When your company or organization is trying to implement a new culture or formulating one, it should hold a unique point. Because KG is trying to implement the new learning culture where learning doesn’t have to be in a class but you can learn through other media such as reading, videos and podcasts. By unique it can have a range of things, the unique approach, the unique ritual to make it more sticky, the unique culture and many more unique approaches. This unique point will bring out the stickiness factor more for everyone in the company. The author of The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell, defines the Stickiness Factor as the quality that compels people to pay close, sustained attention to a product, concept, or idea. The stickiness will depend on the context.  Bola, one of KG’s business units, had a really interesting ritual and requirement to work there. The requirement is that you can’t just like sports, you have to love it and be crazy about it. You can’t just know the surface or basic knowledge of the sport that you are into, you have to know facts about it. For example, if you are into Formula 1, you have to know the fact of the champion in 1997, which drivers use which car and so on. The unique ritual is that every Friday at 3 PM, either you have work to do or meetings, it would be stopped and everyone has to play soccer. Larisin and Corporate HRD have a common practice in implementing the learning culture. Once a week an employee has to do a “Ted Talk” where they share the knowledge they know to everyone there. This knowledge can be your expertise or something that you know or do for fun. In order to have the learning culture mindset by doing this kind of knowledge sharing can strengthen the need of learning culture. Since you have to share your knowledge you have to at least learn something. The unique approach talked in Harvard Business Review is “shocking rules”, in other words, rituals and practices that are memorable, so “bizarre,” that people inside the organization “encounter almost daily” and that people who hear about them wonder why they are necessary. There are many examples of this “shocking rules” such as Amazon where Jeff Bezos insisted that the office furniture are built or bought by buying cheap materials, especially the desk where they bought cheap doors and nail the legs to it. This shocking rule reminds everyone that even though they are one of the biggest online marketplaces with billions in revenue, they should look at every opportunity to save money so they can deliver the best products at the lowest cost. In the end, not every lock can be opened with every key. This unique approach may work at your business or company, but at times it wouldn’t. It could because of the previous culture was too great of a difference with the one you want to implement now. Shocking rules are worth the try.  

Feedback is an important part of an employee's growth and development. Most managers and colleagues will give you a "sandwich" feedback. The "sandwich" feedback is where negative feedback is "sandwiched" between two positive feedback. This happens because they don't want you to feel bad. But should you receive a sugar coated feedback or not? Sugarcoated or “sandwich” type of feedback can be deliberate or unintentionally delivered. Deliberate feedback of delivery is usually done by colleagues that you asked for feedback or when they want to give you feedback. For as unintentional, most managers do so without realizing it.  Deliberate sandwich feedback is caused because it is a common thing to do. People do this because it's easier for people to hear and accept negative feedback when it comes with positive feedback. They assume the sandwich approach provides balanced feedback.They also believe by giving both negative and positive feedback reduces discomfort and anxiety. Managers unintentionally deliver sugarcoated feedback because of the illusion of transparency. The illusion of transparency makes the communication vague and the receiving end can misinterpret the intent of the feedback. It is where people are so focused on their own intense feelings and intentions that they overestimate the extent to which their inner world come across to others resulting in the words may be too vague to convey their true intent. In order to avoid misinterpretation of feedback you could dispel any incorrect assumptions by asking questions or by requesting managers to use precise, explicit terms when delivering feedback. If your manager doesn’t ask you to rearticulate what they have told you, you can try using statements that begin with “So if I’m understanding you correctly, you’re saying…”. As the person receiving the feedback, you should not fear the negative feedback. As an employee negative feedback should be a motivation that leads you to grow to be a better employee. It may be hard in our culture, a high context one, to receive negative feedback but just hearing positive feedback would make you a stagnant employee in his/her comfort zone.

Many companies are starting to implement learning culture as part of the digital transformation. With the Industry 4.0 emerging, many companies are moving towards digital transformation, and it’s not easy for the employees to settle in with this change. There are a number of uncertainties that would create anxiety for the employees such as the automation takeover. But many companies are still implementing the classic classroom learning where it’s more of a mandatory activity rather than a voluntary one.  Contextual learning is a learning system that is connecting the academic content with the real world context. A real example of contextual learning would be the learning system in SALAM Yogyakarta (Sanggar Anak Alam). They are using contextual learning on their students. The school doesn’t have the standard curriculum given by the government, instead they are using their own curriculum. The way the students study is also different, they don’t study from books but they try to study by understanding scientific concepts and theory such as friction, buoyancy and many more through seeing and experiencing those concepts and theory. What the students learn isn’t guided by curriculum like the usual school, but instead on what they find interesting to study that day. (continue here or next paragraph) The purpose of contextual learning is in order for students/learners to understand the purpose of learning. So they will know what they need to learn in the future, in this case a work environment, and be adaptive towards uncertain change. Contextual learning doesn’t demand the teacher to teach the students/learners about the subject but becomes more of a facilitator if they have questions. In the workplace contextual learning can be carried out by individuals, and if they have questions they can refer to someone who is more experienced in that subject. The benefits of implementing contextual learning in your work environment are hands on learning which you can combine theory and real world actions, an experience-based learning that would be at the back of their head, and more productive and enhancing concepts to the students/learners. (continue this plz) Being adaptive in this digital age means that you need to be able to absorb information quickly and implement them in a short period of time too. With the ever-changing work environment, classroom learning is old-school and is not effective today. Contextual learning can be done by an individual’s own initiatives and could grow into creating a learning culture in the department or company. Contextual learning has a great benefit on you, as the one who takes the initiative, and the company in order to be adaptive as a whole by creating a learning culture.