Play To Potential Podcast

GUEST Lloyd Reeb is a successful real estate developer and owner of retirement housing who made a mid-life transition, looking for greater meaning, joy and impact in his second half. He has had the privilege of investing 20 years helping leaders plan their second half. He helped launch the Halftime Institute, a global team that teach, coach and connect successful men and women in pursuit of significance. Lloyd has taken the Halftime message around the world: speaking, teaching and coaching individuals through the journey. In our conversation we spoke about a range of themes including being a Chief Life Officer, Deploying Time, Talent and Treasures for Social Impact, Keeping the Centre of Gravity low, Maintaining a Margin and much more. This conversation is packed with insights for anyone who is looking to make a thoughtful transition from Success to Significance.  Published in Oct 2021. HOST Deepak Jayaraman, the host of this podcast series, works with Leaders and Organizations with a growth mindset and

GUEST Harish Bhat is the Brand Custodian of Tata Sons. He has had a ~35 year career at the Tata Group and has held several leadership roles including COO - Watches and Accessories Business at Titan, MD & CEO of Tata Consumer Products, Chairman of the Board at Tata Coffee Limited and more.  He is the Author of four books. "#Tata Stories", 40 timeless tales to inspire you. "An extreme love of coffee", an exciting novel about coffee and magic. "Tata Log", inspiring stories from the contemporary history of the Tata Group. "The Curious Marketer", a free-flowing exploration of curiosity in marketing. He also writes frequently in several leading publications including The Mint and The Hindu Business Line.  In this conversation, we spoke about his journey, some of his key choices and his perspectives on storytelling and building culture through it. Then we dove into some of the stories and lessons from his book.  Published in Oct 2021.  HOST Deepak Jayaraman, the host of this podcast series, works with Lead

GUEST Katy Milkman is the James G. Dinan Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and holds a secondary appointment at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine. Her research explores ways that insights from economics and psychology can be harnessed to change consequential behaviors for good, such as savings, exercise, vaccination take-up and discrimination. She has also recently authored the Book - How to Change - The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be.  In 2018, she began hosting Charles Schwab’s popular podcast “Choiceology with Katy Milkman”, which explores key lessons from behavioral economics about decision making.  Published in September 2021.  HOST Deepak Jayaraman, the host of this podcast series, works with Leaders and Organizations with a growth mindset and helps them play to their full potential. He strives to spend significant upfront energy in understand the nuances of the context and then armed with the mutual trust and understanding of the cont

GUEST Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School.  Amy has been recognized by the biannual Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers since 2011, and most recently was ranked #3 in 2019. She studies teaming, psychological safety, and organizational learning, and her articles have been published numerous academic and management outlets Her most recent book, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth (Wiley, 2019), offers a practical guide for organizations serious about success in the modern economy.  She has been studying Psychological Safety for ~15 years way before it became popular in the blogosphere after Charles Duhigg wrote his piece for the New Yorker about Project Aristotle and Google’s lessons from its quest to build a perfect team in 2016.  In our conversation, we speak about the various nuances involved in the way we think about Psychological Safety and how it pla

GUEST Over the last year and a quarter, since March 2020, a lot of us have been thrown into this work from anywhere world without any prior preparation. It is like being thrown into the deep end of a swimming pool without any prior training. We have had to figure out our own response to the evolving situation. While there has been no shortage of wisdom and webinars, I have been looking for a research backed view to learn from. In that context, I am excited to bring the next conversation with Darleen DeRosa (Consultant at SpencerStuart's Stamford office) and author of Leading at a Distance: Practical Lessons for Virtual Success, that she has co-authored with her colleague Jim Citrin, who leads SpencerStuart's North American CEO practice and is a core member of the firm's Board practice. SpencerStuart is one of the world's leading Leadership Advisory Services firms. Darleen has been studying Remote Work since 2008 long before COVID struck.  Given a lot of the listeners to this podcast are leaders in India or

