Latest / ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence / 2025 Recap Episode - 12 Questions Heading into 2026

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2025 Recap Episode - 12 Questions Heading into 2026 · ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_06: How do you stay relevant when technology, markets, and human behavior keep shifting?
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_06: As AI systems get better at pattern recognition, where should humans stop relying on intuition and where should they double down on it?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_13: So when I look at your uh you know education, you are fairly successful, right?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_13: Because you've been in IIT, you've gone to the US, you've studied there.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_13: So if I put it from a the traditional template of education, whatever was the education system, you've been very, very successful, right?
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_13: So therefore, given the fact that you are you're successful in whatever templates that are currently running today, right?
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_13: Uh, and the template that you are now looking to change as a part of Community learning that you have, uh, how do you see it different?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_13: And what do you see are the challenges?
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_13: Because at one end you have been so successful in the old template, right?
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_13: If you are not somebody who said, Oh, I I'm a dropout, and you know, I I did not go to the school.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_13: Uh you know, you've been fairly really successful in the old template, right?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_13: If I were to call call it the current template, right?
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_13: So, what does that mean to what you're doing today?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_13: Because that's work very well, right?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_13: So, therefore, how does it change given the new uh framework that you are building?
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_14: I think that's a great tragedy of our education system that someone who went down that path could be considered a success.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_14: So I was very successful at one thing, which was I think cracking exams and doing well in in uh standardized exams.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_14: And that did get me quite the distance, but it also shielded me from real world and reality for a very long time, almost 30 years.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_14: And I mean, I almost have to laugh or maybe cry and look back and say that we have a system that shields you from the real world, creates a very artificial world where the things that matter are very, very different from what matters in the real world, right?
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_14: So your exams don't matter at all in the real world, right?
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_14: What matters is whether you can get the job done.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_14: Uh our education system started off as a proxy for getting the job done, but that was in the industrial age.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_14: And the real world has evolved and moved on very quickly, but our in the world of education is not.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_14: And it's it's I think very sad that we still have the system where you know, so tens of lakhs of Indians go through these competitive treadmills, whether it's IIT, IAS, spending four, five years, kid start as young as six, going through all of that.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_14: Of course, when you go through that, you know, you come up with any test, you will have people who excel at that who probably have other abilities as well.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_14: And I don't think it's a merit of the system itself, it's just that you you you're just literally dumping tens of millions of people through a filter, and you're going to get someone out of it.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_14: You are you are going to get true positives no matter what.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_14: Um yeah, so the system, I think, having gone through that, having been on the inside and seeing very closely what it can and cannot do, really helped me realize that education, especially now, is the conventional system that we have is very separate from what is required for the new world.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_14: The new world values something else, it requires it requires us to understand and be comfortable with ambiguity, with uh chaos, even, with understanding how to make decisions, how to work in that.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_14: Whereas the schooling system that we have is very deterministic.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_14: It teaches you.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_14: And in my case, you know, having gone through these multiple steps, at least for the first 25-30 years of my life, was telling me that you know life comes as a series of neatly defined packaged problems, and all you have to do is solve that and you cracked it in life, which is absolutely not the case.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_14: And I think having gone through that, then having spent 30 years within that system, I say 30 because I mean while the PhD does open you up to some of the ambiguities, you're still within academia.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_14: And academia is still far removed from the from the real world.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_14: So having gone through that and then finally exiting that and then saying, oh my god, the real world is nothing like the model or at least the distant model we have there, that really opened up my eyes.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_14: So I think even like even before we had kids, there was this vague notion that uh you know we we can't have this education system.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_14: But of course, I didn't really have any uh skin in the game, but after after kids that became especially uh a pressing problem.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_14: So I guess I think that the being on the inside really helped see the flaws up to us.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_06: At what point does sticking with a familiar identity start holding back long-term growth?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_13: So when you say uh work for India and when you're inspired by such people, uh one thing that I wanted to uh ask you is what made them work for India and what was the inspiration behind doing this?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_13: Because you can go outside India and do many things, right?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_13: Uh so what made them do it, and what did you see as uh say the character and discipline that they brought in and the passion and purpose that they had in their lives to inspire somebody like you?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_12: Again, again, a terrific question in the sense that it's very difficult to answer this in a sentence, but I'll try.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_12: Um, people like uh Dr.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_12: Manjusharma, Professor Padmanavan, Dr.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_12: Suru uh were forward thinkers, and that's what I believe this country needs.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_12: You have to think what the country will need 20 years down the line or 30 years down the line, and they were already thinking what or where the country will be in 2047.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_12: That is what the honorable prime minister is now uh talking every day about to different ministries in the sense that we figure out where we want to be.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_12: Do we want to be as a developing nation or do we want to be a developed nation?