Latest / ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence / Srinivas Venkatram on Building Your Capacity to Contribute (#073)

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Srinivas Venkatram on Building Your Capacity to Contribute (#073) · ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: There is a second very interesting point which is there.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: People have also asked this question that my boss doesn't allow me to contribute.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: But what our research has shown is that every single person has what you can call a zone of freedom.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: There is a zone of freedom around that person, and if you can identify your zone of freedom and contribute within the zone of freedom, that would be enough.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: If you have a great boss, he will widen your zone of freedom.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: If he is a tough boss, he will reduce your zone of freedom, but your zone of freedom will be there.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_05: Today's episode is proudly brought to you by Effortless.
• 0:41
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• 0:50
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• 1:00
  SPEAKER_05: Visit www.goeffortless.ai and embark on a journey that will redefine the way you do business.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_05: In this episode, I have a very esteemed guest, Srinivas Venkatram.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_05: Srinivas Venkatram is the founder and CEO and lead researcher of Ilamin Knowledge Sources.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_05: And he's also the founder director of Ilamin Foundation.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_05: Srinivas has spent the last 35 years on one problem, which is information doesn't change people, assimilation does.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_05: He's an engineer from IIT Bombay, he's done his MBA from IMAM Dabad, and he's somebody who's actually done a huge amount of work on cognitive behavioral change frameworks, which is something unique for a country like India.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_05: And his contribution to driving large-scale change is something that I was fascinated about.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_05: And that's the reason I thought it'll be a great idea to have a conversation with him.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: It was uh it's always a pleasure to have a conversation with you, whether in a podcast or otherwise.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_05: So thanks.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks, Srini.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_05: So Shini, I just wanted to kick off this conversation with a very interesting uh point that I saw in your uh career, which is uh you started you started off your career by actually building information products, right?
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_05: Which you then sold to Kryzel and things like that.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_05: And then uh suddenly uh you also felt that information alone is not enough, assimilation is key, which is really what the last uh you know probably uh two decades of work that you have done now.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_05: So, what was this interesting uh I would say inflection point that made you believe assimilation is more important than information?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: So uh when I um was making these reports, these industry reports, etc., what I found was that uh the reports were the same, the knowledge or the information was the same.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: But the way the divers, we had you know almost 900 clients, corporate and financial sector clients, the way each of these clients were using that information was radically different.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: So the first thing that struck me was that it is not uh the input that's important alone, but it's also the way people process it.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: That was the first uh understanding.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: Then as I went deeper into this whole uh point, it uh it struck me that it's not just about processing, it's also about what kind of value they create out of it.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then when you kind of investigate the question a little further, you start asking a parallel question that what happens, say, for example, in a classroom, why is it that uh the same teacher is there, but some students are able to comprehend uh uh uh better or get, you know, understand the subject better, master it uh also a little better on their own thereafter, while uh other students somehow are not able to are lagging behind.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: So again, what there you find that it is goes it started going deeper into understanding that there's also differences in comprehension that people have.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Then if you look at our society as a whole, and you take uh Indian society, for example, as a whole, it's got some of the most uh, if I may say, sublime uh ideas that uh any culture would have in the world.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: And but there is a huge gap between the sublimity of the ideas and how much of it is actually assimilated or uh you know transferred into new behavior or into the way people think, etc.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I started discovering that this problem which is there is not just a problem of a report being used uh uh differently by different clients, but it's but the problem extends to education, the problem extends if I'm to say to uh you know to society itself and to the way society assimilates absorbs ideas.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it struck me that it was a really uh if I may say fundamental problem in our society.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that exact inflection point was it was the birth of the internet, the internet was becoming more uh, if I may say, prevalent at around 96-97.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: It was and that's when the boom started, the first round of boom, and then I realized my own sense was that over the years information would become less and less relevant, and uh it would be assimilation, which is uh really the uh, if I might say the kyber pass, where you know, um, and that would determine the rate of change.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Now, over these years, if you take the next 25-30 years, and now when you look at the birth of uh AI and what AI is beginning to do, and we are still in early years of AI, I think this problem has only compounded n-fold because uh even the information is provided, but also a lot of the processing of that information AI is able to do, whether it is reasoning it out, whether it is converting it into products for you, structuring it, synthesizing it.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: So uh the it it has moved from information to knowledge processing, both are being done by the machine.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: But what is still left is what you still do with that insight, what judgments you make, how does it transform the way you are as a person, the way you think, etc.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that becomes you know that that problem of assimilation is now only multiplied n fold in in terms of its importance.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: I called it the last 12 inches problem.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I read about that.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, getting it right up to the uh getting it to the or to the screen was easy is one level, which is access problem.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: But how does it go from there into the way you think and the way you act became uh rest of the problem.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: I also want to make another comment that the deeper I have gone into this problem of assimilation, it appears to me that assimilation represents, if I may say, the uh critical driver for the rate of evolution of systems.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what its importance is.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: One is its rate of uh assimilation of knowledge into a system, but from that knowledge, if the system has to evolve, whether behaviorally or socially or psychologically or in any other way, that evolution depends upon how much of that knowledge is transformed into human change or human insight.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful, beautiful.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_05: So, one question that kept coming back to me as I read about your background and the work that you have done and the phenomenal uh I would call the scale of human change that you're attempting and you have attempted.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_05: Uh you are a typical IIT and you're from IAM.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_05: What made you not think of a traditional corporate ladder?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_05: Because this is something that I was very intrigued about.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: So there are two stages of that decision making.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: The first stage was uh right uh uh in my last three months at uh IAM, where it struck me that it would be more interesting to uh try out something on my own.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and I remember having um conversation with my father at that time, you know, would as to asking him what should be done, and this is what I want to do.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so he made an interesting comment.