Latest / ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence / Best of 2023 | ContraMinds Podcast

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Best of 2023 | ContraMinds Podcast · ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: Hello everyone.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to a very special year and episode of the Contraminds podcast.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_02: In 2023, we had a phenomenal lineup of esteemed guests who were achievers in their own profession.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: They all stood for the Contraminds philosophy of having the conviction with what they were doing, irrespective of what the world around them believed or wanted them to do.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: This episode is a curation of ideas, thoughts, and highlights of the conversation that I had with them during the course of this year.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: I had a chance to speak to Raj Jain, who shared with me his thought on Proficon and how profits need to be at the core of every business.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uja Johari shared with me her leadership lessons that she had learned while building a world-class marketing services firm.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: Rajat Kumar Agalwal spoke to me about how health tech platforms need to focus on doctors, nurses, hospital support staff to change the experience of patients.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: Roger Frostgrill spoke to me about how engineers need to read history and how history can improve critical thinking skills.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: James Bellaggio had a conversation with me and he said great performers often look beyond job description.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: Bremkumar Gokul Dasan had a chat with me where he shared the technology and the platform that is being used to change rural education in India.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: Matt Abrahams talked to me about the importance of spontaneity in communication.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: Bharat and Maduri had a chat with me on data privacy and how the new data privacy laws are going to change the world of privacy in India.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: Dr.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_02: Anirod Damal Pani emphasized the need to rewire education and how education of the future needs to instill curiosity in kids.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: Srida Ramaswamy talked to me about how digital factories are built and how digital factories are going to change the world of manufacturing.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to listen to the full episodes, log on to www.contramines.com or alternatively, you can listen to them on Apple, Spotify, Google, Amazon Music or on YouTube.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: Don't forget to subscribe, download, share, or comment on these episodes.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: Your feedback is extremely important to us and that will help us improve the experience that you have with Contraminds.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: I wish you all a very, very happy new year and look forward to interacting with you in 2024.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_08: So a ProfyCon is a startup which is or a business, which is private, which is bootstrapped, profitable, and highly valuable.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_08: Now the perception is that you can't build a business without raising lots of capital.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_08: And yet the reality is that more than probably 99% of businesses are actually self-funded.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_08: You look at it from the Kirana store or the small teams, consulting teams, to even some decent-sized businesses.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_08: You saw it's possible to build a business without raising capital.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_08: And that's the point I wanted to get across because in newspapers and all the online publications, all you read is fundraising.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, everywhere.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_08: And my point was that look, it is possible to do it, and it's not a theoretical thing.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_08: I've done it twice in my life, and there are others who have done it.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_08: Like I have four stories from other entrepreneurs also in the book.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_08: So I think it's for entrepreneurs that your energies should be really spent focused on customers and the product rather than investors and fundraising.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_08: So it's a better way to build a business.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_08: So when you're as a founder, when you start thinking about how I am going to build a model which is sustainable, which basically focuses on profitable growth, I think you build a better business, you have more longevity in your business, you have greater freedom and control in your business.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_08: I think that's more fun being an entrepreneur than perhaps owning a small percentage of a large, potentially large business, you never know, but which is driven by investors, and their uh interests change, their thinking changes, and they are basically forcing decisions for you.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_08: So you set out to be an entrepreneur, but you end up becoming an employee to the investors.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: The first I've already shared with you is that we can all learn to be better speakers in the moment.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: The second is that you have to prepare to be spontaneous.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that sounds strange.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, what do you mean?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that antithetical to being spontaneous?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: But if you think about it, if you ever played a sport or a musical instrument, how did you learn to get to a point where you could just do it effortlessly?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Through a lot of practice and preparation.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: So the same is true with communication.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: So the the first four of the six steps relate to mindset.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then the second two steps have to do with messaging.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: So when it comes to mindset, first we have to address anxiety.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mentioned how that's a big deal.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Second, we have to get out of our own way and stop striving for perfection, or rather, we should look to connect.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: So it's about connection and not a perfection.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: And step three is to reframe these circumstances, not as threats and challenges, but see them as opportunities and collaboration or potential.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then step four of the mindset piece has to do with listening.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's really strange to think about, but listening is essential in any communication, especially spontaneous speaking.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, imagine you and I come out of a meeting and you ask me, you say, you know, how do you think that went?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: I immediately hear feedback.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so what do I do?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: I start giving you all the things that could have been better or the things that we need to do differently next time.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: But if I really would have listened, I might have heard that that you were really asking not for feedback, but for support.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: If I would have noticed you were looking down, you were speaking more softly, slower than usual, I would have understood that what you wanted not in that moment was feedback, but was support.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: And when I itemized all the things that were wrong, I was actually not helping you.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was probably doing you a disservice.