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While chatting with my writing students the other day, I mentioned that I wished I had
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done such a course when I was in my early 20s.
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Now, I wasn't praising the course as much as I was making a confession about my past
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The 21-year-old Amit wanted to write, but knew nothing about writing.
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He didn't know the craft, and more importantly, he didn't know the importance of discipline
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of building processes and writing habits.
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He thought he understood life and the world around him, but that was just the arrogance
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Like most people, I learnt whatever I know by making mistakes.
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Life gave me hard knocks, I learnt.
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But if I had read more, had more humility, I could have learnt faster.
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If the 47-year-old me could speak to the 21-year-old me, I could change his life, which leads
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us into complicated science fiction territory because a 47-year-old me may not exist then.
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Now, my point is this, life teaches all of us important lessons, but it's possible,
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with the right attitude, to take shortcuts, to learn those lessons from others, and as
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a result, to live our lives better.
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That's why I find it important to constantly think about life and writing and creating
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and all the things I do, and to try and build a framework around whatever I have learnt,
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and to share that with others whenever I can.
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And the kind of people I love chatting with on this show are those who do just that.
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Welcome to The Scene and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioural
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Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
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Welcome to The Scene and the Unseen.
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My guest today is Prakash Iyer, who is a man of multiple careers, all of them successful.
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After doing an MBA in the early 1980s, he joined the corporate world, where he went
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on to hold top positions at Hindustan Lever and Pepsi, among others.
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As if being a corporate bigwig wasn't enough, he reinvented himself and became an author.
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Driven by the urge to share his learnings and his life lessons, he wrote a series of
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books, the latest of which is just out.
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It's called, How Come No One Told Me That?
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And Prakash further reinvented himself to become a leadership coach, a public speaker,
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a YouTuber, a modern day creator.
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He is also an alteration tailor.
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You'll have to listen to this episode to find out.
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But first, let's take a quick commercial break.
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Have you always wanted to be a writer, but never quite got in town to it?
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Well, I'd love to help you.
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Over the last year, I've enjoyed teaching my online course, the art of clear writing
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and an online community has now sprung up of all my past students.
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We have workshops, a newsletter to showcase the work of students and vibrant interaction
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In the course itself, through four webinars spread out over four weekends, I share all
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I know about the craft and practice of clear writing.
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There are many exercises, much interaction and a lovely and lively community at the end
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The course costs rupees 10,000 plus GST or about $150 and the September classes begin
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on the 4th of September.
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So if you're interested, head on over to register at indiaankar.com slash clear writing.
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That's indiaankar.com slash clear writing.
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Being a good writer doesn't require God given talent, just the willingness to work hard
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and a clear idea of what you need to do to refine your skills.
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Prakash, welcome to the Seen on the Unseen.
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Thank you so much for having me here, Amit.
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It's such a pleasure to be with you.
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Yeah, I mean, your books are of course incredibly famous.
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I remember after you signed up for my course, some of the other participants were so surprised
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that hey, there's, you know, it's like we signed up for Atul Berede's class and we get
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Sachin Tendulkar himself as one of the participants.
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So congratulations on your new book.
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But I'd like to start not by talking about your books, all the life lessons you've shared,
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but just your life to begin with, which is so incredibly fascinating to me that you spend
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all these years in the corporate world and then you sort of become a leadership coach
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and, you know, and in a sense transform just the way that you kind of look at the world
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But take me back to your childhood, wherever you born, where did you grow up?
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I mean, I know that you spent a certain part of your childhood in Jaipur where you learned
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to fly kites and you started learning leadership lessons from that point on when you were five
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But in general, take me back to your childhood, where did your dad work?
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What were your parents like?
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How was your childhood?
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So, yes, I was born in Jaipur, Amit, and my dad used to be working in a steel rolling
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And I was born in our house in Jaipur.
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And there's a little story attached to that because we went back several years later with
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my wife and I showed her the house where we were born, but I'll come to that some other
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So I was born in Jaipur.
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Dad used to be, you know, a huge influence on my life, as I look back.
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My father was a huge influence.
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He left home when he was 18, from a small town called Perimbabur in Kerala and came
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to Mumbai, Bombay at that time, to work with the railways.
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And came here and then kind of educated himself and got a diploma in engineering.
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But more importantly, here was this man who probably spoke only Tamil and Malayalam, and
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a bit of English perhaps at that time, and comes to Bombay and learns Hindi and becomes
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so good at it that he starts teaching Hindi at the Bombay Tamil Sangam, which is really
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meant to help all these people who come from the south to work in Bombay and don't know
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So he's actually out there teaching Hindi.
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And I say this because in many ways, that's a memory that kind of stays with me to say,
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wow, you know, it takes a certain kind of person to do this.
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And as I look at myself and my children now, I wonder if we have the ability to pick up
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languages like perhaps another generation did.
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A very nice and comfortable childhood, very fond memories of flying kites, of going to
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school, of going to St. Xavier's in Jaipur, and having the headmaster look at my shoes
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And I still remember that.
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And I keep thinking that if you're in a meeting and if you're in anything formal, hey, make
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sure your shoes are shining.
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We moved from Jaipur to Delhi to Bombay.
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My father used to be in was in private service, tried some business, which looked like the
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best time of our life because suddenly we had like, you know, cars and we had bought
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But he was in business, which also meant that suddenly we found everything was going away
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and, you know, tough times.
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But overall, very, very fond memories of growing up, of time spent in Jaipur.
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Let me tell you a little other small memory that I have from Jaipur again, which is my
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father used to be part of the Dakshin Bharatiya Samiti, okay, in Jaipur.
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So one of the things they would do is these cultural events of some kind.
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And I remember featuring in one of these little performances.
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It was a play which my dad had written and the whole thing was in Tamil.
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But it was a song sung in Tamil set to very popular Hindi film music.
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So you know, I played a Manthri in that little as a six year old or a five year old at that
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time and the song I had was set to the tune of Chodh Gaye Baalam Hai Mujhe Saad Hamara
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Chodh Gaye whatever that song was, very popular Hindi songs.
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And I'm saying this because as I now look at the things I've done in my life, I like
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this idea that you can take a popular Hindi song and set it to Tamil lyrics and make it
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work and that you don't have to listen to a Hindi film song the way it was.
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So one of my favorite pastimes as a young kid was to translate Hindi songs into English.
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So I would sing very confidently, my life is a plain paper, plain it remained because
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you know, my life is a plain paper, plain it remained and maybe I'm trying to attribute
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too much to it but it perhaps got me started on this journey of not of looking at things
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and saying maybe there's another interesting way to do it.
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Maybe there's something else happening over here and my father as you might have guessed
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by now because he did theater and stuff like that so he was fairly creative in many senses.
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He got me onto this journey of let's say feeling confident about being in an elocution contest
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in school or being in a debate in school and that again gave me the confidence to say maybe
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this is something that I can do reasonably well and I still remember as a little kid
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I would write letters to the editor and in those days there used to be sports week and
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I would write like this you know superbly creative piece of work which would be something
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like you know congratulations Sunny for scoring a ton at Melbourne keep it up and guess what
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you know God bless Khalid Ansari he would actually publish it in sports week and I would
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find that my name was appearing in that last page you know with those three lines attributed
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I would be walking up to a newspaper stall in Mumbai and I would actually sneakily peek
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into the last page of sports week before deciding whether I want to spend a rupee on buying
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it and if my name was there I would pick it up and I would come home and I think my parents
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felt so good but at least my recall is my parents said wow what a good thing and if
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there was a guest at home they would show that to people to say hey look here's something
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that our son has written and maybe these things got me interested excited so I'd write a bit
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went to school I you know would be would debate a fair bit and did reasonably well at that
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would write essays in school and again and you know I'm just looking back to say that
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as you write an essay and I remember class eight or nine we were asked to write an essay
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about a person I admire okay and so you can imagine most essays in class were like you
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know Mahatma Gandhi or stuff like that and here I am I wrote about my brother my older
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brother as the person I admire and the teacher thought was pretty cool my parents thought
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was pretty cool my brother of course thought was very very cool and these I guess were
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interesting memories for me did reasonably well in school and when I was graduating here's
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another memory my physics teacher a kind gentleman called Mr. Venu Gopal he you know sees says
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well done and you know I've done reasonably well in school and so he says so what are
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you going to do now now if you're a South Indian boy from a middle class home and you've
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done reasonably well at school it's a given that you have to do science and then become
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an engineer or a doctor I mean you cannot think of anything else and I remember my physics
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teacher telling me I think you should do arts okay but I'm now this is what 1977 you don't
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do arts arts is for those you know especially if you live in Bombay maybe if you lived in
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Delhi there's a St. Stephen's and you start thinking of stuff like that but it never even
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crossed my mind or or within the family to say I should do arts I did science quickly
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figured that engineering is not the kind of thing I want to do but luckily found statistics
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and loved it so I actually did a bsc which would have more arts courses than science
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I did economics statistics and math and really as I look back I think one of the better things
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I did in my life was to have done statistics in college because I think it's it's it's
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it's usually useful as a as a skill to have as compared to perhaps doing several other
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things you could do so that's like a you know a quick recap of what early years in my life
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might have been yeah many many strands I want to follow up on and one of them which comes
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to mind is you know when you describe your father sort of migrating to the north from
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Kerala and then learning Hindi and then teaching Hindi to his community and it seems to me
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that there is a sort of the best aspect of how we can think about community in India
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that you go somewhere else but you're not insular when you connect with your community
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instead you help them adapt to what the wider society which in his case he did by teaching
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Hindi or by you know having those interesting crossover musical experiments and so on and
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so forth and in recent times especially there is also an uglier side to it like of course
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this side of it is also a side that lends itself well to globalization and we see it
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all across the world where our identities are broadening in the sense that we hold on
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to those aspects of our past with pride and with joy but also we open ourselves to the
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outside world but equally in our modern politics there is also this strain of becoming more
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and more insular of these sort of divisions kind of sharpening now in your experience
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from the 70s 80s 90s to now when you look back on this entire span of time what is your
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sense of the movement of things like you know when I look at the way that I grew up probably
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a decade younger than you or so and when I look at the way that I grew up it was a very
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cloistered elite English speaking kind of existence where you received idea of India
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was all of these sort of feel-good Nehruvian things and all of that but today it seems
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that the reality all along may have been something else entirely what is your sense of that because
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what your work also took you out into doing was just interacting with a lot of people
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who were outside your immediate social circles per se and in the kind of marketing roles
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that you would have done in companies like HLL also therefore having to understand kind
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of the pulse of the country have we changed fundamentally were we always like this and
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were we missing something then what are your sort of observations I said look back maybe
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there are two things that are happening or two things that come to my mind the first
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of course is I think childhood influences parental influences I think are very strong
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for all of us and I'd like to believe that a lot of the way I might look at the world
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the way I might have seen things was born out of what I might have seen at home and
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in that sense I guess I was lucky that whatever is the lottery that we are all supposed to
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have been lucky at in terms of saying that you know we were lucky to be born where we
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were and I think it's been a privilege that I think has a huge impact and as I look at
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a lot of other people I've often felt that you come across people who are who are probably
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much smarter have had far more opportunities to do great things in life but perhaps missed
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out on some of those early lessons on staying grounded on respecting other people on valuing
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differences of opinion and not trying to you know foist your views onto everybody else
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and maybe that's something that that that has had an impact I certainly think that it
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was a much nicer easier world and even if I look at it from a professional standpoint
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my early career was spent in sales and therefore a large part of the early years would mean
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going to Tirupur and selling something or going to Asansol and trying to sell more Pepsi
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or soap or whatever it was what that does is it it just opens your eyes to the diversity
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of the country people are different you learn not to stereotype people you learn not to
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prejudge and you often realize that now that you are in in Saharanpur or you know God forbid
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you are in you know in the neck of the woods in Azamgarh you suddenly realize that you
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are actually at the mercy of your distributor or your salesperson and you better learn to
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respect who they are and what they do and you can't be expecting them to be like you
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or to necessarily say that look I'm senior I will tell you what to do so I think it builds
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it builds a sense of I'm not standing modesty is the right word but a sense of just appreciating
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the fact that you may be who you are but learn to value other people learn to value what
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they might bring to the table and very often what they bring to the table is not a function
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of how much this which college they went to or what level of seniority they might have
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in the organization so I think that's something else that's become very strong for me and
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I sometimes worry that as we become more and more insular as we start to think or spend
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more time in echo chambers in with people like ourselves we start to imagine that that's
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the world and that we have all the answers and that's the way everybody is and we forget
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that there's actually still a large part of our country a large part of our people who
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are very very different something else I meant that might that might be interesting here
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is that my kids and I often think about my children and you know they went to 11 schools
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in you know by the time they finished class 10 and this is largely because I was enrolled
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which required me to move from one city to another to another and every time we moved
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the wife was pretty clear the kids the family will move with me so it was never an option
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to say oh my goodness we've just come here you go we'll stay here so there was a feeling
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that as a family we must stay together which again feels a bit like maybe an outdated more
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or a value to say hey why did you do that you know you the kids could have spent their
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time in one school maybe they would have done better got better grades probably got into
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an IIT which they didn't but as I look back I think it's a good thing and the kids think
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it's a damn good thing they had to make new friends every year they were in a new school
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every year and I think they just learned to adjust a lot more a lot better and to me that's
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a fabulous skill to have this ability to say I'll go anywhere I'll still make new friends
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I don't have to worry about oh my goodness this is change this is not how it used to
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be and maybe there's value in that too yeah.
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That's a very interesting observation so how old are your kids what do they do now?
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They're twins Amit they are 31 and therefore 31 and they both work my daughter works in
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HR with OYO with the OYO hotel group and my son is with star sports he does marketing
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for the Kabaddi league.
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Oh okay so the same kind of love for sports as you had so a few interesting strands from
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what you were speaking about earlier like one obviously that hey you were a South Indian
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boy good at science good at studies all of that you were expected to do engineering become
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an engineer or a doctor etc etc all of those things or maybe the IAS has a fallback or
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option but you chose a private sector now the interesting thing here is that today it's
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perfectly natural for everybody to want a job in a multinational and so on and so forth
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but back in the day from what I remember it wasn't it was almost kind of looked upon with
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suspicion and you know the respectable professions are the ones we spoke about doctor engineer
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IAS and so on people would spend years and years giving entrance exam after entrance
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exam for the UPLC and I also did arts by the way in college which was also looked upon
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at that time as a very unusual decision and people were like oh you're only doing it because
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your class will be full of girls which it was that the ratio even in the late 80s when
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I opted for that was kind of like that so how did the choice to then you know enter
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the private sector and do all of that kind of come about as it did was it easier for
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you because you did not have that ingrained sort of sense of hierarchy as in the rest
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of society where the private sector comes low down because your dad after all was an
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entrepreneur and did all of these things how did that shift happen in your life?