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_12: And I guess that put these people apart because they were thinking how we could rid India of all the imports.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_12: You know, that currently India pays, you know, at this moment we pay about 90,000 crores to import medical devices.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_12: Uh, it was more than a lakh crore, and it was more than 90% of all medical devices when I started my career.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_12: It has come down.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_12: Maybe in the next 20 years, because of the progressive thinking of these people, it can come down a significant amount.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_12: What put these people apart was their willingness to train younger faculty and younger people in the nation.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_12: See, this is something that I have rarely seen in people.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_12: Uh, and I'll you know, I'll I hope people forgive me for saying this, but rarely you know, I have seen in senior uh very successful people where they tend not to help the younger generation.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_12: And I have seen that being opposite in these people, and of course, there was Professor Bhaan, you know, who was a secretary of DBT when I joined the country.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_12: Many people you know at the at those times who have made significant impact in this country, and very recently, Professor Ashutos Sharma, who just got the Padmashri, you know, people like them have helped so many people in their career, have made the career of so many of us, that all of us are now in tune with one vision, which is a Vik Sid Bharat.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_12: And how do we get there?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_12: Is something that all of us can contribute.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_12: And this is what I keep uh going to places everywhere around the country and saying only one thing.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_12: If I can do it, sitting in a small lab like mine, with a very uh simple education like mine, uh, not even an IITN, how can people sitting in all these different places in India make a difference?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_06: In a world where content creation is becoming cheap and abundant, what still differentiates great creators from average ones?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_13: So uh as a techie, when you move into the film business, uh one of the things that uh the film business comes with is uh not everybody is employed, you know, there's no uh discipline to come and you know check in at 8 a.m.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_13: in the morning.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_13: Um so uh what are the learnings that you had out of that industry uh which uh you believe uh where's the flow state that you talk about?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_05: You know what?
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_05: I'm so glad you asked that question.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_05: That was perfectly teed up.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you for saying that because this is one of the real I uh you know they talk about when you're a fish, you don't really understand the concept of water because you're like it just is, right?
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_05: You're not like I'm in water, I'm not in water, because you're always in water.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_05: One of the things that I learned when I got back into tech after my film career was in tech when the pandemic happened and people had to confront, oh, we can't sit next to each other, we might get each other sick, right?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_05: We're going to be working from home or working remotely.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_05: One of the things I noticed was in my film career, film already for decades has had the full spectrum of work from home, hybrid work, in-person work.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_05: And the way that happens in film is most films, and I did a couple TV shows with mainly film, most films begin remote.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_05: They are writers, creators sitting alone in their apartments, their homes, or in coffee shops or something like that for days or months at a time working on something.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_05: And then once it gets the project gets to a certain point, you start to have meetings, and maybe there's like a studio executive like myself interested.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_05: So maybe you have a meeting every week or two weeks where you sit, right?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_05: And it starts to become that rhythm.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_05: And then as the project gains momentum, you set up a production office and you probably go in a couple days a week, and suddenly there's a production designer there designing.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_05: Well, let me tell you what this looks like, you know, and you have a director and you have, you know, costumers, you know, what would these people wear?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_05: And you start to have that rhythm of like, well, it's hybrid.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_05: Like I'm I'm writing at home because we're still doing script notes, you know, we're trying to get Swami to star, but he has notes, so I have to rewrite his role, right?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_05: So you're doing that as a writer, and then you're also spending a couple of days in the office answering questions because people are talking about, you know, what did you imagine here?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_05: The director wants to dig in with you, and then you're on set.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_05: It is completely synchronous, all day long, you know, like RTO, here I am, for several months, right?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, you couldn't be more on in the office than than that.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_05: And then as you go into post-production, it goes back to there's an editor alone in you know a room with an you know an editing setup, and people come in and out of that thing until finally the movie's kind of done, and then you're just going to screenings and and that whole spectrum exists in film.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_05: And I was like, wow, there's a great template for how things you know could work here.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_05: That maybe not a lot of other tech CEOs had that experience being a senior executive at film studios or having been a producer in film.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_05: So that was really applicable to me to see what do you do at each stage of that remote to hybrid to in-person to hybrid to remote that keeps the team feeling energized and together and gives enough time for deep work.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_05: Because let's be honest, when you're on set and it's$125,000 a day to be on set, you're not sitting in your trailer doing deep work for three hours.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_05: You know, the time for that is really hard.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_05: It's the early days when you're sitting there going, like, you know, if you and I were writing a script together, that you and I would cloister somewhere and say, Oh, what happens next?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_05: What do you think should happen next?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_05: And I'll tell you, there are a number of writers I worked with that had very specific ways in which they did their Dorgan places.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_05: Like, for example, uh, when we did Independence Day, uh Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, with whom I'd started my first company uh when I was doing visual effects, they had this house down in Puerto Rico.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_05: Um, sorry, in Puerto Varta, where they loved to write.