“As a disabled kid, I had slim chances of attending a primary school. Mastering the ability to learn faster and better than others through my own efforts was the only help available to me that could possibly act as a light at the end of the tunnel. The power of learning helped me persevere through my tough times and inspired me to be a learning coach to make learning easy, efficient, and faster for people worldwide.”
These profound words undoubtedly speak of passion, persistence, and motivation displayed by Dr Raman K Attri, an award-winning accelerated learning scientist known for his groundbreaking science of speed in organizational learning.
Learning to Learn is a Foundational Skill
“Learning is a skill that not only determines one’s earning power but also enables progress in life and career.” Dr Attri said.
He continued, “Being a true learning leader is not a job. It is a commitment to the people to teach them and equip them with infrastructure to learn fast enough to navigate the professional challenges they face at the workplace.”
In his words, a true learning leader has the same place and role that one’s teachers have in school or college. Workplaces are moving at the speed of business. Thus, employees need highly passionate learning leaders who are not there just to do their job but to serve for the love of learning.
Dr Attri’s journey, achievements, and accolades speak of how deeply he has lived this philosophy. He noted, “I am on a mission to teach and guide people how to master their learning abilities for personal and professional excellence at a faster rate.”
Chasing the Learning Journey
Dr Attri’s passion for learning for himself and paving the path for others to learn better and faster started in his early childhood.
He contracted polio at the age of 6 months, which took away his ability to walk for life. As a permanently disabled amidst hardships of poverty, lack of educational facilities, and slim chances of attending school, Dr Attri resorted to leveraging his immobility to self-learn any book he came across, regardless of the topic or subject.
He soon discovered that specific strategies helped him learn things faster and better than others. As he continued his experimentation, he learned subjects and skills ahead of his age and began sharing the tricks with his classmates. As a result, he became a go-to ‘teacher’ among his friends.
“The ability to learn better, deeper, and faster than others provided me a magic wand that bounced me out of the darkness of inferiority complex and social isolation,” said Dr Attri.
Despite physical challenges, he graduated in Electronics Engineering and was selected as a technology scientist in India’s premier research laboratory. After serving five years in that job, he sought avenues to pursue his fundamental passion for learning.
“When you are obsessed with something that is meant to be, it makes its way to you,” said Dr Attri.
In the turn of events, he was deployed in the training arm of the organization. That started a new chapter for him and subsequently opened several doors.
Following his passion for learning, Dr. Attri has earned two doctorates in organizational learning, over 100 international educational credentials, several degrees, and diplomas, and some of the highest certifications. He is an authentic accelerated learning business coach who practices what he preaches. Dr Attri represents a true lifelong learner.
Over his professional career, he has served on advisory committees of leading professional bodies such as ATD, ISPI, CLO, and IATA. In addition, he served as an adjunct professor and career mentor for leading universities. He has been privileged to serve as a board member of international training assessment councils such as HETAC Ireland.
Becoming a Learning Teacher First
“I have probably seen the best and the worst – both sides of the education, training and learning,” Dr Attri said. He expressed that modern-day learning leaders must act as “Learning Teachers” rather than just “Learning Leaders.”
Dr Attri poses a thought-provoking question: “If we have subject teachers in schools and colleges who specialize in their domains to impact specific content, why can’t we have teachers whose job is to teach how to learn better and faster?”
He expressed that this seemingly simple question remained unanswered in schools, colleges, and even at the workplace. He attributes this lack to an attitude among teachers and trainers to focus heavily on subject-specific content. They ignore building their specialization in methods to learn better and faster themselves first so that they can guide their learners to follow those methods. Education systems in schools, universities, and workplaces continue to underplay the need for learning specialists who can set an example of how they break the learning barriers.
He noted that students and employees alike struggle to learn fast enough amidst the fast-paced world around them. “Even professionals from the best backgrounds, schooling, or institutions lack proper guidance on mastering the skill to learn faster. None of us has been taught this important futuristic skill in school, college or workplace,” Dr Attri expressed his concerns.
