Creating quizzes, treasure hunts, games and other fun activities for large corporations is a deadly serious business, finds Akhila Seetharaman.
For Arvind Krishnan, life really began when he decided that a full-time job with a dotcom wasn’t enough and enrolled in kalaripayattu and contemporary dance classes, each twice a week after work. “I realised that I wanted to have something to show for myself beyond the paper work,” said Krishnan. He soon discovered that a lot of other people were thinking along the same lines. It didn’t take long for this IIM graduate to connect the dots between leading a fuller life himself and building a business around the idea to help others do the same.
“The company Fuller Life was born seven years, two months and 20 days ago,” said Krishnan, confessing a predilection for numbers. The time was right. The idea of “employee engagement” was becoming popular among corporates. Krishnan and his team began organising on-campus classes for companies and went on to do “everything you find at a college fest” – from quizzes and games to sports and fashion shows for employees.
“It could be said that we are a bunch of kids who never grew up,” said Krishnan, dressed in jeans, a brown T-shirt and sneakers. On a regular day, he cycles six kilometres to get to his office in Victoria Layout, striding into the main room with its bright green wall around 9.30am. There’s more colour inside, with one room in blue that’s generally the retro music zone, and another with a bright orange wall, whose inhabitants prefer listening to trance .
Despite the brightly-coloured walls, however, the business of fun is dead serious. Monday mornings begin with meetings on things to do, complete with minutes that must be sent out to the team soon after. “Everybody has a to-do list, however unglamorous. If it’s not on the list, it doesn’t get done,” said Krishnan.
After the meeting, Krishnan spends time with each member of the team, going through their agenda for the week. Lunch is a kilometre-long walk to a darshini in Austin Town, during which he makes several phone calls. “I’m not much of a foodie, so it’s the same meal every day.” Apart from plotting growth and sales, talking to customers and forging alliances, his role as a chief executive officer includes fetching food for others in the office. “The CEO’s role is defined in the negative, and that often means doing things that nobody else is doing,” he said.
Most afternoons Krishnan and his teammates meet clients, most from the software industry, who present them with particular challenges.
“A job is no longer a matter of ‘you work, I pay’ – it has become a commodity, with employees as the customers,” said Krishnan. Adding fun elements to otherwise mundane lives of employees however isn’t an end in itself. “Recreation is the idiom, but there’s a deeper communication that’s the ultimate objective,” he said, sipping on his afternoon cup of herbal tea with honey. The challenge could be to communicate the values of a company in an interesting way, to help employees map their careers, or build team interaction. The tools used are creative – games, quizzes, treasure hunts, sports, clubs and even fitness.
“Here, most of us know how to set a quiz, or can tell a good treasure hunt from a bad one,” said Krishnan. “We’re still excited about putting together fun stuff – none of us is jaded.” Work at the office is interspersed with impromptu ball games, carom and even makeshift golf. Thursday afternoons are for classroom sessions in which team members take turns making presentation on general topics. “We call it the Learning Gene,” said Krishnan. “People have taken classes on topics as varied as aircrafts, the Human Genome Project and tigers in the wild.” Somewhat sheepishly, he admits that his presentations in the past have been on less-than-thrilling topics, like “making sense of financial reports”, and the recession.
“Ultimately, building a company is about combining hard things, like processes and soft things like people,” observed Krishnan. Helping individuals push their limits is part of the process.
“While getting an average person to run a marathon would be a big deal, getting someone to participate in a quiz for the first time, Krishnan believes, is equally significant. “We create ways to start small and do more.”
Source : Time Out Bengaluru ISSUE 1 Friday, July 23, 2010
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