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, mindset is about anxiety, getting out of our own way, reframing, and listening.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then the last two steps are about messaging.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: First has to do with structure, how we design our messages, and the second has to do with how we focus our messages to be more concise.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_10: The most difficult skill is delegation.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_10: If you ask me to do something, I can do easily.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_10: But if you have to get it done from somebody is the most difficult thing, but uh as managers, that is the you know biggest art all of us you know trying to you know uh improve every day and every week.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_10: But thankfully, I think one of the biggest differences when we come to non-profit like this, only passionate people will come to you work with you.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_10: Only those passionate people will stick on and walk this journey.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_10: It is not easy.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_10: You believe in people and you just enable them, you know, give them all that the basic finance and asking to stay, forget about all that.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_10: Enable them and you stay out of the scene, and they will prove, and that is what passionate people about.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_10: Uh, you know, two weeks back we uh implemented in a district called Arielo.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_10: You will not imagine in 20 schools to implement in the same district uh that person has travelled 900 kilometers within one district, 20 kilometers.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_10: So imagine you know how many people will come and you know stay with you and do that job.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_10: And I'm not paying, you know, one of the you know very small things I can pay.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_10: And this guy is only 22 years old, and he says he came to some of our programs and he understood what we are doing, and he said, you know, it is not like a job itself you are doing, it is nothing, nothing like work.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_10: You people are like so passionate, so happy, and that that is what makes me come here and join.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_10: And uh he's doing it, like he's he's a full-time employee and pretty curious.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_04: For most of us, we are extremely well advised to pay careful attention to the job description.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, it's simply that at a certain stage, if you can reach it, some people will have the chance to do exceptional things which do go beyond their job description.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_04: But what I think and what I describe is it's helpful to think of one's job uh or one's career in three distinct phases.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_04: In the first phase, you're learning how to do the job.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_04: You uh your main requirement here is just not to mess something up too big in the time that it takes you to learn what your job requires.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_04: So, do you have all the necessary skills and knowledge to perform your job?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_04: And by the way, each job and each company has unstated expectations as well as the explicit ones that are written in your job description.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_04: So you have colleagues, your company has a culture, management has a certain style and certain expectations.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_04: It takes some time for you to understand your company and your particular success factors to being effective.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_04: This, in my experience, takes anywhere between six months and two years, depending upon how much experience you already have and the job that you're in.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_04: Second phase is where you are delivering the essentials of your job as they're described in your job description.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_04: Do a good job in your current job.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_04: That is what unlocks every other good thing.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_04: You must develop mastery of your core job.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_04: The more things that you become good at handling or expert in handling, the more work you can take on, and then you can do that same work in less time with better results and greater confidence.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_04: So there's really a lot of time that can be spent, years and decades even, mastering your core job and getting better at it.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, it is honorable to stay put and do your job as well as you can.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_04: It doesn't always, however, create the maximum impact that's possible.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_04: So this is the third stage for those people who say, yeah, but I really want to do something extraordinary.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_04: And then I say, okay, once you've mastered the core job, you need to look at your motivation.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_04: Uh do you wish to have something more to satisfy your ego?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_04: I want to be the CEO because that's what I want to see on my business card.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_04: Or I think the best results come from people who are looking to do something for others.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_04: How can I help other people have uh an impact?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_04: How can I help other people thrive?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_04: And that can only happen after you've gone through stages one and two.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_04: You don't have the time for your core job.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_09: I was very fortunate to work with uh one Dr.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_09: Lawrence Faulkner.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_09: So he's a trained doctor, but I think he was born to be an engineer.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_09: And I happened to work with Mr.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_09: Arend Basal, who's again a thought leader.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_09: So these people, uh gurus who came in at a much later stage, really, uh, are the ones who uh opened up the world in the sense uh tell us what other people are doing, and then we could look back at our systems and see where we had reached.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_09: But the interesting part, in fact, is that we realized that a lot of uh best practices and the right rules kind of things were organically built into our products just because that was the best way to approach that problem.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_09: The principal problem that I see in India, I believe not many people are able to really uh assess the value of a software system, right?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_09: So there's one system and there'll be another copy in any uh shortest possible time, and people make decisions purely on the cost of the product, and there's very little investment into what it actually changes on the ground.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_09: And uh a vast majority of health tech decisions in our country are really made for the administration, not for the doctors, not for the nurses, and mostly not even for the patient.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_09: So they are essentially reporting and feeding tools to top-level management, not really systems which can change the experience of delivery in a fundamental way.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_09: So those are the two uh major challenges that we see in the Indian market.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_09: In the Western market, you if you leave US and you look at all the other spaces, they are again living in stone age when it comes to health, right?