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_05: And that was like their special place.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_05: And they would go down there and it was really hard to reach them, and they could do deep work, right?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_05: They would go write the entire movie there to the point where when they were going to write, I think it was Godzilla, that house that they would rent had been rented out to someone else.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_05: And Roland called his his uh agent, his um his attorney, and said, just buy the house.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_05: Just buy the house.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_05: I need to go down there with Dean.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_05: We have to write this.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_05: I don't care.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_05: Just get me that house.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_05: And he did.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_05: He bought the house and became you know his Puerto Vallarta house.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_05: Um, same thing with like Alex and Bob, Alex Kurtz and Bob Orsi.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_05: Amazing guys I worked with for four years.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_05: And you know, they did Transformers One and Two, Mission Impossible Three, Fringe, the TV show, Star Trek, you know, all this stuff.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_05: And they would go, we had an office at DreamWorks, they would go across the street and have their assistant rent them a hotel room at the Universal Hilton, and they would go there and just not answer the phone, just take the phone off the hook and sit there in this hotel room for several months and write the next Transformers movie.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_05: And that was their way of doing deep work, just saying in this period of time, it is complete, it's so remote, we're not even gonna talk to anyone.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_05: So I loved seeing that.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_05: I loved seeing that.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_05: And I try to respect now more the creative process that I've seen how you know deep work works.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_06: If we're likely to work longer lives, what beliefs about career pacing need to change first?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_13: Let's start with work because the way organization uh look at uh workforce today, uh given longevity, there's going to be fundamental changes that they even need to rethink about employees and employability, right?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_13: So, therefore, can you talk about that?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, so um you know so at the let me start with the extreme end.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_08: So you heard of DAOs, DAOs, and all that, right?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_08: Distributed autonomous organizations.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_08: So you have that level of uh disparate way of working or versus the traditional corporate way that exists today.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_08: My view is the current big organizations are going to struggle with readjusting because to change them is more difficult than starting a new company and having the new company do something differently.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_08: So I actually think this is again my view, that we'll have as time goes, we'll have newer companies and newer models come up, then existing companies and existing models changing to adapt to this new way of working.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_08: And and the example is like you know, when I go talk to people, and it's a simple example.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_08: When I talk to organizations who say, look, can you create roles for experts who want to work part-time?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_08: The current HR systems are so ingrained where to move one piece, you have to move ten other pieces.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_08: Right?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_08: Oh, you know, our org chart doesn't have this.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_08: If someone comes, who will they report to?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_08: How will we pay them?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_08: How will we hand over if they only work two days and the other three days someone else works?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_08: So I think you know it's like how India bypassed um you know landlines in a whole way to actually get to digital because you know, the yes, we had landlines, yes, we had the weights, but you know, at the end we still progress much more on telecom than the uh than the US did, for example.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_08: So my view is exactly um there will be a significant shift in newer age companies adapting to this new way of work as opposed to current big companies changing it.
• 16:30
  unknown: Right?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_08: So, and I can see that in my own startup, the way we work is very different from how how I work in the traditional companies.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_08: We don't have any set time of coming in or leaving.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_08: There's a lot more flexibility on on leave and when people come, when they work, what they do.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_08: I think we have um we have rituals.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_10: Right?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_08: So, for example, a Friday lunch ritual, everybody shows up, right?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_08: So I actually think you know organizations will become ritual-based to bring people together, but at the same time adapting to what individuals need and how they want to work.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_08: So the role of HR shifts, the role of expertise shifts, the role of management shifts.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_08: Then you are now, and and by the good part is during COVID, we've actually seen a lot of this happen already.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_08: So the the base has been set of what is possible that you can get productive organizations without actually having people there.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_08: Now, of course, you know, there are these questions around culture and this and that, and um, so again, the change will be and and now all we approach it from an organization.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_08: Organizations are coming to us saying, look, we want 10% of our workforce as flexible workforce.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_08: I I have had this is a signal, this is like a 40 billion dollar company that we are working with, which has told us in measuring terms saying 10% of our staff, senior staff, should be on flexible payroll, which means they can work when they want, plus we can fire them when we want.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_08: So this whole notion of you know, and again, so that is going to change.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_08: Um, the other thing which we are already seeing, right?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_08: The ability of older people to continue working has increased and will continue to increase.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_08: Um, there are many more people who are older or post-retirement who want to continue working, then there are roles for those people today.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_08: So I think there is also that shift of desire to continue working.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_08: Now, whether the desire is for continuing to make money, and I have a view there as well, I actually think the desire is to stay relevant and be respected.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_08: Right?