That’s why Dr Attri decided to embark on a journey to master accelerated learning strategies formally as a practitioner and as a researcher. He wanted to contribute significantly to making learning easier and efficient for others. Chartering that path, today, he is counted among the top learning leaders of the world.
Developing Speed-savvy L&D Leadership
Dr Attri is a Fortune 500 Learning Leader for a $60bn US-based corporation, leading a hall-of-fame training organization, also named one of the top 10 in the world. He leads the design of multimillion-dollar advanced training programs for over 5000 engineers to accelerate their complex technical problem-solving skills.
His experience in L&D spans advanced instructional design, complex problem-solving training design, instructional techniques, learning management, training, and development, learning technologies, and strategic organizational learning.
In his book Speed Matters, Dr Attri revealed his personal and professional philosophy: “I have come to understand that speed is the only competitive weapon in today’s highly accelerated world.”
As an award-winning accelerated learning scientist, he specializes in the science of speed in personal and professional performance. He is one of the few worldwide experts who has cracked the code to shorten time to proficiency at the workplace by 50%. With two decades of research, he has created a time-tested system to help leaders and organizations to accelerate leadership to stay ahead.
Continuing his mission, he founded the GetThereFaster™ portal in 2013 as a one-stop resource for anyone to learn the secrets of learning better and faster. Dr Attri explained his intent, “Through this forum, I am on a mission to teach people how to speed up the path to true excellence in all walks of life. I coach CLOs to shorten their employees’ time to proficiency by half so that they save time and money and stay competitive. I also coach ambitious professionals to excel in their performance at a faster rate.”
Dr Attri has designed a groundbreaking, intensive coaching and mentoring program – ‘Speed-Savvy Chief Learning Officer,’ in which he hand-holds the senior executives to develop a signature ‘speed-savvy learning leadership’ thought process. In this program, he guides learning executives on proven strategies to speed up workforce learning, performance, and leadership. “I offer exclusive know-how on how to design the whole eco-system to accelerate employee development during accelerated times,” Dr Attri noted.
As an admired coach to the futuristic CLOs, Dr Attri won the ‘Top Training and Coaching 2022’ award from the Stellar accreditation board.
Accelerating Learning Leadership
Dr Attri’s thought leadership is regularly featured in leading business, training, HR, and employee development magazines, including Chief Learning Officer, Training Industry Magazine, Training Magazine, and Fast Company.
He is the author of 50 books, most of which are on leadership, learning, performance, and workplace learning.
His book Accelerate Your Leadership in Training and Learning Domain describes how forward-thinking leaders should manage and lead learning organizations to stay competitive. His just-released book, Chief e-Learning Officer in the Era of Speed, discusses how e-learning strategists can develop themselves to CXO roles and accelerate employee capabilities through strategic e-learning frameworks.
His upcoming book, Chief Learning Technology Officer in the Era of Speed, is a must-read for learning leaders to implement AR, VR, AI, and other futuristic technologies to speed up the time-to-proficiency of the workforce.
One of his books has been included as the finalist for the Leadership Books of the Year award by the Institute of Leadership UK. Dr Attri explains, “I leverage every dimension of my multi-faceted personality to write about the deeper aspects of human excellence and capabilities.”
Making the Mark as Chief Learning Officer of the Year
Dr Attri is among the front-running thought leaders in the L&D, training, and HR world.
With over two decades of research in learning, his outstanding achievements have earned him recognition as a Brainz Global 500 Leader in 2021 alongside other stellar personalities such as Oprah Winfrey, Gary Vee, Jim Kwik, and Jim Shetty. He is named as a Transformational Business Leader of the Year 2022 by Exelon.
