A master story teller has always captured our imagination during childhood. Stories told by our mom and dad , by friends have been a key influencer in our formative years. We have sought inspiration on stories at school, home and at work in building key input for our system. Stories have a powerful impact on the communication.

Back in 1893 one dark man was thrown out of a train bound to Pretoria at the Pieter Maritzberg Railway Station just because he was on the first class compartment that was mentioned for whites. A small story that was the beginning of a major “Ahimsa (non-violent) ” struggle in the history of the world. Today world over Ahimsa is a powerful phenomenon. Good or Bad, Stories by itself have been a powerful vehicle to boost communication of the message that we intend to pass to our listeners. And the power of story telling is a key enabler in effective communications.

Corporate world particularly IT has taken a great affinity for Storytelling. Right from building requirements based on user stories to playing real life scenarios to comply with business perspectives, stories are used to make a point across to listeners and as stories it becomes easier to remember and has lasting impact on listeners compared to abstract points. Today there are a lot of project management models where user stories form a key input to building solutions.

A lot of startups and entrepreneurs have a powerful and compelling story behind its formation. Be it the infamous Steve Jobs Speech at Stanford or Randy Paush’s ” The Last Lecture ” at the Carnegie Mellon or stories behind formation of Facebook, Reliance or Infosys, there is always a real life story that relates emotionally with the entrepreneur that led to the formation of the enterprise. Such stories tap into human emotions and connects a strong bond between the story teller and the listener. Stories tend to make it meaningful for people who build upon it. Organizations need to have compelling stories to align with their vision and collective purpose for achieving the larger goals. As leaders we need to be great story tellers and always lookout for that compelling story that can further our purpose and goals.

Project Managers / Product Managers need to acquire story telling skills to capture market opportunity , user requirements and how solutions seem to address market pain points effectively. Today’s agile development models are shaped on user stories as vital input not just for writing requirements but also to talk about users and for building effective solutions. User Stories tend to shift the focus from writing about features to talking about them.

Pls dont get misled ! All these statements are totally wrong and misplaced. I will counter these claims with my understanding on things as it is and do a narrative of events in the past …

I live in Chennai which happens to be the the automotive hub of the East. We are home to more than 6 global auto majors. Ford, Nissan, Hyundai, Peugeot, TVS and Renault have established their operations out here giving employment to innumerable engineers, graduates and ITI diploma holders. These companies not only produce for the domestic market but also export a major chunk to other third world countries from here. The city itself has expanded upto chengalpet on one end, Oragaddam on other and Sriperumbuddur on another side. The key drivers of all this expansion is the exponential growth of Automotive Industry. Lets rollback 3 decades and examine this industry. Indian consumer had 4 choices of cars the infamous HM Ambassador, Fiat’s Premier Padmini,  Contessa and Standard2000 and it was a sellers market where you as a buyer had to wait for months to take delivery of a car. Notwithstanding you need to have a recommendation letter to get a car. Today its a buyer’s market where the consumer is the king and so many choices and we produce for the world. FDI investments !

Look at Telecom Industry …2 decades back landline was a luxury and the first mobile phones where an outgoing call costs Rs 16. Today an outgoing call is Rs. 0.50 and the choices. The industry itself has grown so huge that there is a mobile phone for your milkman, servant maid, laundry guy, grocerer so on..Connectivity at its best. Quarter to quarter growth of new mobile connection happens today largely in rural India. So many supplementary sectors have grown bcos of this . India is a call center hub for the world. FDI Investments !

Infrastructure Industries are growing at such enormous pace. Our people are building airports in turkey, bridges in Africa, and such magnificent growth transformation in India itself. The Golden quadrilateral is a PPP model where FDI is major. We have some great airports getting built in our metros. Today civil engineers are a big demand in the market whereas a few decades back they were a plenty. Thanx FDI

We have so many reference points in the past , when it comes to FDI in Retail why think otherwise. Since Independence India has been primed as a Agricultural nation ! Largest chunk of our contribution to GDP is from Agriculture, from 65 % it has come down to 36%.  India’s green revolutions, ambitious five year plan have all been impetus to agricultural growth.But slowly it has been dwindling due to urbanisation , growth of service industries and all that. There is a growing divide between the aspirations of rural and urban India.