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_08: And to stay relevant, which then you know talks about learn and we'll talk about that, but there will be pockets.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, right now, even in my friend circle, people talking about, you know, I wish I had taken you know 10 years off when my kids were between 8 and 18.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_08: Right?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_08: Because that's the time I want to spend with them, because after 18 they'll go their way, I can then come back.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_08: So I think building in flexibility into work, women anyway do it, or or rather sometimes are forced to do it by themselves and or by the the nature of society and how it's structured, but now I think it'll become a lot more prevalent.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_08: However, it's not in the horizon.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, we see it's we know it will happen, but it's not happening.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_06: Why do capable adults still wait for permission to act?
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_06: And how does that quietly limit their lives?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_13: Julian, one of the uh most interesting uh questions that uh you know that came as I read the book uh was this concept of the fixed world and the fluid world that you spoke about.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_13: Um how do you think this is going to affect people, their skills, the way they work, and uh the workplaces of the future?
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, obviously that's a big framing concept at the beginning of the book, which is what I describe as the great unraveling.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um that a lot of the kind of norms, the conventions, the ways of operating that held us in place and told us how to behave and what was allowed and what wasn't have unraveled for better or for worse.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Many of us are experiencing this as a time of freedom, a time of liberation.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I get to do or be more than, for instance, my parents could.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: For others, it's a very unsettling and confusing time where you know we don't know what right or wrong is anymore, we don't know um what's normal and what isn't normal.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we are we are living through that.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: We have been for some time, and and as I describe in the book, I think it places tremendous um opportunity and tremendous pressure on the individual.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we used to be able to look externally for guidance.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there were a few fixed paths that we were told to follow, and we largely did because we were rewarded for doing so.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if we think about our personal identities, our sense of um, you know, if you take leadership, for example, there was sort of an agreed understanding of what that function looked like, and now it's much more complex.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: So we are all um navigating sort of a broadening of our identities and what's possible within them.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Tremendous amount of choice, which, as I say in the book, we love when it comes to uh Our coffee, we might be a little bit more overwhelmed when it comes to our own identity.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: And we're overwhelmed with opinions and ideas about, you know, what a what the right thing is, what the right way is.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, that's true whether you're a leader, whether you're a parent, whether you're a young person.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the um beliefs and the instructions, if you will, that we used to hold firmly to about how to behave are now up for grabs.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, people are now trying to decide whether university is a worthwhile investment.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: That was not a conversation we were having even 10 years ago.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I think what it's doing is opening up a lot of possibility for us to potentially create far more fulfilling paths, um, explore a much wider range of our own uh capabilities, but it's also requiring us to lean in far more to our own agency to make those choices, to decide for ourselves in a way that we didn't have to very, you know, in the very recent past.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, that fluidity um is requiring a degree of adaptability.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: And quite frankly, we haven't been raised to be adaptive people.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um we've been raised to cherish the status quo and to avoid change.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't say at all costs, but you know, to treat change as I have to do rather than I want to do.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I think um it's it's presenting amazing opportunities for us, and it's also requiring us to become far more adaptive than we ever have been.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_06: If machines start making better predictions than humans, what should humans still remain accountable for?
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_13: Well, I'll come back to this uh uh you know, the skill sets and uh how we need to work with these machines, which is really the core uh you know uh theme of the book.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_13: But uh what I what I really found again uh you know very, very evocative in terms of an idea is your uh trust heat map.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_13: Because what I really liked about that is really, you know, where do you really bring in full automation and where you you know have to have human enlope?
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_13: I thought it was a beautiful representation and can you just uh unpack that big idea that you've written in the book?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: So the the what you refer to, this trust heat map, is something that emerged um you know after I don't know 20 years of building AI applications in a number of areas.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: So finance is something I'd been doing for a long time.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: I had algorithms that were trading uh automatically, no human intervention, completely systematic.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that was interesting because I did ask myself why do I trust the algorithm right in finance, which was wrong almost half the time, right?
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: My win rates were you know barely 52%.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean in finance, if you can get you know a win rate of 52% with equal winners and losers, you know, you should celebrate, right?
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: And 53%, 54%, you should manage the the the world's money.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: So the the edge that you need in finance is very small, you know, in order for an algorithm to amplify it, right?
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because once you have a slight edge, then you just multiply it by trading as frequently as possible and trading across as many instruments as possible, right?
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's the name of the game in finance.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_10: Yeah.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that was interesting.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: I I thought that you know I'm willing to trust an algorithm in finance without any human intervention.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, when I intervened, we would invariably mess things up, right?
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, which is another theme that maybe we can touch on, which is you know, you know, at one point there was this assumption that humans plus algorithms are better than algorithms.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: Not true, right?
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe true sometimes, but not all not always, and certainly not true in trading when it comes to finance, right?
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you if you've done the math right, get the hell out of the way, right?
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's the whole reason for being systematic, right?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: You shouldn't be trying to second guess the machine or think you're better, right?