Continuing his impressive haul of recognitions, he has been selected as the winner of the Chief Learning Officer of the Year 2023 award at the L&D Future Summit organized by UBS Forums. Subsequently, Dr Attri is also selected as one of the ‘Top 100 L&D Professionals of 2024’ by OnConferences Icon Awards. Most recently, Dr Attri made it to the list of ’50 under 50 leaders of 2024’ by the New York Journal.
This was closely followed by being inducted as a finalist for the Learning Leader of the Year as part of the Learning Awards 2024. He shares this list with seven other noted leaders from the L&D industry. The Learning Awards, organized by the Learning and Performance Institute UK, is one of the premier awards in the learning and training industry.
“The Learning Leader of the Year is presented to an outstanding learning leader who has made a real difference, in a strategic sense, to both the learning operation in their workplace and the organisation as a whole in terms of impact and effectiveness and is seen as a leader among his or her peers,” claims the Learning Awards website. Industry’s noted top learning and training executives evaluate the entries based on rigorous criteria, including impact or value created by the nominee for the learning community at large.
Chartering towards new heights, Dr Attri has the privilege of being a judge for several forums such as for CLO Magazine’s Learning Elite Award, Learning Excellence Award, AITD’s Learning Awards and Training Magazine’s Emerging Training Leaders Award.
Dr Attri’s learning leadership journey and accolades inspire a broader audience in the L&D space.
Building an Impeccable Branding as a Learning Leader
Dr Attri appealed, “In my L&D career, while senior leaders are passionate about learning, they sacrifice their global visibility and branding because they don’t know how to balance their loyalty inside the organization and branding outside the organization. If you stay loyal to the learning field, that balance will come of its own.” He warned that senior leaders risk developing passionate learning specialists into job-as-usual employees when they deprioritize external credibility and visibility.
In contrast, despite being a full-time committed employee, Dr Attri’s world-class profile presents a hallmark of personal branding. It demonstrates how people serving in the L&D industry can develop a brand for themselves regardless of their titles.
Dr Attri has leveraged his inability to walk into a unique brand that differentiates him from the rest. He took his differentiation to create true distinction in his space by exploring the secrets of ‘walking faster’ in professional and business settings – learning faster, achieving high productivity faster, becoming a high achiever faster, developing leadership faster, and becoming a sought-after authority faster. Now, he stands as someone who teaches leaders and executives how to ‘walk faster’ in whatever they do.
Dr Attri has been inducted as a Fellow of the Learning and Performance Institute UK and an Eudoxia University, US Fellow, including professional memberships of several forums. He is also invited to speak at leading learning and training conferences, such as the Association for Talent Development (ATD), International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI), Training Magazine, HR.com, and Training Industry, to name a few. A TEDx speaker and professional keynote speaker, he guides top business executives at leading conferences to master speed in business and organizational learning.
One of the Most Admired Global Indians of 2022, his remarkable achievements continue to inspire everyone he touches to strive for true excellence in their personal and professional lives. He has been inducted in the New York Journal’s ’50 under 50’ list of 2024. Featured in over 200 media features, interviews, and shows, Dr. Attri has appeared on the covers of business magazines, including PassionVista, Exeleon, Silicon Valley Times, and CEO Times, among others. He was honored to be featured on the same page as US President Bill Clinton and to share the award space with stellar personalities.
Dr Raman K Attri provides a sure-shot method to accelerate your success in his latest book, Micro Authority: How to Accelerate Your Distinction in a Crowded Market in the Era of Speed. He has created a time-tested system that can help leaders to speed up the path to unique authority and leadership in any domain twofold.
Get There Faster
Dr. Raman takes immense pride in coaching CEOs, CLOs, and CXOs to evolve into speed-savvy authorities in record time. He offers a remarkable blend of transformational coaching grounded in profound research and insights from the world’s largest corporations. You can reach him to accelerate your learning leadership paths at GetThereFaster™ portal. You can follow him at @DrRamanKAttri on any social media platform like Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook.
