Nuggets On
reinventing self
“How do I stay relevant” is a question that all of us have to grapple with as we go through our respective journeys. Careers aren’t linear any more. Some of the leaders talk about how they managed to pivot during their journeys and significantly change trajectories.
Transitioning from Financial Services to Writing
So you have found your passion but undecided when and how to take the plunge? Hear Amish talk about how he transitioned to being a full time author from a banker. Discover how ‘pragmatism and positive vibes’ guided this transformation.
Transitioning from playing sport to commentating
Vijay reflects on how he transitioned to a new career as his family context changed and he approached the end of his active tennis career. He talks about how re-inventing yourself is often like throwing yourself in the deep end of the pool without knowing how to swim. Perspectives that could be relevant for leaders who are trying to re-invent themselves given significant shifts in the world of work and in personal circumstances.
Transitioning across Cultures
Having moved from the army setup to the corporate world then onto a government organization and back to the corporate world, Raghu has worn many hats in his professional life. All of these shifts have involved transitioning across cultures- some well established, others being established and yet others, desperately needing a change in culture! Hear Raghu talk about how he navigated these transitions to integrate into the organization he joined.
Transitioning from the Army to the Corporate world
Raghu talks about how we could think about leveraging the pool of leadership talent that the army produces. He compares India to markets such as US, where there have been generations of Corporate Leaders who spent their early years in the Armed Forces. This is not just about providing an education around some of the elements of business. It is a complete rewiring that needs to happen.
Oxford MBA-Consulting-Stand-up
Son of a tea planter, Papa CJ took the predictable path through school and college. Hear him walk us through his early struggles which led to him maneuvering into the challenging and non trivial transition from Oxford, to consulting, to doing 250 standup comedy shows in his first 10 months! Look out for tips on leveraging the asset of relationships that we all have.
Playing hockey to [email protected]
We often find ourselves in situations where the circumstances at work and on the personal front have changed significantly over time and there is a need to move onto the next innings. These are uncomfortable phases where there are no easy answers or approaches. Viren talks about how he took stock of life when he was playing hockey for India and the circumstances which led him to pursue an MBA at ISB.
Transitioning from Cummins to Microsoft
Having worked in Cummins and moved up the ladder, Ravi took up the challenge of being the CEO of Microsoft India at just 40 years of age and against the advice of family and friends. This was an industry he knew nothing about and a culture his friends thought he wouldn’t adapt to. How did he make this transition successful? What did he pay attention to? Hint: The anecdote of his interview with Bill Gates is very interesting.
Infosys to UIDAI - a 3D transition
Leadership Transitions can be a period of significant anxiety for several executives who are transitioning across contexts and domains. Nandan shares his insights around what he kept and what he changed when he transitioned across 3 dimensions when he moved from Infosys to UIDAI. He also talks about the power of commitment in such situations.
Re-inventing self and playing to potential
Given the VUCA world we live in, re-inventing oneself every now and then has become a necessity. Nandan talks about the mindset with which he has approached the various transitions he has had in his career and shares his perspective on what it takes for people to play to their potential.
Transitioning from Engineering to Photography
A lot of us "go with the flow" either because we want to conform to expectations, minimize risk or don’t listen to our inner voice. Atul talks about how he was an exceptional student in school and ended up in UDCT - one of the most prestigious places to study Chemical Engineering. He talks about the disconnect he experienced at that point and how he moved forward from there.
Being tenacious through the transition
Transitioning from one path to another is not easy. We often celebrate individuals after they have demonstrated success. But we often miss the iceberg that is below the sea surface. Atul talks about how he persisted through multiple hurdles when he transitioned from studying Chemical Engineering to pursue photography.
Entrepreneurial pursuits beyond photography
We often have to reinvent ourselves along the way as we go through our career. There are variuos trigger points where our priorities change and market opportunities change. Atul shares his perspectives around how he has managed to go beyond Photography to venture into new domains. He shares a piece of feedback that one of his friends provides which paved the way to a new possibility.
