A Staff Retreat, an Unexpected Contest, and We All Win!
A critical component of Krishi Janani’s business model are the rural ag tech centers that serve as micro-distribution, learning, and innovation hubs. We opened two centers recently:
- June 6, 2016: Krishi Janani Ponnapuram to serve farmers around Dharapuram
- June 9, 2016: Krishi Janani Boodhimadai Puthur to provide services around Gobi
The first months of a center’s life is focused on signing up new members. Each center relies heavily on their Advisor — a farmer who is well-known among the local community — to grow the membership. Our eventual goal is for each center to serve about 2,000–3,000 farmer-members. It will take thousands of phone calls and visits to get there. And, it all starts with a handful of members and calls in the first week.
The Game Begins
We met for our first staff retreat on June 30. The primary agenda was for the staff from the two centers, otherwise at quite a distance away, to get to know each other. We also wanted to share processes, compare notes, identify common procedures, and create templates for documents. The retreat was in the serene (and fragrant!) yoga hall in Sivalaya, a naturopathy center near Kangayam (check out Sivalaya’s facebook page). We could not have asked for a pleasanter surroundings to contemplate business. As with all such gatherings, we ran out of time, could not stick to or finish the agenda, ate well, shared contact info, had fun, etc. The surprise was what happened after we all got back home.
When we suggested that the centers should stay in touch with each other, we did not realize that we set off a contest for the membership drive.
Next thing we know, there is a full-fledged competition about which center will be the first to reach the magic number — 100.
I would love to tell you how we consciously made this happen. However, the first hint we got was when the centers started exhibiting enormous interest in their counterpart’s member numbers.
To our credit (we were awake after all! ;)), once we realized what is going on, the head office also jumped on the bandwagon and sorta, kinda egged them on. All for the greater good. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this:
- Boodhimadai Puthur Center signed up member #100 on July 12, reaching their goal in 34 days.
- Not to be left behind, Ponnapuram Center crossed that bar on July 14. They got there in 38 days.
The gamification nerd in me is quite pleased that we landed on something that is both fun and productive. A competition where we all win. A contest to emulate in the future. Plus, we can proudly state that the centers came up with this on their own. What more can one ask for?
Four more centers are slated to open in the next few months. Guess what is coming up then? :)