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Look, once you take up a job and enter into it, you will be in a golden cage.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: You'll find the cost of exit will go on increasing.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: So if you want to experiment with your life, then why not do it uh with a couple of degrees, your IIT and your IM degree behind you, and you see where it takes you.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: So the first journey was one of experimenting with entrepreneurship.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: But when I started Illumin, which was after uh you know uh the previous company got sold, was that I saw it less as an entrepreneurial uh venture as a lab as a you know as a startup, and I saw it more as a lab which was experimenting and trying to solve uh a deep-rooted problem, which at that point in time I identified as assimilation.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: So the second one was a lab orientation, and the first one was a startup orientation.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: So Illumin is organized like a lab, but as a uh what I can call an action lab or a living lab, which is not really about uh publishing papers and trying to be like an academic lab, but one which experiments with human systems, experiments with various types of problems, and builds an understanding of what that solution.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_05: So many uh people in your own batch uh would have gone to become uh corporate leaders or senior leaders or whatever, and you have taken a path which is you know, in my mind, I w I would call you a contramind, right?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_05: Which is really somebody who's you know away from the typical corporate ladder.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_05: So uh if somebody were to kind of uh think about a path like what you're doing, uh what is it that they should be ready for?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_05: Because uh it's not like you are being promoted every year, it's not like you're getting increments every year, it's not the traditional uh we'll come back to some of the uh frameworks that you are I'm reaching there, but clearly what is it that they should be ready for if you have to take a path like what you have done, and what should be the key acceptance that they need to be ready for?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think uh the most important driver I think uh has been uh an insatiable curiosity about the problem.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: And um uh you know Swami Vekanda says that if you take a one problem and make it your life, or you take five ideas and make them your life, then you will have more knowledge than a whole library.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: So if you dive deep into any one idea, and it doesn't matter, this was the idea I was curious about.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm sure that if others took up uh uh you know an idea which they were deeply curious about and were willing to follow that path of curiosity, then that but the consequences are many because it means that you will uh your driver is not a valuation, your driver is not uh scale in itself, but your driver is a problem which society faces, and your driver is finding meaningful solutions to society for that.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because frankly, uh no one person can uh you know uh you know uh say that I am going to change society.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's I at least I don't think that that's uh that's something that's any one person can do.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: But what you can do is to truly be curious to try and contribute in some fundamental way in one area, and I think that would be interesting.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think I pursued the uh a problem in a different uh format because the problem needed the interface between knowing and doing, and the interface between knowing and becoming, and I think people have to be ready for uh going through a journey where you have to live in that um middle space and balancing these two ideas, or ambiguity.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: That ambiguity, that uh uh there's uncertainty, there is ambiguity, there is a difficulty of explaining to people because people want to put you into slots, and you've got to be ready to uh accept that and still fight against it.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_05: That's what really so the resilience that you talk about uh is really what is critical, is what you uh what I understand, right?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, absolutely.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: Resilience and also a willingness to find new metrics for yourself because ultimately all of us want some metrics by which to judge whether we are doing uh well or not.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh if whether you are uh uh you know whether you are an artist or whether you are a businessman, they use different metrics.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so you still need to design new metrics for yourself.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: So, what are your metrics for success?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: What are your metrics for progress, if I were to call it?
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: Not success, but progress.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: These become questions which you have to answer.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_05: So uh one of the most fundamental contributions uh of uh Illine Foundation and the knowledge uh resources as a company that you started was this thinking of contribution thinking, right?
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_05: Which is work as a contribution.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_05: And uh can you elicit why this is critical in the context of where we are today in a company and as India becomes a developed country, why work as a contribution is critical for professionals to succeed?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: So let me first start by trying to define uh contribution.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh define so contribution um to uh to try to understand contribution, and one way is to locate it within uh Indian culture itself.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you have the idea of duty, karta via the idea which is very prevalent in India.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: But duty is uh become in a way a static thing which is determined from outside based on your fixed uh set of constellation of roles in society.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: Father, mother, uncle, you know, society.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so of course, as society has changed, roles are changing, role expectations are changing.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: But that's why Kartavya is all understood in that in the fixed frame of structure of how society works.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and in that sense, duty in India has been seen as rather onerous or as something which is uh you know, on the other hand, you have with you the other end, which is uh the Bhagavad Gita ideal in India, which is really one which says that I have to look at work as a means for self-evolution, work as a spiritual practice, uh Karma Yoga.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: And um there the idea is a non-attachment to work, the idea is that you need to be selfless, etc.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this Bhagavad Gita ideal, though it is very known in India, uh it is a very high ideal which people cannot necessarily reach.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: They cannot necessarily live that very easily in the midst of their day-to-day life.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if you look at it, there is a gap, there is a space in between where you can operate with what I can call where two, three reconciliations take place.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, can I work not only for outer impact and results, but can I work along with that for inner fruits or for inner development?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: One of the ideas of contribution is to say that it is that contribution is that work which makes a positive difference outside and which is also going to in some way create a positive uh create positive meaning and fulfillment within your own self.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: This is fundamental, this idea, for example, is fundamental in the modern workplace.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like there was a recent Gallup study which shows that uh the only 26% of India's uh you know of the people surveyed seem to be engaged with their work.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: 74, that means three out of four people are not engaged.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the reasons is that they don't find meaning, they don't find the meaning at work, they are not finding that fulfillment at work.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, this is one of the dimensions of contribution which is uh very important.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: The second dimension of and the second dimension of contribution is that if I want to do that, contribution is a choice that I make.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: And the purpose of contribution is really about awakening my own possibilities as a person, besides just getting rewards.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: So, therefore, this idea that you need to have both the dignity of the individual and the value of the institution, both are necessary.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Similarly, both meaning inside and work outside, and also in our relation to society, how can I expand my scope of contribution not only to self but to institution and to society?