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you're systematic, you're systematic, right?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: You intervene very, very infrequently, you know, in rare events like COVID, right?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: Something happens and you know, that I can understand, but on a day-to-day basis, you're systematic.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: So that was you know, one thing that was interesting.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'd also worked in sports and healthcare.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, in healthcare, for example, I'd found that you probably wouldn't be willing to uh uh take the machine uh take a decision from an algorithm.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: You want the human specialist, the doctor, to be making that decision, right?
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Even though an algorithm may be correct m much more than it is in finance, right?
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: The algorithm may be correct 90% of the time.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: You still want the human to say, yes, it makes sense, or no, it doesn't make sense, or or well, this is slightly different in this situation, the algorithm couldn't have taken that into account, right?
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: You want that reassurance from a human, right?
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: So um you know, and then you have things like driverless cars, right?
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: Which until very recently, right, this is a technology with hardly any mistakes.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: And and yet you're really reluctant to uh turn yourself over to an algorithm, right?
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: So when I thought about the range of problems, I realized that our trust in an algorithm really depends on how frequently it's wrong and the consequences of error when it's wrong.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so those are the two things that I've put on the x-axis and the y-axis.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: So the x-axis is predictability, it goes from sort of zero to one, zero being completely random, one being completely deterministic, like you know, will the sun rise tomorrow?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right, we know that.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: And on the y-axis are the costs of error, from zero to infinity, right?
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so I have this map where uh there's a green zone which is you know problems to the lower right.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: If a machine hardly makes any mistakes and the mistakes are inconsequential, then you should trust the algorithm.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas on the bottom on the top left where there's unpredictably lots of errors, high cost of error, you wouldn't trust the machine.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's an inherently human thing.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now it doesn't mean that a human will do it well, but it just means that there's no basis for the machine to do that.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: So that in a nutshell is the trust heat map, and you can place all kinds of problems on it and see where you are you know willing to trust the machine, where you're not, and those problems that lie sort of on this frontier where you know it's moving from don't trust the machine to trust the machine.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: And actually the Demotheran bot is a great example of that of a technology that I've that I uh um would assert is moving from the red zone to the green zone.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: That is, in twenty fifteen when I talked to the Motheran about this problem, there's no way that you could trust a machine to do valuation.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now we've got a demonstration um and we're evaluating it.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it still makes mistakes, you know.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, sometimes it comes up with a thesis that's less than satisfactory.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: So at the moment I'd say we're sort of on this frontier um, you know, as far as long-term investing is concerned, with you know the the bot.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: But just to come back and sort of wrap up the the answer to your question, the trust heat map is really a trade-off.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: It expresses a trade-off between how frequently a machine will be wrong and the consequences of its error.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a really simple idea.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: And um you know that's what the the trust heat map is about.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's you know, I found this to be a uh I I find that senior managers, leaders find this to be really uh useful in helping them position the various problems that they're dealing with in their companies, you know, on this heat map and prioritize which ones are more amenable to automation versus those where you will need a human in the loop for the foreseeable future.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_06: Why does formal education struggle to keep up with how people actually learn in the real world?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_13: I wanted to uh talk about one thing that you really talk about, which is uh you know learning how to learn, right?
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_13: Absolutely.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_13: Uh you are you're somebody uh who I found the work that you do, the uh content that you actually you know build and provide, uh there's a lot of talk, and I think you're very passionate about uh how to uh you know, learning to learn is an area that you focus about.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_13: Uh why do you think it's very important and how does it impact anybody uh across their student days, across their work life?
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_13: Uh how is it important and why do you think it's critical for understanding and applying some of the principles that you talk about?
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_13: We'll talk about the principles first, but I would like to talk to you about why is it important learning how to learn?
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, this is uh a very important question.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_03: So the motivation behind this is actually very simple.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_03: So we know of that little story where uh somebody is very hungry, he wants uh food, and uh people give him food, but then a wise man comes along and teaches him how to fish and he has solved the problem forever.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_03: So you teach a hungry man how to fish, you have solved his problem forever, right?
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_03: So, I mean, learning how to learn is uh in is along the same spirit.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_03: So uh no matter how many degrees you have, no matter how much uh bookish knowledge you have accumulated, but if you have actually unlocked the ability to learn for yourself unaided, uh then uh the whole world is there opening up in front of you.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_03: It is as simple as that.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_03: You do not need anything else.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_13: Where do you see the challenge for people learning unaided?
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_13: Because you actually make a point in your math video that I saw uh that uh you know you just uh practice without understanding, right?
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_13: Uh go through the pain of uh learning it, is what almost you say, and then you say then practice it.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_13: So uh why is that important and what does that do to learnability?
