Is communication an art, business, a profession, a cliché or a bore?

Answers can be many. It’s all of the above and or a few of the above, as questions and answers come these days. At the corporate context, let us spend some space discussing.
In the new millennium, for a fact, one cannot live without communicating. By this I do not at all mean communicating within breathing distance or between two rooms divided by a wall or a half-wall in modern office layouts.  I mean communicating over blocks of buildings, across state boundaries, across national boundaries, between organizations, within organizations divided by distance, and so on.

Organizations that communicate succeed. In contrast, organizations that do not foster communicating fail. Why is communicating so paramount?

• Communication prompts people to inspire from within.
• Communication inspires people to be creative.
• Communication removes inhibitions if nurtured in an unbounded environment.
• Regular communication leads to an enlightened group of people with cohesive attitudes.
• Two way communications promotes value integration within an organization.

 
Dear reader, I can go on adding to the list ad infinitum, but the idea is to encourage You to contribute to the theme by, yes, communicating.  In our world dominated by information technology and the innumerable gadgets that help us connect and communicate, the very theme is worth probing deep. As people become accustomed to living and working divided by distances, so has the emphasis on more effective communication. Economy rules corporate lives everywhere. As this blog is devoted and directed to people living and working in organized corporate environs, let me pool in my thoughts into a saucer of open discussion – as blogs often do.  How does communication improve performance?

Organizations that pick people with pronounced communication skills simply perform better than others.  This places focal weights on resumes where the corporate recruiter must have a nose for traits on our subject.  How can the recruiter do this?

The selection criteria can include professed qualifications on communication. The sad fact is, laying focus on subject-matter-tech-expertise alone, many organizations fall by the wayside just by ignoring this key recruitment must.  The one test that comes to my mind that recruiters may insist as qualifier is the widely recognized IELTS scores. The test sequence lays emphasis on all four aspects of our subject – Speaking, Writing, Listening and Reading.

While finding hires excelling in all four may be a tall challenge, one can, depending on the need, opt for particular skills from among the four. If the JD requires prolific content writing for instance, the recruiter must look for reading and listening skill strengths in an applicant apart from just the required writing traits.

How can Wayanad, the renowned hill station and tourist destination succeed by adopting communication at it's best ways?

As hinted in the home page blurb, the place must perennially attract the creative minded. The best non polluting industry or enterprises are the knowledge based ones such as IT, pure sciences and mathematics and statistics, I mean schools where advanced pure sciences are taught.  Organisations based in this beautiful district can  best utilize Communication channels at their very optimum levels to see success in their performance. More on this aspect, I will dwell in more depth in the coming days and weeks.

I would like to continue writing on the subject more. But I would equally love to receive input from my dear readers on the validity of the things I just mentioned.    

Healthcare scene worldwide undergoes changes at a pace never seen before.  Change is a word often tossed about in corporate management corridors. But large corporations, in context healthcare organizations, find change a daunting challenge. Larger the organization, tougher the challenge. Flexibility, personal freedom to change things, strategy planning, teams disappearing at the mere mention of a need to change – are some of the flipside fallouts in those organizations not ready to change.

Fear of change, technophobia to be precise, has been gripped by professions in medicine now more than ever before. Obamacare and related legislation in the US helped bring about change in the medial professional practice more effectively by force than by persuasion. Touted as a country where once people could not ‘’afford to fall ill’’ becomes suddenly patient friendly and doctors proudly proclaim ‘’our hospital does not turn patients away because they cannot pay’’. 
In bringing about change in such a colossal scale sweeping the country where corporate managements compete for leadership in revenue and reputation, healthcare information technology is the raison d'etre for triggering and guiding change although legislative moves can hasten the pace. A model of statutory regulation India can adopt as forced stimulus.

