FLY Methodology
How we learnt what must be taught
CMI’s flagship program, Finding the Leader in You (FLY), stemmed from a question that took us 2 years to answer:
Why does India lag behind in competitiveness?
The question led us to look for the traits responsible for workforce competitiveness.
We got our answer in 5 non-cognitive skills through our landmark 2017 research.
These skills built the foundation of our flagship program, Finding the Leader in You (FLY), focusing on building, as we call them, the 5 pillars of competitiveness:
conscientiousness
perseverance
innovativeness
taking initiative
problem-solving
These skills were found to be the most responsible for competitiveness and to be most lacking in the Indian workforce.
Why do general methods fall short?
It is hard to inculcate non-cognitive skills through memorisation, comprehension or any traditional approach used in academics and professional training.
These are behaviours that can be developed and rewired through active and reflexive practice. They demand an immersive training architecture that shifts a participant from merely knowing about these skills to internalising them in their behaviour.
Standard soft-skills training through non-interactive lectures, online courses, and seminars is limited to theoretical comprehension and memory, falling short of the internalisation these traits require to translate to action.
How did we come up with our method?
With the five pillars identified, our founders — a group of educationalists, entrepreneurs, social scientists and industry leaders — decided to build a specialised program, one that would meet the exact demands of cultivating these skills in professionals and students.
Led by our Chief Program Architect, Dr. Aparna Rajagopal, our founders spent an entire year engineering a curriculum grounded in Carol Dweck’s growth mindset research to develop and measure these non-cognitive traits.
FLY methodology
The FLY program methodology treats non-cognitive skills as muscles that grow through discipline and repeated practice.
Our program does not include passive instructions, pre-recorded videos, or top-down lecturing.
Every session is live, hands-on, and built around group exercises and real-time peer feedback — breaking personal inertia through accountability to others, instead of relying on mere exposure to the content.
We keep our classes limited to 30–36 participants to ensure every individual can actively participate, share feedback, and receive personalised guidance from the faculty.
The course content
Targeted Non-Cognitive Skills
The FLY programs are designed to inculcate the 5 specific non-cognitive skills that research shows have the largest impact on competitiveness — Conscientiousness, Taking Initiative, Innovativeness, Perseverance and Problem Solving.
'Full Loop' Content
Course content is designed to teach not just How to do something, but What to do (e.g. what risks to consider), Why and When to do it.
Action-Focused
Participants learn how to translate understanding into action (effectiveness). Over 84% of participants say they will put into practice the techniques they learned.
Participatory Design, Real-World Focus
The course focuses on Practice and Internalisation, for rapid and long-lasting results and behaviour improvements.
Pedagogy
Active Learning Pedagogy
We use instructional strategies that promote active learning. Participants engage with the material by doing. They analyse, create, reflect, and collaborate with each other throughout each session.
Inquiry-Based Learning
Instead of just presenting the facts, instructors use questions, problems and scenarios to help students learn through their own agency and investigation.
Learner-Centred Environment
We create a participant-centred learning environment that is cooperative, collaborative, and community-oriented. This makes participants self-confident, self-directed, and proactive.
Our proprietary L.I.F.E. Framework
The L.I.F.E. framework helps cement the learnings from the training and helps participants reflexively put learned skills into practice at work and in life.
Learning: Intensive online or in-person sessions covering the 5 Pillars of the Competitiveness Mindset. All learning is instructor-led, highly participatory, immersive and action-oriented.
Introspection: Reflections about, and analysis of, key concepts in each individual pillar facilitate self-examination and deeper understanding of each of The Five Pillars.
Fellowship: Participants acquire skills by practising LPT (Learn, Practice, Teach) techniques, one of the most effective and proven ways of developing non-cognitive skills.
Engagement: Application to real life. By observing, analysing, understanding and eventually applying concepts and techniques of the pillars in the real world, participants are able to apply their learning to real-life situations.
Certification
Unlike conventional soft-skills programs that award certificates for registration or attendance, a CMI USA Accredited Certificate is earned through three strict gates:
Collaborative Team Project: Teams identify and address a real, current problem within their organisation.
Viva Voce: A formal oral defence validating the participant's conceptual grasp and personal application of the five pillars.
Capstone Presentation: A live presentation of the team project before our evaluation panel.