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I'm not sure if I can find a moment in time it's probably a continuum of saying that my
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parents probably felt that hey here's a kid who seems to be doing all right seems to be
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enjoying what he's doing when I was in college in Bombay I spent afternoons writing copy
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for an ad agency there was a fairly strong interest in advertising as a possible career
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and therefore maybe that might have in some sense led me to think of heroes and I remember
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going to an ad club Bombay meeting where I suddenly see there's a guy called Arun Nanda
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who at that time looked like you know was really very hot Rediff Fusion which is the
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agency started was making waves and I also happened to hear the then marketing director
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of Hindustan Lever a guy called Shunusen he was speaking at an event and he was so funny
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and he had so much knowledge coming out of everything that he was saying he was funny
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he was interesting and suddenly maybe at some level you start thinking of these people and
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saying I think there's a hero I can see over here or there's a role model that I might
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want to kind of follow in the footsteps of and then an MBA looked like an interesting
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thing to do at that stage and one got familiar with the fact that if you were in school and
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college at that time so in Mumbai particularly I think there was a fair bit of noise around
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saying MBA could be an interesting option and that's how I guess I got into into business
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school and having got into business school then and then Hindustan Lever which is the
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first company that I you know that I went to work with became a natural progression
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to say if you want to do sales and marketing and if you get a chance to work with Hindustan
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Lever take it and maybe I must tell you a little side light here Amit which is again
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how perhaps some of our decisions in life are I mentioned I went and wrote copy for
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an ad agency and I really enjoyed it and I loved the fact that I would do something which
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would then appear in midday the next evening or whatever at the institute I had spent my
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summer working with Hindustan Lever and there was a reasonable chance that if I had done
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a reasonable job I might have got to get a chance to work with them again but I was very
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keen to look at advertising as an option and David Ogilvie was this god for me and I said
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I want to work with Ogilvie but Ogilvie wasn't an agency that would come on campus so what
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do I do I actually write to a gentleman called Mani Iyer spelled with an A-Y-E-R who used
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to run Ogilvie at that time and tell him that I want to I'd love to work for in advertising
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and I'd love to work with Ogilvie and this is days of snail mail so I've sent it off
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and nothing happens and you don't lose heart unlike in current days where if you don't
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get a response within a few hours you start thinking you know maybe the guy's not interested
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but after a couple of weeks I get a response saying you know great why don't you come and
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see me and I say you know I can only come on a weekend because I have classes through
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the week and he says come so Saturday morning 11 o'clock at his residence and I go and meet
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him and long story short four weeks later I get a letter from Ogilvie saying that we'd
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love to hire you into the agency and around that time I've also now got into placement
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season at Ahmedabad and I get Hindustan Lever and you know what the clincher might have
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been for me two things the more public view was that I thought to myself that hey Arun
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Nanda went to Hindustan Lever first and then started Rediffusion so maybe that's the route
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to take go into go to Hindustan Lever work there and then get into advertising whenever
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you want to the actual big reason was that Ogilvie wouldn't give me housing and living
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in Bombay on 1800 rupees a month would have been a challenge whereas Hindustan Lever have
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these chamois and even as a young manager you would get a place to stay and that suddenly
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looked like a pretty solid reason to say maybe Hindustan Lever is a good place to go to get
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started and then you can always try and make a move later on but I've often felt that you
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know advertising is that that bus that I let go off which you know I might have enjoyed
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being in yeah that's the counterfactuals always interesting you make these small decisions
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and suddenly you know 30 years later you wonder what your life would have been if you had
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kind of taken the other one so you're kind of one of the early MBAs in a sense you went
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to IMA right so which is pretty elite right now but was even way more elite back then
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because there were sort of so few places in India where you could do an MBA and one of
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the things that they say is that the big deal about going to an elite management school
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is not just what you learn but also the network strategy form so the question that just comes
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to my mind now is when you look back at your classmates and all of that is there some truth
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to that where are they all was it an exceptionally bright one just because of the selection effect
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that you know so few people actually get in there yeah so certainly I think one of the
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highlights of being in an institute like that is the kind of people you get to spend time
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with the people you find yourself in the company of and for me that's been a huge part of my
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life I must add that a batch senior to mine was also a fabulous batch and I made lots
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of friends with people out there as much as I might have with people in my own batch or
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the batch junior to mine so that's really you get to interact with three sets of people
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it's very humbling I'm at that one level you get into a place like that and you think it's
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natural to think you might have arrived that wow and then you promptly get into a course
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called maths and stats for management and you get a D and you realize that hey you know
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this is going to be tough and if you thought getting in was tough getting out might actually
#
be tougher and that starts to kind of hit you but Ahmedabad was also a place where I
#
suddenly realized that everybody has their own strengths and I would never be I could
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not have become a topper at Ahmedabad I figured that pretty quickly but I also figured that
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you know what there's a great idea we've got going here which is to start a Sunday morning
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rag on campus and we started something called Synchrony and you know with a couple of seniors
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and a couple of us from my batch and we started it and suddenly Prakash here along with a
#
few other people was not just one of those middling people in class but was actually
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the guy who brought out that rag which everybody tried to make fun of but couldn't pick up
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couldn't stop themselves from picking up and reading because they were all worried what
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would we say about them or what would we what were you saying what something else so I think
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in some ways Ahmedabad also taught me that there are lots of smart people in this world
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and you learn from a lot of them they'll challenge you they'll push you to do better but at the
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end of it we all have something about ourselves that we shouldn't lose sight of and and just
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playing to your strengths can can become you know can become a route a ticket to to success
#
and happiness too so I could have spent those two years wishing that I was in the top 15
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or I was in the top 10 or you know I was a scholar now I scoll as they call them I wasn't
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but I have lots to look back and say wow I made some fantastic friends I managed to do
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a bit of writing in those days I would write for the Sunday Observer and that was pretty
#
cool again so suddenly you'd find outside the classroom on a Monday there's a newspaper
#
cutting put up on the notice board where usually you would have grades and all those you know
#
people who've done cool work at work but you'd also find some Chappie who's written a piece
#
for Sunday Observer so I think as I look back fond memories but surely humbling and to your
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point does the network matter I think it's it matters at two levels one I think it inspires
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you you see a lot of people and and there's some people who've done extremely well for
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themselves and you feel wow so good about it you learn another lesson which is that
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there isn't a very strong correlation between those rankings at the end of your business
#
school and how people might have done for themselves in their lives there are of course
#
a few people who manage to continue to kind of do extremely well but there are enough
#
examples of people will surprise you people who might have been at the tail of the class
#
at some level but who go on to do extremely well in the corporate world or indeed as entrepreneurs
#
so you know that's something else that's that's an interesting lesson to keep.
#
And another strand I want to pick up on is you said earlier that you're very glad you
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did statistics that it made a very big difference and it also kind of strikes me in my own life
#
that I wish I had studied math much earlier because I think you know I began to apply
#
mathematical principles and think of the world using math only after I became a professional
#
poker player in some ways and that kind of taught me a lot of humility it improved my
#
decision making it just made me a different kind of person because once you internalize
#
some of those lessons and especially most importantly the probabilistic way of thinking
#
which teaches you something that is a big part of even this book of yours the whole
#
lesson of humility where you know you realize how much of your whatever has happened in
#
your life is determined by luck so you don't let you know you don't let your successes
#
get to your head you don't let your failures get you down as I kind of keep stressing I'm
#
intrigued by what are the many different aspects in which you meant when you said you know
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learning statistics made a big impact on you.
#
As I think of what else I could have done and I'm just thinking of it a lot of the stuff
#
that you might otherwise learn in a science curriculum doesn't necessarily find application
#
in day-to-day work unless you get to work on that specific science so for instance if
#
you did chemistry and you went to work with organics or chemicals you would apply some
#
of this some of the stuff that you might have learned in chemistry in the work that you
#
I think statistics is probably a slightly more universal subject and has application
#
across potential jobs industries and it's it's almost agnostic to which industry you
#
might be in learning the principles of probability and perhaps more than just the principles
#
are trying to say do I understand how I might calculate the probability I think learning
#
to think with numbers learning to think on the on what could go wrong understanding probability
#
understanding why 10 tosses of a coin and what happens when you do it 10 times you know
#
how people might actually make mistakes in their thinking around something as simple
#
I think that's really what I think has been very very useful it also makes you comfortable
#
with numbers and I still say this and I say this to everybody that no matter what you
#
do it's a good idea to get comfortable with numbers and this is not to suggest that all
#
of us have to be have supremely solid numeric ability or any such thing but just being comfortable
#
with numbers is a is a fabulous life skill to have and then to be able to think in numbers
#
and to think in probability and to have that not have to consciously dive into it to say
#
oh I know what to do I remember reading this in a textbook in statistics or this was in
#
my second year in statistics but just having that at the back of your mind as a process
#
or a structure that just kind of becomes default and allows you to think you know and I think
#
that's useful whether you're driving a car and trying to take a turn into a blind alley
#
or taking decisions in business or evaluating you know should we buy this business or not
#
should we sell it or not you know do we hire I think everything that you do there is an
#
element of statistics and probability that can come in so that's how I think it's usually
#
So you've already kind of mentioned the Chamaris which were the deciding factor and you're
#
choosing HLL over Ogilvy so tell me more about your time at HLL like what were the impressions
#
you went in with what were your early learnings there like one of the things that I love about
#
your books is that they're peppered with stories from your own life which carry all of these
#
excellent lessons but it strikes me that a lot of this is you looking back and in hindsight
#
being able to draw these lessons out from what happened to you back then but what were
#
you actually learning back then in real time like if you had to look back on say the big
#
TIL moments on your early years in HLL you know what were they like tell me a bit about
#
So the first one that I learned was that if someone says TIL and you don't know today
#
I learned is what it stands for ask so you know never take it for granted and I think
#
you get comfortable with saying that there'll be lots of jargon thrown around there'll be
#
words being thrown around if you don't know just ask and get comfortable with not knowing.
#
I think a lot of the early years in levers were also about understanding the reality
#
of a marketplace understanding the power and dignity of a sales profession.
#
If you went to business school and you wanted to be a marketing person and I often talk
#
about this I mean you know I thought that I would get into Hindustan Lever and have
#
this great opportunity to decide advertising campaigns and be out there winning an ad club
#
award and I go into Hindustan Lever and they send me off to sell soap in small town Tamil
#
Nadu and just going out there and living on 26 rupees a day allowances staying in hotels
#
which are lodges which would cost like 13 rupees which is where your salesman stayed
#
and learning to live like a salesman work like a salesman travel like a salesman I think
#
it's it was very very powerful so at one level there was disappointment because after six
#
months your investment banker friend was talking about how you know it's the airport in Singapore
#
is so nice the internet is you know I don't even know if the internet was there but you
#
know they are talking about international travel boardrooms big deals and you're talking
#
about you know how the distributor in Polachi is going bust and what do you do about it
#
and you start wondering do I really need to learn this is this what I went to business
#
school for to be out there in Polachi selling soap it teaches you that look that's very
#
important once you get that bit right once you understand what's actually happening in
#
the marketplace once you understand what does a salesperson do how do consumers buy our
#
products in stores if you understand that then that stays with you for the rest of your
#
life and as you start to make bigger decisions and you start trying to formulate strategy
#
those strategies and decisions are founded on on fairly robust basics and I think that's
#
a powerful lesson that I might have got out of Hindustan Lever just to understand how
#
business really operates something else that influenced me at Hindustan Lever is how the
#
management trainee program at Hindustan Lever sends you through various functions six months
#
after being out there selling soap you suddenly find yourself in a soap factory trying to
#
understand how is soap manufactured you then find yourself in a role where you're playing
#
you know you're calling up truckers and saying you know I need six trucks and no no I want
#
a seventh one today it's the last day of the month have to dispatch and then negotiating
#
with him to say give me that same price don't charge me more and then you suddenly find
#
yourself spending two months in a small town in UP in a village in UP in Ita district where
#
Hindustan Lever used to do a lot of rural development work so the expectation was that
#
all of us as young management trainees will go out there and make a difference to the
#
people in that village and and just spending eight weeks in a village living in that village
#
with the with the village dairy head who used to handle our milk business for us over there
#
carrying a little can not even a Dalda can smaller one actually and going into the field
#
every morning it teaches you a lot about what's happening in what how a large part of our
#
country lives again very very powerful Hindustan Lever also you know gave me the foundation
#
to say that understand how things work and sometimes the benefit of being in a large
#
organization like Lever's was that you saw great processes at work you saw good people
#
operating them and therefore you suddenly understood what gold standard looks like and
#
perhaps later in my life it's easy to start saying you know yeah but the people here are
#
not as good or they're not as smart but but you learn to work with what you have but you
#
also learn the importance of then putting in place good systems robust systems which
#
will then stand you in good stead and I think that's something else that I might have learned
#
over there I also of course learned another lesson so we used to be brand manager on Sunlight
#
in my early years and it was interesting and in those days Piyush Pandey used to be our
#
creative person from Ogilvy who would be coming in and telling us about you know and then
#
he'd tell so here are the two interesting things that I learned from Piyush one of course
#
is that as a creative person he would only think in Hindi you know and everything that
#
he told you was in Hindi and here you were thinking this is my positioning statement
#
this is my advertising brief and this is what I'm saying and it was fascinating to see someone
#
turn all of that into into saying hey this is what it does and I still remember a simple
#
thing I'll give you an example on Sunlight we were we were trying to say how we are very
#
good for colors you know and how typically therefore the problem we had understood was
#
that if you use detergent on colored clothes over time colors fade and then you know you
#
feel that look this is not a good detergent and with Sunlight we said we've put color
#
guard in it so it will protect your colors and guess what Piyush comes and tells us and
#
you know and he says remember how we used to do the same pinch if I'm wearing a blue
#
shirt and you're wearing a blue shirt and I'll say same pinch and she says yes you
#
bought it yesterday no no my shirt is four years old so same pinch with Sunlight because
#
even though your shirt is four years old it still looks like new okay and I think it was
#
so fascinating for me as a young kid to see somebody turn a brief a fairly boring brief
#
I might have thought into a creative idea to think in local into in the vernacular to
#
think in local idiom again I think gives you allows you a chance to respect a lot of other
#
people who do things very differently from you but do them well.
#
On the one hand it's kind of interesting that you know you learn statistics and a big company
#
if you're looking at a top-down view would look at all of its market as basically numbers
#
and what this experience does is that it helps you humanize the numbers and get much deeper
#
insight into what they actually mean and what they come from as you rise up the ladder number
#
one do you find that that stays with most people or once they get more and more away
#
from it the thinking kind of goes back to thinking broadly in numbers again like does
#
one have to remind oneself all the time that that the market out there isn't homogeneous
#
that every individual is different that some of the things that you speak about in your
#
book that don't make assumptions you know always look for new explanations and new sort
#
So good leaders I think learn to do that and as you see other good leaders in action you
#
probably learn to do that I again go back perhaps to early influences and I think it
#
was an important grounding for leaders in Hindustan Lever or in Unilever that you had
#
to spend those first few months or first year out there with sales people understanding
#
how it works and that tells you that there is a reality out there which might be different
#
from what you might have assumed and I think that stays with you and it's probably one
#
of those good practices that companies like Unilever have that even now the chairman of
#
that company will go on market visits will go out and will not go in thinking he knows
#
the answers he will go in saying I don't know tell me what's happening and he'll want to
#
learn from what's happening over there and I think having both an open mind not having
#
assumed that you have all the answers recognizing that I want to learn that I don't know I want
#
to learn and third also recognizing that the world is changing very very quickly and what
#
you might have thought you know oh I know this I've done this before I was there right
#
just doesn't work and you will discover that it's if you thought like that you will suddenly
#
discover that you missed the bus but you assumed that people were still stuck in shopping the
#
way they were and you don't realize that your you know that your maid is actually now saying
#
I bought this on Amazon so if she's doing that she's no longer saying I don't understand
#
digital or I don't I have to go back to my neighborhood Kirana store the world is changing
#
and changing rapidly and just being aware of that I think helps I must also add maybe
#
there's something else about you know sometimes it also helps to be not the smartest guy in
#
class or you know and I don't think I so like I said when I was in Ahmedabad I was a middling
#
kind of person and then when I went to Hindustan River someone one year my junior was a man
#
who I thought was such a bright guy you know a fantastic I went on to actually become chairman
#
of Hindustan Lever great guy and I think you learn to respect people for their abilities
#
their skills and and you also tell yourself that there's space for everybody there's room
#
for all of us you don't have to grudge people their their successes or their greatness you
#
can in fact celebrate along with them and feel good about it and actually you can learn
#
a little bit by just looking at other people and saying hmm what might I learn from this
#
person and maybe it helps to not have been on the top of the ladder as it were very earlier
#
then say look I know it all yeah so maybe that's just natural corollary of that.