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_09: So we we visited several different countries to assess what kind of technology are they using and what are the capabilities, and we were shocked.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_09: We had frustrated doctors, frustrated nurses, each one of them very, very enthusiastic about moving forward, but working with systems which uh in 2020 we had a hospital which was working on uh HIS which was deployed in 2001.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_09: Zero mobile capabilities, you can access data only from within the institution, and it comes with so many restrictions that at the end of the day any of the innovations are uh basically ruled out.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_09: People are just letting things continue the way they are.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_09: US, of course, is fundamentally different.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_09: That's the market which where uh all the innovation in health IT is happening and adoption is very, very big, and really that's the space where you have to really put value on table to be able to move forward.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_03: My first degree was in liberal arts and in history.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_03: And uh as we mentioned, we talked before.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I got out of uh I graduated and got out of school and couldn't get a really a decent job with a history degree, and I had to go all the way back and get an engineering degree.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought at the time I thought, I'm just boy, I just wasted four years on it on that uh history degree.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_03: But as I progressed through my career at NASA, I used my liberal arts degree and my history degree more than I used my engineering degree because I was managing with, you know, dealing with people.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_03: And history, I think, is a subject that gives you those critical thinking skills.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: You look at something like how did World War I developed, and you know, there's not one simple answer.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_03: There's a variety of different answers, underlying problems that it may have been festering for years and years and decades, that just finally come to a head.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I think when you look at a problem, you have to understand that and look at those critical thinking skills.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_03: I think those are advantages that I had at NASA that other engineers didn't have, and those were opportunities.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_03: I think I we what we use that as an opportunity to kind of teach engineers the importance of those skills.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_03: But I don't want to, I don't want I don't want all our engineers to go, I don't want all our engineers to go back and get a history degree.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_03: I just we just wanted to teach some courses uh in communication and critical thinking skills.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_03: And to be honest with you, that's why I wrote the book.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_06: It was a culmination of of um uh you know vaccine uh manufacturing took anywhere from 12 to 17 years because they were literally performing those tests physically off late.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_06: They're using digital twins and uh a lot of automated machine learning and artificial intelligence to build these uh models to simulate those things really fast and get to 18-90% of the way and then tweak the remaining 10-30 percent in the actual plant.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_06: Let's say if I'm building a product for a new uh Boeing or an Airbus uh uh plane, um, it's all about light weighting.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_06: Uh so steel is heavy, uh, you can't really put steel in airplanes, so they started using aluminum.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_06: Aluminum is uh light weight, but it is not as strong as uh steel.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_06: So they started mixing alloys, and uh uh so uh to produce a new product uh used to be you you mix up literally physically, you mix up a bunch of different alloys and uh to figure out uh how uh strong it is, uh, come up with the different strengths, uh, and how it is going to perform in different conditions, temperatures, is it going to break?
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_06: If I'm launching this, putting it in a rocket, how is it going to perform in uh in uh outer uh in space?
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_06: Uh those are the things that they literally they were used to test.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_06: So it would take anywhere from five to ten years to do these kinds of testing.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_06: Uh so now what they do is uh instead of physically testing these things, um they have uh evidence of uh some of these uh products, how they behave, uh characteristics of different alloys and stuff.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_06: So they have those uh things, data available.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_06: So they use those data, uh, they do finite elemental analysis and a bunch of other uh computational tools, they build those into uh a digital twin model and they simulate how a product will perform.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_06: And uh and so uh what it allows them to do is they can eliminate some of the other combinations effectively so they get you up to 50-60 percent of the weight.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_06: Uh so that reduces the time frame much much less.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, and then based on those simulations, they then they go back and they do uh create those combinations physically, test it, and further refine their models.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_05: It was the kind of products and services that we created which were tangible, which you could put value on.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_05: For example, we automated video production.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_05: For example, there were certain pieces on technology and really building smart tech for um you know things that were happening, you know, long ago when apps became a big deal and when um you know um personalization became a big deal.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_05: We create we looked at all of those aspects and added a pro and built products so in any year we had at least five to ten new products and services that we were launching, which is what we priced for, not creativity.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_05: Because creativity, my price may be 100 rupees, someone else's is 50 rupees, right?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_05: The person is always gonna go with the one with 50 rupees, it has to be with what is the product that you take into the market.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_05: So, to answer your question in a more sharper manner, it's it's is the service industry as scalable?
