Play To Potential Podcast

GUEST Atul Khatri is one of the top Stand up comedians in the country. In his previous avatar, he used to run a successful IT Business with his brother for several years. When he got tired of the business routine, he tried his hand at DJing and Bar-tending before trying his hand at comedy in Feb 2012 as part of his new year resolution in 2012. 7 years later, he had a Netflix special featuring 47 comedians from 13 countries around the world.  We speak about his journey, mid-life reflections and how he rode two horses (IT Business and Stand up comedy) for a period of time before he took the call to do Stand-up full time. He also speaks about how he had to balance passion and pragmatism  as he transitioned from the world of Business to the world of Stand-up.  We also spent time talking about his response to COVID-19. He had a series of shows lined up in US and Canada from 13 March to 13 April. He speaks about how he was in Canada on 10 March and the world started falling victim to Corona and started shutting

GUEST Sir Andrew Likierman is the former Dean of the London Business School. He has been researching the topic of Judgment for several years. He is the senior National Independent Director of Times Newspapers Ltd and an NED of listed insurance company Beazley Group and of Monument Bank. His former Non Executive roles have included Bank of England and Barclays Bank Plc.  We initially spoke about his journey through life and his various choices including his arc of curiosity around measuring things that are hard to measure that eventually led him to studying Judgment.  His thinking has been published in the HBR in Jan-Feb 2020 issue. Podcast published in August 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 a

GUEST R Gopalakrishnan is a man of many identities. A Board Member, an author, an advisor, speaker and a teacher. Apart from having an illustrious career in Hindustan Lever and Tata Sons, he has been on several Boards over the last few decades. He has authored 12 books since 2007 (that is a run rate of about a book a year if you think about it). He spends his time on Boards, as a Mentor and as a Corporate Advisor, as a speaker and as a Teacher. He is an Executive in Residence at SP Jain and a Distinguished Professor at IIT Kharagpur. While there is a lot of wisdom to mine from him, we tried to anchor the bulk of the conversation around his book Crash where he profiled about 15 high profile CEO appointments that didn’t quite work out (that includes Vikram Pandit at Citigroup, Anshu Jain at Deutsche Bank, Carly Fiorina at HP, Vishal Sikka at Infosys and more. He looks at common patterns across some of these transitions and distils them in the book. We unpack some of that in this conversation.We first speak ab

GUEST BJ Fogg is a behaviour scientist with deep experience in innovation and teaching. At Stanford University, he runs the Behaviour Design Lab (earlier called Persuasive Tech lab). He spends about 50% of his time to Stanford and 50% to industry innovation. On the industry side, he trains innovators to use his work so that they can create solutions that influence behaviour (focus areas include health, financial wellbeing, learning, productivity and more).  He is the author of the recently published book - Tiny Habits. In this book, he breaks down his model for human behaviour that he has developed based on years of research. The formula that underpins this model is B = MAP. He says that Behaviour (B) happens when Motivation (M), Ability (A) and Prompt (P) come together at the same moment.  In our conversation, we explore the various elements of this model and also discuss how we can contextualise it to the current situation we are in given COVID-19.  Published in June 2020.    HOST Deepak Jayaraman, the

GUEST Jennifer believes that leadership is one of the most vital renewable resources in the world. This might be more true than ever as organizations across sectors and around the world are facing an unprecedented amount of volatility and change. Jennifer designs and teaches leadership programs, coaches senior teams, and supports new ways of thinking about strategy and people with clients facing these dramatic shifts in complexity, volatility, and change in their workplaces and markets. She blends deep theoretical knowledge with a driving quest for practical ways to make leaders’ lives better.  Jennifer also supports leaders one-on-one as a leadership coach. Over the last decade, Jennifer has developed The Growth Edge Coaching approach, which she describes in her book, Changing on the job: Developing leaders for a complex world (Stanford Business Books 2012). She supports clients to find their current growing edge and then make choices about how they want to grow, and she teaches coaches around the world tr