GUEST For many of us, the last time we learned a new skill was during childhood. We live in an age which reveres expertise but looks down on the beginner. Upon entering adulthood and middle age, we begin to shy away from trying new things, instead preferring to stay nestled firmly in our comfort zones. Beginners asks the question: why are children the only ones allowed to experience the inherent fun of facing daily challenges? And could we benefit from embracing new skills, even if we're initially hopeless? Bestselling author Tom Vanderbilt sets out to find the answer, tasking himself with acquiring several new skills under the tutelage of professionals, including drawing, juggling, surfing and much more. Witty and often surprisingly profound, Beginners is an uplifting exploration of the science of brain plasticity and how we can learn how to learn anew. Published in July 2021 HOST Deepak Jayaraman, the host of this podcast series, works with Leaders and Organizations with a growth mindset and helps them

GUEST Dan Cable is Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School. Dan’s research and teaching focus on employee engagement, change, organizational culture, leadership mindset, and the linkage between brands and employee behaviors. Dan was selected for the 2018 Thinkers50 Radar List, The Academy of Management has twice honored Dan with “Best article” awards, and The Academy of Management Perspectives ranked Dan in the “Top 25 most influential management scholars.” In our conversation, we spoke about his journey including a cancer diagnosis which led him to examine his life and make pivotal choices. We go deep into his book “Exceptional” where he speaks about how we all can unlock our “best self” by using the highlights reel, a concept that we are familiar with in the realm of sports. Gathering and reflecting on our highlights reel could open up new possibilities that can help us play to our potential.  Published in June 2021. HOST Deepak Jayaraman, the host of this podcast series, works

GUEST Sally Helgesen, cited in Forbes as the world’s premier expert on women’s leadership, is an internationally best-selling author, speaker and leadership coach. Sally’s most recent book, How Women Rise, co-authored with Marshall Goldsmith, examines the behaviors most likely to get in the way of successful women. It became the top-seller in its field within a week of publication and rights have been sold in 15 languages. Previous books include The Female Advantage: Women’s Ways of Leadership, hailed as the classic in its field and continuously in print since 1990, and The Female Vision: Women’s Real Power at Work, which explores how women’s strategic insights can strengthen their careers. The Web of Inclusion: A New Architecture for Building Great Organizations, was cited in The Wall Street Journal as one of the best books on leadership of all time and is credited with bringing the language of inclusion into business. In addition to delivering leadership workshops and keynotes for companies around the w

GUEST Dr. Jennifer (Jen) Goldman Wetzler is a leading expert on Conflict and Organizational psychology. For two decades, she has advised senior leaders at global corporations in a wide range of industries as well as at large non-profit and governmental institutions. She is the author of Optimal Outcomes - Free yourself from conflict at Work, at Home and in life.  Earlier in her career, she was Director of Negotiation Programs at Mediation Works Incorporated, and a facilitator at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. A former counterterrorism research fellow with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, she received her B.A. with honors from Tufts University and holds a Ph.D. in Social-Organizational Psychology from Columbia University.  When I reflect on my journey, I feel I often default to a conflict-avoiding approach which I find to be frequently counter-productive in situations. Jen speaks about the various defaults each one of us gravitate towards and how that leads us to being stuck in co

GUEST Bill Carr is the Co-Author (along with Colin Bryar) of the recently published book Working Backwards - Insights, Stories and Secrets from Inside Amazon.  In Working Backwards, these two long-serving Amazon executives reveal and codify the principles and practices that drive the success of one of the most extraordinary companies the world has ever known. With twenty-seven years of Amazon experience between them, much of it in the early 2000s―a period of unmatched innovation that brought products and services including Kindle, Amazon Prime, Amazon Studios, and Amazon Web Services to life. The book offers unprecedented access to the Amazon way as it was refined, articulated, and proven to be repeatable, scalable, and adaptable. The book demonstrates that success on Amazon’s scale is not achieved by the genius of any single leader, but rather through commitment to and execution of a set of well-defined, rigorously-executed principles and practices. In our conversation, we first spoke about some of the di