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_05: There is enough evidence to show that it is not as scalable as like a tech industry or you know a product industry or you know, an industry like that.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_05: But if you're able to create um products and services backed by tangible technology, something that a marketing manager is putting money behind is going to actually be able to see results very, very quickly.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_05: That's the only way um you know you're gonna be able to scale up, but not on the back of creative retainers, that's not happening anymore.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_11: I think this is a big problem.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_11: I think basically schooling encourages a loser mentality, and obviously by definition, it is going to because if you have a hundred kids sitting for an exam and only one can become a topper.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_11: You know, even the guy who becomes number two doesn't think of himself as a winner, he thinks of himself a loser.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_11: Forget about all the other 99.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_11: So you're encouraging that loser mentality, you're effectively saying, you know, you're helpless, you're powerless.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_11: All these other kids who have the right connections, the right network, the right parents, the right money, they're the ones who are going to become successful.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_11: Which is why Nara and Murti keeps on complaining about how terrible all the graduates are who apply for enforcers jobs.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_11: That's exactly why the change needs to happen at a much earlier stage.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_11: Because by that time, so you know, you can't teach a 16-year-old ethics.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_11: Because he's already he's already been engraved, he's watched his parents grow up all the time.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_11: And if at your home you encourage your kids to ask questions, you know, the first thing we normally do is don't ask so many questions, or I'm too tired, or you know, whatever else it is.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_11: Whereas if your attitude is, you know what, that's a great question.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_11: Let's figure out the answer for ourselves.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_11: So you know what, that's a great question, but you know, I don't know the answer.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_11: But let's go meet Mr.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_11: Desai, who stands next door, who happens to be an engineer.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_11: Maybe he'll have an answer.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_11: Or you know what?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_11: I honestly don't know, but let's watch a YouTube video and see if the answers are there.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_11: So I think if we create This attitude that you can figure out stuff for yourself.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_11: Everything is figure outable.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_11: Here is the question.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_11: Let me answer that question.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_11: The second step, when you have enough confidence in being able to answer those questions, your second step will be you know, we answer that question, but I think it was a pretty crappy question because the answer was just a Google search away.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_11: Why can't we start asking better questions?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_11: I think that then that's where starts happening.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_11: So usually the quality of a kid's questions are a hundred times better than the quality of an adult's questions, let's be honest.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_11: It's just that we can't answer them.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_11: You know, we can only answer those simple things which a teacher asks us or which a boss asks us, so we're comfortable with those.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_11: But to your point, I think there are lots of great books written on open-ended questions on how to be able to ask the right.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_11: And none of these are difficult.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_11: It's you know the simple things why, how, when, where.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_11: When you start from those, it starts very difficult.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_11: Being able to figure some of this stuff out.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_11: You again, it just comes back to giving the kids the freedom, respecting kids enough to give them the freedom, trusting your kids enough to put them back, and allowing your kids to have that courage to be able to ask those questions.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_11: I think it all boils down to the fact is we don't respect our kids enough because they're so much smaller than us and because they're so much more dependent on us.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_11: And if we said, if we change that attitude, and you know, we took the approach, this kid is a guest in our house.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_11: We brought this kid up, and if we treated all our kids as respected guests who are going to be in our life for maybe 15 years, 20 years, or whatever else it is, and then they're gonna grow away and grow apart.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_11: I think if we did that, a lot of these things would automatically change.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_07: I honestly believe that no framework is perfect, that there's a famous thing, right?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_07: You know, all models are wrong, but some are useful.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_07: So all frameworks are imperfect or wrong, but some are useful.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_07: So you have to kind of you know take it with that.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_07: So 139 for me is a way to build your story narrative, right?
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_07: So let me see tell you where that build story narrative comes within a story, and I think it might be useful to talk about the ABCD process or game framework for whatever word, uh, because that's where it sees it.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_07: So any storyteller broadly is going through these four steps, right?
