Rajat Gupta

Generating options amidst political constraints

Jay talks about how he has grown as a politician in all these years. He also talks about Track II dialogues where he is active. These are informal back-channels which can be tremendously helpful in improving the communication and improving one’s understanding of the others’ point of view.

Influencing an ecosystem

Jay discusses he thinks about picking ideas to champion and talks about how you could get a pulse of the acceptance of the idea. He goes on to talk about the criticality of setting up feedback loops for you to get a pulse of the real public sentiment.

Steering by listening

Arun discusses his definition of a leader – “she or he who takes the first steps towards something that she or he deeply cares about and in ways that others wish to follow”. He talks about the criticality of listening to what other people care about as a key element of building engagement and followership.

Influencing without authority

Ambi talks about his key insight around what it takes to influence clients. Given Advertising is a domain where there is arguably a lot of possible subjectivity, it is an interesting canvas to see how advisors influence clients. Ambi shares that it is often more about the intent and then followed by the content.

Managing stakeholder expectations

Stew speaks about the criticality of unearthing what the stakeholders really want and solving for it. He suggests that we should go past what they state as positions and unearth their real expectations while having these conversations. He also speaks about the criticality of caring for self before caring for others. He compares this to a change management initiative and suggests that one needs to be artfully political while driving changes through the system.

Machines - Decision Makers or Enablers?

Kartik speaks about how we should think about using algorithms for decision making versus decisions support. He urges to think about machines as augmenting and not substituting human capability. He speaks about how we should consider the extent of consequences and social implications to think about how we leverage the power of the machines.

Warrior to diplomat

Michael speaks about the criticality of leaders transitioning from a competitive mindset to a collaborative mindset where they focus on building alliances and identify opportunities for cross-company collaboration, often even reaching out to rivals to co-create opportunities for the organization.

Mapping the influence landscape

Michael speaks about the criticality of navigating the influence landscape especially when one gets into a Corporate Diplomacy challenge where things get done more through influence than through authority. To get things done, one needs to work through the network of allies that one has in the system. Michael speaks about some of the elements of transition involved here and talks about why engineers often struggle with this.