Management lessons from Anna’s movement

It is not often that you can draw lessons in management from a mass public initiative. I went to Azad Maidan in Mumbai in August to join the thousands others in the fight against corruption. But the business analyst in me couldn’t help marvel at the management spectacle that was on display, which would put most business school case studies to shame.

Mission: Speaker after speaker made the mission of the movement crystal clear: it is a fight against corruption. Not land acquisition, not food inflation, but corruption. Team Anna was taking on the mantle of leadership of a cause for which demand was high but supply almost zero. To confirm a tangible outcome, a measurable and achievable success criteria was defined — passage of the Jan Lok Pal Bill. This laser-sharp focus enabled the organisers to march in step and direct all the firepower towards a single goal.

Lesson: Focus is a prerequisite for fighting a large more empowered competitor.

Operations: On the field, Eliyahu M Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints was being executed flawlessly to ensure that there were minimum bottlenecks. The help desks were placed near the entrances with enough space for people to queue for sending postcards to the prime minister. The entire process of taking the postcard (provided free), getting a pen (borrowed), writing into the postcard, filling the PM’s address (done by an organiser) and receiving a badge, took less than five minutes! Yes, I timed it. That’s called throughput time in MBAspeak, and five minutes would have clinched a medal. All this was done by five people manning a booth that saw thousands pouring in. That’s Lean Management for you.

Lesson: Queues can scare away people. Managing crowd should be priority.

Communication: Two boards were communicating the message. One had the slogan ‘Azaadi ki doosri ladai’. The second had listed the 11 major differences between the government’s version and Team Anna’s version of the bill. It was so simply written that a taxi driver turned and said, ‘Agar MP aur MLA ko vote khareedne ke liye nahi pakad sakte, toh kya faida?’ The board was serving its purpose.

Lesson: Keep your message simple, direct and catchy.

Enrollment: Subscription to the movement is easy. All you need is an ‘I am Anna’ topi and lots of patriotism. Most slogans are in Hinglish, India’s unrecognised national language. No registration is required. No need to learn jargons, or fear missing the fine print, or providing proof of your Indian citizenship, or accumulating loyalty points by fasting for a minimum number of hours to be considered a bronze, silver or gold patriot.
Lesson: Make it easy to sign up.

Marketing: The 4Ps marketing model was in application in its full spirit — Product (Gandhi topis), Price (affordable), Place (Azad Maidan, accessible), Promotion (viral marketing). The topi symbolised allegiance to the Gandhian form of dissent — you can shun the real Anna, topple him, starve him but his spirit will live on through an invisible line of succession. The cost, at Rs5, is just at the right price-point. Last and perhaps the most viral of all, was the ‘I am Anna’ slogan, which called out to all those uninvolved in the same manner as the messages you see during elections, ‘I voted, did you?’

Lesson: All the 4P’s must resonate with people. The result could be viral.

Customer service: For questions about the rallies, you don’t have to call a 1-800 number and be transferred via an IVR five times before speaking to a human voice. The time, location, intent of each rally was written out in tabular format with the name and mobile number of a regular, average, Indian youngster alongside.
Lesson: Don’t try to have your customer service put on a human face. Have a human instead.

Motivation: If you wondered how a make-do protest ground can engage people for so long, the power of context can help explain that. The picture of people fasting in white kurtas under Gandhi’s portrait in Azad Maidan made the movement patriotic, and emotional. The visible appeal converts into an adrenalin rush through your heart in seconds, and before you know it, you body has suddenly acquired energy to go on.

Lesson: Right ambience can tip the movement in your favor.
Like every management strategy, this one too has its limitations. But it can only be an example for those who follow, with the hope that they adopt it for a good cause and retain the values with which this strategy was created.

The writer is head of research, Gateway House, Indian Council on Global Relations, a Mumbai-based think tank