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, if I see contribution in these terms, we can see it as a work ethic, which is in a sense coming from India, but which is also trying to answer a problem of work which is not yet solved globally.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: It is actually saying that as a that Indian culture actually offers a modern format which is addressing the ills of Western uh notions of work, but which does not mean that it denies the value of many of the things which uh uh which is productivity, efficiency, discipline, quality, all of these are wonderful uh values that you can have, which is effectiveness, which is the effectiveness dimension of things, but you combine that with the intrinsic values which uh the which are talked about in Indian culture, that combination of East and West is maybe what is the work ethic which the world needs today.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: And not just simply one idea, and that is the centerpiece of the notion of contribution.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_05: So really, really uh uh deep and the dimensions that you kind of uncovered uh is very interesting.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_05: Uh is it uh Relevant and applicable, and where have you applied this framework in a context of a large corporate or uh say a massive scale of change that you wanted to apply contribution uh to work thinking?
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_05: Uh can you give us some examples of the impact of the change?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and let me uh kind of uh first we've kind of applied this in multiple contexts.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we've uh for example applied this in corporates, large corporates, and we've applied it in different shades of con of the same idea.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: For example, the first time when we applied it was with State Bank of India.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay uh in around 2000 during the tenure of Mr.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: Opi Bad, was the chairman at that time, and he was uh responsible for a major turnaround in uh uh SBI.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: So at that time, uh Illumin was the partnered with him for the human transformation agenda.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and uh he used business consultants to come in for some of the other work, but for this transformation, he brought in and we uh called the pro called that whole thing.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: So the first phase he called Parivartar, and then it was called Citizen SBI thereafter.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so citizen SBI was the uh which involved two lakh people, right?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: From the chairman to Chaprase, that's how we called it.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone had to go through a new understanding of their own work, and where we asked ourselves because the problem that he came with when we discussed it was he says that I am working that here is a public sector organization.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: What am I going to uh uh you know?
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: How do I uh incentivize them?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: I can't incentivize them.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, what can how do I how do I then get them to be interested in serving customers?
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: So then we said the incentives can come from within.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's how this idea of abhudhaya and nisreyasa comes, which is that there's an intrinsic incentive to work.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: There is a joy of work, there is a you know, there is the joy of quality, the joy of creating something, all that is intrinsic values of work.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that is how we uh applied it there.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: And after we applied it, we applied it into the branches to ask how it can change contribution to customers.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and so this idea was applied in State Bank, and the con the impact was of course they had an independent study done by XLRI where they found that you know there was uh a jump which was they at the end of the whole thing, they it reached a point where more than 75% of the uh people who were interviewed, employees, citizens, etc., between 70 and 80 showed a significant shift in their understanding of how to think about work and how they should see service to the customer and customer orientation.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: So that was an example of SBI.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: But after that, and that was one you know example, and he himself said that the more deeper impact of that was that new energy started flowing through the bank.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: That is what he said, and that consequently will have told us from the state bank thereafter that that actually, in a way, was a turning point because we started by saying that you are a great Indian bank rather than saying that you are a second-rate private sector bank.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: You see what I mean?
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: So that shift itself, because that we are citizens and we are people who are serving the country, is a very important idea that came from there.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: Similarly, there was since then we've applied it in the government in more than two million government surveys.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_05: Two million.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: Two million across in the last four years, because we've we collaborated with the capacity building commission and we worked with them, we worked with the Indian Railways to look at how frontline staff can uh improve uh the whole uh quality of service.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: You see, the problem for frontline staff uh is that um they have a lot of discretion.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: This discretion cannot be taken away.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: So you see, most organizations they try to create processes for frontline staff.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: But frontline staff processes means that you are saying that you will dumb down your work and you can escalate anything that's smart.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: But what customers want, what citizens want, is discretion.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: They want him to use his powers, use whatever his you know his uh insidership in that system to find solutions for you.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: This happens even when you talk to a call center.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: You call in a call center when you're you call them, you expect them to respond positively and find a solution rather than escalate it to some person upward.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: Which means that you need discretion, you need intent.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: And agency.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, agency, intent to serve, you need uh that sense of responsibility, you need that sense of uh ability to have that human touch in that interaction, demonstrate empathy towards what I am doing, have the solutioning capability to find a solution for what I'm doing, understand my role itself very differently and say my role is not limited to just uh doing the work, but it's actually finding answers.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: So there is a whole lot of change that has to take place, and they have to move in the sense from duty, which is a process or rules view of my work, to a role and contribution view of my work, where I understand that I am a role, these are my stakeholders, and this is how I'm contributing to all these stakeholders.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: So that model that is there was applied in SBA in uh in railways, for example, and when it was applied there, the measure that we used was an interesting measure.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: We wanted to check that what happens if people uh are going to use their discretion and uh are going to respond to customers and find solutions, and we found that the what will actually change will be the number of flashpoints from the citizens will come down because there are a lot of hidden flashpoints that take place in a day, some of them may be visible, but there are subtle or tacit flashpoints taking place.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, right from when a person buys a ticket right to the point when he gets off the train, there can be n flashpoints that can take place in terms of where they're staying when they stand in the station, they use the facilities, they get into the train, they're using the train itself, you know, when they're asking for tea, coffee, whatever in the train.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: At every stage, right down the line, whether a train reaches on time, there are n flashpoints.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: So we said, can we measure these and see whether flashpoints can come down?
