Citizen SBI

CITIZEN’ EXPEREINCE FROM SBLC, NUNGAMBAKKAM. CHENNAI

FROM FACILITATOR - S R RAGHUNATH

CITIZEN SHARING MOMENT – 10.12.2009

Module 1.2 of ‘Citizen SBI’ programme deals with ‘How to recognize a Citizen SBI?’ It talks about three points under this through a slide:

1. The person converts his / her roles in life into an opportunity of strengthening himself / herself and enabling others.
2. The person’s behavior is based on

i. Human Being – first

ii. Functional position – next

3. The person seeks to achieve excellence in all aspects.

At the end of the slide is a practice point for the participants where they are asked to identify one citizen SBI whom they knew and put down what they can learn from him / her. This has to be done initially individually and then in small groups. After the allotted time each group started sharing about one ‘Citizen SBI’ whose qualities they had admired and fondly remembered them. Some of those identified ‘Citizens’ were either serving in the Bank still and some had retired but left an indelible mark during their tenure in the Bank. The profile of the participants was a mixture of both seniors as well as juniors (recent recruits). While many of the seniors could relate to the identified ‘Citizens’ when their names were mentioned in the sharing, the juniors couldn’t do so as they were new to the Bank.

After four groups had shared, came the turn of the last group. One of the group members, Shri. Bhaskar, now working at LHO started sharing by telling the class that “Our group’s identified ‘Citizen SBI’ is none other than our facilitator Shri. S R Raghunath.” On listening to that the rest of the class started clapping loudly and I was really stunned and taken aback as I didn’t expect that. I asked the group ‘Are you sure? It can’t be.’ My doubt arose since I had no memory of having worked with any of the members of that group who had chosen my name and was perplexed and thought it could be a case of ‘mistaken identity’. Shri. Bhaskar seeing my predicament said “ Sir, you might have forgotten me. You had come to my previous branch in Pudukkottai for conducting a five day ‘Achieving Service Excellence’ programme in Nov, 2003 from State Bank Staff College, Hyderabad where you were a B S Faculty.” The moment this was mentioned I could breath easy as I then started remembering and recalling the visit to Pudukkottai branch to do an OD Intervention Programme designed by SBSC, Hyderabad –where I had the privilege of working as a Behavioural Science Faculty for more than five years.

Around that time in 2003 there was a major fraud in Pudukkottai branch involving the Branch Manager himself. That resulted in bad publicity for the Bank in that town resulting in low morale of the entire staff. The motivational level was very low and there was lack of trust amongst the staff. They had to work with suspicion all the time and in view of the slurred image among the public the staff were feeling very uneasy and stressed. The Circle Management at that time wanted an OD intervention programme to be done at that branch. The ‘Achieving Service Excellence’ progarmme contained a lot of B S inputs like -

UNRAVELLING THE POTENTIAL WITHIN

INDIVIDUAL VALUE CLARIFICATION

TEAM VALUE CLARIFICATION

PERCEPTIONS

COMMUNICATION SKILLS

COLLABORATION

ASSERTIVENESS TRAINING

ACTION PLANNING USING MIND JOGGERS

The programme would be conducted over five days in the evenings for 2 hours each day for all the staff members with very interesting activities, games and role plays to drive home the above concepts. Shri. Bhaskar said that due to the positive impact of the programme the motivational level of the staff got increased and they all regained the confidence and worked as a ‘Team’ to recover the lost glory of the branch, which they also did eventually. He recalled my role as a ‘facilitator’ of that OD intervention programme in Pudukkottai branch which helped the whole branch. I was really overwhelmed by that statement and was very much humbled by the clappings. I apologized to Shri. Bhaskar for not recogonizing him in this ‘Citizen SBI’ programme as almost six years had passed between then and now. This wonderful experience of being remembered by some body even after so many years gave me tremendous amount of joy and satisfaction. May be that is one of the advantages / privileges of being a ‘trainer’ of our SBLCs or a ‘faculty member’ of our Apex colleges, where you come into contact with hundreds of our colleague participants – all of whom you may not remember – but they never forget you and your contributions. I am really thankful to SBI for giving me this excellent opportunity to serve as a ‘facilitator’ for ‘Citizen SBI’ – even after my retirement. Today’s class room experience has further increased my own motivational level and there can’t be a greater recognition for me than this.

11.12.2009 S R Raghunath - Facilitator ( Chennai Circle)