2022 – BNI – The 3 Monkeys Handover Party

““It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”

Harry S Truman

I had served the chapter for 6 months as the Secretary Treasurer a few years ago, and that was quite a strenuous effort to try and helm odyssey through some rough waters.

Given my past experience being on the leadership table, I was a bit reluctant to take it up as “President” for the term April 2022 to September 2022.

The previous Leadership team of Mihir Asher, Deepak Jumani and Nirmal Kumar, had done a stellar job in steering Odyssey through the murky online waters, keeping everyone in check and in line with the protocols and guidelines of the BNI framework. It would be a tough act to follow after their term.

I was encouraged, cajoled, convinced, (brainwashed??) to take up the President role by many of the old and wise members of Odyssey. I was selected to be a part of the team along with Satheesh Gundappa as Vice President and Harinath Gopalaswamy as the Secretary.

While the “designations” are well defined in BNI framework, the beauty of the setup is that the onus on running the chapter is shared in equal parts with all three and hence, it was imperative the “all three” act as a single unit.

Harinath is a gentle soul, and Satheesh is a seasoned entrepreneur. I have always been the “backbencher” who would be caught for disrupting serious meetings! It was quite a learning for me to be “serious” and i suppose it was also a testing time for them, to be put on the same panel as me!

Initially i was skeptical about Satheesh as i had no major interaction with him in Odyssey. We only knew each other as a person representing a certain category of business. Harinath and me had had some interactions as Feature Presentation coordinator and other roles.

It was a tumultuous term. Satheesh and I got on like a house on fire. While Harinath is probably still coming to terms with “what is happening”!

We soon realised all three of us had the same idea towards how we wanted Odyssey as a chapter to evolve. We believed in first building relationships, and then business would follow.

Our vision was not a very lofty one, with what we thought to be easily achievable targets, but the central theme would be “F-U- N”. We were a bit tired with the online system, and we wanted to “break the monotony”

We formed a whatsapp group and for fun i just put in the name “the three monkeys” .. hoping to change it to something more serious later.. but the name stuck!

As a back bencher in Odyssey, i knew all the ways we could “cheat” or “not pay attention” during an online or in-person meeting

We disrupted every other meeting, to ensure members did not know who was going to be called when!

We recognised people at the drop of a hat.

We delegated a lot of the work / and roles to newer members.

This resulted in fresh ideas and a positive energy in the room. We ensured that we had something to celebrate at every meeting, and we ensured that at the end of most meetings there was CAKE!

We did a lot of bending the rules and took liberty with the chapter meetings all in the hope of making the meetings fun and something to look forward to. With innovative open networking sessions which would make you actually think. We opened and closed each meeting with a quote depicting one or the other member from the number of photos gathered from my collection over the last 10 years.

We took Odyssey for a hike, to an overnighter at a camp, and involved them in a CSR activity with Rotary.

We did all this, as we were really having a lot of fun. Without any major expectations our numbers were improving, more members were talking to each other, and sure enough there was a boost to the business between members.

The Last Leadership round-table of our term was in September 2022. We were pleasantly surprised to receive the award for “best performing chapter” for the region, having risen 21 places, from 30th To 9th, in a period of 5 months!!

We were ecstatic! and really proud of our achievement and the unexpected award and recognition!

All three of us realised that the only way we can continue to grow the chapter is to bring it back to an “in – person” meeting chapter. And the month of September we concentrated all our energies on in person meetings, culminating with a Poll for Odyssey to decide on whether they were ready to move to “in person” meetings.

Almost all of Odyssey preferred to move to In Person and that was the best “Gift” that this Leadership team could give back to the chapter!

Our final meeting we celebrated Odyssey’s 11th Birthday by calling on a bunch of odysseys alumni and also had both the Executive directors and the Senior director consultant come to the meeting.

We broke the “monotony” yet again by

1. Announcing the Handover at a Bala’s farm, instead of a regular hotel.
2. Gifting members with a Personalised Diary and a Custom made bottle etched with the terms that refleced the last 6 months of fun
3. Awarding the Role Coordinators with “Medals” instead of Trophies.

We did a beer and breezer event, asking members to bring their families and kids.

6 months of fun, chaos, work, business, family, and giving back. A lot of learning, on building teams, on keeping relations, on the power recognitions and trusting the system.

A few pictures from that beautiful event