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: So we use a different metric to find whether uh there is improvement because of discretion or behavioral change.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then the answer that we found there was that the flashpoints came down by nearly 40 to 50 percent.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: So that was very huge.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: We are now working with Maharashtra government for the entire frontline staff.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so there has been a huge subtle movement which is there, and everywhere the message is how do we contribute instead of getting trapped into rules, how do we contribute to citizens, contribute and uh you know, try to get things done faster, cut the paperwork, stop actually uh being barriers but being enablers along the way, start not looking at citizens as people who can be our uh you know, as the reason for our service, rather than uh as Bhatman Gandhi put it, rather than as uh you know, as people who are uh obstructing it in some way.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: So this entire transformation which has been taking place, which is still going on, is uh is contribution thinking as applied on a massive national scale in the government.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: Very interesting.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_05: But uh tell me, Shirwas, the challenge here is measurement, right?
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_05: So there is nothing called a citizen satisfaction index, right?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_05: Which is like saying that uh you know, in a company they do CSI, they do uh net promoter score and things like that, where they look at whether you're an advocate or whether you're a detractor.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_05: But there's nothing called a citizen satisfaction index.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_05: So these remain programs, but the change is very, very uh I would call it uh low impact, right?
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_05: Would you would you agree with me?
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: No, I wouldn't because I think there are three uh three levels at which I want to kind of uh bring this out.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: The first, let me answer the question.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: We've for us the idea of citizen trust score is the is, for example, the measure we use.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it is fly whether we are looking at flashband, citizen trust core.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: For example, in Maharashtra, we have identified seven schemes or seven different initiatives of the government as our test bed.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we are doing it across the board, but we are saying in these seven services, the quality of the service has to the citizen trust has to improve.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now, when we say citizen trust has to improve, what must happen?
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: For example, there we are in Maharashtra the measure that we are going to be using is uh an app-based evaluation of whether the people were available to serve them, whether their problems were heard, whether people were able to uh they enable them to solve the problem, or whether they were able to teach them about the scheme or about the service and so on and so forth.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: So these are the points, the citizen touch points have become the measure for citizen trust score.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, this citizen trust score, what it has not yet happened is citizen trust score has not become the dominant uh kind of measure like NPS.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_04: Correct.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: The second point is that you need to think about um what are the sustainability measures that you bring in.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you just have a training program, uh the yes, a training program can be very valuable.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: Again, there are two levels at which training programs take place or learning programs take place.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: The first level of a program is when there is conceptual or uh learning.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: This is where assimilation comes in.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: If I do conceptual learning, then it is subject to memory and it's subject to decline over time.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: But that is fundamentally different from what you can call transformational learning.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: So transformational learning is a learning where I where you do not just change what we know, but you change who we know, who knows.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: This is again ties back to our contributor idea.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: It is not enough to know how to contribute, it is important to become a contributor.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: So there is a dual change that we are attempting.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: We are not attempting a single change, the change in the person and a change in the world.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now, when you say change in a person, the fact is no program, no book, nothing on earth can change a person.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: The eye of the person changes because the person chooses to change.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: So the important thing here is that we have to help people perceive that choice, and they have to perceive that I can be a different person, I can decide to be just a karmachari, or I can decide to be a karma yogi.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: So that choice is in me, and this is the value of being that for myself, this is the intrinsic value.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: You see, this is how the contribution ideas flow in.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because the choice of making a of trying to be a contributor is an intrinsic choice based on my intrinsic work.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: So that's my second point.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: Third point, which is there is now if I want to make these choices, what proportion of people will make that choice?
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: Will 100% make that choice?
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: The answer is no.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's why for us, ultimately, impact has to be assessed in terms of a bell curve.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: There is a bell curve.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: If the bell curve shifts even 20% to the right, that's a huge shift.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: Think about it.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: There are 9 to 10 million customer interaction, citizen interactions with the railways every day.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: A 5 to 10 percent change in that means that nearly 1 million uh people are going to have slightly better service.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: It still means 8 million are not getting it, but 1 million are getting that service, and that's how you start looking at change.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't look at change as a 1-0 game where either I've got a perfect solution or I've got a uh that I have no solution at all, but you look at it in terms of how the percentages start stacking up in front of you, and that is very, very important.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that is the thing.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: So you need to bring in this kind of a transformative change.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, firstly, the citizen trust score is needed, number two, you need a transformative uh change as the centerpiece of your whole thinking, and third is you need a lot of sustainability elements.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: You see, whenever you do a program like this, you need to architect change in that sense.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not just enough to do a program, you also need to give them tools for continuing to respond differently to customers.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: You have to give them, for example, simple things like what you can call what we call a flashpoint app.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: For example, we first you know we first tried it out in Mumbai police, for example.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: More than every day there are more than 40, uh there are you know uh thousands of flashpoints between policemen and citizens.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if these flashpoints are taking place, when we did a study, we found that beneath all these flashpoints, there are only 120 flashpoints that repeat themselves.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: If you are able to take those flashpoints and empower these people to start responding better to the flashpoint through an app or through other tools, as a sustainability to the cognitive change, so you combine cognitive change with the capacity to handle, respond to changes, then you are sustaining it, or the capacity to design answers, then you are sustaining it.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to have sustainability in the whole thing as an architectural element.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: Very interesting.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: ContraMinds is a podcast dedicated to decoding people, minds, strategy, and culture.
• 37:37
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• 37:45
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• 37:49
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• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: And now back to the show.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_05: So uh you talked about the importance of transformational learning in aiding memory and one that does that doesn't decay, right?
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so how do you the interventions for transformational learning?
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_05: Because you've also done it in schools.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_05: I can see that uh you've hit a huge number of uh you know millions of students in schools.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_05: So how do you really uh uh build the intervention for transformational learning?
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_05: Because it's very critical in actually addressing the basic DNA of a behavior, right?
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_05: So, how do you do the interventions for transformation learning?