#
You were mentioning working with Piyush Pandey on your advertising and that reminded me of
#
one of the most delightful anecdotes in your book where you talk about how as a young brand
#
manager when you would interact with the advertising team you would always be saying isko zada
#
blue karo isko tinker karo font asa karo all of those kind of things and at one point your
#
boss kind of called you in and said that listen don't do this your job is just to create a
#
brief they are specialists they know what they are doing better than you do and then
#
this beautiful quote where he said quote why keep a dog and bark yourself a stop quote
#
and that's lovely and what this story also tells us with great humility is a little bit
#
about your own journey of learning to get past that youthful hubris where on the one
#
hand and I say this because it perhaps took me longer than you to get past it myself where
#
on one hand you have that hubris that I'm so bloody good there's that thing of I'm
#
so good and I can do this and that's a Dunning-Kruger effect at work at one level at another level
#
it's a level of you have power over people right and therefore at some level you want
#
to tell them what to do because you're the one with the power you want to tell them you
#
want to show your authority and that lesson which you pointed out in your own life is
#
sort of about stepping out of the way you know when you look back on the young Prakash
#
here the young version of you what were the things that changed in him on this journey
#
especially in the early years and made him eventually the person that you are today I
#
think a lot of a lot of lessons learned early in life and maybe I was kind of built in a
#
way by which I said let me try and learn this or let me try and understand how can I get
#
better on this one and you're right maybe it's it's a lot more of now looking back and
#
thinking that wow that's something that I learned but some things just stayed with me
#
and I an example you know which is about how I had a boss I'm at called Suman Sinha who
#
was my boss at Hindustan Lever for a while and then I went and worked at Pepsi with him
#
who's been a huge influence on my life and he's been a mentor at you know in more ways
#
than one I remember how one of the things that he taught us was that you know he showed
#
us a an org chart for the organization and at PepsiCo and he said he put up a chart
#
and these were those days of those carousel slides those 35m slides which you had to carefully
#
put in upside down for it to be projected right in the projector and I remember how
#
he put up a slide which showed the org chart upside down and I thought you know some trainee
#
is going to lose her job for having done this wrong and Suman actually went on to explain
#
that it's not wrong this is the organization I'm trying to build it's an upside down organization
#
where the person at the top of this business is our frontline salesperson he's closest
#
to our customer he will decide what this business will do he will tell us what's the right thing
#
and below him is a manager whose job is to support him and below him is a vice president
#
whose job is to make sure that the entire function is doing what the salesman needs
#
to succeed and he would say you know at the bottom of this pyramid is me I'm just here
#
to make sure this entire organization is focused on our front you know on our customers and
#
I think that that just stayed with me and I thought wow what a powerful idea this is
#
because you suddenly start realizing that you don't have power over other people you're
#
not you don't have people reporting to you but you start seeing them as saying man I'm
#
responsible for them I'm responsible for their success I need to do whatever it takes to
#
help them succeed because if they succeed I'm okay I'll be taken care of you know that's
#
been a pretty powerful little influence in my life to say every time I've had to lead
#
a team and I must confess I've been sometimes blown away by the by the smart people I've
#
had the privilege of leading and I say wow what a fantastic person this is and I'd be
#
damned if I tried to tell that planner you know how to get it right because you know
#
he was he was so good my job then was to ensure that I could leverage that planner get him
#
to deliver and help everybody else in the team to say okay now we need to take a decision
#
so my job was to get everybody else together and I was very happy not being the smartest
#
person in the room and that usually meant that every time you were discussing something
#
and if it was something let's say to do with manufacturing or technical I was not a technical
#
guy and there was somebody else who was smart my job was to ensure I knew how to ask the
#
right questions maybe ensure we were giving them support that they needed making sure
#
that people working together but my job was not to be the smartest techie or the smartest
#
finance person or the smartest marketing guy in the room and that I think has been a huge
#
almost a transformative piece I think for me to say that stop worrying about you stop
#
worrying about saying I must be the smart guy I must be the guy getting credit people
#
must say wow you know what a bright guy this is yeah I don't think that was that's what
#
drove me as much as saying gosh can I just make sure that as a team we get this right
#
can we ensure that our collective intelligence can we can we harness that to make sure that
#
more often than not we're doing the right thing rather than the wrong one and there
#
would be times when we'd still call wrong there'd be times when there would be debate
#
and discussion and I'd still have to as a leader take a call but I would try very hard
#
to ensure that I had I had kind of got other people together and to come back to your point
#
therefore that this whole idea of you know thinking that you have power over other people
#
I think that that hasn't been the way I might have looked at it and there's another lesson
#
that I learned and you know this was something else about an arbit line I might have read
#
somewhere but that kind of got me thinking which was how there's apparently a bunch of
#
professors in Ireland who did some research on Champions League footballers and they found
#
that footballers were two footed earn something like 27 28 percent more than footballers were
#
good with one foot okay and and that that set me thinking and and I figured later that
#
there's actually a school in Scotland called the other foot soccer school where they teach
#
young children to kick with both feet because once you're a senior footballer then you can't
#
be taught to kick with the other foot you've got to learn that early in your life when
#
it's okay to kick with the wrong foot and find the ball is flying somewhere else it
#
doesn't matter you're okay with it and because you're okay with failing you you gradually
#
strengthen that foot and you become good with both feet and I think in many ways in the
#
corporate world it's great it's a great idea for us to try and say can we be two footed
#
and when you're two footed you suddenly realize you're not so good with one foot you're not
#
so good with another function with another discipline but you learn to respect other
#
people who are very good at that and I think having that humility might be a big word but
#
just having that realization that you know what there are other people who will be better
#
than you in a given subject area that's okay just learn to work with them just learn to
#
leverage them and be grateful that you've got good people helping you to get it right
#
now in your book you've actually mentioned I think so much in multiple places including
#
where you spoke about this upside down organizational chart which sounds beautiful and you know
#
you give leadership sessions and seminars for companies and all of that and where you
#
teach all of this which also sounds great but the way most people look at companies
#
is that look companies mein bahut politics hota hai they think that you know to get ahead
#
in the corporate world it's not about how good you are at your job but it's about how
#
good you are at managing your seniors and all of that even in your book you know there
#
are bits about the importance of dressing well and you know how the exterior matters
#
wearing a tie matters all of those things kind of matter equally along with the politics
#
there is also that thing that I often say about you know politics in the real world
#
in the case of the state that power always corrupts now the thing is that obviously there
#
are more checks and balances within a private company and the incentives are better but
#
there is power that you know till the checks and balances kick in you know till accountability
#
kicks in even if it's much more than say in public life you know it can kind of corrupt
#
so many people therefore have a very skeptical view of what corporate cultures are like in
#
many places like you know when me too broke a couple of years back there was much talk
#
and quite correctly I think of how toxic many advertising workplaces are for example for
#
women and all those corrosive cultures kind of going through so on the one hand I see
#
that you've not only mentioned Mr. Sinha you shared your own insights you've spoken
#
about other leaders through your journey from whom you've learnt a lot so there's a lot
#
of talk of all these wonderful principles but somebody from the outside could argue
#
that yeah they sound great but the reality of corporate India is kind of something different
#
and therefore the assumption is that people like you who are trying to improve the culture
#
like at one point I think you quote Drucker saying that you know culture eats strategy
#
for breakfast now people like you who are trying to improve the culture in these places
#
improve the way people work you know build in all these qualities like humility and upside
#
down knock charts and all that aren't you pushing against the tide in a way and aren't
#
you also pushing against human nature and the natural incentives at play so in the course
#
of your career you know if one is to read your book one would just sing that oh Mr.
#
Ayyad's career has been so remarkable he has been learning these great lessons all the
#
time and building these enlightened workplaces but is there's a bit of selection bias in
#
there because that's just what you're choosing to write about is that the other side also
#
what is your experience with it are there times you were disheartened about it say maybe
#
corporate politics or whatever are there times where as a leader you had to figure out ways
#
to change the culture what were those struggles like so yeah several several strands in that
#
in the set of questions on it so maybe let me start by saying a couple of things which
#
are perhaps influenced the way I look at the world I'm hugely positive I'm a huge optimist
#
and for me the default always is it's a good place it's a good world before it starts to
#
get proved otherwise so that's that's certainly a huge one for me and I would I often encourage
#
other people to try and think that way and you're right sometimes it can be you know
#
personal experiences can be to the contrary you can start thinking it's a bad place and
#
are there organizations and office setups which are political politicized of course
#
there are and like you referenced were they toxic work cultures of course they were but
#
does that allow us to say that therefore the whole world is like that the answer is no
#
and here's what I think a you've got to believe that that's not necessarily true and the second
#
thing you've got to believe is you can make a difference and I often say this to young
#
leaders about our culture so it's easy to say my organization culture is like this right
#
or we are such a it's a terrible place or it's so bad and all of that and I my answer
#
to that would be if you have two people working for you for them their organization culture
#
is what you do it's not what HR does it's not what the global CEO is saying it's not
#
what's happening in some other parts of your organization for them all culture is what
#
you as a leader do so so my point would be if you are the leader and you've got two people
#
working for you set the culture right for those two people right don't and here it's
#
here's where it starts mattering that don't blame it now on the environment don't say
#
the organization is like that it's a cop out right you need to take ownership for it and
#
say you can make a difference so a be positive about it I think start with an assumption
#
that things are good things it's and that's just the way I am but I'd like to say that's
#
the way you know we could all benefit by being the incentives are better if you do that the
#
second one of course is to take ownership for what's happening and say look I can make
#
a difference here now what are some of the challenges that we can have an organization
#
start to get you know become bad I think young people coming into work today don't want to
#
take anything which you know they have options they will not take rubbish from a boss the
#
world is changing they will speak out there is no fear there are options available they
#
will you know if they don't like a job the distance between an argument with the boss
#
and a resignation letter is really getting shorter by the day this is a great place to
#
be because these young people want to change the world and if something is happening that's
#
not right they're saying come on I won't take the part I want to change the world and if
#
organizations can learn to harness that power and say let's get this right let's try and
#
get people to kind of change it and I'll give you a couple of examples of what might have
#
happened in one of the businesses where I worked we had a practice where you had to
#
swipe your card to come in okay and that marked your attendance it marked your time and of
#
course you know good old HR would have policies like four times in a month you're allowed
#
to come 10 minutes late but other than that you will take half day off and if another
#
repeat will mean a full day off now this isn't quite anybody's idea of a great organization
#
but most factories were built this way and very often what happens is that you start
#
looking for contrary evidence then and you suddenly realize that if you were to relax
#
it like I thought I would and you suddenly start wondering are there a lot other people
#
are willing to take advantage of it are you suddenly discovering that on every time that
#
you have a meeting at 10 o'clock there are four people who have had work in a school
#
or a bank and are not there in the meeting that day you know so why does this happen
#
but you've got to kind of now understand that this was culture from the past it may not
#
work and how do I now start thinking of it from that young millennials perspective and
#
say what's the culture that will work for them how do I get this person to feel the
#
need to be in office at time to feel the need to ensure that discipline of some kind matters
#
so I think you have a chance to change culture if you're willing to also adapt yourself you
#
can't be saying culture is what I've decided you try and figure how does this work for
#
younger people you try and take them in to that journey and you try and say look what
#
can I do to make it work one of the bigger mistakes you can make as a leader is to also
#
think that this culture is terrible my previous organization got it right and you then try
#
and come into a business and try and say let me try and change everything over here and
#
that's something else that I referred to perhaps in one of those stories where I talk about
#
you know setting out to drive early morning with your headlights you know you get out
#
in the morning at 630 as I did one morning and I didn't think that headlights were needed
#
and I go out on the street and I see lots of cars with their headlights on and I start
#
to think why does this man have his headlights on and then I see another car with headlights
#
on and then my wife says you know maybe they left home much earlier so for them they had
#
left home at a time when they needed the lights and they've still got it on because they still
#
think the light is not good enough whereas you came in later and you didn't think the
#
need there was a need for it and I think this is so true for organizations leader comes
#
from outside and he starts wondering why are people doing things this way you know why
#
is this man driving with his lights on we forget that there's a good reason why they're
#
doing it that's the way it is that's the way they've been and if you want to drive change
#
the idea is not to try and say you know what just switch off all your lights but to try
#
and understand why do we do things the way we do and I also feel eventually that organizations
#
have been built in such a way that if there is a problem it gets thrown out of the system
#
and that's what a good organization will do it does not allow this foreign body or this
#
virus to stay for too long there will be a bunch of antibodies that will come in and
#
fight that virus and throw it out maybe that's how good organizations are built maybe that's
#
what we all need to try and do to try and get it right one last point I'm with which
#
is which is a big one I think is around this whole idea of power corrupting and I think
#
that's that's a real risk and that's something that I think we all need to guard against
#
and we need to find systems and processes within an organization where this gets called
#
out there are some checks and balances in place to ensure that behavior which is not
#
right is called out and I think the mistake organizations make is to condone this behavior
#
early on and say it's all right because you know he's such a powerful Saints guy he gets
#
you know he's beating his targets every month oh my goodness he has such fabulous relationships
#
with those key accounts if he goes away those accounts will go away with him and we then
#
start to condone behavior which we which is clearly not right and then we expect that
#
when this person becomes senior then the person will change and the person just thinks that
#
hey if I could get away with it as a junior person assure this is the way of the world
#
I will get away with it the other challenge you have in organizations is people tend to
#
follow the leader and therefore you will find in an organization if the leader is this abusive
#
short-tempered foul-mouthed person young managers start modeling themselves on that
#
style they think that's the way to succeed in this organization and you will find them
#
being disrespectful of other people vendors partners consultants and you suddenly realize
#
that there's a problem over here and very often the problem the rot starts at the top
#
and it's it's the culture that flows from there and that's something else that you know
#
maybe organizations need to try and set right in your book you've given lots of examples
#
of leaders who've led from the front very well like there is this HLL person you describe
#
who visits a small village and they're looking at products in a store and there is a tin
#
of Dalda that has dust all over it and he takes out his own white handkerchief and he
#
cleans that little bit of dust and you've given a bunch of examples like that but just
#
now when you were speaking so eloquently about the dangers of power corrupting about you
#
know leaders getting away with stuff and they were juniors and therefore those bad practices
#
carrying on with them and then everybody looking at them as an example you said it with such
#
conviction that it seemed that those are things you've come across in your own career so without
#
naming names or companies or whatever have you been in situations where you have seen
#
that happening where you faced a kind of dilemma that do I just get on with my own career or
#
do I try to do something about this and which is more widespread these kind of bad toxic
#
leaders who are engaged in this constant seemingly ubiquitous political struggle to get ahead
#
within a company or the kind of inspirational leader you speak about who sets a culture
#
by example from the top again it might just be the optimist in me speaking but I think
#
that this toxic bad leader is Israeli a relic of the past is is probably not quite the norm
#
anymore I think there are two or three things happening one there are no hiding places earlier
#
perhaps you could get away with some of this stuff and and you know today if you put your
#
hand in the till you're gonna be caught before you do it so this and I've seen this and I've
#
seen this in the sense that you know we've come I've come across situations where perhaps
#
there have been accusations of people being and they've been you know found to be true
#
that there were people who are making a mistake but I think that the strength of the organization
#
has got to be in the fact that if it comes to light action is taken the bigger problem
#
is not that somebody's got his hand in the till but that it is allowed to to continue
#
that I think is the is the bigger problem so something I've learned and struggled with
#
I'll give you an example there was a situation in a business where somebody had fudged a
#
expense statement and it was like some I think 80 rupees spent on taxi fare to go from place
#
A to place B where the controller and the business said that actually I gave that person
#
a lift in my car so they couldn't have spent 80 bucks on a on a cab and this became a bit
#
of an issue and here's this person who was doing very well for us you know good colleague
#
nice person and I didn't think this called for the person to be sacked but my boss insisted
#
that we sacked the person and we actually ended up sacking the person so I protested
#
a little bit and then of course my boss was horrified that I might even protested but
#
I think I learned a lesson there that if you let this pass you're setting the wrong example
#
and now it's no longer about was it 80 rupees or was it 8 crore if it's wrong it's wrong
#
and sometimes you need to take these hard decisions just to get the message across that
#
that's the organization that's the culture now I think that's a that's a again a good
#
one and I've seen I've been in organizations where fairly senior people have been asked
#
to have been let go off almost overnight because they did something which violated you know
#
the code of conduct now it doesn't necessarily mean that that person was all bad and it's
#
not as if the person is a complete rogue or a villain it's just that in a moment of weakness
#
maybe the person has done the wrong thing but I think organizations they need to set
#
an example to say if it's the wrong thing it has no place over here too bad we need
#
to set an example out you go that I think is what will help us to ensure that organizations
#
stay on track and this is this is where I'm now coming to that in the good old days maybe
#
there was a little more of this hierarchy a boss was all powerful I still remember joining
#
a business where you know I commented on a car I just got into the business and I looked
#
at my factory manager I said you have a nice car there and he said you know actually the
#
previous boss gave it to him now the previous boss didn't give it to him the organization
#
gave it to him because he earned it he deserved it but this feeling that previous boss gave
#
it to me my boss gave it to me my boss is all powerful I think that also caused a few
#
problems for us where everything the boss did was all right so if the boss made you
#
know did a few other things which are not all correct let it go let it pass that has
#
changed I think today increasingly in organizations and I use Suman Sena as a great example because
#
when I used to work with him in Hindustan Lever he was sir he was Mr. Sena and then
#
you move to Pepsi a few years later and he's Suman and even the truck driver calls him
#
Suman you know so that's just a culture change but I think it's so important for you to have
#
a situation where the boss is not sir God he's not God he's just another person and
#
we need to be able to tell him if there's a problem and I don't know if you saw that
#
little news item I think a couple of days back where Air India Express have said that
#
the pilot will not be called sir in the cockpit and the whole idea here is that they found
#
that from one of those accidents that they might have one of the several accidents Air
#
India Express might have had that the problem was that the co-pilot is deferring to the
#
captain and is so respectful that when the captain is making a mistake the co-pilot is
#
not calling it out because sir if you don't mind sir would you mind considering that you
#
are actually losing altitude is not the best way to say it saying bugger we are in trouble
#
do something right and I think having a culture which allows us to create more equals to break
#
the hierarchy to call out bad behavior and I think increasingly across organizations
#
things like you know having a hotline or having an ombudsman or having systems in place where
#
if you have a problem you can call it out which didn't exist earlier so my submission
#
would be I don't think that the corporate world is full of toxic bad apples and if anything
#
it's gotten a lot better now with a new bunch of people coming into work and indeed more
#
systems and processes coming into play yeah and that's a that's a wonderful story about
#
your colleague with his hand in the till as it were over a taxi journey and the moment
#
you said that story I said okay I mean I would just sack him no matter who it is and that's
#
the call that your boss took and it reminds me of this old story by I don't know who this
#
is probably apocryphal no matter who it is about but I think it's probably George Bernard
#
Shaw therefore because most apocryphal stories are about him or Oscar Wilde yeah one of these
#
two where this person asked a lady at a party that will you sleep with me for a million
#
dollars and she said a million dollars you're not taking it as a thought experiment and
#
said yes so he said that you know will you sleep with me for one dollar and she says
#
what do you think I am and he says I think we've already established that now we are
#
just haggling over the price and it therefore strikes me that this is you know this case
#
of you know an 80 rupee taxi voucher is exactly the same thing it's a principle that matters
#
that today if some guy is willing to do something unethical for 80 bucks tomorrow he'll do it
#
for 80 crore bucks so you have to sort of set your culture there yeah but here's where
#
I think it matters where you know what your early years are and I think sometimes it's
#
a privilege to be able to work with a good boss or a good organization because you learn
#
these lessons early and I dare say there are several organizations where you might say
#
oh come on it's only 80 rupees right you don't sack a person for that and come on you know
#
if that's the case the whole organization will get sacked for example that's the kind
#
of thinking that can happen and I think I love it when you said for instance that for
#
you this was a no-brainer right you said if it's 80 bucks or 800 doesn't matter the person
#
goes and I think getting that value in early in your career is really what makes a difference
#
if you grew up in an in a culture in an organization where it's alright I think this can become
#
a problem and I often find this Amit when I speak to corporates I often if I feel that
#
there's you know if one of the things they want to talk about is this whole thing about
#
integrity and culture I will often use an example where I will talk about what do you
#
do when you see a traffic light if the traffic light is red what happens and everybody says
#
we'll stop and I say what do you do when it's red everybody says we'll stop and then I
#
say but you know are there situations where you've seen people not stopping or you yourself
#
have you seen that it's a red light and you've gone on and suddenly that entire room which
#
said I stopped when I see a red light will now say yeah if I'm in a hurry yeah if there's
#
no traffic if it's late in the night if there's no cop right and then I asked the question
#
if you had a chance to steal a million dollars would you steal from your company and the
#
answer is everybody says no no no no I wouldn't and then you ask them what if it's the middle
