Ten days of cultivation

Everyone at PwC knows about ATP, the Audit Transformation Programme. But the training which we went through recently can be called as TTP. We will come back to its expansion later. Employees in any office will love to attend any training. Not because they get some break from work but they can sharpen their knowledge. I can’t imagine stating this before attending this particular training. I have always been in the other side of the fence, troubling the tutors. Now I got the taste of my own medicine. But to be honest to become a successful tutor you should work your heart out with some sincere effort. I am not going to bore you with too much of philosophy. I am certainly not a Shakespeare. But I would like to shake the minds of my peers with some thoughts like this (shake+peer = Shakespeare). Never mind! Let’s make it interesting. The three most famous things in Pune (which I can think of) are the food items - Bakarwadi, Vada pav and the Hotel Le Meridian (the only person who liked the Hotel was our instructor. So I had no choice other than to bring it in here). Well we are talking about Pune because the training was organised there. Everyone who came to the training had the taste of all three things. I have never gone to a city in India which doesn’t have a road called MG Road. If you really want to do some good shopping in any of the Indian cities even if you are new to the place, you can always bet your money on MG Road. Pune was not an exception. Something about the training now! I have never attended training with so much fun but nevertheless it fulfilled the purpose. There were plenty of firsts I experienced in this training. My first ever training wherein we didn’t extend the scheduled time on any day. That can only happen when we have instructors who can manage time efficiently. Who were the instructors? None other than people who attended the training! We had more than 40 people across offices from India. Every two days we had new set of people visiting us who have previously attended the academy. I could draw an analogy to a hospital where specialist doctors visiting the patients. But no one could actually cure us! We were bit by a knowledge virus – our instructor! We did lots of activities across ten days and learnt many things. It started from how to write a flip chart to how to handle mischievous people during trainings. Before the training everyone knew how to write a flipchart, but after the training we learnt to write it in a way that can draw the attention of the trainees. Our team (called “Desi Boyz”) won the activity of writing an attractive and colorful flipchart proving that even boys can be colorful. We had one more team activity of making an elephant with the things that are available inside the training room. Few teams didn’t find anything to use. So they finally used their own team members. Until then I was under the impression that humans came from apes. But after seeing few team members turning into elephants I had a doubt whether humans came from elephants/apes. Oops! Now I am questioning Darwin’s theory! We also had plenty of technical sessions. One such session was relating to Fraud. The instructors related the number 420 (everyone in India knows about 420) with the International Standards on Auditing which deals with fraud i.e ISA 240. No one can ever forget the ISA number with such references. There was also a picture quiz which was amazingly done. There were 100 reasons to make it amazing. But one of the most important factor was, it was done by our team! During the weekend it was party time with free cocktails. It would look much better for our trainers to move their mouth than to move their legs which was so obvious from the dance party. But we had few people who were good at both. On the final day a collage made by our own instructors brought back the memories of entire ten days together. Now, coming back to the expansion of TTP. It can be called “Trainer Transformation Programme”. It really transformed everyone who attended the training. The next day after the training, when I was getting ready to go to office, I nearly forgot how to wear the tie. During the ten days of training we were wearing only casuals! One of the firsts in trainings I have attended.