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: If you modify cognition, then the chances of behavioral change is much faster.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so if your behavioral change goes unit by unit, one behavior at a time, if you change one mental model or one shift in the architecture of thought, then the consequences can be on many behaviors simultaneously.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: And the deeper you go into that, the deeper you go into the cognition.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: Cognition itself is not one thing.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: You can have simple heuristics as cognition, that means simple rules of thumb.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: You can go deeper into cognition when I'm looking at it in terms of some mental models for some situation.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: You can go even deeper and you can have mental models about yourself and axioms about yourself, which are even deeper and which are even stickier.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: Then there are identity level axioms about yourself.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: Who am I, do I stand for, etc.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it's actually many levels and many grades of uh you know cognition.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: The trick is that if you transform the cognition at whatever level to that extent, you can see behavioral shifts taking place much easily, which is not to say that you don't need environmental enablers.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: We've always held that along with the change inside, you need external enablers.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: Having said this, if you have enablers without the change, then the minute the enablers go away, the change will come back.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: The change will revert.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: But if you have brought about this cognitive change, then if the environment is even slightly favorable, then people will move in that direction.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_05: Can you give me an example of uh how you did this intervention in say a company or in a uh you know, so just give me an example so that how did that cognition effect happen?
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_05: That's very important, right?
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because yeah, so I'll give you an example.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: So we were, I don't want to name the uh government uh institution, but we were working with one uh government institution which had a which had both a service role and an enforcement role.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in that enforcement role, you me many of the people, nearly 65 to 70 percent of the people within the uh you know within that institution had a mental belief or had a belief system that citizens are thieves.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: Or citizen, not citizens, but let us say, you know, whoever is dealing with them, they are out to make money and they are not to be trusted.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that their main tool is to is to actually enforce the law and not to make not do business easier or not to make ease of business better, you know, increase ease of business.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: Now that's a fundamental mental model.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: So even if you have the topmost people in the country saying that look, we need to uh that we need to uh you know improve ease of doing business, if these people who are actually enforcing it on the ground or are engaged with various stakeholders are going to have the idea that they are really adversarial view of uh the people they are working with, then nothing is going to change.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_04: Correct.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the metrics that we used in the intervention was that can we bring about a measurable shift in this mental model?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we measured the mental model before and how many people had, which was 65% plus, and then we measured it thereafter, and then we found that it had dropped from 60%, 65% to about 30-35% at the end of the whole process.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the minute it falls to 30-35 percent, the people who believe that citizens are adversaries are a minority in the system.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_01: Earlier they were a majority, and because they were the majority, it kind of became the dominant idea.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, got it.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: But the minute it became a minority, then it became the the the dominant idea became that it is actually citizens are not our adversaries, but it's our job to make life easier for them.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: Once that happens, the cycle of change starts.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_01: So there is a new discourse that starts in a system, and that discourse is what is transformative.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'll give you one more very interesting example.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: I we were working with a European NGO, uh very um again, I don't want to name them with a client, but they this European NGO, very large NGO, and uh we were working with their team to look at to look at diagnosing their uh how they were.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Supporting various initiatives in various countries.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: They were in some 15 countries, etc.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: The core mental model or the core frame, I wouldn't call it a mental model, it was deeper.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: It was more than a mental model.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: The core frame was that we need to that resource is our key contribution.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: But if you really looked at their activities, resource was a useful and very powerful enabler.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: But they had two other critical contributions which they had to make.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: One of them was setting outcomes, and then they found that they wanted to set sustainable outcomes for where communities could sustain change.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly the question that you're asking.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_04: Correct.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: Rather than intervene with resources.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: So now that recognition was a very important recognition, and the second recognition after that was that our role is those of being enablers to them who have because of our financial clout and because of our influence, we will be able to time multiple stakeholders to help that particular agency perform better on the ground.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: So then they found that giving money was the third most important contribution that they can make.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: And there were two before that, which is setting the right outcomes or enabling the NGOs they were funding and working with to set the right outcomes.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: And number two, also how they could enable them to perform better.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: Now that resulted in a dimensional shift, so to speak, in their thought process.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: So cognitive change at a deeper level and especially with leaders can have deep consequences on organization.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_05: Beautiful.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_05: I think I heard you speak in one of the uh you know uh lectures that you are giving in one place where you said even if you take a large organization, only three to four percent of the employees really contribute.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_05: The balance are all uh, you know, they just come and do the tasks.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_05: So if that is the problem of a CEO, how do you really change it, Srinavas?
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_05: Because you said that's really the data that you have, and therefore this whole thing of cognitive enablement that you talk about, which is deciding your own identity as a person working in the organization, your own vision, your own ideas, your own cognitive capacity, your own knowledge engagement.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_05: I think the levers that you speak about, right?
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, how do you bring about?
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_05: Because that's the real challenge that as you scale an organization, it becomes a problem.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_05: Because if just three to four percent contribute and the balance, you know, 96% are just passengers, then how do you really uh enable the change and make them think work as a contribution?
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: So here there is I want to now introduce a new point.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_01: See, there are two levels of mind.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: One is when you use the word cognition, one is the individual mind where it is about my goals, my aspirations, my desires, etc., which is highly individualized.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_01: So if I look at an organization only as a bunch of individuals, then it looks like an unsurmountable problem because each individual comes in with absolutely different viewpoints, etc.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then it appears as if all you have to do is to impose a structure on top.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the only way I can get all these people to work together.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: But our own research has shown and our own work has shown that there is you might call a space in between the individual mind and what you can call just the organization as a whole, which I call the collective mind.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: The collective mind is a set of shared models of thinking, shared alignments, shared vision, shared appreciation of what is going on.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: That shared aspirations of that collective or group together becomes the collective mind that everybody chooses to subscribe to.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: Which is why we enjoy working in some organizations or we enjoy committing to certain uh goals and we don't enjoy being part of some others because that collective mind doesn't appeal to us.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_01: And if you find organizations with very strong cultures are those who have a very strong collective mind or who have a well-articulated collective mind.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: So that's our first starting point of change.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_01: So the first thing to do is to diagnose that collective mind.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_05: But when I recruit, I don't use all these metrics, right?
