Touching the Ground

In hindu culture, it is a habit and practice to touch the feet and ground of elders and in front of gods.  Traditionally, this is an enforced rule. But in reality, it teaches you an important lesson - Being grounded to realities irrespective of the heights you reach.

In Managers too, this needs to be an enforced trait. I recently was struggling to find words explaining the role of an Instruction Designer to a senior manager. The commentary was how and why we cannot use fresh talent from college to analyze content and write them up. It was difficult conversation.

Today, I realized that may be, I being aloof from the ground is not helping matters. So under the able guidance of my senior most ID, I requested to be mentored in writing an existing storyboard. Not that I came out trumps from the exercise, but I got enough words to express the travails and troughs a designer needs to go through to get a great learning flow and seamless understanding of content.

Touching the ground this time wasn't a conscious exercise. But it is good to add to my arsenal at least once a year to be hands on with tools and techniques used by the team working with you.