#
of the night what if the CFO is not looking and and suddenly people realize that look
#
where is this going and I think the rule is that if you see a red light stop it doesn't
#
matter whether there's a cop or no cop it doesn't matter what time of the day it is
#
it doesn't matter that everybody else is doing it none of that is relevant yeah so I try
#
and make this point to say that you know if there's eight bucks eighty bucks or eight
#
million get the principle right and you'll never make a mistake you'll never find yourself
#
in trouble and I've often found when I say this to some organizations right they almost
#
look at me as saying from which planet is this person coming he doesn't understand the
#
reality of our world because you know how can you work in this world without greasing
#
a few palms without bribing that purchase guy in that other organization without doing
#
something which is which is incorrect so I think that's still a challenge but change
#
will happen change is slow but it needs to happen and I'm a big believer that hey eventually
#
that's what should win so I read about what you just said in the traffic light chapter
#
in your book and I have a slight kind of quibble with that but before that a couple of clarifications
#
and one clarification of course is that like that apocryphal story implies that that woman
#
was somehow doing something wrong and sure wild or whoever it was that caught her out
#
I don't think there is anything wrong with you know making a voluntary decision to sleep
#
with someone for money for example that's just one of those traditional moralistic notions
#
that we have I think sex work is as legitimate a profession as a podcasting or writing the
#
other clarification is that when I was in my early 20s I might well have you know made
#
a taxi voucher like that myself because I think at that time it was just everything
#
was shelter and these are small things and what difference does it make so it is convenient
#
for me today when I don't work for anyone to sit and kind of make these judgments but
#
what do you do in the moment do people get second chances in life and all of that I think
#
those are larger questions so I don't want to be too definitive about this but here's
#
my disagreement about the traffic light and ceiling a million dollars thing that the argument
#
with traffic lights and I make this argument often about say speed limits at the early
#
ceiling which are 80 km but the convention is everybody goes above that and it's perfectly
#
safe when the road is empty to go above 80 km on that particular ceiling is that many
#
of these laws so to say don't actually make that much rational sense you know there is
#
an emergent order which is a conventional way in which people do things which doesn't
#
harm anyone else which has evolved like a particular speed at which people go through
#
a road and there is a sort of an imposed order now where in my mind breaking a traffic light
#
at midnight when there is nobody there is different from stealing a million dollars
#
is this that when you break a traffic light at midnight when there is absolutely nobody
#
there you are not harming anybody else you are not infringing on someone's rights right
#
that convention exists traffic lights exist for a reason and people follow it during the
#
day but at this moment in time it doesn't harm anyone you are not doing something morally
#
wrong by breaking a traffic light when the entire road is empty however you are obviously
#
doing something morally wrong by taking a million dollars even if you will get away
#
with it like you correctly pointed out in your chapter values are basically what you
#
do when no one is looking which is a striking way of thinking about it and this is again
#
on the one hand on the other hand kind of thing because at one level I am saying that
#
no this comparison is not made because traffic light I can understand in fact I was in New
#
York a few years ago and I was staying at New Jersey with my good friend Yazad Jal who
#
has been on the show and I was driving his car at night because I was like let me see
#
how it feels to drive in America and I broke a traffic light because there was no one on
#
the road and Yazad just you know completely panicked and of course got billed for it
#
and all of that so I didn't know the convention in that place and the Bombay guy in me is
#
just saying that there is no one on the road but the other way of looking at it is that
#
at a normative level if you just follow all rules if you just follow all conventions it's
#
a good thing to do at a normative level don't seek out exceptions and all of that just at
#
a normative level if you remain on the straight and narrow then you can never make a mistake
#
so I just sort of share this kind of contradictory notion and this argument about your traffic
#
A fair point and this is not to suggest for a moment that I have never jumped a red light
#
okay and but I confidently say that I wouldn't want to do the other part of what I might
#
be talking about but I've certainly the point I want to make here is about decide which
#
are those red lights in your life that you want to really hold on to what's really important
#
and the point here is that no one suddenly steals 10 million dollars from a business
#
no one suddenly goes to you know takes Nissan into where it went and we've seen heroes in
#
our lives who after a board meeting have gone and shared data sensitive data and then found
#
themselves in jail after having done some fantastic work all through their lives and
#
why does this happen and my point over here is that it doesn't happen overnight it happens
#
because long back there was this red light that you didn't stop at yeah and what was
#
the equivalent of that and whether it's that if Volkswagen and allowed a small factory
#
engineer to tamper data right because it was all right it's a monthly report how does it
#
matter doesn't and to your point it doesn't violate anybody else's rights it didn't cause
#
any harm to anyone else but damn it cost that company 50 billion dollars or more because
#
you know they tampered with pollution data which was wrong and they got caught out doing
#
it and my point here is figure out what are those red lights in your life what are those
#
rules that you want to live by what are those principles that you hold dear and once you
#
have that try and ensure that you don't say it's okay it's only today because that will
#
take you down a slippery a slippery slope I think you know and that's that's really
#
the point I want to make no absolutely very wise words I agree with that another question
#
about something that you haven't really addressed in your writings or your YouTube talks or
#
whatever that I haven't at least come across but since we were talking about corporate
#
culture and since I happen to mention me too also and one of the things that strikes me
#
is how so much corporate culture is sexist in very subtle ways for example air conditioning
#
right you know the norms for what the air conditioning temperature was was set in the
#
50s where most people who worked in offices were men and therefore they were set at whatever
#
level is optimal for men and they're comfortable with but the truth is that women's body temperature
#
are sort of modulated differently and they feel colder which is why it is incredibly
#
common that at a temperature where a man is comfortable the woman will be feeling cold
#
and putting a sweater or a shawl around herself and to me this is also a great metaphor for
#
everything in our society just the way that it's designed with men in mind and for the
#
comfort of men and I'm using it now in a metaphorical sense as well that you know a lot of women
#
would say that corporate culture might be more open you can take your boss's name by
#
their first name and all of those things but this stuff remains it's invisible like one
#
common complaint that women make and I have seen it for myself happening in this way is
#
that in a meeting where there are men and there are women a woman will say something
#
and everybody will just listen not react and then a man will say the same thing in different
#
words and everybody will be like what an idea Amit, kya bola hai, isko podcast dete hai
#
and so on and a lot of this stuff these invisible ways in which cultures not just corporate
#
cultures but around us are biased against women these were unseen to me and over the
#
last few years maybe some of these layers have started peeling away and one starts trying
#
to actually see what all of these are is this stuff that you notice during your corporate
#
time or you know in your corporate life rather and is this stuff that you wanted to do something
#
about do you think that there are being things done about this what are the sort of barriers
#
to this what what are your impressions I think this is an area where things are changing
#
very quickly and not quickly enough over the last last several years the corporate world
#
that I got into was still very very different and and I think the problem with with biases
#
like the sexist biases that we've had is that we didn't realize it we don't even realize
#
that it happened and I must tell you that in around the time when I was a young sales
#
manager in in Hindustan we hired women into sales management training that they weren't
#
too many women they were like maybe a handful two or three or four women who might have
#
been management trainees in sales so the thing was if you hired a management trainee who
#
was a woman into Hindustan Lever in those days she would either end up in marketing
#
HR or finance but not in sales and the argument and the thinking would be stuff like you know
#
how will you travel into those villages how will you go and deal with the distributors
#
and you have to go and spend time in the evening with the sales guys what will you do and all
#
of that so I think there's a as you look back today a load of rubbish okay but I'm just
#
trying to say that this was so deeply ingrained in minds and workplaces tended to be far
#
more male dominated than they are today and I think right from the time if I look at the
#
last 20 years or so I think the world has changed dramatically and the corporate world
#
is trying hard some companies more than others and I certainly think PepsiCo or Unilever
#
were great examples of trying to drive equality in the workplace I also remember and I hate
#
to say it but I remember how as men we've we've often felt oh my goodness why are they
#
doing this you know I remember very clearly a situation where we thought there was a friend
#
of ours who was in line for the CFO's job and the the bad joke and I can say it now
#
that the bad joke was that you know we were trying to say that if he has to get that job
#
he has to change his sex because there's a great attempt to try and bring in a woman
#
in that role now I think this is just telling you how bad it was and the fact that there
#
is far more awareness and I must say this that I think the world has changed dramatically
#
and I know as I look at workplaces and and policies the conversation has shifted I must
#
tell you this that I try very hard in in everything that I'm doing to make sure that I'm not saying
#
him naturally I try very hard to make sure that if I'm talking about a boss I'm saying
#
and then she said you know and these are small things but I think they all matter and there
#
are times when subconsciously I might I might have made a statement I'll give you an example
#
not so long ago I referred to something about doing something at work when I was trying
#
to do something while the wife and I said while the wife was on Netflix and I actually
#
got a friend writing into me to say not a good thing to say you know why are you assuming
#
that it's only your wife who watches Netflix maybe a lot of men are watching Netflix through
#
the day while the women are out there working and without realizing it like I said but I
#
think the good news is and I thought I saw a bit of that just now Amit I love the way
#
you kind of came back on that Bernard Shaw joke because that might have been funny 30
#
years ago it's not so funny today right the world is changing and I think we all need
#
to acknowledge that and and I think there are lots of women out there in the workforce
#
today who are driving that change there are progressive organizations you know I think
#
just having glues reflecting the number of men and women there are you know very often
#
you'll find organizations where there's like this one tiny room which becomes a women's
#
loo and there's this massive place which is the men's loo why because in the good old
#
days there were so many more men at work that needs to change I think just the air conditioning
#
not a great example I think just being respectful of what women might need just being respectful
#
of their needs like anybody else's and also I think being sensitive to the differences
#
and creating that sensitive and and calling it out and saying it is not acceptable I still
#
see situations where there is a leader who will crack this not so okay joke right especially
#
in mixed company it's not acceptable and yet there'll be this nervous laughter around the
#
room and those people say the boss has said it must laugh and there'll be a woman sitting
#
over there wondering what's going on here and I think that will change and that woman
#
is changing the world and she's making sure that that boss doesn't get away with it and
#
I think this is this is a big change happening and like I said I think it's there's a lot
#
that's happening is it enough maybe not certainly a lot more needs to be done but I think it's
#
it's such a deep-rooted malaise and I and I'd like to believe that particularly for some
#
of us who've grown up in cities who have been privileged to have women around us spouses
#
daughters friends girlfriends we've learned to respect them and this is still different
#
and challenging perhaps for a bunch of men coming into work from another part of our
#
country another part of society where it's still you know where women are not being respected
#
if you grow up in a home where your dad did not respect your mom you will struggle with
#
this I think in the early years of your life and I think we just need to kind of enable
#
that change and and recognize that in this continuum we are all perhaps at different
#
points the destination is clear but we are not at different points in that journey and
#
we just need to try and say how can we take people along and make sure that we're making
#
it easier for the other half of the world.
#
So you know taking off from your point about this being a deep-rooted malaise which I sort
#
of agree with there's another very nuanced point that your book makes which I find relevant
#
to this because while we were talking about this it also struck me that this sexism doesn't
#
come from malice it comes from blindness that people simply aren't aware there are jokes
#
I would have cracked 20 years ago which I would not crack today or that might reflexively
#
come into my head now but I have that filter which stops me from actually saying it and
#
in your book you speak of course about hand lens razor which I keep talking about all
#
the time in the context of politics which is never attribute to malice what can be adequately
#
explained by stupidity and or in this case the guy just doesn't know the guy has just
#
never experienced his way of thinking he doesn't realize that it's kind of wrong like a friend
#
of mine runs this mailing list where one of the guiding principles there is assume goodwill
#
and the idea being someone says something that you don't agree with don't assume they're
#
coming from a bad place that they're malicious you know one they may be ignorant about something
#
two they may be right and you may be wrong and just assume at least that the intention
#
is good and then you can explore that further but leaving that aside you know your optimism
#
is quite lovely I haven't been in the corporate world for like a decade and a half so your
#
optimism is sort of lovely to hear tell me now about I mean we'll come back to the principles
#
in your book and the life lessons and all that a little later after the break but I
#
want to go on with your personal journey for a moment take me through your corporate journey
#
what was it like number one was a job something that you loved doing people think of corporate
#
jobs as oh it is drudgery and I have to do this and I have to earn a living and I'm shifting
#
city so many times in your case was it something that you love doing and a supplementary question
#
to that would be that were you all the time getting meta about your job and formulating
#
all your learnings from there because what you've done after the corporate part of your
#
career ended is you know brought out all these learnings you know from your career and I
#
would say improved at least thousands of lives by sharing them with the world and by teaching
#
people but was that process of actually formulating those lessons those guidelines those principles
#
for yourself was it a process that was on while you were in your corporate journey it's
#
hard to it's hard to be able to put a finger and say yeah yeah that's that it was always
#
the case and I completely buy into your point about how some of these things work so well
#
when you look back and you can connect the dots and say that's how it worked for you
#
but what was true Amit is is perhaps two things first I actually feel that what is it about
#
that little boy from Jaipur how did he manage to kind of you know get into these funny roles
#
and do reasonably reasonably important enough work or in in seemingly important roles and
#
I think the answer to that could possibly be that you know kept learning a little bit
#
from other people kept getting looking at other people and saying wow how does this
#
work here what can I learn from this person and I think that that has been a common thread
#
perhaps in my life where I have been maybe a bit of that optimist positive guy also where
#
I might see someone who might be having lots of other problems here but I'll still try
#
and figure despite those problems he's doing some something is right here so let's try
#
and figure what's right what can we learn from this person and so maybe I kept looking
#
at it in that sense the second thing that happened was that very early in my life I
#
perhaps figured that without realizing it and without giving it a term or a label I
#
figured that stories are powerful and that being able to use stories or tell stories
#
can help you to get your message across so as a young area sales manager running a monthly
#
meeting with eight salespeople in a small hotel somewhere you know you can keep telling
#
them arey yaar theek hai karenge you know have to get our target it's looking impossible
#
but you know we will get there you can keep saying it nothing happens but maybe if you
#
can tell them a little story suddenly the mood in the room seems to lift and then later
#
that night when everyone's having a beer suddenly that story gets referenced again and you realize
#
that you know you had spent so much time trying to tell them ya karna ya karna ya karna and
#
no one seemed to get it and now you've told them a story and that has stuck with people
#
so I think this tendency or this habit of then using stories started to become something
#
that I would do and maybe that in some ways is if I was to look at my career and say how
#
do I remember some of those little things maybe that's that might have helped to make
#
that happen it also kind of moved into another part of my life very often I would read an
#
entire book and after finishing you know 340 pages I would remember this one little story
#
tucked away somewhere which is a story that I said wow that was very cool so there is
#
a lot of good stuff in those 350 pages but that little story would stick out for me my
#
kids would often say this that they know what I'm reading by the story I'm telling them
#
at dinner time you know and I would probably I can't wait I have to tell you that you know
#
what I read this really cool thing and it still happens I would have come across something
#
interesting and I'll want to share it in as much as I talked about Air India Express
#
and you know saying that don't call sir I just saw it and I said hey this is such a
#
cool story and maybe that's really what has kind of stayed with me through this entire
#
process to say that there are lessons that we can learn and I how do I put it I think
#
I was lucky I was lucky that I got to work in some reasonably good business I'm guessing
#
if I had worked in a business where values weren't so important where the culture was
#
politicized where there were favorites and people were doing all kinds of funny things
#
maybe I would have been a different person I may not have been the person I am yeah I
#
might have struggled with it perhaps but I may not have learned so much and because I
#
learned some of these things I've often felt hey sometimes you see lots of bright people
#
getting it wrong you know and I think wow I wish they also would get to you know learn
#
some of this stuff and maybe that's really what gets me going to say perhaps there's
#
a lesson that I might have learned which can help someone else you know it may be a tiny
#
I'm totally with you on the value of stories like I keep telling my sort of the participants
#
of my writing course as well that you know go for the concrete the abstract to take care
#
but go for the concrete and that really makes an impact at which point I am going to ask
#
you to go for the concrete like at one point you mentioned the hypothetical example ki
#
sales meeting chal raha hai and I tell them a story and it comes back to me do you remember
#
any such interesting story which you you know told back in the day where you were actually
#
a sales manager that you know that worked
#
yeah so I'll tell you a story that we used many years ago so I used to be in PepsiCo
#
okay and soft drinks was a very seasonal business so if you were in UP for example dukhaane
#
band ho jaati hain it's cold and they really start opening in after Holi so March April
#
is when the season will start so Jan Feb March is a washout as far as soft drinks sales are
#
concerned and as a company I remember the boss you know we had decided that what can
#
we do to try and flatten seasonality which meant can we do something to sell more soft
#
drinks in Jan Feb March now given that our targets and our accounting year was Jan December
#
it was a terrible sight to see that the first three months you were doing nothing you were
#
losing money because you know your costs were all in place not getting enough revenue so
#
we said what can we do to sell more soft drinks in in that first quarter of the year and therefore
#
I think the theme was to try and say let's be fast off the block to get Jan Feb March
#
off to a great start and the way the company looked at it was to say that you know what
#
let's get it off to a great start Jan Feb March we have an opportunity let's make it
#
happen if you do that if you know four can become six percent six eight percent we are
#
off to a great start the year will be great I don't think it is working too well and and
#
that's when I you know I'm a bit of a cricket fan so I came up with this whole thing about
#
how in the good old days in 50 overs cricket the belief was that you start slowly keep
#
your wickets intact and then you know you have the slog overs and then you start to
#
say that that's when you'll start hitting right and I talked about how Jai Surya and
#
Kaluvitharna actually changed that for us and Mark Greatbatch perhaps another level
#
and how just changing the rules can catch your opposition by surprise you can catch
#
them off guard and if you were to suddenly start doing stuff in Jan Feb March just wake
#
wake up to the opportunity that might be there and suddenly we might discover that we've
#
set a platform from which we can now launch into an even higher plane and therefore a
#
little cricketing story actually got us off to saying that you know what Jan Feb March
#
could be very different in in a soft drinks calendar year and it's not as if we it became
#
the norm and everything changed etc etc but it helped us to make to land the message that
#
you know what there is an idea here let's try and make Jan Feb March much bigger than
#
it is and there's no rule which says it has to be that Jan Feb March me kuch nahi hoga
#
and the slog overs will start only in April yeah and that the cricketing analogy is great
#
and it in a sense it also illustrates another lesson that you have in your book which is
#
that don't assume that the way things were done are still the right way to do them that
#
you have to look at new paradigms and of course that happened with ODI cricket because if you
#
look at run rates through the 70s 80s 90s 2000s up to the modern day where England have
#
taken it another level ahead that they've just gone up because you changed the way of
#
playing you earlier you followed a kind of a more test matchy structure and then later
#
on this structure evolved and I think in T20 they still haven't many teams still haven't
#
figured out the optimal structure where when T20 cricket began at the end of the last decade
#
at the end of the 80s rather you know they transplanted the ODI format that you slog
#
at the start pinch it at the start then you consolidate then you slog at the end but the
#
truth is because you have the same number of batting resources but now spread out over
#
20 overs instead of 50 the expected value the eevee of aggression as it were just goes
#
up massively and therefore that old structure kind of becomes redundant so that's still
#
a lesson that I see that many teams haven't got in fact elsewhere in your book you speak
#
about how when you're building a team you don't want to pick a team with the 11 best
#
players you want to figure out the best team and you give the examples of you know Kohli's
#
Royal Challengers with Kohli and de Villiers and Gayle and all that and the example of
#
the early Rajasthan Royals but I think the big mistake that Kohli has consistently made
#
as a T20 captain and which is why Bangalore have kind of not managed to dominate the IPL
#
despite the riches is a strategic mistake that they simply haven't figured out that
#
you need to kind of front load the hitting and just keep going that period of consolidation
#
is perhaps overrated sorry that was a digression but I hope that book is coming Amit you have
#
so much to talk about as far as you know getting better metrics of performance looking at cricket
#
strategy very differently into 20 I've heard you speak about this in some forum and I think
#
there's a great book waiting to be written on this one I actually think it's also a mindset
#
thing it just goes to show how difficult it is for us to change and to adapt from one
#
to the other and we are our default setting seems to be to say the old one will work you
#
know and I can stay with it and then just minor tweaking and we think oh I've adapted
#
and I'm now very good for it whereas the reality is that you probably need to just demolish
#
it and start afresh and you know the value of a wicket is such a powerful idea and I
#
must tell you a little story myself this is Rahul Dravid talking about him becoming a
#
better T20 cricketer in IPL and you know he says Yusuf Pathan was his teammate in the
#
Royals and he says I used to watch Pathan play and you know and I was very impressed
#
with his batting and then Yusuf apparently came to Rahul one day and told him Rahul Bhai
#
do you know what your problem is and he says you know you put too much of a price on your
#
wicket here you know you are too scared that I will get out you know you put too much of
#
a price on your wicket and Rahul says I spent my entire career putting a price on my wicket
#
and being lauded for it and here was this chap telling me you are putting too much of
#
a price on your wicket and he says the rules of T20 are such that don't your wicket is
#
not so important right it's more important for you to be able to score that six or four
#
and Pathan he says would go in five innings in three or maybe throw his wicket away didn't
#
care but in the other two he would win a game for you because of the way he would bat and
#
he says and Rahul says that opened my eyes that maybe I just need to think fundamentally
#
differently about my game because the format calls for it and maybe that's something that
#
you you know you also advocate I think so.