GUEST Raj Raghunathan is a professor of Marketing at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin, where he relies on themes from psychology, behaviorial science, decision theory and marketing to explain consumption behaviour. He also studies the impact that people’s judgments and decisions have on their own happiness and fulfilment. Based on his research, he teaches a very successful online course on Coursera on Happiness (named A Life of Happiness And Fulfillment). His book (titled, If you’re so smart, why aren’t you happy?) was released in the US, UK, and India in 2016.  In our conversation, he speaks about his journey to researching happiness and his take on why so many people around us who are smart and successful but not necessarily happy. He talks about some common pitfalls people get into and some perspectives on how we can prioritise (not necessarily pursue happiness) in our lives.  He is an alumnus of BITS Pilani and IIM Calcutta. This conversation was published in May 202

GUEST Matthew Paul Walker is a British scientist and Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of the book - Why We Sleep (NY Times Bestseller, #1 Sunday Times Best seller). Previously, he was a professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on the impact of sleep on human health and disease. He has published more than 100 scientific studies and is the founder and Director of the Center for Human Sleep Science.  A lot of us grow up with the narrative of sleep being a residual figure in our lives where getting work done at the expense of sleep is seen as a victory of will power and mind over body. The reality is that there are dire consequences of trading off sleep for work or for exercise and it often shows up several years later. Given the delayed feedback loop and possible lack of attributability, many of us possibly end up ignoring it. Sleep constitutes about one third of our time on the planet and the quality of sleep po

GUEST Jennifer Petriglieri is an Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD and the author of Couples That Work, a book on how dual-career couples can thrive in love and in work. Her award-winning research and teaching focus on identity, leadership, and career development. She is particularly interested in how people’s close relationships shape who they become professionally and personally, and how moments of uncertainty and crisis make us who we are. She was named one of the world’s best 40 business school professors under 40 by Poets & Quants. Her research has appeared in the Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Learning & Education, and the Journal of Organizational Change Management. It has also been featured in the Business Week and the Harvard Business Review. A British citizen, Jennifer earned a PhD in Organisational Behaviour from INSEAD. She also holds an MBA from IMD, Switzerland, and a BSc in genetics from Nottingham Univer

GUEST Lynda Gratton is a Professor of Management Practice at London Business School and is one of the World’s foremost thinkers at the intersection of leadership, the world of work and careers.  Over the last 20 years Lynda has written extensively about the interface between people and organisations. Her eight books cover the link between business and HR strategy (Living Strategy), the new ways of working (The Democratic Enterprise), the rise of complex collaboration (Hot Spots and Glow) and the impact of a changing world on employment and work (The Shift). Her last book (100 year life) that she co-authored with Andrew Scott (Prof of Economics at London Business School) has fundamentally shaped a lot of my thinking and the choices I have made in the last few years.  Lynda’s work has been acknowledged globally - Lynda is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum and has chaired the WEF Council of Leadership. She chairs the Drucker Prize panel and is on the governing body of London Business School. In 2017, Lynda

GUEST James Clear is the Author of the book - Atomic Habits that has sold more than 1 Million Copies globally. He is the creator of The Habits Academy and runs the website jamesclear.com where he writes about habits and human potential. The central question he is trying to answer through his work is “How can we live better”. He has a weekly newsletter where he shares some of his ideas and this goes out to more than Half a Million subscribers who benefit from his thinking. To subscribe to his newsletter, you could just got to Jamesclear.com.  In our conversation we spoke about several elements that he has covered in the book. We first spoke about his journey and how he came to studying and researching habits. We then spoke about how we should think about building habits in the right areas. James says that we need to work hard on the things that come easily to us! We explore that in the context of transitions and relate that to the notion of keeping the identity small. We then dive into the notion of the plat