India  
Incredible as the country always is, what happens way across oceans and time zones begins to see echoes in this country. As competition is keen in this country too in the healthcare space, innovative individuals to large well known group of institutions scurry for prominence in getting attention and lavishing patronage on the factor once least concerned – the patient. The cared. Those hospitals or their parent organizations begin focusing on designing patient-centric features, turning to new directions which can take their care-providing locales into places where patients feel invited. With everything else in management sewn close-knit with Information Technology, patient care too becomes an easy fit in the care triangle, the doctor, hospital and the patient.

Change or Bust  
With IT to the rescue for almost every aspect in healthcare management, the winning feature for survival emerges in a concept and mode least expected in a dog eat dog world – interoperability! The social services sector to which patient care industry belongs more in the Indian context, healthcare is the one in which interoperable systems are most visible and have received the most publicity and public attention. This is because health information systems, specially, electronic health records (EHR), impact the public at large, in a country as India where healthcare targets range from the affluent to those classified below-the-poverty-line (BPL).  As electronic health records (EHR) become a paradigm of significance and lies as the core of the most important driver of interoperability, all healthcare institutions corporate or not-for-profit, will have to fall in line if patient-centric care is to be ultimately achieved and delivered using the best of professional channels. 

What is Interoperability?  
Interoperability simply means the ability of health information systems to work together within and across organizational boundaries in order to advance the effective delivery of healthcare for individuals and communities. Fundamentally interoperability is the ability of two or more systems or their components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged.

To sum up without proceeding to complex scenarios of an unfolding topic, a debate on the benefits of interoperability in the context of the widespread adoption of EHR within hospitals and across hospitals will be timely!The easy seamless patient friendly transition of information across media overriding info-tech variances might be a simple layman’s understanding of interoperability.

Amrita Institute for Medical Sciences, a tertiary level patient care hospital in Kochi, Kerala, India is a major institution where Amritatech has deployed a full scale end to end HL7 based architecture which fully supports interoperability. The continually upgraded Amrita Hospital Management System has end to end ERP functionality across the complex hospital domain. This pioneer implementation has triggered major medical institutions across India to adopt the field proven Amrita Health Informatics Suite AHIS.  The flagship work done by Amritatech’s  developers and architects, having won US patents for the core health informatics algorithms, will certainly hold the torchlight leading the way in India’s Healthcare Management systems  arena as time and technology move on.

Author works at Amrita Technologies in Marketing & Strategic Projects.

Again a gap from my side!

But never mind, I've been busy too. Let me come straight to the point. You know that I hinted about in a previous piece about how I am engaged with an e-commerce venture, in fact a labor of love, Promoted by a leading charity organization in India.

Now that venture is looking to aggressively source articles of merchandise from the rural locales in Kerala. The profile of a prospective sourcing point will be, roughly, it must be an organized Self Help Group, preferably from the tribal communities. The SHG must be a legal tax-tagged entity however it may enjoy tax advantages supported by the Governments in the state and at the Center. It must be producing merchandise using natural materials originating locally. Needless to stress, it must promote Eco-friendliness. From production till usage and disposal.

The SHG can seek assistance from the local branches of the charity organization for further information in areas of logistics management and packaging for delivery.

I am prompted to write this post for another reason. I was visiting an exhibition supported by the Kerala State Bamboo whatever, a few weeks ago at Cochin. There were quite a number of stalls from your district, all sponsored by the Uravu organization. Exchanged business cards with the on-hand coordinator. Promises too were exchanged. But nothing ensued!

I want to put an end to this lack of professionalism the district now is plagued with.

I understand people who can read this blog can respond too. The only gentle condition that I would add is that the people who are willing to respond and take the act forward, will have to be Wayanad based, best living there. Those who would love to preserve the pristine Nature in Wayanad. Those who would love to see Wayanad Winning. Thos who would love to Win With Wayanad! (WWW).

If, after going through this piece you feel convinced about the potential of your own piece of heaven on earth, do post a line of comment! I am all eyes and ears. Post pics of products you are able to source too!