#
That's fantastic because yeah obviously because you have 10 wickets spread out over 20 overs
#
instead of 50 so the natural conclusion there is that the value of a wicket goes down and
#
the cost of a dot ball goes up so you have to look at the eevee of each action which
#
as a statistical person obviously you're familiar with expected value and therefore the expected
#
value of aggression is just far higher and it's therefore a tragedy when a team places
#
too much of a price on his wickets and you see they've gone through 20 overs and they've
#
only lost three wickets which regardless of how much they've scored is a waste of resources
#
because they had hitters in the pavilion who could have you know lifted the rate and therefore
#
they should all have been a little more aggressive as far as my book is concerned yeah I was
#
Wesleyan did ask me to write a book on this which I was supposed to deliver months ago
#
some point I have to kind of get down and finish it final flippant question before we
#
continue with your personal journey that you know I saw one of my friends Peter Griffin
#
ask on Facebook and Twitter recently that if you are in advertising have you ever you
#
know felt bad about working on a particular product which didn't gel with whatever your
#
personal value system was and all of that now for a long time you were in charge of
#
Pepsi which is basically selling sugar and we know that sugar is poison did that thought
#
ever cross your mind I don't want to put you on the spot it's just sort of a flippant kind
#
of no it's not flippant at all I was hugely passionate about Pepsi and in all honesty
#
I also survived not survived as much as saying I was I was there when there was this huge
#
crisis of saying this pesticide in Pepsi you know and we spent a year struggling with
#
it and I think we took great pride in our products and in Pepsi and I honestly at that
#
time I didn't think of it as being anything wrong I guess the awareness around sugar and
#
what it might do for you and the need to kind of cut it down I think is far more now than
#
it might have been at that time the awareness now that you shouldn't be selling it to kids
#
versus you know we used to target kids and our kids were hugely passionate about about
#
Pepsi so I must confess that while I was there and while I was doing what I was doing I didn't
#
think of it as would I have gone and worked for a liquor company chances are no would
#
I have gone and worked for a cigarette company chances are no in my mind did I see Pepsi
#
that way honest answer I didn't and therefore that begs the question perhaps that what would
#
I do today and would I you know what I would look at if I still think that Pepsi still
#
shown that we they are responsible they try to get it right and you know they will not
#
advertise to children they are trying to ensure that their sugar level you know comes down
#
but so to answer your question you know I never thought of it that when I took and for
#
me Pepsi was like if there were the best years of my life I had a blast while I was at Pepsi
#
I really enjoyed work with some fabulous people I also discovered how being passionate about
#
a business can make a huge difference to outcomes you know and and I also learned how sometimes
#
having a enemy can actually foster that passion we used to joke that apparently there was
#
a saying in Coke that if there was no Pepsi they would have had to invent it because there
#
in strategy and everything that happened in the world happened because there was this
#
other you know the shark in the tank or an enemy at the door kind of thing and that made
#
a huge difference to the way we might be we woke up every morning saying we've got to
#
win and you knew that you know you would bleed blue because you were Pepsi and I think this
#
whole idea of saying how do you build how do you get a team of people to be passionate
#
about what they do and in the context of what we see in our country and what's happening
#
maybe there's there are lessons over here both good and bad in terms of how if you can
#
get people to be excited by a cause they will often suspend judgment and just do what's
#
required and suddenly the fact that you're weak that you're not spending as much in terms
#
of advertising dollars as your competitor the fact that your you know your brand salient
#
scores are not as high as the other person all that becomes irrelevant because you started
#
believing in a cause which is to say you know what we're gonna kill the other guy and we'll
#
become number one you know or or a more milder version a more politically correct version
#
of that so you know can work against you but can work for you I think that's the way I
#
know it strikes me that you know passion is a double-edged sword in more than one way
#
like one of the pieces of advice that I think I give people which kind of came from early
#
personal experience in the corporate world is that don't get too passionate about your
#
job my sense was that there are people who get too passionate about their jobs a sense
#
of self becomes too deep and then when something happens when they have to leave or something
#
goes wrong then their entire lives are shattered and my advice to them always was that save
#
your passion for what you do in your free time whether it's your hobbies or whether
#
it's something else that you do and when you're working work with full intensity give it everything
#
you know that's your Dharma you're there to do a job work with full intensity give it
#
all that but don't get emotionally involved with it because if it goes bad it is not worth
#
going through that emotional turmoil for over a mere job for example which almost seems
#
to contradict what you're saying and I get what you're saying as well because you will
#
do anything to the best of your abilities when you're more passionate about it and when
#
you know so what are your thoughts on this?
#
The world is changing and I'd like to believe that you know the kids at work today think
#
of it perhaps slightly differently than we might have I don't think when I was in when
#
I was at work we had this luxury of thinking that you know this is work and I will just
#
treat it as a compartment and then I have this other passion and this is my free time
#
and this is what I will do in many ways they kind of the lines got blurred it all merged
#
if you were not happy at work chances are you were not happy it's not like you could
#
say I'll shut it off and I'll just do what I want to do and I think therefore getting
#
enjoying what you were doing feeling good about it enjoying the people you are working
#
with I think became a huge part of it and I think you can do well all of us will do
#
well if we start to feel that we are enjoying what we are doing another lesson that I think
#
I learned and I try and tell young people is that it's not to suggest that there will
#
not be moments that you won't enjoy there won't be parts of a job that you won't enjoy
#
it's it's par for the course but you need to get over those and if you start saying
#
I don't like this little bit so I'm out of here chances are you'll never stay anywhere
#
because they'll always be a tiny bit which you won't enjoy and which will then make
#
you say I'm out of here I'm out of here I'm out of here and then you'll suddenly struggle
#
to say why am I not getting anywhere so for me being passionate about about what you
#
do and as a leader and I'm just saying this now I sold we sold Pepsi and it was it was
#
easy to be passionate about Pepsi because you were in those days if you were on a flight
#
the guy next to you would be this you know snooty guy reading something and he suddenly
#
asked you what do you do and you'd say Pepsi and you shut the book and then tell you about
#
you know what you should do about your taste about how you know my daughter likes it my
#
son doesn't like it coke is better not better I think in your advertising you should do
#
this Pepsi was all over it was such a it was such a high interest category it was easy
#
to be passionate about you had an enemy but I must tell you that one of the challenges
#
I had was I went and sold yellow pages after that now how boring can yellow pages be compared
#
to colas and you know you don't have Shah Rukh Khan and Sachin Tendulkar telling you
#
you know use infomedia yellow pages getting my team to be excited about yellow pages to
#
be excited about saying you know we are doing something special we're gonna help that small
#
business get it right and getting people to believe in it I think was an important step
#
for me to get people excited to do more than they might have thought was possible and therefore
#
to you know for me that that's what passion might have done for them and you're right
#
it is not to suggest that it's the end of the world if the job goes if something doesn't
#
work out right it's only a job after all but while you're doing it I think it's a good
#
idea to be passionate about what you do.
#
So two questions one aren't yellow pages sort of the Kodak of the informational world in
#
the sense completely missed the bus and gone and two when you're passionate about something
#
and does that create the danger that you're closed to the possibility that what you're
#
doing today may be completely irrelevant tomorrow as I guess in the case of yellow pages if
#
I'm mistaken please tell me.
#
No so you're absolutely right so yellow pages is history it's not there but so one of the
#
things we did when we were when I was with the yellow pages business was we tied up with
#
Alibaba and we brought Alibaba into India so that Alibaba's entry into India was at
#
some level with us at that stage so just to make the point that we recognized that yellow
#
pages are not likely to last very long we also recognized that so we had a telephone
#
answering system and you know ask me as a service that we would do but we recognized
#
even that may not be future proof enough and really the way to go would be to try and say
#
how can we leverage the internet to get this right so you're right the only difference
#
I'd say is that it wasn't a Kodak moment we tried to get Alibaba in but then of course
#
the way things work in business businesses gets get bought and sold and get de-prioritized
#
and you know it's I also say this Amit it's it's always tough when you are running Kodak
#
to see the Kodak moment and say that you know it's very easy to look back and say what were
#
they thinking what are they smoking how could they do this right but when you're making
#
when you're you know valued as high as you are and you're making all those billions in
#
profit it's not easy to say let's destroy our business you know it's not easy and I
#
have a lot of respect for people who can do that and I think Gillette is a great example
#
of that you know as anyone and you know as all of us who might have used Gillette blades
#
you are very happy with Gillette and then came mark one and you thought is wow very
#
nice and you upgraded and you paid a little more you didn't need mark two and you didn't
#
need mark three and you didn't need mark three plus right but they keep doing this to make
#
sure that they're still giving you a blade which is better than what somebody else might
#
give you and even if it means killing the previous one they will do it and I think it
#
takes courage to do it but as we've learned it's not about having a choice it's just about
#
having the wisdom and having having voices in the system which will tell you that's what
#
you need to do and listening to those voices so in fact a great example of this is actually
#
Netflix which you know began as a DVD rental service and then they killed that business
#
and they did this and you know in a sense played a part in the massive change that has
#
happened since let's take a quick commercial break and when we come out of the break we'll
#
move past your corporate career into your role as a teacher and motivator and so on
#
and talk about your book in some detail as well.
#
Long before I was a podcaster I was a writer in fact chances are that many of you first
#
heard of me because of my blog India Uncut which was active between 2003 and 2009 and
#
became somewhat popular at the time.
#
I loved the freedom the form gave me and I feel I was shaped by it in many ways.
#
I exercised my writing muscle every day and was forced to think about many different things
#
because I wrote about many different things.
#
Well that phase in my life ended for various reasons and now it is time to revive it only
#
now I'm doing it through a newsletter.
#
I have started the India Uncut newsletter at indiancut.substack.com where I will write
#
regularly about whatever catches my fancy.
#
I'll write about some of the themes I cover in this podcast and about much else.
#
So please do head on over to indiancut.substack.com and subscribe.
#
Once you sign up each new installment that I write will land up in your email inbox.
#
You don't need to go anywhere.
#
So subscribe now for free.
#
The India Uncut newsletter at indiancut.substack.com Thank you.
#
Welcome back to the Scene in the Unseen.
#
I'm chatting with Prakash Iyer about his remarkable career not just in the corporate world but
#
in terms of really all the life lessons that he has distilled in his many training programs
#
and in the three books that he's written the latest of which is called How Come No One
#
It reminds me of something like I've recently been binging on the cookery videos of Ranveer
#
Brar and one of the tropes in that and he's just delightful does it really well and he's
#
got these tropes that repeat themselves and one of them is this bit where he says where
#
he'll warn somebody against doing something and then at the end he'll say yeh mat kahna
#
ki Ranveer ne bataya nahi.
#
So you know the title of your book sort of reminded me of that.
#
Now while talking about your corporate journey I've tried to kind of get you to talk about
#
your sort of journey to the top where you became CEO and MD and led these great companies
#
but I can see that you're too modest to go there yourself.
#
Let's talk however about both that phase when you're leading these companies and what you
#
bring into it and also your openness to then reinventing yourself in the way that you did.
#
Like how did that transition happen?
#
Were these thoughts that I will do this, that I will share my learnings and write books
#
like this, do courses like this, was it kind of there from before or was it something that
#
happened after you led these companies and was there a moment where you think about what
#
next and also I have no idea if you bought a BMW in your 40s but was there some kind
#
of midlife crisis and what form did that take?
#
So I'll tell you a couple of pointers perhaps in this direction.
#
The first was that something I would do every year is make out a list of resolutions for
#
the year or things that I will do this year and I can look back maybe to 20, 25 years
#
I certainly remember I think there's a 1998 version of it, there's a 2000 version of it
#
which will include things like have a waist size 32 which never happened or have a golf
#
handicap of 18 which has never happened or write a book which is also was a recurring
#
part of my wish list or my you know what things I want to do this year kind of stuff and interestingly
#
enough when I was leaving towards the end of my stint at Infomedia which is the Yellow
#
Pages business that I ran, it had got sold to a strategic investor and I was just you
#
know I was staying on till I finish.
#
I used to write a blog over there and the blog had started to become reasonably popular
#
which means that you know three colleagues and four friends would read it and say things
#
about it and suddenly of course I wrote something about tipping in a restaurant and a lesson
#
that I learnt about tipping and guess what there was this waiter from a small town in
#
the United States who wrote in to say what a good thought and it suddenly struck me wow
#
here I am writing a blog which I think is restricted to you know friends and family
#
and somebody else is reading it and responding to it and that said you know maybe there's
#
something happening here.
#
The blog kept happening you know I kept writing reasonably regularly I enjoyed it, it was
#
like a message to my own team and then it struck me that maybe there's an idea here
#
for a book so of course I decided that I must write that book and I you know and this is
#
that year where I'm about to leave a business and then I'm not sure what I want to do I'm
#
thinking I'm going to write and speak and do all those cool things who wants to go back
#
to the corporate world so we say let's make up and I've read somewhere that you know the
#
way to do this is you must make a book proposal so I make a book proposal which suggests why
#
I think it's you know the best idea there is and then I send it out to three publishers
#
I send it to Penguin I send it to Harper and then of course to keep it easy I say let me
#
also send it to Roopa and Jaiko that will happen you know and guess what within a week
#
of sending it I get a immediate response from Roopa saying not interested and then a week
#
later I call up Jaiko who's in the same city and I live in which I live in and which is
#
Bombay and I call up Jaiko and say I'd send this book and they put me through to an editor
#
who I can swear is in the you know is probably in the kitchen and I can hear the pressure
#
cooker go off and and she says you know we do too many of this kind of book tell me what
#
is it about and I suddenly discover there's something called an elevator pitch which I
#
don't have nothing happens and then of course a book starts to happen and Penguin responds
#
three months later by and says that you know what we see the editor lady kind lady called
#
Heather Adams writes to me and says I've liked what I've read I'd love to make it a book
#
and we'd love to work with you and I think this is like dream come true.