GUEST Sudhir Sitapati is currently Executive Director, Foods and Refreshments at Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL). He has just published his first book - The CEO Factory, published by Juggernaut Books.  I have had the privilege of knowing him for the last 22 years right from the day we joined IIM Ahmedabad in the summer of 1997. This podcast conversation is special for a few reasons. 1) It is the first time I am interviewing a friend on the podcast 2) It is the first time two siblings have been on a podcast (I had interviewed Sudhir’s brother Vinay on his book Half Lion a while back). 3) Sudhir speaks about Prof AK Jain of IIMA in the book and in the podcast. I had the fortune of being taught by Prof Jain and happened to interview him in the context of a felicitation function we had organised last year. You can find my interview with Prof AK Jain here.  In this conversation, Sudhir and I spoke about various elements of his book - The CEO Factory. We spoke about a range of topics including how HUL looks for

GUEST William Vincent Campbell Junior (Bill Campbell) was an American businessman and Chairman of Board of Trustees of Columbia University and Chairman of the Board of Intuit Inc. He was VP of Marketing and Board Director for Apple Inc and CEO for Claris, Intuit and Go Corporation. After his active career as a business executive he had a profound influence as a Coach. He worked with the who’s who of the Business world that includes luminaries such as Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, Marissa Mayer, Sheryl Sandberg, Sundar Pichai and so on. Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Alan Eagle (Executives at Google) interviewed more than 80 leaders who knew and loved Bill Campbell and shared their insights in the recently published book Trillion Dollar Coach. To honour their mentor and inspire and teach future generations, they have codified his wisdom in this book. In my conversation with Alan Eagle (one of the Co-authors of the book), we spoke about how Bill transitioned from a care

GUEST Dr. Tasha Eurich is an organizational psychologist, researcher, and New York Times best-selling author. With a PhD in Industrial-Organizational Psychology, Tasha is the principal of The Eurich Group, a boutique executive development firm that helps companies—from start-ups to the Fortune 100—succeed by improving the effectiveness of their leaders and teams. Her primary areas of expertise are executive coaching, executive team development, and leadership and high potential development programs.  She contributes to Harvard Business Review and has been featured in outlets like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, Forbes, and Fast Company, as well as peer-reviewed journals.Tasha’s first book, Bankable Leadership, debuted on the The New York Times bestseller list in 2013. Her latest book, Insight, delves into the connection between self-awareness and success, where she shares the surprising findings from her multi-year research program on the topic.  In this conversation, we div

GUEST Paddy Upton is a Head Coach in Professional T20 cricket, Mental Coach to professional athletes, Executive Coach and Professor of Practice at Deakin University. Changing careers, following a second master’s degree in Business Coaching from Middlesex University (2003), and along with Gary Kirsten as Head Coach, Paddy was appointed Mental Conditioning and Strategic Leadership Coach of the Indian National team in 2008. Under Kirsten and Upton, the team attained ICC top test team ranking for the first time (2009) and went on to win the ICC World Cup in 2011. Following this success, Paddy was appointed Performance Director of the South Africa Cricket Team from 2011-2014 during which they became the first team to simultaneously hold the Offical ICC World Number 1 ranking in all three formats of the international game. Between 2012-2018, Upton has been Head Coach in 12 professional T20 Cricket seasons for five different teams across three tournaments including the Indian Premier League, Australian Big Bash Lea

GUEST Herminia Ibarra is the Charles Handy Professor of Organizational Behaviour at London Business School (LBS). Prior to joining LBS, she served on the INSEAD and Harvard Business School faculties. An authority on Leadership and Career Development, Thinkers 50 ranks Ibarra among the top management thinkers in the world. She is the author of the best selling, Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader and Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing your Career. She writes for HBR and business publications such as Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and New York Times.  In our conversation, we unpack the nuance behind Herminia’s belief “Adults are more likely to act their way into a new way of thinking than think their way into a new way of acting”. We talk about how leaders in transition could experiment with different pathways and think about a portfolio versus a full-time role. We also get to the bottom of the catch-22 that a several professionals encounter especially in identity consuming t