GUEST Sanjeev Aggarwal and Hari TN have seen the "scale-up movie” in different contexts. Sanjeev was the Founder CEO of Daksh that he eventually sold to IBM. He is now an investor at Helion Ventures and Fundamentum Partnership. The have recently co-authored the book - From Pony to Unicorn - Scaling a Start-up sustainably. From Pony to Unicorn lucidly describes the X-to-10X journey that every start-up aspiring to become a unicorn has to go through. The book effortlessly narrates the fundamental principles behind scaling. Peppered with anecdotes, insights and practical wisdom, the book is a treasure trove of lessons derived from the authors' rich personal experiences in both building and guiding several start-ups that went on to attain the 'unicorn' status and became public-listed companies. In the conversation, we speak about how Founders should think about scaling up, the three different rhythms of an organization that is scaling up, how organizations should think about transitioning senior leaders, being d

GUEST Bruce Feiler is an American writer and television personality. He is the author of 15 books, including Council of Dads, a book that describes how he responded to a diagnosis of a rare cancer by asking a group of men to be present in the lives of his young daughters. His latest work explores the power of life stories. Drawing on interviews with Americans in all 50 states, he offers strategies for coping with life's unsettling times in his new book, Life Is In The Transitions, published in May 2020. Informed by the sifting and coding of life story interviews across America, Feiler examines what gives our lives meaning. Adam Grant called the book, one of "The 20 New Leadership Books for 2020”.  In our conversation we speak about the notion of anytime life transition, how resilience might be the wrong attribute to have during transitions, the three phases in a transition, the power of stories in navigating transitions and much more. In a world where the rate of transitions we all will go through is increa

GUEST Ramesh is a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, and a leader in the Pharmaceutical and Organization practices. He is the Global Dean of the Bower Forum, McKinsey's program for CEO learning. He is a member of McKinsey's Global Social Responsibility Council, and sits on a few non-profit Boards in the Education sector in India. He also has been through the unimaginable trauma of losing two young children to cancer. I was keen to speak to him to get his perspectives on leadership given his experiences at McKinsey and how we can all deal with lifequakes when they hit us given what he has been through on the personal front. We speak about how CEOs should discern their mandate when they take charge, how they should focus on not just doing but being, how he has reinvented several times over within McKinsey, How he has architected a Personal Board of Advisors and how that replenishes him, how he and his wife have dealt with the twin shocks that they have experienced and more.  Published in Feb 2021. HO

GUEST Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi is the president and CEO of the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 2020, Priyadarshi released his book "Running Toward Mystery: The Adventure of an Unconventional Life”. In the book, he speaks about his walking away from his school at the age of 10 based on some dreams he had been having from the age of 6. He speaks about the various twists and turns in his journey that has now brought him to MIT.  In 2009, Priyadarshi founded the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT to design and disseminate innovative programs on teaching secular ethics and human values. The Center for Ethics has 6 Nobel Peace Laureates as its founding members and its programs run in 5 countries while poised for a global reach. Published in January 2021. HOST Deepak Jayaraman, the host of this podcast series, works with Leaders and Organizations with a growth mindset and helps them play to their full po

GUEST Dr. Ashley Whillans is the Volpert Family Associate Professor at the Harvard Business School. Professor Whillans earned her PhD in Social Psychology from the University of British Columbia. Her research seeks to understand the associations between time, money, and subjective wellbeing. She is particularly interested in understanding how individual, organizational and societal factors like gender, workplace policies, and income inequality predict how people value and spend time and money, with possible implications for well-being. Published in December 2020 HOST Deepak Jayaraman, the host of this podcast series, works with Leaders and Organizations with a growth mindset and helps them play to their full potential. He strives to spend significant upfront energy in understand the nuances of the context and then armed with the mutual trust and understanding of the context, strives to be of value as a (behind the scenes and discreet) Coach / Sounding Board for their journeys. LinkedIn profile here.  ABO

