10 - What they don’t teach at IIMA - Rama Bijapurkar on Choosing your Playground, Staying Relevant and Board Leadership

Rama has been a solo-advisor for several years now. She talks about how she has thought about her portfolio of work (she likens it to broadcasting multiple TV channels) and how that has evolved over time.

Rama talks about the parenting context in which she grew up and talks about how that has played a big role in shaping her journey till date.

Rama talks about how she ended up joining Market Research by accident after joining the Advertising world. She talks about the notion of “sliding doors” where small events along the way can have a significant impact on the overall trajectory and outcomes.

Rama talks about her attempts to work at the intersection of consumer and business understanding and discusses how she ended up going solo after a long stint in the corporate world. She also talks about how her role models (CK Prahalad, P. Chidambaram and Bhimsen Joshi) influenced her choice to go solo.

In a world exploding with choice, Barry Schwartz argues that consumers are often worse off due to the complexity in decision making and Fear of Missing Out. Rama talks about how one should navigate the world under such circumstances.

Rama talks about the notion of identifying and playing a game that only “you” know how to play, as espoused by Prof. Indira Parikh. She talks about how she has taken consumer insights and applied it to different contexts.

Rama talks about the various elements that go into the personal brand beyond the pure technical capability that one brings to the table. She describes the notion of “balance tilters” which has an implication on how the bundled proposition is perceived by the customer.

Rama talks about how she has prioritized performance in a role over trying to belong. She talks about some practical tactics she uses to increases the chances of being heard adequately while operating in a forum full of men.

Rama talks about how people who have led companies end up getting empathetic with the management (by default) of the companies where they sit on Boards. She talks about the need for people to have clarity on who they are accountable to.

Given how hard it is to get into places like IIMA, Rama talks about the mindset of the typical person that’s getting in and how that’s at odds with the climate at the workplace of today. She talks about how one could bridge the gap.

Rama talks about importance of navigational principles in a world where we are all headed in a direction where the destination is unclear. She relates this approach to how Google builds its products. She also underscores the importance of a core skill which wires us in a certain way, which gives us the ability to process the world around us with a certain frame.