TCS holds learning conclave
Hindustan Times — December 20, 2006

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) organised a learning conclave at Hotel Taj on Tuesday evening. TCS' principal consultant, Jayant Krishna, emphasised the need to 'evangelise a learning culture in knowledge intensive organisations and enumerated the learning challenges for knowledge workers engaged in digitally integrated global organisations. He said that as the outsourcing industry had gone far beyond the cost arbitrage, client expectations had also increased. "This calls for people to get into a life-long learning mode and deliver an increasingly greater value to customers," he said.

The event saw a congregation of knowledge workers as a part of TCS' annual event to encourage its associates to get into a continuous learning mode since the company happens to be in a knowledge intensive business. Zarik Boghossian, director, Integrien, USA, spoke about the significance of learning in IT product organisations. He said that since the development in the IT field were rapid, the need to adjust with the latest technologies was required. He said the key to managing people was treating them just as one would like oneself to be treated.

Prof Archana Shukla, from HM Lucknow, emphasised the significance of knowledge management in learning organisations, which facilitated in creating a knowledge culture in companies. In her keynote address, she said that issues before organisations were those of sensing changes in the environment accurately and processing those inputs for defining and shaping the organisation's capabilities. She elaborated on the knowledge development cycle. She spoke about the changing environment and said that speed was a key component of working in the knowledge era.

"Shortening of products' life cycles has made it imperative that to stay ahead of competition you need to have ideas and vision," she said. Noted academician, Dr Amrita Dass, enunciated that newer age nuances of learning in organisations had taken the academic world by storm for which the academic community needed to be adequately prepared. She called for integrating knowledge, wisdom and intuition. She advised that one should focus more on the flow of knowledge than stocking it. Arvind Kumar, TCS' senior consultant, was presented with the 'Friends of Learning' award. This award is given to a person whom associates vote for his contributions made towards competency building, use of innovative pedagogical techniques and being a role model for continuous learning.