GUEST Vinay Sitapati returns to the Play to Potential Podcast on the back of his recently published book - Jugalbandi - The BJP before Modi. The book begins with the creation of Hindu nationalism as a response to British-induced elections in the 1920s and moves on to the formation of the BJP in 1980 and ends with its first national government, from 1998 to 2004.  The book also traces the entangled lives of its founding leaders Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani. Vinay digs into various moments to really understand what made their six decade relationship tick. He teases out the secret recipe behind their cohesiveness despite twists and turns in their respective fortunes. He says that what kept them together was fraternal love, professional synergy and, above all, an ideology that stressed on unity.  This podcast is for information and learning purposes only. All content and opinions expressed in this podcast are that of the guests and are not necessarily the opinions of Deepak Jayaraman or Transiti

GUEST Ashish Dhawan is the Founder and Chairman of Central Square Foundation (CSF) and Ashoka University. He worked for twenty years in the investment management business and ran one of India’s leading private equity funds, ChrysCapital. In June 2012, he left his full time role at ChrysCapital to focus on philanthropic work in education. Ashish is an MBA with distinction from Harvard University and a dual bachelor’s (BS/BA) holder with Magna Cum Laude honors from Yale University. Central Square Foundation works on system reform in school education in India. The foundation has 60 team members who work on grant making, research, policy reform and policy implementation. Ashoka University is a new liberal arts institution that aspire to transform higher education in India.  In our conversation, we spoke about how Ashish set markers for himself at 30 (to become an entrepreneur) and 45 (to move towards social impact) and has made choices in line with those markers. We also speak about the various pathways he cons

GUEST Marshall Goldsmith helps successful people achieve positive, lasting change in behavior; for themselves, their people, and their teams. He has four decades of experience of helping top CEOs and executives overcome limiting beliefs and behaviours to achieve greater success. He has received several accolades over the years. Thinkers 50 ranked him as World's most influential leadership thinker (2015 and 2011), top ten business thinker, top rated executive coach (2015, 2013, and 2011). In our conversation, we spoke about staying relevant over the long term, ROI in Coaching, the path to excellence, getting behaviours to stick, the art of asking good questions that open up new possibilities and what matters in the end given his work with several leaders. This had a slightly different tonality from a typical podcast conversation. Very often Marshall would slip into a Coaching mode and get me to reflect on several key questions. I hope that you find it as purposeful as I did. Published in Oct 2020. HOST De

GUEST Venkat is the Founder of GiveIndia, a platform that strives to bridge the gap between two sets of people - People who want to give, who want to try and make a difference along with those that are doing phenomenal work but don’t know how to reach out to the people that want to support them.  GiveIndia was born on April 28, 2000 out of the belief that equal opportunity is the cornerstone of civilization. All human beings must have the same opportunity to succeed in life, irrespective of the circumstances they were born into.However, this is far from true. GiveIndia strives to change this inequality. We speak about Venkat’s journey, his childhood, his time at IIMA and his early career choices before he moved into Philanthropy. We also discuss some of the questions people end up having around giving - 1) Giving time versus money 2) Raising Giving children 3) Our relationship with money and how it impacts our Giving decisions 4) Givers that inspire him Published in Oct 2020. HOST Deepak Jayaraman, the

GUEST Whitney Johnson is the CEO of WLJ Advisors and one of the 50 leading business thinkers in the world as named by Thinkers50. She is an expert on helping high-growth organizations develop high-growth individuals. Whitney is an award-winning author, world-class keynote speaker, frequent lecturer for Harvard Business School's Corporate Learning and an executive coach and advisor to CEOs. She is a popular contributor to the Harvard Business Review and her course on Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship has been viewed more than 1 million times. In 2019, she was ranked #3 on the Global Gurus' Top 30 Organizational Culture Professionals. In 2017, she was selected from more than 16,000 candidates as a “Top 15 Coach” by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith. Whitney was the cofounder of the Disruptive Innovation Fund with Harvard Business School’s Clayton Christensen, through which they invested in and led the $8 million seed round for South Korea’s Coupang, currently valued at more than $9 billion. She was involved in fund forma