Investments in retail will empower rural India in a great way, earning potential will increase, larger employment opportunities, better access roads to markets, establishing better logistical modes to market, cold storage facilities, contract farming possibilities, new technologies to improve productivity all that is possible.  Today the farmer is not getting what he is due bcos of the middle man. FDI in retail will empower rural india indirectly, increase aspirational levels too.

Gone are the days when Indians were ignorant and uneducated to fall prey to plunder of large organizations. We are no sitting ducks ! And the govt is proposing right measures of systemic expansion so on.

And as told by one of my friends India is a market on its own and it takes time to understand the factors, demographics of Indian retail market. We are not new to retail experience … today we go to the Spencers, the More’s and Big Bazaars to do large purchases. Tomorro we will substitute them with the Walmarts, Carrefours of the world. Still we will continue to buy those small, immediate things from the kirana store near our home.

People who are raising voices today did so a few years back too when KFC’s and Mac Donald’s forayed into the Food Industry. They said that all the dhaba’s and the hotels will be taken over by these chains. Nothing like that happened … in fact it gave Indian consumer greater choices in the table. And the Industry has grown . Thanx FDI !

(The author of this post also has a Degree in Supply Chain Management from MMA (Madras Management Academy) and Anna University . All views expressed here are based on sensible learning of the business ecosystem and realisation of the power of Vitamin M to an emerging Industry.)

Some of the questions that were posed had great relevance to what i have been doing all these years and this was my take on the topic

Q1: What do you think is the most important thing you can do to successfully achieve a goal?

• Prime most clearly define your goal. Talk to people who have pursued that goal in the past to get a hang of what to look out for.
• Take time to visualise what it means to achieve this goal on grand scheme of things. By doing so you draw on your inner strengths and renewed hunger to achieve the goal
• Indulge in a meticulous planning exercise
• Break your path towards the goal into smaller units defining in between milestones. Time box them
• Identify your critical path for acheiving this goal, estimate leadtimes, identify dependencies and resultant delays that need to be addressed along the way
• Prioritise your smaller tasks and set milestones, Determine yardstick for measuring milestones achieved
• Identify possible risks along the way and plan contingencies for possible risks.

Q2: What do you find to be the biggest obstacles to success?

• Lack of meticulous planning
• Have clarity while you communicate with a team when you work towards a goal.
• Reluctance / Delay in mental shift from Planning to Execution mode.
• Not being perseverant for the long haul until realisation of the goal and taking the foot of the pedal midway.
• Any plan has to be in a detailed manner (unless you are confident), always anticipate and cover your risks.

Q3: What advice would you give to someone to help them be more successful in reaching their goals?

• Define your objectives to reach a particular goal
• Plan Plan Plan
• Have a peer group or mentor who can share thoughts with you help acheive your goal.
• Identify bottlenecks , The strength of the entire chain is as much as the weakest link.
• Have a victory dance / ritual on how you reward yourself on achieving your goal

Overall the discussion was so powerpacked and well received that i felt i needs to be recorded in the blog too !

Interesting statistics reveal that of late NCRB (National Crime Records Bureau) reports – High suicide rate among IT Professionals and NIMHANS (National Institute of Mental Health) reports – High stress related cases among IT professionals

Facts about Stress: Stress is a Fight, Flight, fright response. There are two types of Stress : Eustress and distress. Eustress is good stress while distress is the negative form of it. Science behind Stress is that body alerts the sympathetic nervous system. Putting the organs back to original state is done by parasympathetic nervous system

Yerkes-Dodson Law of Arousal: This law states that an organism’s performance can be improved if that organism is aroused in some manner. However, if the level of arousal increases too much, performance decreases. Of course, this level is different in everyone. An example of this is an athlete who performs better under real game situation than he/she does during practice games. There is more arousal (stress, excitement) during the real games which increases their performance. But, if the pressure becomes too much, their performance can decrease (e.g., missing an easy shot with time running out and losing the game — choking!).