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_03: So uh this is always a pain point which many of us academic academicians feel is the I mean it's kind of a necessary evil in this day and age, the curse of coaching.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_03: So, as human beings, we were supposed to evolve into higher and better forms, but it seems that collectively we have managed to regress to something uh which is uh which is backwards.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so uh I mean you see, I mean, maybe uh during our parents' time, or maybe even our grandparents' time, uh people with just a matriculation degree were really mature, they could uh figure things out in life for themselves, but that ability has kind of magically disappeared.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_03: Like a 16-year-old kid now, it is really a kid.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_03: So, I mean, he may know a lot of formulas, he may be very adept at doing so-called problem solving, uh, competitive examinations, and this and that, but uh uh this ability to unlock things for himself and to carve out things for himself or herself, so this is something which is solely missing in the in the mass group of students.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, of course, there are students who are doing absolutely brilliantly well for themselves, but uh I think uh on an average we have regressed to a lower font.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so this is something which uh I I personally feel and I share this feeling with many of my colleagues that we need to uh bring bring this message home to the students that uh look, the way that you prepared for these competitive examinations, where it was kind of given to you in capsule form, and you I wouldn't say you mugged up things because there was definitely an application of your brain, but it was presented to you in such a very I mean, like a plugged-in organized fashion, that is not how it is supposed to work, it has to be the knowledge which is not it at your fingertips, it is supposed to be in a very amorphous, very uh unclean form from which you have to extract the things which you need to learn.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_03: So, where is that ability?
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_03: So when they come from that uh 10 plus 2 stage from high school stage to the undergraduate stage, and uh they no longer have coaching at their disposal, and we try to treat them like adults, they do not respond like adults because uh the moment there is a little bit of an uncertainty regarding any sort of knowledge, they feel completely lost.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas that is the real truth in the real world, the knowledge or whatever the thing, the pieces of information, it is never well organized and puts, I mean, nicely nicely uh junketed in front of you.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_03: It is never like that.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_03: You have to I mean search for yourself, you have to find it out for yourself.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_03: So, where will that ability come from if you have not developed the muscle to learn for yourself?
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_03: So, this was probably an ability which was earlier little bit honed, greater in amongst high school students, but uh I mean day by day it is falling down when growth slows, how should marketing leaders decide what to protect and what to let go of?
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_13: I have a question uh that I want to ask you.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_13: So, if I were a CMO, how do I define which media is effective?
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_13: So, what's the definition of effective?
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_07: Oh, that is simple.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_07: That uh that essentially is defined by saying that if I were to spend ten million dollars, uh let's say that I spend a hundred million dollars and I spend uh let's say ten million dollars more on TV, how much sales lift will I get?
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_07: Okay, okay, so you do a lift analytics and you say that I can increase, it doesn't have to be ten, it could be one million dollars, two million dollars, whatever extra that you pump in.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_07: What is the impact on the output, which is the sales?
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_07: Uh it doesn't have to be sales, it could be awareness, it could be liking, it could be consideration, it could be purchase intent, and this can be viewed as a system, and then maybe it doesn't directly lift the sales, but it indirectly lifts the sales because the awareness has gone up, and awareness in turn affects uh sales.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_07: Okay, and so there could be a broader model where these ideas can be applied.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_13: Fantastic.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_06: What signals do marketers rely on today that may turn out to be dangerously misleading?
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_13: So clearly uh uh it was like a matrix that you would say, here is a persona, this persona for this category uh consumes this kind of content, and therefore, if I am a marketer or a brand, what kind of content can I really uh you know build as a content engine?
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_13: Is really what I think uh you are talking about in the predictive content intelligence work that you did, right?
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_13: So, how did that learning help you when you became a CM?
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_11: So I think uh for me, really, it wasn't just that learning, uh it was more a reinforcement of uh you know things that we had kind of come across with over the course of my career.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_11: I think when you're building a marketing career, really it's about a always having if you want to be successful, you have to have you know, all it always a first of all boils down with boils down to a deep understanding of the customer, having a good understanding of your business, and then really trying to figure out where that intersection is going to be.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_11: And uh for us it was not just about content, but it was more about understanding you know consumer behavior.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_11: So today, when I think about my current role, right?
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_11: Uh I lead marketing for a brand that is seeing one of the biggest transformations in the insurance space, right?
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_11: So we used to be yeah, uh we used to be known by another name, we've been known by another name since 2008 and in 2024 when Bandan Financial Holdings acquired us.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_11: Uh it came with the challenge of kind of repositioning what was a relatively well-established name into something that actually now fit within the you know uh larger financial services ecosystem of the Bandan group.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_11: So for us, this was a lot more than just a changing of a logo or the changing of a tagline, right?
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_11: It was about building credibility, building trust, and building long-term equity in a sector like in life insurance where there is a bit of skepticism.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_11: Right?
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_11: Yeah, so in a way, the challenge really was how do you position yourself not just as another private insurer, right?