#
So maybe that's one watershed moment of sorts where the book happens and that starts to
#
change things for me and maybe I'll come back to what might it what it might do for me over
#
Let me go back a little bit and say that something else that I that might have made a difference
#
was that I know this there's this popular icky guy kind of the book and the idea and
#
I think the idea is pretty powerful and and somewhere along the way I guess I started
#
to figure this for myself that you know maybe what can give me happiness is if I can work
#
in that sweet spot where I'm doing something that I'm reasonably good at that I'm uniquely
#
good at something that I enjoy doing something that has value in this world and will make
#
a difference if I can kind of find the intersection of those four circles maybe I'll be in a sweet
#
spot and that for me starts to kind of work to say this might just be an interesting space
#
to be and I still remember that you know from conferences in businesses from many years
#
ago I would I would be that I would speak and people would think wow that was no one
#
came and told me I think that was such a great strategic decision this is going to change
#
our market share but they would probably come and tell me that was you know that or people
#
bottlers or distributors would come and say that was very interesting so again looking
#
back I would feel that maybe there's something that I have over there as a strength I met
#
a man called Brian Tracy when I was running infomedia Brian Tracy is this you know is
#
an American motivational speaker but of those one of those guru kind of guys being around
#
for a long time written like a million books and and a few million tapes sold etc etc and
#
I told him I want to be a speaker I want to quit all this corporate world and become a
#
speaker and become a motivational speaker like you know so so he said to me he said
#
you know what I don't do that don't be in a hurry to quit and do this you start to speak
#
you speak 200 times speak at the Rotary Club speak in your school speak in your local
#
college complex speak wherever you get invited just speak and if you spoken 200 times two
#
things that have happened one see if you still enjoy it after you spoken 200 times and to
#
see if 200 people call you and it's quite likely that you don't get to that 200 number
#
but if both these happen then you're probably in a place where you can say yep I still want
#
to do it and what happened for me was when I when the book was out it got me a lot of
#
opportunities to speak around the book so lots of friends and other companies HR folks
#
would all call me and say come speak to colleges would call me and say speak about the book
#
and the book started you know the book was the habit of winning and I just enjoyed sharing
#
stories about winning which is big stories from Pepsi from soap from cricket whatever
#
it was and I started to speak and I actually literally took that 200 speaking engagements
#
seriously and I did that and I started to enjoy it and then by then of course the second
#
book happened and then there started being conflict I got invited to speak at a TEDx
#
event and it clashed with my global CEO's visit to India which happened you know and
#
therefore I couldn't do the TEDx talk which at that time TEDx was still happening and
#
it's still something special in that sense and I thought oh gosh missing an opportunity
#
and and I guess somewhere along the way this you know a second book happened speaking was
#
giving me great joy I'd be at an airport where some guy will come up to me and say sir you
#
remembered or you had come to our company event or you came and spoke and you know we
#
I need to repeat something I might have said I thought this is this is so cool this is
#
what I want to do and literally you know I really asked myself that question if I was
#
to be run over by a bus tomorrow morning what is it that I would really regret not having
#
done you know and I didn't think I'd answer wasn't that I wish I'd bought a bigger BMW
#
or a bigger house or a big or more stock options or more money I that didn't and this is not
#
trying to sound immodest I didn't have a BMW to start with but that was not the point it
#
didn't didn't excite me it wasn't why I thought wow that's what's gonna be cool for me the
#
cool bit was wow I'd love to go out and be this guy who writes a lot more who speaks
#
a lot more my ideal my world had this this lovely image of my grandchild climbing up
#
an attic and pulling out a book and saying you know what my granddad wrote this you know
#
just that feeling of saying maybe there's a legacy there the fact that you know market
#
cap went up in my business and our investors made more money or that market share went
#
up or that we launched this terrific product all of that seemed to pale into insignificance
#
in a sense to say that and this is not to say that's not important it's just that to
#
me that didn't seem like the big deal for me it felt like what a life it could be I
#
would have so much fun it wouldn't be work for me if I could just go out and speak about
#
stuff that I'm passionate about life would be so good for me if I could go out and write
#
the stuff that I seem to be enjoying and if I can use some of what I've learned to help
#
other people get just a bit better and that's where perhaps this coaching bit you know was
#
a bug that had bitten me much earlier and I trained to become a coach just to say that
#
can I help formalize a process by which I can help other people to get just a bit better
#
than they might be so this really looked like what I want to do and and then of course you
#
know came the conversation with the spouse just with my wife and she was usually supportive
#
and I did tell her look I'm gonna do this not because it's gonna make money for us I'm
#
assuming that I if I don't make a penny from here my CA has told me that look don't worry
#
you know we wouldn't have to kind of be on the you know we don't worry about food clothing
#
and shelter and indeed that little holiday and and that little whatever else that is
#
our indulgence don't worry about it but it's not like we can suddenly say now I want a
#
bigger home and I want more and more and more that's not gonna happen but I'm gonna have
#
fun I think I love this year and that's how I think the transition so the transition happened
#
by the time there were two books out I had been speaking for nothing I mean I wouldn't
#
make a penny out of my speaking but I could see that what I was doing could also could
#
also get me you know could pay the bills could make some money but really the driver was
#
that's what I thought I wanted to be you know my chance at being Prakash Aiyar that one
#
that one little purpose for which maybe maybe I was meant to do that's that's what it sounded
#
like for me yeah that's a that's a lovely story about your passion shifting from one
#
P to another from Pepsi to Prakash and it strikes me that just in this story of your
#
life there are life lessons for people to learn in fact one of which is a chapter in
#
your book and is also something coincidentally that I spoke about last week when I did an
#
episode on creators with Roshan Abbas where one of the things we chatted about was the
#
importance of quantity over quality not in so many words this is you know I got these
#
exact words from your chapter on the subject and you know you spoke about the advice you
#
got to speak 200 times and similarly I mentioned to Roshan how I was struck by the youtuber
#
Ali Abdal's advice to young youtubers that for you know make 200 videos literally two
#
videos a week for two years before you look at the metrics just do that and just the constant
#
iteration will make you better and you've got a great chapter on this which you begin
#
with a lovely quote by GK Chesterton quote anything worth doing is worth doing badly
#
stop quote and then you give a great example of the ceramic pots you know you read it as
#
did I a long time ago from this book called art in fear by David Bales and Ted Alland
#
as you pointed out and it's a fantastic experiment with a key lesson at the end of it so you
#
want to repeat for my listeners what it is and the lesson that we then arrive at yeah
#
so one of the things that fascinates me is this we all get told that something is better
#
than something else and that becomes like a norm and what I want to do is to tell ourselves
#
that maybe that's the norm but learn to challenge it and it may not always be the case and look
#
for where the outliers might be and an example of that was this thing that we've always heard
#
right quality is better than quantity I mean we've used it to our own advantage at several
#
I'm sure you know we can all relate to this quality over quantity and this is an experiment
#
and in a ceramics class apparently where the teacher decides that she does an experiment
#
she says that you be judged in this class at the end of the term on one of two parameters
#
you could either go for the quality route or for the quantity route which is very simple
#
if you take the quality option you can spend the next term making your best pot and come
#
back and at the end of it if your pot is perfect you'll get an A if it's good you'll get a
#
B if it's not so good a C and if it's terrible a D and in the other case if you had to go
#
the quantity route what you would need to do is I'll bring a weighing machine at the
#
end of the term and all the pots you've made we put on the weighing machine if you've made
#
more than 70 kilos you get an A if it's 50 kilos you get a B if it's 30 you get a C etc
#
the interesting bit of course is that some students chose the quality route and some
#
the quantity route and at the end of the term what they found was that the finest pot that
#
emerged in class the finest set of pots that emerged were not from the quality group they
#
were from the quantity group the kids who were focused on delivering this great pot
#
were thinking of the great pot dreaming of that great pot idealizing what's the right
#
material reading up on it and trying to say how do I make that perfect pot and that pot
#
was no way near as good as the kids who chose the quantity route who said banao yaar 70
#
kilos lagna hai so like you keep making pot after pot after pot and as you do it you get
#
better and as you get better your pots suddenly start to look even better so that by the time
#
you're getting to that 60 and 70 kilos your pots were far better than that the group that
#
had set out to make the perfect pot and I think it's such a powerful lesson for us and
#
whether it's videos on YouTube as Ali Abdal will tell you whether it is writing as the
#
great Amit Verma will tell you or whether it's speaking as Brian Tracy might have told
#
you know I think just going after quantity being willing to make mistakes being willing
#
to get it horribly wrong but just learning from it can actually help us to get to a better
#
place yeah and as you said in the book quantity leads to quality so my advice to any creator
#
out there is don't don't overthink it like on one hand it is of course to what Lincoln
#
says that if I am going to cut a tree I'll spend six hours sharpening the axe and again
#
you quote that in your book and I used that in some of my slides as well but so preparation
#
and all of that is important but at some point there is a balance to be drawn between getting
#
it done and getting it right and I keep talking about this trade-off in our lives and I think
#
in my own life in fact for most of it I have made the mistake of you know thinking about
#
getting it right and therefore never getting anything done and I think what's important
#
is that you have to first get it done and getting it done again and again and again
#
is actually the route to sort of getting it right the other thing that struck me as very
#
interesting is that when you made your year-end list 99 2000 whatever all these year-end lists
#
that you're making you said you would put things like waistline 32 or golf handicap
#
number X number or write a book and those are all goals and as we both know by now you
#
know it's thinking in terms of goals doesn't help you thinking in terms of processes does
#
where you know you build a process and the goals kind of happen by themselves and they
#
fall into place I'm very curious to know what your processes were like not just in this
#
later phase of your career but even earlier when you were in the corporate world like
#
in terms of work ethic what kind of processes do you build for yourself are you building
#
similar processes in terms of reading and taking ideas you know what do you do for knowledge
#
management at a time where perhaps they weren't any apps or fancy software for it what do
#
you do now what are your processes through which you know you write these books do these
#
courses you're obviously or constantly modifying your content you've just started a YouTube
#
channel as well which are linked from the show notes so Godspeed for that what tell
#
me about your processes that's what really interests me I like the point you make about
#
how those lists that I had were goals and not processes and clearly I didn't know no
#
better as it were and that that's probably why I put in put them there and I didn't actually
#
put down that you know write four times every week or take golf lessons every week or watch
#
your diet which is really the better way to get to the goals that I might have had but
#
I guess the goals were at least served a purpose which is they kept me in focus of saying what
#
do I need to do to get there and maybe just get better with it in terms of processes maybe
#
there are a couple of things that have become habits so as a young manager I remember if
#
you walked into a bosses in the good old days when laptops were still you know not yet around
#
us if you walked into your bosses room for a meeting or a discussion if you want to any
#
meeting it was expected that you would carry a pen and a pad with you you couldn't be walking
#
in flaring your hands and sitting over there and looking at the world you had to have that
#
pen and paper because if there was something that you needed to do you would write it down
#
if there's something interesting you found you write it down if you saw a statistic which
#
was interesting you'd put that down on a piece of paper and I think that is something in
#
some ways that has stayed with me I don't trust my memory and I guess over time it just
#
seems to be getting worse and therefore I think the need to write down something is a big
#
one for me and what I've done Amit is often if I see something interesting or if I if
#
I see a line which might be an interesting one or I hear something which is interesting
#
I will write it down and I will then try and figure out I may not even write everything
#
but I'll write enough of that line to be able to say I know what what this was and very
#
often stories that I might share or ideas that I might propagate come from those little
#
lines that might have actually cropped up somewhere so this is really the crudest form
#
and then that became notes and then you know I use Evernote which is which I find is useful
#
I know that there are you know I'm a big fan of of the idea of building a second brain
#
but I just find it too complicated and I want to tell myself that maybe at this stage of
#
my life I don't want the process to hijack my agenda and I don't want to be so caught
#
up in saying I must get the better process so long as I have something that works for
#
me and serves my purpose I'm saying you know this this is good enough you know and I don't
#
really need to move to notion or you know or to something that's that's the way I see
#
it the other thing I've done in terms of processes and I said this to you earlier that I like
#
the idea of being able to to kind of share what I have heard or learned which is new
#
for me and therefore a lot of my conversations with friends with with other people who might
#
be around me family whoever I meet I will often share very often I'll tell my if I'm
#
driving in a car I'll tell the driver something that I might have read because I think it
#
might be interesting and and maybe this is again good old Hindustan lever training at
#
work which is to say test your ideas test market new launches you know don't try and
#
suddenly say you've got this great idea and one day I'll go and say a big bang here it
#
is so I like the idea of being able to test it out so I might even make a I might even
#
put it out on a LinkedIn post and just put out the center the kernel of an idea and say
#
see what how do people respond sometimes you'll figure that you got it wrong or that there's
#
a logical error in what you're saying or people think this is rubbish but you learn that bit
#
before you actually take it out to the larger world so that's something else that I find
#
extremely useful which is to share whatever I have and that helps me to get some kind
#
of instant feedback test market results as it were in terms of saying does this make
#
sense is there an idea here very often putting an idea out actually gets back a bigger idea
#
you you put out something which you don't know how it will work and you just put it
#
out there and somebody else will make something else out of it maybe people will see it very
#
differently from the way you might have seen it and just getting that fresh perspective
#
just getting a new idea suddenly says hey I had an idea you have one I can pull these
#
two together and now I have an even better idea than what I might have had so that's
#
something else that works can you give me an example of that so I'm just thinking there's
#
an I I wrote something in one of my in my second book I think about lessons from a teabag
#
okay and I think I had like you know leadership lessons from a teabag and this was born out
#
of a line somewhere about how I read something is like a teabag put it in hot water and you'll
#
know how strong it really is and that's such a powerful idea and I said now this is like
#
sounding like a leadership idea and then I kind of looked at what are the other lessons
#
from it and I had five lessons and I'm just thinking aloud now but it would be things
#
like you know the bag of the teabag needs to be porous you can have the best tea inside
#
but if the bag is not porous it won't work suggesting therefore as a leader that you
#
might have all the ideas and knowledge but you need to be porous need to share need to
#
get it right I had things like saying at the end of a cup of tea nobody ever said wow what
#
a great teabag that was we'd say it was good tea so you know as a leader don't worry about
#
being recognized as this great leader don't worry about being you know 40 under 40 cover
#
of the magazine etc etc focus on building great teams focus on building great organizations
#
focus on impacting other people that's what people will remember no one's gonna say wow
#
there is a great teabag so you know I had these four or five lessons what I discovered
#
was that as I started talking about it you know in the early years people got fascinated
#
and suddenly when I finished somebody will come and say you know what I can think of
#
one more lesson sir and somebody will come up with another one and another one and today
#
I probably have like 10 lessons from it which are probably very different from the four
#
I might have started off with when I when I when I got this going so it's just a case
#
of literally now the word became popular much later but you know crowdsourcing ideas suddenly
#
started to happen wow fascinating tell me now about your writing process because you've
#
mentioned that you were a reader when you were a kid you like to write you know you
#
enjoyed writing essays when you were in IMA you did your the magazine that you edited
#
and which I presume you also wrote for how did your writing develop over this period
#
of time like right now it's very crisp is clear writing it you know it does a wonderful
#
job of communicating ideas of storytelling there is no jargon it's simple everyone can
#
understand was it always like this is there a journey that you took to arriving at this
#
did you consciously think about what your writing voice should be like give me a bit
#
of insight into that part of your process first up of course getting a writing guru
#
to say that he thinks this writing is pretty good is like I'll take that I mean thanks
#
so much thanks for those kind words I must confess I I didn't read too much fiction as
#
a kid a lot of my reading was was magazines was non-fiction newspapers so if you asked
#
me who were some of my favorite writers as a as a kid growing up I would I would like
#
to say I was a big fan of Dilip Bob who would write for India Today you know and I thought
#
he wrote such a great job of it or a lot of Arun Shourie and his research and his writing
#
in newspapers at that time I was a big fan of that kind of stuff so for me reading some
#
of this was what got me excited and and I think at some level keeping it simple was
#
important I like to say this I give a lot of credit to my English teachers in school
#
perhaps and I'd probably call out you know there was a lady called Auti D'Souza and there
#
was Sujata Mitra and and they they what they did for me was to say that look it's it's
#
the idea that matters it's not about using big words it's about how can you can you get
#
that idea across to people who may not be familiar with what you're trying to say and
#
I think for me simplicity therefore became a pretty much what I wanted to do and I'd
#
like to say this that I sometimes think it's actually a very self-serving if it was complicated
#
I wouldn't understand it if I use big words I probably wouldn't understand it and that
#
has kept it kept me on track to say that you know use words that that you understand use
#
words that your reader would understand I I also think that I don't think I consciously
#
thought of my writing voice but because I I also speak and I like I said a lot of my
#
writing also stems from having shared that story or having told something so I often
#
think that I write like I speak and and therefore when I'm writing I'm not thinking oh I'm now
#
writing a book or now this has to be serious I still think I'm talking to someone and I
#
picture my reader which could be when my first book when I wrote my first book I thought
#
of my 18 or 20 year old kids to say I'm talking to them what would I do I would not use if
#
I wouldn't use big words if I'm talking to them and I kept it that way I like short sentences
#
because it keeps it simple for me to ensure that I don't have to worry about grammar and
#
syntax and saying I have you got this right or is that last part of the sentence fitting
#
into the first keep your sentences shorter and you take away the problem of trying to
#
figure that out so I think my writing style therefore has always been about keeping it
#
simple keeping making it sound like you're listening to me and maybe without like I said
#
without consciously realizing it I I'd like to believe that that's the way it should be
#
for me if if someone reads what I've written they must feel that I'm I'm talking to them
#
and I'm having a chat with them not even talking to them I'm having we're having this conversation
#
I'm trying to tell them a story and that's really what you'll get over here I probably
#
learned this also earlier on that this is the idea of why am I writing this was not
#
to try and impress somebody it was not to try and tell somebody look everyone look I'm
#
so cool I can write so well or you know look everyone I can use such big words that was
#
not the intent the intent was to say you know what I have something interesting to tell
#
you and let me try and tell you something which I think is interesting now that was
#
the brief in a sense to say keep it interesting you have an interesting story to tell make
#
sure it's interesting for the other person the other person doesn't have to tax her head
#
and scratch her brains to figure out what happened what happened oh sorry what was this
#
what's how does this fit in keep it simple for them one last thought which is and I think
#
I'm trying to now trace this back and you know it's easy to keep looking back and saying
#
where did this start but I wonder if as a little kid being this kid who would try and
#
pun too much you know we're trying you know and everyone hates a punster and it can be
#
a pain in the neck and you know you can be pun is indeed lowest form of humor and all
#
of that but I used to be this kind of guy who would always see something else in that
#
word and I would always see another if somebody said something I would probably say that's
#
what you're saying but here's what it could mean and I think this this tendency to listen
#
to that song in Hindi and to quickly try and say how would this sound if it had English
#
lyrics right what would it do this ability to look at something and say what does this
#
tell us about the larger world maybe that is something else that has kind of become
#
what gets me going in my writing where I try and say that look maybe there's a lesson to
#
be learned here maybe there's something that's important here but it comes from something
#
else which is happening and I try and bring that to life and say hey if that's what it
#
is how does this what does this tell us about about life about relationships about leadership
#
about the way we are about the way we behave the way we think I try and see if I can find
#
lessons in that and maybe that's something else that that's kind of seeped into the storytelling
#
that I that I enjoy doing yeah yeah that's that's kind of fascinating number of things
#
to take away there and one which I find particularly interesting is this notion that your mindfulness
#
of language can increase because you were a punner like I also of course don't approve
#
of puns and very often it's just a writer drawing attention to their writing which retracts
#
from the narrative and you don't really want that but at the same time it's important and
#
it's important for writers especially to look at with granular detail at the language that
#
they are using and to have a sense of what effect their language has on the reader because
#
every choice that is made in a particular piece has an effect on the reader and you
#
want to be mindful of that so this is an interesting angle that tendency for sort of fancy writing
#
doing you know writerly florid prose I think perhaps I have often mused comes from that
#
old post-colonial hangover where for decades and to some extent even now English was a
#
marker of class and you know in India and if you wanted to signal your sophistication
#
you do it with these big fancy pompous phrases instead of saying you know stop this nonsense
#
you'll say put an end to this pontificatory blah blah blah and so on and so forth and
#
again write as you speak is something I talk a lot about because I think people misunderstand
#
it people think that write as you speak means that the way that we are speaking you write
#
like that and obviously that won't work because there'll be all these long run-on sentences
#
there'll be these sort of pauses and um's and ah's and words like like and whatever
#
because when we are speaking there's no filter between our brains and what we are saying
#
which is fine because we are saying it in the moment what write as you speak really
#
means is that when you read something out it should sound as if it is something that
#
you would say in conversation it should sound natural to you which is why for most of the
#
writers that I read including you most of the writers that I know personally rather
#
including you you know when I read something by them I can actually hear it in their voice
#
because it is so sort of natural to them and I think people lose this people try to be
#
like too writerly and like I think William Zinsser once said that if there is a word
#
that you would not use in conversation never use it in your writing and I agree with that
#
you know so all great points and great lessons in there.
