From the Podcast archives

It has been 4 years since we started the Play to Potential Podcast (www.playtopotential.com). It started out as chance encounter with Vijay Amritraj at the Mumbai airport around Dec 2016. I was on a flight to Chennai and he was headed to Bangalore. I walked up to him and requested time from him to talk about his journey. After initial apprehensions about who I was and why I wanted time from him, he asked me to come to his hotel room to record the conversation. I got back to Mumbai, dropped everything else on my agenda and jumped on a plane later that week to meet him in Bangalore. I remember going up to his room with trepidation with an H4N recorder. Given Vijay's accomplishments as a Broadcaster (not to mention his accomplishments as a tennis player), it felt like playing Gilli Danda with Sachin Tendulkar.

It has been a fulfilling and an enriching journey thus far. The plan is to keep marching on this journey and build the library to something of value to leaders at various points in their journey. Some key stats so far. Guests: 68 and counting, Nuggets: ~700, Listens: 900,000 (several of them CEOs, CXOs and Professionals) Newsletter: ~3000. More than the numbers, it is the learning that has been the most fulfilling. It has been a true privilege to spend time with and to marinate in the wisdom of thinkers (from Harvard, LBS, INSEAD, Stanford, Berkeley, Wharton etc), Coaches (Marshall Goldsmith, Jennifer Garvey Berger, Matt Dixon et al), leaders (Nandan Nilekani, Vinita Bali, Pramath Sinha et al), artists (Bombay Jayashri, Atul Khatri, Atul Kasbekar et al), sportsmen (Viswanathan Anand, Viren Rasquinha, Paddy Upton et al), philanthropists (Venkat Krishnan, Ashish Dhawan, Neera Nundy et al), historians (Dr Ramachandra Guha, Dr Vinay Sitapati et al) and more. Every now and then, when listeners send a note of acknowledgement to share the difference the podcast has made to their life, it gives me that extra spring in my step to do my work.

As we wind down 2020 and welcome 2021, I am taking the liberty of sharing a few nuggets and playlists that I (and some of the leaders I worked with) found useful in navigating the last few months. Best wishes for the year ahead.