Successful Lawyer to Successful Entrepreneur
Zia talks about the journey from being a successful lawyer leading a small boutique with 15-20 people to heading a 400-person organization today. She talks about the trade-offs involved in terms of her time and cultural implications as the organization scales.
Shaping your playground
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.
Transitioning from Advertising to the Tech world
KV Sridhar (Pops) talks about how he thought about the move from the world of Advertising to the world of Technology. He also speaks about the notion of staying relevant in the context of children and consumers and how one needs to be in sync with them to be able to connect with them.
Transitioning from Healthcare to Mythology
Devdutt talks about his journey after graduating with a degree in medicine. He mentions that he didn’t have any childhood inclination in Mythology and he first used the word Mythology in a deliberate sense somewhere in the 1990s. He talks about how he started gravitating towards mythology in an organic fashion including writing several books and the TED talk in 2009. He mentions that he was in the Pharma industry till about 2007 after which he became the Chief Belief Officer at Future Group and possibly committed to Mythology as a career.
Transitioning from Banking to PE
Amit talks about how he thought about the transition from the world of Investment Banking to Private Equity. He talks about taking stock of life after reaching the heights of the Investment Banking profession and also seeking more time to devote to some of the other elements in his life such as Social Impact.
Choosing career direction post CRISIL
Roopa talks about how she took stock of options after her successful run in CRISIL. She talks about the process she went through to first eliminate what options may not make sense for her before she ended up choosing to join Omidyar Network. She talks about having informal discussions with ~45 people over a 9 month period to get directional clarity on what might make sense for her.
Flexing leadership style at Omidyar Network
Roopa talks about how she had to adjust her leadership style when she moved from leading a team of 4000 plus people in CRISIL to Omidyar Network which had about 150 people globally and about 15-20 people in India. She discusses the power of listening, learning and tapping into the internal network to come upto speed and build credibility with the organization.
Early career choices - Law, Journalism, Teaching and Writing
Vinay talks about how he has thought about his career choices. He speaks about the fact that after his 12th, he could have possibly become an architect instead of a Lawyer. He also talks about his thinking at each of the transition points where he made critical choices (Law versus Architecture, Law to Journalism, Journalism to study PhD in Politics). He also talks about how he thinks more about the quality of the product he creates with his diverse backgrounds than sweat about the notion of his identity.
Staying relevant through transitions
Vinay talks about how Narasimha Rao stayed relevant through the various transitions that he went through in his journey. He also talks about how he learns and grows when he did not gets a transition wrong. He also talks about how Narasimha Rao re-invented himself when Congress moved from the Indira Gandhi phase to the Rajiv Gandhi where the core group had several people from an Oxbridge background (far from Narasimha Rao’s comfort zone).
Picking the first "mountain" to climb
Deepa talks about how she took charge of life and how she became a restauranteur and in seven years, had built a flourishing business giving her financial independence. She then talks about her passion for biking and how she wanted to create records on a bike to ensure that her voice is heard and for her to be able to have an impact on Society.
Making Directional Choices
Jayashri talks about how she made choices along the way, more specifically, the choice between going deep into Carnatic music versus collaborating with different art forms. She also speaks about how she has learnt from collaborating with other artists and how that has improved her core art form – Carnatic Music
Reinventing oneself at 45
Arun talks about how he was a cross-roads when he had to move from a successful stint as an executive in Tata Motors to a role as a consultant with Arthur D Little in the United States. He talks about the circumstances in which he took the decision (including a nudge from JRD Tata) and how he had to adjust his style to be effective in a new professional and cultural context. It is not very often that you see a leader transition from being a Business Leader to a Business Consultant.