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_05: I just look for a vacancy.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_05: There is a slot, there is some experience, there is some uh you know, uh degree that I look at, and I have to fill it at the fastest pace.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_05: I don't really look at this collective mind as you call it, and therefore I recruit the wrong person, it could be a leader or it could be the person on the last leg who is implementing things, so which means that there is no application of the collective mind in a hiring process itself.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll give you the example of my own organization.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: So while we might go through a regular interview process, we've also designed the contributor test.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that contributor test is a go-no-go test for us.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_01: So that is a test which actually measures, for example, whether the whether the individual who comes in has the right orientations which are linked to being a contributor in a system like this.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: Now, and some of those things, for example, however competent that person is, I'll give an example.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: One of the measures there is trust conduct.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if someone doesn't meet the measure of trust conduct, however competent a person is, we will not hire that person.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: So for us, competence is less important than alignment to the collective mind.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_01: So even in that case, at the hiring level, you need to bring in this kind of uh you need to bring in the notion of the collective mind into it.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's the first place where you need it.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: The second place you need it, for example, in what I call the Bigfoot problem.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_01: So the organization is a big foot, it is walking in one direction.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: But that big foot is actually comprised of many small feet of all individual employees now.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_01: If all the individual small feet are all moving in different directions, then that big foot will find it very difficult to move forward.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_04: Correct.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: And if some feet are moving in the opposite direction, it's even harder.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: There's a hidden resistance or a drag in the system.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_04: Correct.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I need to realign it and I need to align those small feet along the lines of the big feet.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: That alignment is also one of the interventions that I need to bring about.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: So one is I need to know how I hire, I need to know how I align people.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_01: Third, think about how you run the company.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: Suppose you're running the company.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: What are the things?
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: What are the if I may say, what are the levers you use?
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: Use structures, you use measures, you use processes.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: These are the three uh levers that you use.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: But we find that deeper than that, there are other levers.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_01: What about helping people uh you know look at expanding their roles?
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_01: What we what is today being called rolecrafting can be taken many levels deeper.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_04: Correct.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: And looking at role crafting as an arena for visioning your own contribution.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_01: The protocols that I use with each other in how I collaborate, how I work, which means that I have to think of win-win as a collective mind idea rather than win-lose or one-up manship.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_01: If you have a highly competitive environment where one-up manship is central in the collective mind, then you are not going to have win-win behavior.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: Which means that there will be silos, there will be satraps, there will be uh systems where uh people that that organization will not be able to respond fast.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: So you need to have new protocols.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: So institutionally you need to bring in these protocols, you need to bring in these, and third is you need to give people tools.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: Tools which are not just IT tools, which are simply about automation, but tools that enable these people to behave differently and act differently, like that flashpoint tool, which I talked about.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's a tool that enables a person to respond better or to serve a citizen better.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now, so you need tools that actually promote the right behaviors in the system.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: And if necessary, go one more deeper level into the shared ideals, which is what OP did, for example.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: That Mr.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: But for example, his whole idea was he said, our ideal is citizenship.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: Our ideal as a bank is that, and it's not an ideal I gave, it's an ideal that they had that if you can awaken that ideal in that system, then they are the people who will bring out the highest in themselves.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that you can do a lot towards architecting an organization, towards becoming a contributor organization and building a contributor work ethic.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_05: Very interesting, very interesting.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_05: I also want to deep dive a bit on the motives framework that you uh talk about, and because many a times as an employee I have conflicting motives, right?
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_05: What I believe in, what the organization believes in, and what the organization believes, I don't believe in, but I have to work every day.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, so how do I reconcile this conflicting motives that I have to go through every day?
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_01: So uh you know, uh the other day I was having a conversation with uh uh somebody uh senior from the government who mentioned that uh many years back when there was uh uh you know when he was in one of the states or somewhere, there was a change in uh there was a change in government and a change in party and power.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: So somebody asked him that you know now that there is a change in power, uh how will you how will you function?
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, it's going to affect your work every day.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_01: And he made a very interesting remark.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: He said, no, that's not how it is.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually that uh 90% of our work is anyway connected with improving citizen services and improving the life of citizens, and that is agnostic to any opinion or party that is connected with the intrinsic role itself.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: So it is not impersonal, but it's transpersonal, it is trans anything.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_01: I am arguing that in organizations there are many aspects of your role which are exactly like that, that you don't have to necessarily have ideological conflict every day.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_01: It is about if you have to serve customers or try to improve the life of customers, whether or not you like the political or social or even the strategic leanings of uh one guy, if you are finding that you can contribute or serve better in that space, then that itself becomes uh very uh that itself becomes an agnostic space or a space of a zone of indifference where you can work perfectly fine.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_01: So that's my first point.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_01: There's a second very interesting point which is there.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh people have also asked this question that my boss doesn't allow me to serve.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_03: Correct.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_01: My boss doesn't allow me to contribute.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_01: But what our research has shown is that every single person has what you can call a zone of freedom.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_01: There is a zone of freedom around that person, and if you can identify your zone of freedom and contribute within the zone of freedom, that would be enough.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_01: If you have a great boss, he will widen your zone of freedom.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_01: If he is a tough boss, he will reduce your zone of freedom, but your zone of freedom will be there.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_01: Very interesting.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_05: And uh talk to me about the the 12-inch last mile gap that you talk about and why is that very important between thinking and acting, right?
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_05: Because typically the think, act, or know, knowing, doing gap is really this 12-inch gap, and uh talk to me about the uh levers of the 12-inch gap that that is there, right?
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_01: So if you think about this uh gap which is there, what is deeply rooted in that gap?