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_11: Going back to Bandan's own rules, right?
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_11: About access, about inclusion, about financial security, and saying, okay, fine, how do we position ourselves in light of this in a way that's still relevant to the end customer?
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_11: And and that kind of helped having that understanding kind of helped us put give us a positioning where we are today.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_11: So, for example, today you see Bangan Life Communication where we're really all about making insurance more accessible.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_11: Accessible for whom?
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_11: Accessible for the self-employed, accessible for middle class Indians, accessible for women, right?
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_11: Those are the kind of focus areas that we're uh uh that we kind of double down on.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_11: That's because of the fact that yes, it has to be, like I said, an understanding of who you are as a business, where your customer is and where those two things can potentially interspere.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_06: Why do organizations intellectually accept change but emotionally resist it?
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_13: Natin, uh, if you look at the world of marketing, uh it's largely moving to a privacy-first world, right?
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_13: And uh that's a massive transition that's happening.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_13: Uh, can you talk me through the importance of marketers having to understand this privacy-first philosophy and what are the key points that they need to keep in their marketing plans if we really have to tackle a privacy-first world?
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_09: That's a very intriguing question.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_09: Uh, we ourselves, uh like as a company, how we do things is we have a lot of people who are trained on this, right?
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_09: From our uh CTO to our we have a legal person, uh, but essentially she is a uh data security and privacy uh person who is now getting to know what is GDPR, what is TCPA.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_09: Uh, in our world, uh, we do conversational messaging and uh TCPA is the governing law in the US.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_09: Uh so having data security, privacy uh is a very good, very important thing.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_09: Plus, what we need to learn is be a little forward-looking in terms of what is coming up so that we can prepare our organizations for that.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_09: For us, essentially, like I would say how you get data, how you get consumer data.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_09: So uh are you uh they are giving voluntarily, they are punching on the website, or are you kind of getting it via cookie, or are you purchasing third party, or are you getting through an advertisement click?
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_09: So, how you capture uh consumer data, how you kind of retain and store data, and how you reuse that data for targeting or retargeting.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_09: Uh, so those are the key key things that the marketers should uh look at, but that's a very technology uh description.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_09: Uh, most marketers lean on uh their IT teams and they lean on their uh providers, uh be it the provider of their marketing platform or their advertising agency, to kind of uh tell them and uh to kind of bring.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_09: Them up to speed on how to do these things.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_09: But I think the data is the core.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_09: Even if you have very good agencies and you have very good systems, still everything is configurable.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_09: And a marketer should spend some time understanding how the data and privacy is happening in their systems.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_09: If not anything, they should definitely ask these questions to the people, the IT team or the service providers that they work with.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_13: So you are somebody who uh is a big believer of content and context, okay?
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_13: And you've done some fantastic campaigns.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_13: I saw the uh awards that you have won uh you know for some of the work that you have done.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_13: So, can you talk about the importance of content and context and how have you been able to build marketing innovations in an industry like yours where gaming, you know, you may say that you know, yes, it doesn't have enough attention, but you seem to have built uh you know not a mob but a DAO, right?
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_13: Clearly, that's something which you're passionate about.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_13: So, can you give me some examples of how you have brought content and context to build customer engagement?
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so so I have been very lucky to have worked with brands, all of which have really, really high DAU, like incredibly high DAU brands, right?
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_02: And and like eight, nine-digit DAUs in general.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_02: So that is very special, I think, in my opinion.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_02: So, what it also allows you to do is to work with content.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_02: So, what it means, content is essentially what content is just narratives, content is story, right?
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_02: Now, when you do that, something different gets triggered inside your fans, inside your users, right?
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_02: So instead of like whenever you start watching anything, be it an ad or a film or a content or whatever it is, your first instinct as a consumer these days, because we live in this overtly consumeristic world, me co koiku.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_02: Someone is selling me something, right?
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_02: What content does is that it relaxes you, it says kin no no, hey guys, I'm not here to sell you something.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_02: For example, we've created mini content around our top game called Battlegrounds Mobile India, uh, which talks about friendships, right?
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not here to ask you to download the game after you've seen that film, right?
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just asking you to just watch this film and guess what?
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_02: People really love it, people really enjoy it.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_02: What it subconsciously does is that it endears people to your uh brand, right?
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: This is something that I've I will definitely credit that gaming and a lot of social first brands did it first in India, and then people came.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like we're very used to seeing placements of brands in films, it's very obvious someone sipping on a beverage that they know about, some someone talking about driving a car that a brand that we know about.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_02: But uh, what I think gaming brands and social first brands did, they turned this into entertainment.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_02: And entertainment is not something Indians can ignore.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_02: They love watching content.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like if you are on a bus ride which is one hour and you know there's a great episode of BGMI which has come up, you will watch that episode because you are anyways gonna watch something on YouTube, right?
