi: The current trends of leadership development are moving towards accelerated leadership development through innovative action learning. Indian leaders need to mature faster hence they need to hasten the cycle between gaining new knowledge and developing effective skills and behavior. Indian leadership development is hence moving towards blended-learning which supports the job implementation and achievement of business results. Blended learning needs a three-stage process:
- Assessments to help the person understand where he or she is (not only at the beginning but continuously throughout the learning process),
- Implementation of tailor-made developmental programs to help the person gain new knowledge and,
- On the job application, coaching and action learning to develop new skills and behavior.
Indians by nature love technology as also competing, and hence gaming is a great way to engage them in all the three stages of leadership development.
How does Flow theory fit the Indian mind-set?
I believe Flow as a concept has always been a part of Indian culture but forgotten along the way as India modernized. The Bhagavad Gita argues that in order to find true inner peace, we must practice and master the art of enjoying the process of work itself, rather than the end goal. The Flow theory of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi analyses the state of mind that one has when one is deeply immersed in one’s work, and achieves a high (arguably the highest) level of satisfaction with life. It also goes beyond this to identify the specific steps to achieve this state. Not being in the moment is leading to great stress in people especially the younger generation. In the business context, understanding the concept of Flow will enable two things to happen. Firstly, understanding that continuously improving skills is the inherent desire of all human beings, which leads to happiness and will make the employees continuously work on improving their skills. Secondly, this will enable organizations to achieve a performance enhancing culture, a WIN-WIN situation for both the organization and the employees. The concept of Flow in relation to professional life and happiness is an amazing finding and clearly demonstrates that a good professional life can give as much happiness as a good personal life. Both these lives are so integrated in a human being that seeing these as distinct and different is a mistake and also great source of misery.
How will FLIGBY partnership support your consulting business?
Our consulting business is focussed on providing long-term learning engagements with a blended learning approach to achieve our mission: “We Build Leaders Everywhere”. FLIGBY with its researched and innovation ways of simulating real life professional situations and decision dilemmas, incremental increase in difficulty of tasks and continuous feedback will support our clients in being fully engaged during the learning process.
How could FLIGBY benefit your clientele?
Since the modeling of decisions in the game is competency-based it will help the player and the organization understand the strengths and weaknesses of their relevant organizational competencies and support them in applying the developmental program learnings in the game to measure their progress.
What is your personal message to the FLIGBY community?
In life and sports the way to learn is not by being a spectator but by playing the game. THE GAME IS ON …..SO COME PLAY AND PLAY TILL YOU WIN!