Bye for now!



I have this input from Mr Balakrishnan.

I am as graphics designer, doing brochure, banner & book lay outs and others

Its more than a year since I have ventured into this space!!!

In short, its Writers' Block! I discovered I too have this 'sickness'.

How to cure this?   I am getting clue after clue from so many sources but the best yet was from my fave Seth Godin the Marketing Guru.

SUSDAT.

In fact the letters show the direction to the solution, the cure. many may not like it. But for sure this is the remedy. It means:

Show Up, Sit Down And Type.

The line of advice, or more to the truth - a command to yourself is a call to rework.

Did I follow the advice? Yeah, I am beginning to.  While I do that, my warm welcome to all my ole' friends on the web and also my new facebook acquaintances who for some reasons, must be love for the land I adore, came to the FB page and 'liked' it. When I last left the page after writing my first blog the FB page hardly had clocked 65 of those positive signals! But now it has climbed to a whopping 250 plus!!

Why & How?  

All I can say is that Murphy's law seems to be at work - what has to work, will work.

The one challenge people, I mean those serious with peculiar penchants such as passive traction, leverage and the like - have this thing ticking in their heads. Again, the MG's short burst of advice in the form of the title of this paragraph before this, did the trick. Or seems to be doing it.

What is (are) there to write about? Type about?

Wayanad, my own paradise of dreams? Plenty. But the sad part is that I was 'forced' out this paradise (like Lucifer?) by circumstances totally out of my control!

I have only sad news about the one ridiculous thing happening to that place! Tall buildings, condos seem to mar the beauty and the "cleanness" of the terrain! Although efforts are up to raise heckles of sorts peacefully but strongly, it is to be seen only by what the future holds as karma takes its course in hardbound rules!

In other words, Wayanad still beckons the responsible tourist, the visitor who would just want to spend his hard-earned weekend, or a family that would love to seek out a less visited resort or a home-stay and make much of the time at their disposal.

To the entrepreneur, large or small, this place is full of promise.

I will dwell on this topic at a later blog. 'Coz I have much to talk about.

For nearly a year and till now after my departure from Wayanad I've been in central Kerala most of the time.  The relationship between me and the organization I was attached to while in Wayanad began to scale to deeper understandings. And assignments.

Amrita Institutions and in general the organization that carries this name is not any more strange to people everywhere. Spirituality apart, the organization has made its mark in serving humanity addressing its various pain points as well as places where help should reach fast.

In times of climactic and seismic disasters, where famine stared at communities, when violence marred the landscape, this organization has flown men, medicine and yes, money where these were needed most. 

Ever to take heed of the trends of the times, this group has entered into a wide range of activities; healthcare, super-specialty medicare, medical education, industrial education, education in engineering  disciplines, applied sciences and technologies for instance.

My involvement in the public relations an marketing wings of the organization has finally landed me with equally challenging assignments of the web enabled aspects of the organization's endeavors.

In general the association makes me get closer and keener to the basic subtler facts of life quite the opposite of what the general multitudes are biased to believe. That it is a fact that we worship God while we serve the needy. The earlier one gets adequately sophisticated about the differentiation (read transition) between the ultra gross and the super subtle  the less cumbersome life will turn to be. The earlier one learns o jettison most of the mental garbage we have accustomed to accrue the earlier will be the discovery of the truthful and wholesomeness of this enterprise called Life.

In the course of the journey the association came to the organizing of an e-commerce venture. This one is different. The sourcing of merchandise as well as the management of the proceeds are not strictly profit oriented. Subsistive in nature, most of the operatives in the venture exist for the spiritual thrill of it. The articles of merchandise come directly from the artisans and craftsmen who were India's pride centuries ago. The proceeds after the sales cycle are channeled back to them to prop up a cottage industries culture and all its surrounding benefits.

If you feel moved with the narrative go shop at Amrita Store!