Transitioning to solo-preneurship
Indranil talks about his challenges in transmitting some of the elements of the credo he had crafted as the head of Marketing and Strategy of his organization. He underscores the risks of abstraction when we craft values such as honesty, excellence, customer-delight etc. and adorn the walls. He takes the example of a story to illustrate the point “no room for ordinary” a value they were trying to live in his company. He goes on to share how he transitioned to the world of story-telling and reflects on some of his early lessons in solo-preneurship.
More from Indranil Chakraborty
Strategy and Careers
Tarun talks about developments in the field of Strategy and maps that to how individuals should think about their careers. He acknowledges the influence of Prof. Ben Jones (of Northwestern University) in shaping his thinking here. He talks about the fact that the world of knowledge is growing exponentially and we will know less and less (as a percentage) of what is to be known. He discusses how people should think about specialization and collaboration in this context and shares his perspective on the mind-set with which we should march into the future that can feel overwhelming.
Taking the entrepreneurial plunge
Falguni speaks about the phase of life when she decided to become and entrepreneur after 25+ years post IIMA and after a successful run at Kotak. She also speaks about other businesses she considered (Professionalizing Nursing Homes, Creating a Market for second homes to name a couple) before proceeding with building out Nykaa.
Athlete to Coach to Entrepreneur
Matt speaks about the transition from being a Triathlete to being a Coach and to being a Business Owner. He speaks about how he thought about the choices at each of these transition points and what made him go down this path.
Acting your way to new thinking
Herminia speaks about the criticality of not over-thinking around transitions and urges us to take actions which gives us new “material” for us to reflect on and move forward. She specifically urges us to craft experiments (try new activities and roles), shifting connections (find doors into new worlds) and making sense to rework our story.
Experimenting with different pathways
Herminia speaks about the criticality of sticking to your core and playing to your strengths but at the same time finding a way you can experiment and try different experiences on the edges. She speaks about how you need to build a bridge into a new possibility. Has parallels with the journey of Papa CJ and Amish Tripathi.
The perils of foreclosure
Herminia speaks about two dimensions – commitment and exploration – when leaders go through a transition. She speaks about how there is a tendency for leaders to commit to something too early and how that could lead to a suboptimal solution because they haven’t considered enough possibilities before they make a decision.
Transitioning from well-paying time-greedy careers
Herminia speaks about the specific challenges facing professionals who are in time-greedy and identity-consuming careers. She provides some thought-starters for those professionals to take charge of the narrative and steer their journeys in line with their evolving life context.
Physical trainer to Leadership Coach
Paddy speaks about the journey and the various steps he took as he moved from being the fitness trainer for the South African cricket team between 1994 and 1998 to becoming the Strategic Leadership and Mental Conditioning Coach (working closely with Gary Kirsten) of the Indian Cricket team between 2008 and 2011 (helping them win the World Cup in 2011).
Self-awareness during career transitions
Tasha speaks about how the nature of feedback that one seeks during a transition is often much deeper than the kind of feedback in an organizational context. Transitions give us an opportunity to examine ourselves more fundamentally (values that matter to us, what we are shooting for, the kind of life we are trying to design etc). She speaks about self-awareness unicorns referring to “alarm clock events” in their life that got them to examine several of the assumptions they made in life.
Sports to Business to Coaching
Alan speaks about Bill Campbell’s journey and the various transitions he has been through – from being a Football Coach to becoming a Business Executive to Leadership Coaching where he worked with several luminaries such as Steve Jobs, Founders of Google, Eric Schmidt, Sheryl Sandberg, Al Gore. He also speaks about how Bill transitioned from one canvas to another and what stayed the same across these stints.
Keeping the identity small
James speaks about how we sometimes get crippled or limited by the identity we carry about ourselves. He makes the case for a smaller identity for us to evaluate new possibilities and walk down new pathways and reinvent ourselves.
Mid-life: a double whammy
Lynda speaks about the kinds of issues that show up in mid-life. She speaks about how individuals at mid-life are grappling with two transitions – one is the mid-life itself. The other is the fundamental social change driven by technology. She speaks about how individuals in mid-life can navigate this passage of play.