#
I must ask you a question here Amit and something that I've not really thought too deeply about
#
but I've sometimes wondered so when I went to school and I learnt English I've never
#
studied Ren and Martin and grammar and I didn't really understand what you know past perfect
#
and you know all the terms that we used to describe I've never studied or learnt that
#
and I find it fascinating that without having learnt that as it were I learnt how to read
#
and write a little bit and I'm just wondering how does this fit in with this whole thing
#
about saying that if you need to know something you need to understand the science behind
#
it perhaps or is how does this work?
#
I actually think that taking Ren and Martin too seriously for example might be counterproductive
#
because what each of these grammar books or write like this books will give you is an
#
ossified version of language is a convention of a previous time I think the way we learn
#
everything is by reading a lot there's no substitute for that we learn how to write
#
by osmosis by reading a lot and that reading can be mindful where you know Arundhati Roy
#
after she won the Booker in 96 for the God of Small Things once said that the quality
#
of a reading changed when she became a writer which means that you're looking for all the
#
things that writers do the tricks they use how they build rhythm how they do transitions
#
how they tell their stories all of those things but for me any kind of reading is great even
#
mindless reading like I'll often tell participants of my course that do not become very conscious
#
about what you are reading or think that some things are in fraud again some things are
#
things that you should read read anything that you enjoy reading because anything that
#
you enjoy reading is by default doing something right and you learn osmosis from that so whenever
#
somebody asked me how do I improve my grammar how do I improve my vocabulary the answer
#
always is that there is no instruction book which will teach you all of this you just
#
read a lot and you kind of learn it by osmosis which is why I'm never critical of a person
#
whose grammar isn't great who are making grammatical errors or who's may not know many big words
#
I'm never critical of them because those are things that you pick up along the way what
#
is more important is the honesty in your storytelling that are you putting yourself at the service
#
of your narrative or are you trying to impress somebody with oh look what a good writer I
#
am I know all these big words and fancy phrases so yeah so my short answer I gave a long answer
#
but the short answer would really be that we learn by osmosis true so tell me about
#
this particular book you know you've referred in this book to things that at some points
#
you'll say April 2020 this happened or you know you you've referred to the lockdown
#
and the pandemic times and all of that how did the idea for this book kind of come about
#
you know and what was the process of writing it like and is there something that this book
#
has gained from being written after the pandemic began when let us say that you know the old
#
normal became the new normal that is such a cliche I even I feel embarrassed using these
#
phrases but you know is there something in the book that was formed because of that period
#
the first bit is that as my penguin editor will tell you that the pandemic ensured that
#
I wrote the book so it's been a bit and a fair very long time in the works and it's
#
been an idea but I guess when the pandemic hit and you suddenly realize that you have
#
a little more time on your hands you're at home I think it just took away one more excuse
#
and as I looked at so if I flash back to to April last year and I told myself that the
#
world is changing a little bit no more travel no more having to be on flights all the time
#
you're at home you're doing everything sitting in front of a computer so it's a great opportunity
#
to do a few things and those few things included learning new stuff so I said hey what can
#
you learn so I tried to learn two or three things that that might have helped and I told
#
myself not a bad idea to say let's finish the book now so let's get that book out and
#
start writing so I think that the discipline probably got a little got some impetus thanks
#
to the to the pandemic did that in any other way influence what I do I think a lot of it
#
goes back to my my little attempt to try and say that I actually think there are things
#
people need to know and we don't get taught those things and and sometimes just being
#
just a little thing someone tells you can make it so so much more powerful I'll give
#
an example and I'm not saying this because I'm on your podcast Amit but just this it
#
never struck me that adverbs are bad until I until I took that course and you know and
#
to to answer that question about Atul Baderde and Sachin Tendulkar and all of that I think
#
if you don't get your hand in line with your foot no matter who you are you're going to
#
be in trouble and I just think that one little thing told me so much about about my own writing
#
and I and I used to feel bad when I'd get rid of those adverbs I thought they were adding
#
so much to my to my writing to realizing that you know it's such a drag just take it off
#
horror of horrors I did account once when after I wrote something and I had something
#
like you know in a 700 word piece I used the word just 14 times you know just like that
#
and I thought it sounded just right and anybody who said it's not right I'd say you know you
#
must be just kidding you know and I did realize it so that's that's my point that sometimes
#
you're not aware of some of these things and it's not and I could turn around and say that
#
this isn't rocket science and you know surely someone I could have picked it up etc etc
#
but the problem is there are some simple things that we need to know about what we do and
#
no one tells us that yeah and we and it just it just so happens that we no one tells us
#
if they if we knew it it could make a difference to our life and it's not to suggest that this
#
is the one thing you need to do and this will change your world that's not the intent these
#
are small things that I think we all need to know and that's really what got me started
#
and saying so what are some of the things that I might have learned which I think could
#
be useful and and that's how I started to write I think a good a good practice in this
#
was also to say that push yourself to write and I wish I'd be a little more consistent
#
but some of the best moments I've had or the best months I've had are when I would tell
#
myself that I will write something every day on LinkedIn you know I would just post something
#
and here's the interesting bit and this is true whether you're you know if you want to
#
write a book or if you tell yourself that you'll write posts on whatever's your medium
#
of choice if you sit down on the first day to write you'll say I have nothing to write
#
about there are no ideas and there will be no ideas and then you can get up and go and
#
say I have no idea so I'm not going to write today but if you force yourself to sit there
#
and say failure is not an option you there is no cop out okay you have to write that
#
piece today which could be hundred words or 200 words or whatever it is but you have to
#
write it and suddenly something will come to your mind and you'll write a 30 40 words
#
which will be rubbish but those 30 40 words will tell you that actually there is another
#
idea coming from here and that will then become a piece and by the time you're finishing you
#
don't want to get up because you think you've got something really nice happening over here
#
and you want to kind of stay with it and there is another idea that you've got from and and
#
I think that can become a great way to tell yourself that hey this book can happen and
#
for me very often if I sat there and said I need to write a book I can't decide what
#
to write about and it's not like the book started by saying I have a great title how
#
come no one told me that all I have to do is to think of stories that will fit into
#
that that's not how it happened I just had to think of what can I say and gradually I
#
think one thing leads to another and to another and to another and all of that happens because
#
you tell yourself you have to sit and write and I think to anybody out there who wants
#
to write a book and I often you know I'm sure this is advice you also gave us and you give
#
everybody which is to say if you want to write a book first just write we worry about will
#
I find a publisher will the book sell you know how is distribution what are royalties
#
how much margin forget all of that if you want to write a book first just write the
#
rest of it will take care of itself yeah and I think if we can do anything and maybe this
#
is true not just for writing it's true for anything else I'll give you another one Amit
#
and you know after one of my books I have I was in Kathmandu for a Nepal Lit Fest okay
#
rare occasion when someone who's written an ordinary book on nonfiction gets called to
#
a Lit Fest but for me the high point was that Shobha Dey was there and she was a fellow
#
speaker at that Lit Fest which also meant that you know the budgets being small for
#
the organizer they had one car to ferry us from one place to another you know I wasn't
#
complaining and I'm hoping Shobha wasn't either but as I was talking to her she said something
#
and you know we all you know and again I'm saying this as a young kid I thought Shobha
#
Dey was this great you know was a fabulous woman and whether it was Celebrity magazine
#
which she started or just Neeta's Natta and Stardust and all of that forget the books
#
I thought she was she was terrific and a big fan of all that she did and you know a little
#
bit about her you know the books she writes the her husband society she's obviously this
#
you know socialite all of that and I'm sitting over there with her and we're talking about
#
something and she tells she tell me something she says you know what Prakash I write 3000
#
words every day it is a must it could be a column it could be a book it could be a piece
#
that somebody has commissioned it could be notes to myself but I will write 3000 words
#
every day I will not go to bed if I haven't written 3000 words and then I can remember
#
picture her saying this and she says it's like Riyaz for a singer you know if you have
#
to be a singer you have to do your Riyaz for me this is my Riyaz and here I am running
#
a company and writing a book and thinking you know this is all cool and I say wow yeah
#
this is this is such a powerful thought and every time I tell my if I'm now when I try
#
to write and I'm thinking of an excuse I think of myself think of saying my diary is not
#
half as busy as Shobha's diary might be and if she can find time to write those 3000 words
#
you know what's my excuse yeah yeah and in fact that's both something to learn from and
#
something not to learn from there and what one can learn from there is of course the
#
importance of Riyaz like I keep saying like to me the facility to write is like a is akin
#
to a muscle so if you want to grow your writing muscle you know you have to do what you do
#
to grow your other muscles you don't take a gym membership and without going to the
#
gym by having an intellectual understanding of how the body works grow your muscles you
#
got to go to the gym every day and get the job done similar thing with writing however
#
3000 words a day is intimidating like the advice that I give in my course and I have
#
a slide just for this or you know spoiler for those who haven't attended it yet is set
#
a really modest target like what I say is 300 words a day or even 200 words a day you
#
know just write 200 words a day and the thing with that is that many days you'll write more
#
than that many days you will be in a difficult situation where you have fever and you're
#
in bed or you have flights to catch in a post covid world obviously and you know but you
#
can still take out your phone and write those 200 words on your smartphone and in fact since
#
I started speaking after you finished I have probably spoken twice as much we speak around
#
200 words in a minute it's very easy to write but what it does and even if you have nothing
#
to write about write a daily journal write about what's been happening in your life the
#
point is number one the juices are flowing the muscle is working out number two it accumulates
#
even if you write exactly 200 a day and nobody will obviously stop at the 200 word if it's
#
and or but but even if you were to write that much that's 75,000 words in a year that's
#
like a novel and thing you know so the important thing is like you correctly said just get
#
out there just do it every day the process is what matters the goals will happen by themselves.