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things which is deeply rooted in that gap is first of all, it starts with my own I know instead of I learn.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_01: So my own identity with which I come in is itself the biggest gatekeeper on one side.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it actually starts, so this is the one gatekeeper on one side.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_01: The other most visible, the most uh superficial gatekeeper is language or access.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_01: In between this access and identity lies the whole 12 inches gap.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_01: So if I start from one side, I will start with simple things like saying that I need to translate the subject, I need to make it more interesting, I need to bring in you know uh animations, I need to bring in things like that.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_01: So that'll be my first solution.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_01: Then I'll find that's not enough.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_01: Then I'll say I need to design the content, I need to chunk it, I need to organize it.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_01: Then I will say, no, that's also not enough.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: I need to be able to uh you know present it at the right time, group it into small parts, put it all these are best practices which people have come out with.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: Then I will go, then I will say, okay, I have solved that problem.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_01: Then I will go deeper and say there is no alignment between the knowledge and that person's requirement.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: Learning problems include how do I comprehend it, how do I, which is Bloom's taxonomy is the most famous uh learning comprehension framework that is used.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_01: Or I can go even one level deeper and say, okay, I can understand what it's doing, but it's not touching me.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a bright guy who understands everything, who understands suffering but cannot feel it.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_01: And there are many, you know, you might you might have who can who understand all the who can analyze the problem but who cannot therefore be motivated to do something about it.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_01: So all that is actually at the level of thinking, feeling.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_01: So as you go deeper and deeper, you move from the realm of comprehension and knowledge delivery to the realm of cognition, to the realm of thinking, to the realm of how thinking has to be done.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_01: And each level, each of those blocks becomes one block which can stop the whole journey, at least till then.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_01: So then you solve the cognition problems.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_01: Then from a cognition problem, it goes into capability problems.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_01: I do not have the capability to think, I've not been trained to think.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's for example now a vital problem facing our society.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_01: We do not know how uh we do not know how to think.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_01: We are not taught in our schools on a large basis, I mean.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_05: You re you you really think so that we have uh a large part of a society has the problem of capability to think?
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because your uh education system is uh is based on rote learning, because your education system is based on regurgitation of set answers.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_01: So it is based on what people have been measured on, it's because teachers have come in and uh kind of laid out information on the board, so they have been in the business of parlaying information or conceptual learning, so there is no effort at even the next level of thinking, which is critical thinking, etc.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_01: So that becomes a problem.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_01: So that's also one of the areas.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_01: Mental models and becoming self-aware about my own mental models and changing them becomes the next problem.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_01: Below that, you get into empowerment.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_01: Do I have the agency?
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_01: Do I have the self-confidence to learn?
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_01: Do I have the self-confidence to do what I have learned?
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_01: Do I have the ability to solutionize, which means translate what I have learned into action?
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_01: So these are all you know problems of bridge problems of how do I transform information, uh, transformate the transformational problems of transforming knowledge into change into oneself.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's one set of problems.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_01: Then there is the problems of identity and of who am I.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_01: If I think of myself, for example, if a software person thinks of himself as a coder, he is going to find himself limited in the current world.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_01: He has to think of himself in some way as a solution designer or as a person who is actually using code as a means for creating value and solving problems rather than simply building code or building products which are there.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_01: So he needs alternative identities which will empower him to use AI as his friend rather than something which is going to finally take his job away.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_05: If that identity is a problem, then he doesn't see AI as a friend, but he sees AI as a bottleneck.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_05: As a connect.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_05: His identity is that of a coder and not a solution designer.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_01: And if he doesn't have agency, if he doesn't have that sense of agency, that confidence, what I call cognitive agency, the confidence to use his mind, then it's depending on process.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_01: What happens when I keep using process?
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_01: You take the discretion problem that I told you.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_01: You want to build discretion in people, you want to build capacity to respond at the front line of your organization.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_01: But you do, but if you don't give them cognitive agency, the self-confidence to find answers themselves, if you are going to second guess their answers all the time, then they are never going to find answers.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_01: So you want to get into a vicious loop where you will say that you anyway can't do it or you don't have the confidence.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to get them into positive cycles.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_01: So cognitive agency itself becomes part of the 12 inches problem.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_01: There are people we have encountered who don't believe they can learn by learning in the sense of comprehending, diving deep into it, they believe it is meant for someone else because they've been told by teachers that they are dumb and that they cannot learn.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_01: So you see, they now you think about the range of problems in the last 12 inches problem.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, I might find some problem beyond identity, but right now this is where we have seen that identity itself can be solved.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_01: Very nice.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_01: And now I'm realizing the deepest problem that I see today is the problem of asking that am I ready to evolve at all?
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_01: Am I willing to let go of what I have in order to find to create something new, especially in the world of AI?
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_01: Very nice.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_01: And if I can't let go, I'm not going to get.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_01: So you are going to have organizations and institutions spending huge amount of time clinging on to what they have and trying to adapt it.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_01: So in my word, adaptation is going to be the greatest enemy of organizations.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because I don't think they can adapt, they have to evolve.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_05: So if I were a 25-year-old, what should be my measure instead of salary and title?
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think that the biggest measure is power to contribute.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_01: If I can look at or my zone of contribution, so one of the we had uh in one of our um you know one of the projects that we did, we mapped out careers, we remapped careers from anarchical journeys into journeys of state changes.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_01: Now within that state, you can go on widening and enriching your role.
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_01: So what We said was that careers will start looking like state journeys in the next few years rather than simply journeys of position.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_01: Notice position is an outside term, it describes your place in the world.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_01: While a state journey represents your state of evolution.
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_01: For example, if you are a leader of a small organization, let's say in some large group like the large industrial group, and they asked you to then become the MD of a big company in the group, your state change again has to change because the complexity has transformed.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_01: The stakeholders have transformed, the stakes have transformed.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not a set of skills that you are transforming from that you are taking from one place to another.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_01: You are bringing about a state change that you are bringing.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_01: So my argument is that organizations will see that if you have the state necessary to be in a particular level, from that state you can then use AI, use all the tools around you to enrich yourself and grow rapidly in that state and build yourself and make yourself capable of living in that state.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_05: So how do I how do I measure state change?
