Indranil Chakraborty

“Six years into my first job, when I was still a junior manager, I got into an argument with the head of business during dinner after the launch of a strategy. I was arguing that I didn’t believe one leg of the strategy would work, and I was forcefully trying to make the point. The next morning, a helpful colleague asked me why I was hell-bent on having what he called a ‘career limiting conversation’. But I think that conversation had a positive effect. Two weeks after that, I was chosen, by the same head of business, to lead a cross-functional team to work out plans to execute parts of the strategy. I don’t think that would have happened had the business head been offended.”
― Indranil Chakraborty, Stories at Work: Unlock the Secret to Business Storytelling

“Three Best Ways to Start a Speech The third best way to start a speech is by using an ‘imagine’ scenario. ‘Imagine a big explosion as you climb up 3000 ft. Imagine a plane full of smoke. Imagine an engine going clack, clack, clack. It sounds scary. Well, I had a unique seat that day. I was sitting on 1D.’ This is how Ric Elias started his TED talk—‘3 Things I Learned While My Plane Crashed’1—on the Hudson river landing. This true story was captured in an award-winning film, Sully, starring Tom Hanks. The second is to start with a statistic or factoid that shocks. Jamie Oliver, a British celebrity chef, restauranteur and activist who promotes healthy eating among children, started his TED Talk—‘Teach Every Child about Food’2—with ‘Sadly, in the next eighteen minutes when I do our chat, four Americans that are alive will be dead through the food that they eat.’ Given that the audience here was mainly American, there is no way that it didn’t get their attention. The absolutely best way to start a speech—no points for guessing—is with a story, one that is inextricably linked with the topic you are speaking on. ‘I was only four years old when I saw my mother load a washing machine for the very first time in her life. That was a great day for her. My mother and father had been saving money for years to be able to buy that machine”
― Indranil Chakraborty, Stories at Work: Unlock the Secret to Business Storytelling