#
I know you said this Amit and I remember you telling us in this course why 200 words is
#
an important one was I remember you said even if you're going back to the airport after
#
a meeting you know 200 words is something you can type out onto your phone right so
#
you just take away the excuse for not writing and I think that's a great start but here's
#
the interesting bit I have found that once you get into the swim of things once you get
#
into the habit you start saying wow there is more to say there is more you want to do
#
and that 200 will soon become 500 and once you become class five it will become 700 and
#
then if you become postgraduate like Shobha probably is it becomes 3000 words but the
#
second bit I want to say here is that apart from the writing bit the big problem most
#
of us have is when you sit down you wonder I have nothing to say I have nothing to write
#
what will I write about right and that becomes a reason so we wait for once I have something
#
to write about then I will sit and write and I'm saying maybe you want to switch that sit
#
to write and something will come to you it may not have been there I have found this
#
happens to me so many times you know and there'll be days when I say gosh I haven't written
#
I must write today I'll get up in the morning and I'll tell my wife I have to write I'm
#
not going for a walk in the morning 5 5 a.m. I'm sitting at my desk here I don't know what
#
I'm gonna do but I'm sitting over there and I'm saying I need to write and surprise surprise
#
something will come and I think that's something else that maybe you know anybody who wants
#
to write should try and figure this don't wait for that idea and I'll tell you another
#
little story Amit I once was I was on a flight and the gentleman sitting next to me and this
#
is the good old days when you know I'm still corporate and and jet airways is still a thing
#
and business class is still a thing and I surprise surprise there's this man sitting
#
next to me who looks very much like Gulzar and you know before I know it the lady who's
#
serving us gives him the glass of fresh lime and says is there anything I can get you Gulzar
#
Saab and I think my flight is made I'm gonna really gonna enjoy this one and I find that
#
you know Gulzar Saab has this diary like a loose leaf diary a handbook of sorts which
#
he's got with him and he plonks that into the pocket in front as even as he settles
#
into a seat and I'm curious and I asked him you know why have you got that diary and he's
#
got a pen nice looking fountain pens and I said is that because mid flight you might
#
have this great idea or a line might occur to you and you don't want to lose it so you
#
want to write it down is that why you have that he says no sir I have work to do I have
#
to deliver three songs by the end of the day and I have work to do so I have to sit and
#
write it's not like I'll wait for an idea I'll write it and maybe I'll get an idea
#
you know and I think that's a if it happens to someone as great as Gulzar maybe it's
#
an interesting one for all of us to consider that don't wait for inspiration to strike
#
before you write sit down to write and I think inspiration will find you yeah in fact in
#
my course I have a slide which has a quote by Joan Didion where she says quote I don't
#
know what I think until I write it down stop quote so you know even if you have nothing
#
to write about just just you know sit exercise that muscle and magic will eventually happen
#
you've got to kind of have that faith but don't start with a big target start with a
#
small target the big targets will happen 3000 words a day can also happen more than that
#
can happen like one of my favorite writers is a French novelist George Simonon who wrote
#
some 400 novels in his time created the detective Maigret but also wrote a bunch of I think
#
they're called Roman Adoors which are these wonderful novels about everyday life and he
#
gave an interview to Paris Review when he was I think around 50 years old and his process
#
then was he would call his doc when he felt ready to write a novel the doc would take
#
the blood pressure give the go ahead and Simonon would then lock himself up in a room for seven
#
days like his wife would leave food outside the door and he'd write 7000 words a day
#
and at the end of a week he's got around 50,000 words send it off to the publisher calls a
#
doctor doctor comes takes his blood pressure says okay you need to rest till so and so
#
date and then I will come and check you again but this is one of those things which I would
#
say please do not try this at home you know start small start achievable otherwise you
#
know what a big target does to finish that thought is let's say you set yourself a big
#
target I'll write 1000 words a day also okay you set yourself a target there you will fall
#
of the wagon there will be days when you just can't and then you start beating yourself
#
up and then you say yeah writing life is not for me you're medicine yoga like my corporate
#
meto achha kamara who I should I do this and that affects your self-image and it becomes
#
a vicious cycle where because you don't write you tell yourself you can't write and that
#
feeds into itself so the one way to break that is modest targets let's start by talking
#
about your book and when I read the book in my mind I was sort of dividing it into personal
#
lessons that is self actualization kind of lessons and other lessons outward facing lessons
#
like leadership lessons and team building lessons and all of that and some of it struck
#
me and what I again love how you bring your own personal stories into these like to give
#
you a point of feedback for your next book the entire book is filled with stories but
#
the stories that I really enjoyed were the personal ones and not so much you know the
#
ones of other people and other things because they're just so much charm to them and one
#
of those stories was you talk about how you've gone on a drive with your twins I think their
#
nicknames are Abby and toots I hope they don't mind I'm just quoting you so at one point
#
when you're going back to the car your daughter says that hey I want to sit on the right side
#
because we both sit at the back and then the son immediately says no no I want to sit on
#
the right side and back and forth kind of happens and you find a compromise and you
#
get to the car and when you get to the car your son says by the way which is the right
#
side which is such a remarkable story and which tells you so much about human nature
#
that he just wanted to sit on the right side because that's what his sister wanted he didn't
#
even know what the right side was and similarly in our lives we set our goals and our benchmarks
#
and our desires by what other people around us are doing and your point there is be mindful
#
of this and avoid this trap and so on tell me a little bit more about this and does this
#
have personal resonance beyond this little story about your kids like do you think you
#
made this mistake sometimes and you know what was the nature of the mistake how did you
#
get past it I think it's it's such a small a tiny little story it actually you know it
#
has it certainly has reverberations across everything that we do and it certainly it
#
has for me personally speaking it has for all of us I think if you look at the number
#
of people who end up doing engineering you know why do they do engineering and if you
#
look at the way we select careers jobs it's almost like and I said this at some level
#
that as a kid if you're first in class in a in or second in class you don't and like
#
I said South Indian middle class home Bombay school you don't do arts you don't do arts
#
why because it's not the done thing it's not you know it's not you do it because everybody
#
wants it why do people want something because everybody else wants it you have hot jobs
#
you have hot careers you have employers who are being sought after courses being sought
#
after because everybody wants it we forget whether it's something that suits our is that
#
what's going to make me happy we don't even pause to think about it and I think it's I'm
#
sure it's happened to me in my life there have been decisions where you do things because
#
everybody's doing it you don't want to miss the bus you you worry that you might miss
#
the bus I also think that again optimist positive and all of that so I don't have too many regrets
#
in my life and I keep thinking that Johua it's taught me something which has helped
#
me to be where I am today and therefore that's a that's that's been you know value for for
#
time and money spent over there but I do think that in a lot of my decisions a lot of our
#
decisions it's not I wasn't this young person who kind of said I don't care I will do what
#
my heart says I will you know I don't care I don't think it I was that kind of person
#
and it's not easy I think there are a lot of pleasures but I think just being aware
#
of it can sometimes make it you know if you took 10 decisions which were of that kind
#
maybe awareness that don't do something because other people want it don't do something just
#
because if other people wanted you don't want them to get it you want to get it before them
#
if they are you know very often you see this happen in in so many ways in our lives that
#
people will get possessive about something the minute they realize somebody else wants
#
it they may not have any use for it but if somebody else wants it it suddenly becomes
#
something that we need you know and I'm just imagining in a middle-class home you know
#
if you went your I hope it doesn't happen too much but you know you can imagine this
#
where you go and say you know can I borrow your toaster for a few just now my daughter
#
is doing a course in making sado bread and all of that so we are eating a lot of bread
#
now so I can't give you the toaster actually I only realized I have a toaster at home and
#
you asked me for it but that tells me that I need it and maybe there's a mindset thing
#
here that if you want it maybe it's got value I hadn't seen and I want to hold on to it
#
and that and that came through for me in in something as simple as this to say like you
#
know and it happens to all of us I think there's like I say in the book there's a little bit
#
of that baby Abby in in all of us you know who's looking for things without knowing why
#
he wants them who wants them because somebody else wants them no it's part of human nature
#
like there's another story in your book where you talk about hanging around outside church
#
gate just to see how the markets are functioning and you you look at this textile shop where
#
there are these three four busy buyers and they buy something and then many others come
#
and they buy the same things and on the second day you realize that these guys aren't buyers
#
they're actually pretending to be buyers so that other people imitate them and it's kind
#
of worth thinking about these aspects of human nature because the moment someone like you
#
points them out then someone like me can actually absorb that tendency in myself and can correct
#
for it so that's kind of invaluable another of the really interesting personal lessons
#
that you have in here is about alteration tailors tell me a little bit about this insight
#
and how it struck you so it acts like like a lot of these ideas or articles they can
#
stem from a simple a silly line I might have read somewhere I still remember this was I
#
think in ET ET used to have this glossy supplement called panache which would have you know good
#
looking people which the top five suit brands and all of that happening in it nothing to
#
do with business but all about this the glamorous side of business as it were there was a column
#
there by a stylist and she talked about her five top tips for you know as style tips and
#
one of those five tips was get yourself an alteration tailor and I thought that was strange
#
you know never thought about it and the rest of it was more standard stuff about you know
#
dressing for the occasion color all of that get yourself an alteration tailor sounded
#
odd and the point she made and I think in very brief was that you know that alteration
#
tailor will make sure that that shirt sleeve which is slightly longer gets short and so
#
that it looks smarter with your jacket that was the kind of thing and I thought of that
#
I said you know wow great idea here and how important it is and and in many ways how we
#
all need an alteration tailor so it could be to say sometimes you know we all have that
#
shirt lying in our wardrobe which we don't wear because one button is gone missing and
#
therefore all we wear it and we ensure we fold up roll up our sleeves because I can't
#
keep them down because that button is missing and all it took was maybe someone who could
#
be an alteration tailor and fix that it could be this thing about you have a trouser which
#
is you know just that half inch too long and if it therefore doesn't fall as well as it
#
it doesn't make you look as smart as it could all it takes is someone to just point it out
#
and reduce that half inch and I took that now to say that you know it's not only about
#
our clothes it's about us yeah we need an alteration tailor in our lives who will tell
#
us about those little things that we're probably not doing right you know and it's not this
#
grand fix it's not saying oh if I need to get better I need to now enroll for the advanced
#
management program at Harvard that's going to change me no what you sometimes need is
#
a friend someone close to you who can point out you know what might be a good idea to
#
just pause a little before you kind of lose your cool just relax you know or you may not
#
realize it but you know the way you say it you might be sounding like you are you know
#
you are being arrogant about what you know these may be small fixes but you need someone
#
who will tell you that you know what there's a half inch that needs to be adjusted and
#
here's how you can do it and having that alteration tailor in your life is such a powerful thing
#
because you will have somebody who's on who's kind of watching out for you who's telling
#
you and it sometimes it could also be to say that you know what that shirt you haven't
#
worn because you think it's it's too tight let me make it all right for you you can wear
#
it it's like saying maybe you have strengths you haven't leveraged you're not sure of
#
yourself and I'll tell you you know what you're very good at that every time I've seen you
#
do it you do it well so maybe you want to do more of it so I just think that little
#
line about saying an alteration tailor is a good style tip I think for me was terrific
#
advice and I would I'm grateful for it and if you now look back I'm sure we can all relate
#
to the fact that hey there was an alteration tailor in my life who made a difference and
#
maybe you want to make sure you still have that person you know it's it's it's never
#
we are never finished products in that sense and it's a great idea to say I have an alteration
#
tailor who will help me to identify what are those small tweaks that need to be made and
#
who will help me to get it right so that was really the story around the alteration tailor
#
yeah that's a lovely thought and a lovely phrase behind it and I'm just thinking aloud
#
that the kind of alteration tailor that I need right now is really a gym instructor
#
who can make me fit my clothes rather than make my clothes fit me this lockdown has really
#
you know some of us have expanded in unexpected ways you know I've taken I took copious notes
#
on your books but if we go through all of them we'll take like you know another three
#
hours just to get through the insights and I would rather that people listening to this
#
go out and buy the book and sort of learn from it themselves I mean in a sense I'm just
#
thinking aloud you are an alteration tailor for so many ways at scale you know in a remote
#
kind of way sharing these sort of insights which is wonderful so you know there are plenty
#
of insights in your book which are great for personal growth which are great for leadership
#
building teams you know making better decisions all of those things I'll leave it to the readers
#
to head over to the book and discover that they've got a taste of it I'll end with two
#
final questions and one is that something that I spoke about in my last episode with
#
Roshan is how we live in this brave new world for creators and for some of us certainly
#
for me I realized so much more of this after the pandemic happened where serendipitiously
#
you know I started the course and I started consuming much more content that creators
#
were putting up on YouTube and elsewhere and just the way the possibilities had expanded
#
and you know the landscape had changed all of it kind of blew my mind now you are a creator
#
yourself you're a creator in the sense that you've done these books you've created these
#
courses you've got a YouTube channel so on and so forth incredibly exciting times and
#
so for you while you might look back to mine what has happened in your life for content
#
a lot more of it is basically just going to be looking forward because hey it's so exciting
#
tell me a little bit about this you know what do you think of this new landscape for creators
#
from a personal point of view from the things that you are going to do and that you're looking
#
forward to oh I completely agree with you I think these are exciting times for creators
#
I think the opportunities the platforms available it's become so much easier to do stuff and
#
you don't have to be terribly tech savvy or you know clued in or have the most expensive
#
equipment to do stuff I think very simple tools can help you to kind of produce and
#
I think it's truly exciting times what fascinates me is of course you know I'm super excited
#
about the next 60 years of my life I think there is so much to do I'd love to write a
#
lot more I am only half not even half way through Ali Abdal's recommendation as far
#
as YouTube you know videos are concerned but I'm super excited by that and I just think
#
that it comes back to you in several ways and there are times when I do something and
#
I figure that it hasn't really you know I think it's a great idea and it just doesn't
#
work and there's something else that I talked about and suddenly you'll find that your neighbour
#
neighbouring auntie is sending it to you on WhatsApp saying you know my son in the US
#
sent it to me and I told him that I know this man why because that little video has gone
#
viral and has a life of its own now I think it's just fascinating to see how this might
#
happen what it might do and I think it tells you that look just do it put out that video
#
you never know what might happen with it something else that I've tried to do and you must check
#
this out I must and I try to say that hey is there an opportunity to reach out to more
#
people in not from any other reason but to say that look maybe there are other people
#
out there who need to hear this and how can I reach them so I try to do a chai with pie
#
which is the video that I do on YouTube in Hindi and I just loved it and it's and I could
#
worry about how many views will I get and it's not as if suddenly you know I've hit
#
gold dust or any such thing but I think I suddenly touched different people and there
#
are another set of people saying you know that they liked it and maybe there's an opportunity
#
here to say look I could do something over here I've learned like I said I learned I
#
signed up to learn writing in your writing course which I loved I signed up for a stand-up
#
comedy course and I just think that you know that's another place where you have this ability
#
to look at something and find another meaning to it you take people down one path and take
#
them suddenly take them somewhere else and you know in some ways I think it's similar
#
and maybe that's something else so I wouldn't be you know I wouldn't bet against myself
#
and maybe a year from now maybe two you'll probably find something else happening as
#
far as as I'm concerned I'd like something else that you mentioned and I'm mindful of
#
it which is you know there's only so much that I want to do in terms of mining from
#
the past because you know there is only so much there is but I do think that there is
#
so much I learn about what I see around me every day and there's so much to learn and
#
so much to kind of make sense out of and therefore what I see is what do I see my role it's not
#
to say that you know what I was working in this organization I learned something and
#
here's what I want to share that's maybe one part of it maybe it's a bit of it is done
#
what I really want to do is to try and say let me try and make this simple for you to
#
understand here's a powerful lesson but let me try and tell it to you in a manner that you will
#
remember in a manner that you will relate to and to me that becomes then the role that I see myself
#
playing this is not about saying look everybody look I've done it that's never been the intent
#
I don't think I've and I've not done half the things that a lot of successful people in the
#
corporate world have done so I can't even lay claim to that but what I try and do is to say
#
hey here's something simple you know it's important and let me explain it to you in a manner which you
#
will relate to and there is so much that's happening in our world now which still needs
#
for someone to try and make sense of and make simple sense of in a sense to make it easy to
#
understand make it easy to remember and make it palatable to say that I am not here to tell you
#
that this is how you should succeed in life or if this is the creator economy here are the five
#
rules to succeed and that's not what I want to do but I want to try and make it intuitive try
#
and say here's something simple maybe it struck you maybe it didn't but you know if you if this
#
kind of gets into your head it might find residence there and it might change the way you think it
#
might change the way you you look at the world and for me I think that is perhaps the biggest
#
piece here which is that a lot of times what you need to change is not to tell people how to do it
#
and here's how you do it but to get them to think differently about it and often it could be to say
#
you can do it which sounds like such a boring motivation in line you know you can do it and
#
all of that but I think it's simply to say we all tend to think of our limitations we tend to think
#
of why it can't be done we tend to think of what's wrong with the world and why it would prevent me
#
from doing it and if you do that what happens is that you you know very soon you you become a
#
fabulous lawyer for that and you build such a strong case that they win and you end up saying
#
oh you know I could have been the guy who did it I could have achieved so much if this was a
#
different world but you know what the world is what it is you can change and you can make things
#
happen and I think just reclaiming the power which is what I think the creator economy is doing in
#
many ways is helping people reclaim the power to make a difference and I think it's there for all
#
of us to claim. Yeah exactly inspiring words and one of the things that I keep pointing out to you
#
know everyone who signs up for my writing course is that there are some things which require natural
#
talent like if you want to be a fast bowler you've got to have fast twitch muscles a batsman will
#
need some hand-eye coordination but for a writer I don't believe that you need any natural talent
#
at all I think anyone can learn to write it's just a question of hard work applying yourself
#
you know having the right approach to writing and and that's again something that you just sort of
#
spoke about that people don't know how far their own capacities can extend if they just have the
#
right mindset so more power to you for you know achieving all of these things my final question
#
and almost a predictable one is that you know listeners of my show are always hungry for
#
book recommendations now you have written books which some people would say have touched their
#
lives or even changed them and so on if I were to throw the owners back on you that what are the
#
books that you know maybe changed the way you think about the world or meant a lot to you or
#
that you learned from or that you're simply so enthusiastic about that you are like I have to
#
share this with the world you know do you have any recommendations
#
so I'm a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell I love his storytelling style and the his ability to
#
pull together strands of research from you know from all kinds of places and then
#
suddenly magically weave them into a narrative so I'm a big fan of his writing his podcasts
#
uh and I'd highly recommend Malcolm Gladwell to to people and maybe I also like the idea of
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writing not because of not only for the manner in which it's been put together but for the idea
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there and I think it's so well done that you forget to look at the writing and you know this
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is something I know Amit you you you put very eloquently W and not the WP you know window and
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not the window pane and I think that's something that's such a powerful idea where you don't try
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and draw attention to the writing but you try and look at the ideas over there so I'm a big fan of
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this half psychology half in you know so Dan Arreley for example big fan of the kind of stuff
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that he he writes though he's gotten into trouble recently you read about that in the the sort of
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the data in his research anyway the jury is out on whose fault exactly it is but it's a lot of
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these behavioral psychology experiments have turned out to not be replicable but anyway I think even
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the ones that aren't replicable point to interesting core insights that one should at least think about
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that's right that's right and I I'll tell you something else as a kid growing up one of my
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favorite writers was Busy B you know Behram Contractor who would write this little piece
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in the afternoon papers at that time and I for me that's a great inspiration because this ability
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to look at something small around you and make sense out of it and to try and make it interesting
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and and to have a point of view which I think is extremely important so for me I I like the idea
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that somebody is saying something out of whatever whatever is being written there is a point of view
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that's coming through it is not always profound it is often built on something which is very simple
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everyday stuff and yet it makes you look at it and say hmm how come I didn't think of that one
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you know and that to me is in itself very very interesting. Great so Prakash thanks so much
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for your time and your insights and indeed for writing these books and all of that I hope we
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continue to have many more conversations through the next 60 years you said right so okay through
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the next 60 years since you're optimistic for a moment I shall adopt some of that optimism for
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myself. Like that line went why are you surprised Amit you look pretty fit yeah you'll survive the
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next 60 don't worry. Well inshallah so Ghee Pepsi yeah thank you so much Amit it's been so much fun
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talking to you it's been so much fun following you and may you continue to inspire a lot more
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people to write indeed to follow their passions and do all the cool stuff that you do thank you
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so much Amit. Thank you. If you enjoyed listening to this episode head on over to your nearest
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bookstore online or offline and buy How Come No One Told Me That by Prakash Iyer in fact just buy
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all his books they're full of important life lessons also check out the show notes and enter
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rabbit holes at will you can follow Prakash on twitter at Prakash Iyer one word you can follow
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me at Amit Verma A-M-I-T-V-A-R-M-A you can browse past episodes of the scene and the unseen at scene
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unseen dot i n thank you for listening. Did you enjoy this episode of the scene and the unseen
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if so would you like to support the production of the show you can go over to scene unseen dot
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i n slash support and contribute any amount you like to keep this podcast alive and kicking thank you