1. Impact of life on work: This was a nugget from Chandramouli Venkatesan. I had spoken to him in May 2018 in the context of his first book - Catalyst. He spoke about how life has a bigger bearing on how we show up at work than the other way around. I was shocked to hear of his passing away on Oct 6 earlier this year after a battle with cancer. RIP Mouli! Let's try and put life before work! If you are interested in this topic, you might like the Curated Playlist - Work and Life. Different leaders speak about how they traded off work and life as they went about their journeys. The one quote that stayed with me on this topic - Nobody on their death-bed wishes they had spent more time in the office!
2. Solving the 4 piece jigsaw - Self | Work | Home | Community: While there has been a lot of literature around the work life balance/harmony, I like Prof Stew Friedman's approach helpful in making sense of the various elements of life, especially in the last few months. Work-life harmony only treats this issue as a 2 piece jigsaw which is an incomplete picture. If we ignore "self", we experience burnout (I saw that with several leaders and organizations I worked with in the last few months). If we ignore the "community" element, we experience a certain sense of hollowness that comes in the way of a fulfilling life. A lot of leaders want to figure out how to integrate Social Impact into their life. This Curated Playlist around Social Impact might provoke some reflection.
3. Staying relevant over the long term: I had spoken to Atul Kasbekar in June 2017 and my primary motive of speaking to him was to understand how he transitioned from studying Chemical Engg at UDCT to pursuing Photography to becoming a producer. When I asked him about how he thinks about staying relevant given the democratization of photography given the rising power of the mobile camera, he spoke about how legends like Clint Eastwood and Amitabh Bachchan play the long game! Timely reminder of the need to keep differentiating oneself given the explosion of supply from the Gig Economy! I found it helpful to have the long game in mind especially during the early days of the Pandemic. You might also like the Curated Playlist - Staying Relevant.
4. Humans have an outdated Operating System: Jennifer Garvey Berger puts this so beautifully. She says that our wiring is based on thousands of years of evolution and that just cannot keep pace with the exponential growth in technology and everything else that it changes. Acknowledging this is half the battle won, I feel. She speaks about the 5 mind-traps that leaders get into and speaks about how we can deal with them. I found her articulation of a couple of these traps helpful (1. Looking for Simple Stories, 4. Controlling instead of Influencing in a complex emergent system). We also spoke about the kind of leadership that will be required in the Post-COVID world!
5. Going on an inner journey: Dr Ramachandra Guha speaks about Gandhiji’s inner journey on multiple fronts – diet, medicine, celibacy and inter-faith harmony. He speaks about how he had a scientific approach in each of these and sometimes crafted experiments to test out a certain belief and based on the results, modified it as he moved forward. Given the chaos in the external world, I guess it has become imperative for each of us to go on an inner journey and find the stillness within. If this is of interest, you might like the Curated Playlist: Self Awareness.
6. Sleep - the swiss army knife of wellness: While I had given my attention to food and exercise, speaking with Matt Walker (Sleep Researcher and Author of Why We Sleep) was eye opening (pun unintended!). I used to short-change on my sleep and often go for a run when I used to train for Half Marathons. This has been a year of bringing sleep back into the equation. Working from home has also given me an opportunity to bring in an afternoon siesta into the mix. I do think we are all brought up with the narrative "conquering sleep" to achieve great things. I have come to realize that 7+ hours of sleep is a must-have for the long game.
7. Raising happy kids: I had an opportunity to speak with Raj Raghunathan (an individual who studies happiness and the Author of If you are so smart, why aren't you happy?). Given the kids have been schooling from home over the last several months, I realized that I was passing on some of my work related stress and anxiety to them. Speaking to Raj helped clarify my thinking around parenting especially given they are also going through their share of angst given Covid-19. When in doubt, pick love over discipline. It is a journey to get here but I find it helpful to remind myself of this nugget whenever in doubt. You might like the Curated Playlist on Happiness.
8. Response flexibility and 3 levels of resilience: Rich Fernandez (CEO of Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute - SIYLI) was on the podcast earlier and he spoke about the notion of mindfulness and how Google developed a training programme initially for its staff that it later rolled out to the wider world. It was about dealing with the turbulence associated with being on a rocket ship. Of the various things we discussed, I really found the pieces around resilience and response flexibility of great value. In the last few months, we have all been in situations where we have had the propensity to react rather than respond. Rich has some thoughts on how we can bake in mindfulness in the simplest of the things we do. Going back to some of this thinking has been immensely helpful for me over the last few months! You might like the Curated Playlist on Mindfulness.
9. Getting on with it as a response to COVID-19: This is something I learnt from Atul Khatri - a Stand Up comedian. Over the last few years, I have started to realize the value of opening the aperture while having a conversation and being open to what transpires in the moment. Of the various conversations I had on the topic, this was the most practical and insightful. My primary objective to speak with him was to understand how he transitioned from running an IT business to becoming a Stand Up Comedian. While that bit was super-insightful, I found the nugget on how he rolled with the times when Covid hit tremendously inspiring. You might like the Curated Playlist on Coping with Covid 19.
10. Plateau of Latent Potential: This was something I learnt from James Clear (Author of Atomic Habits). He speaks about how most new things take time before green shoots are visible. He uses the example of ice melting and says that when you heat ice from -10 deg celcius to -1 degree celcius, you do not observe any change from the outside but there is internal transformation that is going on. The next unit of heat will melt the ice but this often requires us to keep the faith and keep chipping away. I am coming up to the 5 year mark of having moved on from the Corporate world (I left EgonZehnder on Feb 1 2016). Having marched on this path of Coaching / Transition Advisory / Podcasting, I am beginning to see the wisdom here from James Clear. You might like the Curated Playlist on Habits.

These are just some nuggets and playlists that kept me going through the rollercoaster of 2020. I would love to hear from you if there are any specific nuggets/playlists/speakers that you found of value from the podcast.

Best wishes for the year ahead!