On his business card, where you’d expect to find his designation, Rukmal de Silva instead offers two words: ‘Your Pathfinder.’ For ten years now, he and his team at Wild Drift have specialised in Adventure Based Management Training, delighting in pulling people out of their little air-conditioned cubicles and tossing them into new, often physically challenging situations.
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| Rukmal de Silva |
Rukmal believes that the shift from the corporate to the jungle can be used to intensify and accelerate personal growth. “It’s more of an experience than a training programme,” he says. “We create learning experiences to bring in inspiration, alignment and then bring teams up to a better performance.”
Rukmal, (who goes by the moniker Ruki) has an interesting background, having worked with a range of businesses including micro finance initiatives in Jordan, an e-marketing initiative in gourmet tea, manufacturing in Sri Lanka and investment promotion in sub-Saharan Africa. His mantra is ‘experiential learning’ – he tells me that there is little use in instructing adults. “We can only offer adults a learning experience and hope they gain something from it.”
However, at Wild Drift these ‘experiences’ are carefully orchestrated and tailored for specific results. “The experiences that we create are designed in such a way that the behaviours of individuals do come out in specific ways,” he says. The team relies heavily on technology to push their agenda. For instance, one of the key points of focus is decision making. Rukmal counts on the participants being more receptive and aware outside their office spaces.
He helps them along with a little video footage. “Even in a jungle during rainy weather we can film the decision making process. Now when we capture them in video and show it to them, it becomes more of a reflective journey into oneself,” says Rukmal. At Wild Drift, they have “mastered the art of capturing behaviour in a leadership context,” he adds. Part of the process is helping people discover the personal issues that have a negative impact on their professional lives. It’s an ambitious goal for what is sometimes only a two day programme, but Rukmal believes it’s essential that participants are made to question at least some of their assumptions. He calls it “unlearning,” and says it “is a process of being able to keep aside what you think you know about yourself, your current perceptions and to allow new knowledge, new experience and new inspiration to come into your life. In a way it’s actually a spiritual journey.”
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The programme is tailormade to client requirements – some clients just want their teams to have a bonding experience while others want them to return with a concrete plan to improve work performance. A pre-study helps the Wild Drift team work up a plan. Often a programme has a specific goal, says Rukmal, citing the time when the team from the National Water Supply and Drainage Board, Central Region, figured out a way to overcome issues with their service such that they could offer their customers a one day service. “Within two months of the programme they managed to deliver new water connections on the same day of applying,” says Rukmal proudly. Clients also seem to appreciate the team’s ability to deliver a programme in English, Sinhala and Tamil.
Wild Drift is coming up on their 600th programme and estimate they’ve seen as many as 20,000 people participate since they began in 2001. The field is a competitive one but Rukmal claims they set themselves apart from the competition by the quality of their services and the strength of their team. They are the only company to have six full-time trained facilitators capable of handling senior programmes on their staff, says Rukmal, adding that they have been able to run as many as four programmes simultaneously. Today, the company boasts over 160 clients, including the likes of John Keells, CTC, CIC, Unilever, Sri Lankan Airlines, DSI, Brandix, HSBC and Hayleys. They do a brisk business in the education sector as well and have hosted groups from Royal College, Ladies’ College and the universities of Moratuwa and Kelaniya.
The trips themselves are meant to offer their participants a real adventure. Many of their guests have never experienced anything similar before they arrive for a programme, says Rukmal explaining that their events are held in Belihuloya, Bandaragama, Kitulgala, Sigiriya and Dambulla. The longest is five days and involves a 54km trek through “real jungle”. “It isn’t a game, it is real life,” says Rukmal. Which is why, safety is an issue. The company grades its events on their danger level, with a C involving a real risk of fatal injury. Stringent measures must be adopted to prevent any such incident. Rukmal believes that it begins as seeing “safety as a mindset. It’s not an end result.” Suppliers are carefully screened, while participants are briefed thoroughly on safety regulations.
Still, why put themselves at risk in the first place? Rukmal says it can be the most potent tool in his arsenal. “It’s the discovery of oneself at the edge. That’s where we can really push things,” he says. |
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