Typical Profile of IT Professional
* Workaholic
* Well qualified
* Well paid

Sabcons Research:
* D Factor Awareness ( The Incredible “D” Factor – Deadlines missed, divorce, depression, diabetes, disease, death wish )
* Long terms stress causes loss of peace, irritation, depression (mental, emotional, physical)
* Become Aware and Take action
* People Factor – Conflict management styles (Avoiding, compromise, forcing, confrontation)
* Everyone thinks the other person is responsible
* Personality Factor (Type A, Type B, Type C )
* Project Manager ‘s and Delivery Managers’s need to proactively deal with this issue in a better manner.

Identify these in your teams
* Breakdowns and burnouts
* Sick Leave
* Attrition
* Low productivity
* Stress management should be a critical part of your Risk Management in all ur projects

Stress Management – Pancha Koshas : The Yoga path of Self-realization is one of progressively moving inward, through each of those lampshades, so as to experience the purity at the eternal center of consciousness, while at the same time allowing that purity to animate through our individuality. These five levels are called koshas, which literally means sheaths.
* Annamaya Kosha
* Pranamaya Kosha
* Manomaya Kosha
* Vigyanamaya Kosha
* Anandamaya Kosha

Project Managers need to ACT

* Accountability in maintaining harmony in ur teams
* Communications – with ur members to understand them better
* Training – Provide adequate training for professionals to execute the relevant task with diligence

Secret of balanced Organizations
* Plan for Proper Shifts
* Employee Assistance when faced with instances/ episodes of Stress
* Insists on Compulsory Laptop free breaks

These are excerpts from a session on “I am only 35 & I have Diabetes” by Ms Sabita Prasad and Ms. Sudha Jayaram

This caught the attention of Sanobar, a RJ by profession and then a newbie to TKF events. She put us on a Chat with the ACP Traffic Ms Sonel Mishra and me and Ram started the initiative of Capacity building CCTP (Chennai City Traffic Police) on Social Media.

The engagement involved creating awareness of the power of Social media to the Stakeholder group and discussing strategies of the rollout with the team. We powered the entire team on Facebook and twitter and primed for an official Launch on August 15, 2010 . Then we had to face the challenges of end user resistance to technology adoption and thereby a protracted delay in the rollout.

On one end both me and Ram had aggressively campaigned about this online and the media was eager to see this take off. Slowly we started facing queries from the community on credibility of the group and all such outburst. We interfered once to post on the search on Tamanna . Other than that we maintained the integrity of the site all along. Slowly the Knowledge Transfer happened in the month of May 2011 and today the wall is buzz with activity .

Today the Chennai City Traffic Police Facebook wall is nearing 8000 users online and daily action taken reports happening. We have transferred all knowledge artifacts to the Government and I take this opportunity to acknowledge the efforts of Ram and rest of the Team at The Knowledge Foundation on a job well done ! Thanx Team and we have made a difference !

Yesterday there was a very interesting session at KCommunity on the topic ” Art of Story Telling in Corporates ” by Ms Archana Raghuram , Sr Program Manager Outreach of CTS. The take home message is ” that we need to capitulate on the compelling stories that happen at places of work and tell them to people. Doing so will interest people both within and outside the organization ” By following this method people who listen to you tend to keep you in mind for long and you slowly become synonymous with the story. And there are certain steps to do the same.

And I have been lingering on this thought for quite sometime building the corporate presentation for one of our associate as they had so many interesting incidents in their startup four years back. The session last evening has reiterated the message that nothing can go wrong on the age old technique of Story telling to present your ideas as well as keep your audience engrossed in the conversation.

With the evolution of Mobile devices and Better connectivity on networks, we are ubiquitous of an online presence at all times when one is awake. This by itself redefines way we go about doing our daily work. Right from morning jog that get recorded from your GPS into the system to the sign off that happens late at night we are online in one way or other. Slowly businesses are getting redefined into newer channels ! Here is a perspective of global trends.