The second transition - What do we want to become?
Jennifer speaks about the second transition that couples often go through in their journey. The primary question that each member of the couple is grappling with is often around “what do we want to become”. She speaks about how couples can go beyond the “zero sum” discussions around the topic (I win, you lose or vice versa) to developing more of a positive sum mindset.
More from Jennifer Petriglieri
Securing the base for the other to explore
Jennifer speaks about the notion of a mutual secure base relationship and how individuals can enable their spouse to find their “sweet spot”. She speaks about the notion of how we could provide support but layer on top of that a gentle kick away from the comfort zone and be arm’s length about it. Both these elements are quite counter-intuitive to how a lot of people operate. She also speaks about the criticality of relational resilience that is required to weather this phase where there could be a high incidence of divorce.
More from Jennifer Petriglieri
The journey till date
Raj speaks about his journey to becoming a researcher of happiness. He speaks about how he thought about his journey after graduating from IIM Calcutta and how he came to the US. He also speaks about how he started out with a deep interest in marketing but has gravitated towards teaching happiness over a period of time.
Stages of human development
Thank you for listening. For more content across 50+ speakers, 500+ nuggets painstakingly curated across 65 odd themes, please visit playtopotential.com. You can also find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcast Player and most other podcast platforms.
More from Jennifer Garvey Berger
Transitions in mid-life
Jennifer speaks at length about Stage 3 (Socialized mind) and Stage 4 (Self-authored mind) as these two account for ~90% of the adults in the world. She also speaks about the notion of liminality and the connection with transitioning across these two stages. Suffice it to say that this is not easy but this transition requires years of commitment to firmly move from one space to the other.
More from Jennifer Garvey Berger
Trap 5 - Shackled by the past
Jennifer speaks about the tendency we all have to over-estimate the evolution we have had till date and underestimate the evolution that is possible from here on in our lives. She says that a 30 year old will think that 20-30 was a period of tumultuous change and 30s is likely to be smoother. The same person 10 years later is likely to say that 30-40 was transformative but 40s would be a cake walk. She speaks about why this might be the case.
More from Jennifer Garvey Berger
Running your career like a marathon
RG speaks about how he has thought about his career like a marathoner. He speaks about all of us having to refire rather than retire. He uses the metaphor of Lego to state that each one of us like a Lego piece with its unique characteristics and we are looking for a hole in the sky where we could fit in. And he suggests that we keep looking (as Steve Jobs would say) till find a snug fit and we find ourselves in flow.
The mid-life angst
Atul speaks about his career in building out the IT business with his brother. He speaks about how he had gotten to a point where he was seeing good commercial success in the business but it was wearing him down and he didn’t quite have the mojo for the business that he had when he set out with his brother. He speaks about his desire to try something new that led him to trying DJing and Bartending!
Seeds of a career in Stand up
Atul speaks about how he got started in his career in Stand up. He traces it back to a New Year Resolution he made on 1 Jan 2012 that he would do something to change his life and sign up for the first open mic that would come his way. After having tried DJing and Bartending, he speaks about how he nervously approached the first performance he gave with absolutely no prior background in Stand up or any Public Speaking in his childhood.
Discovering our distinctiveness
Whitney speaks about how we all need to tune into our “super-power” and discover our strengths and use that as a starting point to discover our next S curve. She speaks about the fact that we are often quite blind to what our strengths are and have the tendency to shrug off complements when we get them. She suggests some ideas on how we can discover our strengths.
Leaning into constraints
Whitney speaks about how sometimes constraints bring out the best in us and drive us to innovate – at some level, I guess that is the whole raison d’etre of Jugaad innovation. She speaks about the need for an optimal number of constraints that bring out the best in us. She urges to leverage constraints as a tool of creation to gain the momentum up the curve.