GUEST Matt Dixon is an Ironman University Master Coach and a former professional triathlete. He has a master’s degree in clinical and exercise physiology and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Men’s Journal, Men’s Fitness and Men’s Health. Dixon is also the author of two books, Fast-Track Triathlete and The Well-Built Triathlete, available from Velopress.  Matt runs Purple Patch Fitness, an organization that provides a customized training experience for athletes of all levels. This includes multiple World Champions (Athletes that have trained with Purple Patch Fitness have amassed over 400 IRONMAN and IRONMAN 70.3 wins and podiums) and time-starved executives in Silicon Valley (includes Sir Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital, Mark Pincus - Founder of Zynga, Sami Inkinen - Founder of Trulia et al).  We spoke about a range of topics including how Matt transitioned from being an athlete to a coach to an organization builder, similarities and differences in coaching elite athletes and

GUEST Michael Watkins is the best selling author of The First 90 Days and Master Your Next Move: The Essential Companion to The First 90 Days, published by Harvard Business Review Press. He is the Co-Founder of Genesis, a global leadership development consultancy based in Boston, MA where he coaches CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. He is also Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change at the IMD Business School in Switzerland where he teaches two open programs for leaders in transition, including a 2-day First 90 Days Course popular with global organisations headquartered in the region. He formerly served as faculty at The Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Harvard Business School, and INSEAD. In our conversation, we speak about his perspectives around ROI of Transition Support for a leader who is moving in and the timelines that we should bear in mind when we think about transitions. We then spent time discussing three different types of transitions which are covered in details in his

GUEST Kartik Hosanagar is the John C. Hower Professor of Technology and Digital Business and a Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Kartik’s research work focuses on the digital economy, in particular the impact of analytics and algorithms on consumers and society, Internet media, Internet marketing and e-commerce. His book - “A Human’s guide to Machine Intelligence” has recently been published by Penguin Randomhouse in India. The book is a comprehensive overview of the impact of AI and ML on our lives. It is written in simple language and is accessible, relevant and insightful even if you are not tech-savvy and familiar with AI, ML and related topics. The book delves into various implications of AI and ML including how we should think about consuming content, making decisions, diversifying our perspectives, solving for privacy while benefiting from the convenience of AI and more. We spoke about some of these elements and discussed how we should think about stayin

GUEST Rajat Gupta is a former CEO (Managing Partner) of McKinsey & Co. and led the firm between 1994 to 2003 across 3 terms of 3 years each. He was the first non-American CEO of McKinsey & Co. and arguably one of the first Indians to lead a pedigreed organization at a Global level. In 2012, Rajat was convicted on charges of insider trading and sentenced to two years in Jail. He recently published his memoir, titled “Mind without Fear” published by Juggernaut Books. Given most of the press coverage around the book has focused on the nuts and bolts of the trial, I decided not to focus on it. Given this podcast is about learning from people’s journeys, I decided to spend time on how Rajat has grown as a person through his various experiences at McKinsey and subsequently. We also spend time on some of the choices he has made and some choices that he wishes that he made differently at various points in time. If you are looking for specifics on the Raj Rajaratnam trial, Rajat’s dynamic with Preet Bharara

GUEST Falguni Nayar is the Founder and CEO at Nykaa.com. She founded it in 2012 with the vision of making the best of beauty products available all across India. Today, Nykaa.com’s collection includes the best of Indian and International brands across make up, skin care and hair care categories.   Falguni is an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad and initially worked as a Consultant with AF Ferguson & Co and then as an Investment Banker at Kotak for about ~18 years (with roles in International Business, Institutional Equities and Investment Banking). 27 years into her career, she took the entrepreneurial plunge and moved to start Nykaa.com.   In our conversation, we spoke about her formative years, how she thought about her career in the initial years after IIMA and her reflections on how women should think about managing their careers and their leadership style as they go through their journey. We also spoke at length about her transition from the corporate world into the world of start ups when she started Nyka