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_02: So that is extremely important, I think.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_02: The second part is context.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so it's it's not really it's an open secret right now that most folks in India are spending time, a large amount of time on Instagram and YouTube.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_02: Previously, this is like two or three years back.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_02: I would have said, like, hey, Gen Z is spending a lot of time on Instagram and YouTube.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_02: Nowadays it's true even for my dad, by the way.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_02: My dad, whenever he's not watching OTT, he's doing something on Facebook or Instagram or YouTube, but that's anecdotal evidence.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_02: We have actual evidence also where we see that majority in this country, the highest MAU products in this country are all social media led, right?
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_02: So I can't get a guy or a girl to play my game all the time, right?
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a limit to the amount of video games that you can play in a team.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_02: What do you do when you are out of it and you still want some entertainment, right?
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_02: Apart from OTTs, which is different, you go to social media, right?
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_02: And guess what?
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_02: When you go to YouTube and Instagram, I'm there, and you can't be there again, ask him to download the game.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_02: He's just played a game anyway, so big kitna you will get people to download and all of those things, right?
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_02: So you say, hey, there's this nice feature that we made around uh this is this nice feature film that we've made, this is nice web series that we made, this is nice funny content we've made.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_02: So this is these are known as Instagram takeovers or YouTube takeovers, you as buzzwords in general, but at the heart of it is that your storytelling is so so so beautiful that people watch your content, which is why the metrics that we have that we follow here in crafting currently in my current company are very different from metrics that other marketers follow.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_02: For example, most marketeers look at impressions, reach, etc.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_02: We look at weird things like average view duration.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_02: These kind of metrics that we are looking at are AVDs, like average view durations.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_02: Then we look at the number of shares and things like that.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_02: These are all geared towards your innate instinct whether you are enjoying a content or not, right?
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_02: So for us, views and impressions and reach are output metrics which come if you are really good at AVD and shares and all that, right?
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_02: This corroborates with what YouTube is also doing and Instagram also is doing.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_02: Like by the way, if you put something on YouTube which has very high AVD and high shares, it will get a high amount of views because that's where YouTube gets its information that it's getting viral.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_02: So, again, going back to my statistics and analytical D's, etc., like that, where we crack down some of all of these things down to the T, like back three years back in general, and figure out this is gonna be a strategy at least till 2026, 2027 for the next four or five years.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_02: So we figured out if you don't have great content, then people at some point in time will leave your brand and then go towards a brand which is the more new and hip thing to do, especially if you're a gaming or an entertainment brand.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe it is not so relevant for other brands, but for us it definitely is.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_02: Secondly, if it is a game or a brand which has a lot of stories to be told, then tell those stories.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_02: No, and thirdly, if you are able to figure out that these are metrics which are helping you grow the brand, for example, AVDs and shares that I talked about, instead of impressions, reach, and views, which are output metrics, then you should focus on that, right?
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so these are some also in a way I'm also telling you what my predictions are gonna be in the future, which are some things that we'll address later on.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_02: But I think that give it four or five years, I think everyone will start talking about shareability of content.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_02: How much how many shares have you gotten rather than views?
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_02: Because people are feared out that you can just get views through money, like you can just promote any music video and it gets your views in general.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_02: But are people really engaging with that video that you have put out?
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_02: Are people really watching it for the entire two, three minutes or six, seven minutes that you put it out for, or people are just watching it for two seconds and you paid that one cent or ten cent or whatever it is, and then people skip on?
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_02: So that people are catching on to slowly but steadily, but that's where the future sort of lies.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_08: Great.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_06: Why does better data often fail to produce better decisions inside organizations?
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_13: So, if having spent so much of time, a couple of last questions that I have.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_13: Uh, if I were a marketer or a CMO, what are the most important skills that I need to have in myself and in my team over the next say few years?
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_13: Which do you think are extremely important having seen and worked with large brands?
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_13: Uh, what are the skills that you think are important?
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_04: Um I guess there needs to be two things that sometimes are at odds but shouldn't be.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_04: One is the uh ability to experiment an experimentation mindset.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you got to be able to take experiments and fail as long as you learn from them.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_04: And so if you're coming in and it's a high pressure, hey, we need results, we need results, that's when people will default to, okay, let's just pour money on retargeting to pump up the in-platform ROAS so it looks like we're doing well, when that's not the solution.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_04: Uh additionally, you also need accountability because otherwise, if everyone's just doing ideation and there's no clear number eventually on getting a lined-on scorecard of a person's job role, I think is really important as well.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_04: I run, you know, I've seen inside a lot of marketing teams and clear lines of accountability, but the willingness to experiment are two things that lead to success, but they both got to be clear or they'll compete against each other and you won't get either, is what I say.