Rethinking our metrics
Whitney speaks about how we need to often rethink the metrics with which we need to measure ourselves as go from one S curve to another. Very often we are hardwired to think about metrics in a certain way and we often become a slave of that wiring/habit leading to disconnect with what we measure when we move from one S curve to another
Eklavya to GiveIndia
Venkat speaks about how a trip to the US when he was Eklavya opened his minds to the involvement of the citizens in the running of some of the elements. He specifically speaks about an experience during one of the meetings with a school in Burlington where he saw segments of the citizen community come together to solve a societal problem. That was the seed of an idea that eventually led him to start GiveIndia, a movement to galvanize philanthropy in India.
Having career markers at 30 and 45
Ashish speaks about how he had told himself that he would like to turn entrepreneur when he is 30 and do something else when he is 45. He speaks about how these markers influenced the way he made choices and spent his time and attention when he graduated at Harvard Business School and beyond.
Potential pathways post ChrysCapital
Ashish speaks about the different pathways he considered at the point of leaving ChrysCapital. He speaks about his interest in academia and a desire to become a Professor in a University or a Teacher in a school. He also speaks about a potential option of running an NGO or the Indian operations of an established Foundation. He speaks about how he eventually zeroed in on undertaking educational system reform through Central Square Foundation and how the Ashoka University project came about.
Planting seeds for the future
Ashish speaks about how he is seeding some initiatives that could possibly prove to be pathways for him in a few years. He speaks about his interest in Air Quality, China and Healthcare and how some of these experiments might pave the path for his next innings.
Reinventing self within McKinsey
Ramesh speaks about how he has stayed relevant over the 26 years in the Firm and how he has taken on different responsibilities to align his professional pursuits with his personal passion.
Personal Board of Advisors
Ramesh shares his perspectives around why he has chosen to stay with McKinsey. He also speaks about an informal Board of advisors/mentors that he has architected to stay relevant and to stay interested and interesting in the world.
Three phases of a transition
Bruce speaks about the three stages of a transition (the long goodbye, the messy middle and the new beginning). He goes onto say that each one of us has a super-power in one of these three and are likely to be good at coping with that stage of the transition.
Taking a leap of faith
Bruce speaks about the criticality of taking the plunge after shedding our past to explore new possibilities. He links it to what we see in some of the greatest stories that have been told across religions. He goes onto say that growth actually occurs when we feel the discomfort when we go through change, much like how we build muscle when we go to a gym.
Journey and transitions till date
Sanjeev and Hari speak about their respective journeys and talk about how they transitioned from one orbit to another. Sanjeev speaks about his journey from the corporate world to entrepreneurship at Daksh to investing in Helion and Fundamentum. Hari speaks about his journey from engineering in Tata Steel to how he serendipitously ended up at Daksh and how that has taken him to head HR at Bigbasket and on a wider note, engage with the start-up ecosystem.
Cancer and life-choices
Dan speaks about how being diagnosed with Stage 4 Lymphoma brought him close to death and how that clarified a lot of things for him. He speaks about a phenomenan called “transience aversion” in that context and speaks about how he moved forward with purpose coming out of that event.
Developing directional clarity
Dan speaks about how we can think about our strengths when we are at an inflection point. He goes on to say that recognizing our strengths is not about being stuck to the past but really about stretching into new areas that could help us lead a more authentic life and sometimes cues for this could come from domains outside of work.
Engaging different parts of our brain
Dan speaks about engaging different parts of our brain in expressing ourself. He speaks about how he uses LEGO Serious Play to have participants in his course express themselves in the context of their journeys and the future they are trying to create for themselves.
Pausing after success
Lloyd speaks about hitting the pause button in 1993 when he got to a position of success and influence. He also speaks about how he manages to build some deep reflection time in the middle of his busy life. He goes on to reflect on the words from the song by Michael Card - it's hard to imagine the freedom we find from the things we leave behind.