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_07: A is aligned with your audience.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_07: Who are you going to present to?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_07: What is their seniority?
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_07: What is their background?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_07: What do they already know about the topic?
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_07: What are their objectives from that session?
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_07: What are their fears and worries and concerns?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_07: So, as much as possible, if you can uh research your audience and know about their background, um, becomes easier for you to tailor and customize your story, right?
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_07: So aligning with them, aligning with the I call them aligning with the audience, the data, the metrics, uh, everything.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_07: The B is building the story narrative, right?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_07: So once you know your audience, don't start on a PowerPoint slide directly, right?
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_07: So the PowerPoint will come later on paper or Word document.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_07: Write down your story in sentences and um sentences as in messages, not in terms of saying, I will talk to them about the project need, then I will talk about the key findings and then the implications and the next steps.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_07: That is not a story, that is a list of agenda items, right?
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_07: So instead, if I were to kind of take uh an example of a review, right?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_07: A quarterly review, so uh an agenda for a review would be uh revenue review, cost, profitability, next steps.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_07: Tells me nothing, right?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_07: Instead, our revenue grew by 12% higher than target, mainly driven by South region and um the new pricing strategy.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_07: That is one whole big sentence on the cost side.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_07: We managed to rein in employee cost and um materials, thereby pushing up EBITDA by 30 Bps.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_07: Final the next steps.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_07: Uh we therefore need to continue this momentum but address some concerns in division A.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_07: Right?
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_07: So now these three are my broad three messages that I want to give in that year, and those three will then get a one-line summary, which is that you know, revenue broadly doing good, a bit uh improving, but concern on division A.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_07: Um, and then within revenue, ka that one line, it will further get divided, and you know, overall revenue grew by in south.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_07: What really drove uh drove the growth?
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_07: Um, in pricing strategy, what really happened, then cost again, you go into you know employee what happened, in uh material what happened, and so on.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_07: And then similarly on on the this, and then each of those can then further, as you can imagine, drill down further, right?
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_07: So you're building out the story like this.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_07: It will, if you know your data, it will not take you more than half an hour to do this.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_07: But that half an hour will give you so much clarity, and then your presentation preparation becomes easier, far, far easier.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_07: So, this building the story narrative is is a crucial.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_07: Um, I would say it's 70% of your success rests on how well you do this.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_07: It should be so good that even if you don't have your slides, you're sitting and standing in an elevator with your with your audience, you should be able to tell that story, right?
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_07: So, C uh is choosing the right visuals and the slide because you know we are visual creatures, we understand visuals better, and D is for delivering with impact.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_07: So there are some techniques around that also.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_07: So, broadly can remember ABCD.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: So, firstly, before we get into protection of data, we need to understand the privacy side, what is data, what is personal data, what is digitized personal data.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there are basically three or four layers to it.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: So, if if Swami, I'm speaking to you, I know you are Swami, you are in Bombay, uh, you have uh you are a male, uh, you are probably uh Hindu by choice of religion.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know what you practice, but I'm presuming with your name.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and uh you will have uh your date of birth, your medical records, your financial uh status insofar as your banking records.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: So any data which is able to personally identify you and which are personal to you would be the personal data of which you are the primary owner.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: There are a variety of data, there is a variety of personal data, not all data pertaining to you is personal data.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: There might be publicly available data as well, but we'll come to that later.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then these are in different modes or medium, it can be in physical form or it can get digitized and become digital personal data.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: When you look at uh the Indian history, uh we've been very, very open about a lot of things.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, no one was really bothered about privacy.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, privacy law has been primitive, not being enforced the way it would in the Western world.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um in 2000s uh was the first time when there was a need felt to have uh data protection and privacy protection.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that there is a rich history on why it came about to be uh formed, but 2006 statute never made it to becoming a law.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it was more of a bill and it never became an act.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: But eventually, uh earlier this year we have the government which is passed in both the houses a digital uh data protection law.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: So DPDPA is gonna protect personal data which is digitized.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: Therefore, we need to have an act which will protect individuals, which will monitor and also guide corporations, individuals, organizations on how this personal data will be stored, saved, processed, and who uh is gonna monitor all these things, they would be probably a government-run tribunal.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: And last but not the least, the most important key part is the consent.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: I as a personal data, my personal data, or you as with your personal data need to consent where and how this data has to be, personal data has to be used.
• 31:15
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• 31:17
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• 31:24
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• 31:48
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for listening and stay safe.