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_05: Because normally my KPAs are very, very transactional, right?
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_05: So therefore, state change is a little more esoteric in my view, and therefore, uh, how do I measure this person actually has already or is capable of a state change?
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the simplest external measure is position worthiness or all worthiness.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_01: If I actually thousands of I mean in every organization, in so many situations when you are deciding on the promotion of somebody, at the back of your head, what's playing is is this person promotion worthy?
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_01: If it was simply a case of years spent or degrees attained, that you know as any leader who has run any organization also that does not make people position worthy.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_01: Very interesting.
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_01: So the actually the most intuitive measure now, okay.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_01: How are you going to metricize it?
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_01: We can talk about it.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_01: But but the metric actually is position worthiness.
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_01: Very nice.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_01: And if you are position worthy or promotion worthy, that means you are ready for the next state.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_04: Perfect.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I would tell a young person, prepare yourself for the next state.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful, beautiful.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_05: So I just want to end uh Srini uh with a couple of uh I would say uh rapid fire questions.
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so the first question is uh what does success mean to you?
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think success means inner evolution, A.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_01: And B, it means greater capacity to contribute also.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_01: I've never had a promotion all my life.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_05: Very interesting.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_05: The second question that I have is uh uh what is your advice to an 18-year-old in a university today, and uh what do you think is critical for that person to succeed in the next 50 years?
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_01: Shift from knowing to becoming.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_01: Every day ask yourself Am I becoming?
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Am I becoming something bigger?
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_01: Am I becoming something wider?
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Am I becoming somebody?
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_01: That means focus on how you are becoming, both in terms of expansion to include others, in terms of becoming in terms of capabilities, becoming in terms of my vision of my life.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it is focus on becoming rather than knowing or achieving or coping.
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_01: These are things that will keep going on.
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_01: The quality of what you achieve, the quality of what you cope with, the quality of what you respond with will transform depending on what you become.
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_05: Very nice, very nice.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, what's one piece of advice?
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_05: I'm sure you would have got a lot uh you know, in your you know, in such a long career, one piece of advice that you continue to uh you know think about, uh actually look at it again and again and something that you can never forget, which you continue to apply even today.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think the one advice was um I think was uh my guru Swami Ranathananda, whom once I met, and he casually mentioned and he says that uh we need to make ourselves grace worthy rather than seek grace.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_01: So if you make yourself grace worthy, then whatever the grace the universe has to offer, it will offer.
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_05: Beautiful, beautiful.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_05: So almost like the example that you said position worthy versus yeah, I derived from this idea.
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_05: So yeah, it looks like that.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_05: So uh fantastic.
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_05: And uh my uh last question to you is what is one thing that uh which you believe in, which others others don't really agree with you.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_05: Uh by others, who do you mean?
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_05: Anybody who you work with, your clients, you you believe in infinite possibilities, right?
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_05: But when you go into such rooms, you realize that I'm just you know giving you a I think that you know I've faced a deeper problem.
• 1:12:19
  SPEAKER_01: It is that uh people verbally agree with what I say, but they don't accept what I say deep within their heart.
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's uh so it's a subtler disagreement I face.
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like if I talked about infinite potential of a being, nobody's gonna say no.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_01: But it's not going to change anything, so it's again the assimilation problem at stake.
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_05: So is it the patience of uh you know the rewards versus the impatience of a reward?
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_05: Is that the real uh I would say uh conflict that uh you know you are unable to contend with because what you have said is really deep, the mental models, but the patience versus the impatience, is that where people really uh you know disagree with you?
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think uh I think that's a great insight because I think uh many people have questioned that uh why couldn't I why can't I simply monetize at every level?
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because at every stage uh there was a possibility to monetize and to uh you know to move out of a lab mode and move into uh growth mode or to create uh multiple things and to apply that and to and I think that that's why I think I I think that's why the essential curiosity and the essential desire to evolve, and I think the team who's with me shares that vision with me.
• 1:13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
• 1:13:50
  SPEAKER_01: The collective mind as you call it collective mind is one about evolution and contribution, very interesting, and I think that that contribution is to help others evolve and contribute, so you are simply uh sharing what you have or what you believe in with others, so that's the essence of our work.
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_05: Very nice.
• 1:14:13
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks, Shenin, for this lovely conversation.
• 1:14:15
  SPEAKER_05: I think uh uh the contribution to work framework, the motives framework, the fact that uh the mental models that you spoke about, the work ethic that you spoke about, uh I really felt a lot of resonance with what you said.
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_05: And uh, in an era where uh if you want to build uh out of India large global companies, I think it requires a new architecture.
• 1:14:46
  SPEAKER_05: You can't just take the Western way of building companies, but probably requires a different uh you know Indian way of doing it, and some of your mental models uh sound very very powerful, and it's about how people understand it, uh apply it, and then start to practice it.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, it's phenomenal the scale of change that you're trying to achieve uh in the most improbable places, and that is really what has inspired me out of this conversation.
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much, and thank you so much for having me.
• 1:15:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I really hope that uh you know, and your point that you just made, which is that how do you create organizations who are if you want world-scale organizations of India, then you also they also have to be world-class.
• 1:15:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and we have to help them make board.
• 1:15:39
  SPEAKER_01: I agree with you, but thank you again for having me here, and it is always a pleasure to have a conversation with you.
• 1:15:46
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
• 1:15:47
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks.
• 1:15:51
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks for listening to this episode.
• 1:15:53
  SPEAKER_05: For selected links and detailed show notes, visit www.contramines.com.
• 1:16:00
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