CEO Insights India

Effective leadership development instils in leaders a greater sense of responsibility. A mature leader accepts responsibility for his or her errors and encourages others to do the same. They prioritize ensuring that their team is productive. Leaders understand why fostering a culture of accountability is critical to the organization's success through development programs. They delegate this obligation for building a strong culture of accountability throughout the company.

Vijay George Kuruvilla has over 26 years of experience in the Learning and Development domain, having worked across many industries and global geographies. His Core Competencies include working with individuals and teams to develop long term skillsets using a structured Competency framework. CEO Insights interviewed Vijay George Kuruvilla(Founder)of KeyLearning Performance Consultants wherein he enlightened us about the necessity of leadership development programs and how is KeyLearning helping leaders develop their skills.

Can you provide us with a glimpse of your professional journey before the establishment of your firm Key Learning Performance Consultants? What are your skillsets & strengths that you consider to be unique?
I have been in the sector for over 26 years, starting as a Territory Manager for Eli Lilly, then moving up to Sales manager and later, a long and fulfilling stint as part of the Training function of the company. This is where I picked up my passion and rigor for the learning function. Later, I was in charge of Commercial Excellence and Training for Southeast Asia for Baxter, a leading healthcare entity which developed medical devices for healthcare companies. A big part of the job responsibility included training, which covered Learning Roadmaps, talent development, Sales force effectiveness, strategic analysis, and other things, and it was a fantastic exposure since I was in charge of the function for all production and sales units. Then I became the General Manager for Leadership Development and Training at Bharati Walmart, and was one of the initial employees to join the entity. After many years of path breaking work where we were able to establish truly effective retail learning frameworks that still stand the test of time. After that, I worked for Boston Scientific as an Area Director of Talent and Leadership development for Asia Pacific and Middle East. That was my last corporate job before I decided to start an enterprise of my own.

What inspired you to establish the firm? Share with us the inception story of the company.
In 2017, I began my own company, Key Learning Performance Consultants, as a single individual. Now we have 12 direct associates and close to 25 people with whom we have a relationship and whom

we call on a project basis whenever we have a need. We have Facilitators that work with us as Associates decided it was time for me to gently start something on my own, rather than as employees. We primarily concentrate on two areas Leadership Development and Performance Coaching. I am a certified Executive Coach, which allows me to work with entrepreneurs, executives, and people who want to advance in their careers and take on leadership roles. Hence, when I established KeyLearning Performance Consultants, my goal was to help individuals and organizations see learning as more than just a means of getting promoted or acquiring new abilities, which is why I chose the name KeyLearning, to learn the most critical and seminal points of any learning process.KeyLearning is the crystallization of the learning that we carry and putting together the wealth of learning, which we subsequently call wisdom. We try to focus on it in every learning and organizational intervention we conduct, rather than just taking them through a set of slides or conduct a team activity. This 'outcome-based' approach, hence, forms our unique learning architecture. At the end of every intervention, we want our audience to ask themselves What has been my Key Learning? What will be the change I will bring to make even better than who I am today? How do you master the complexities around you with the changed behaviour and learning you now possess? What unique value do you bring to the table? This is where we concentrate our efforts, and we have interesting and unique methods of ensuring that all of our training up with right metrics for optimal impact.

Today, we have dedicated verticals for Leadership and Organizational Development, Sales and Business Management and Behaviors Sills and Assessment, in addition to three industry focus teams a fully dedicated Retail Knowledge Council, a Healthcare and Pharma vertical and a BFSI team.

Kindly throw some light on the content selection process that you follow at your company. Also, what are the various topics that you cover under your programs for leadership development?
The authenticity of the content is one of the major criteria we use to determine quality in learning and development. We keep the quality indicators up to date with the industry and evolving needs. At KeyLearning, we have a very clear Three step internal model based on Relevance, Scalability and Sustainability of content. We determine the content offered by KeyLearning Performance

Consultants fits the internal standards that are further subdivided to address and impact key deliverables. The learning need, audience threshold, omnichannel requirement and other critical principles decide the content architecture. In addition to following these requirements, and coupling it with the target organization's values, goals, mission, and requirements, our Knowledge Management team curates each content. We also have a very capable and experienced set of Facilitators with us, with most of them having more than 20 years of experience. They are our greatest asset and form our uniqueness in the industry. Every Monday we conduct an all-hands meeting and we update and challenge each other on what is happening around us and how we should equip ourselves to these evolving needs. One of our favorite questions in the meet is 'Where are we right now, where do we want to go?

'Is there any recent innovation coming up in your company? What is the future road-map set for your centre?
In terms of innovation, we are putting a lot of effort into our digital and online presence as a firm since these are two extremely important requirements. So we're building a platform called KeyLearning on Demand, which is currently under work, and we are putting together a learning structure that shadows the career maps of individuals and teams. Secondly, we are partnering with Knowledge and Research partners. As a start, we have already coupled up with few Indian and international universities. We conducted a focused research of over many second tier MBA and BBA colleges in India and discovered that many of the faculty need help in application of learning as they had no experience working in the corporate world. We also discovered that just the study also showed that many faculty members in management have lesser than 18 months of experience working in a corporation or owning a business. At KeyLearning, we are attempting to figure out if we can work with these colleges to construct a Faculty bridge program so that those that graduates are better prepared for their careers outside. We have a targeted program and offer internship to students from selected premium Management institutions in India. We are also in the early stages of forming a consortium for learning and human impact at the workplace.

Vijay George Kuruvilla, Founder, Key Learning Performance Consultants
Vijay George Kuruvilla is a Learning and Performance Coach with over 26 years of global experience in the corporate sector in a variety of roles. His main areas of competence are Leadership Development, Training, Organisational Development, Executive Coaching, and Organisational Performance Consulting. Vijay is interested in the behavioural dynamics of persons in building organizations and equity. He has consulted and coached organisations from many industries across Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. He is certified in most of the global Leadership and Human Behaviour Assessment certifications.