Meet our Managing Director

Here at Good Business Lab, experience has taught us that designing and scaling successful programs that deliver worker wellbeing within firms requires not just empathy for workers, but also a deep understanding of what drives the businesses from which workers draw their livelihoods. Scaling research-based insights to millions of workers requires a multidisciplinary approach that relies on new capabilities like service design, business operations, and the lean startup model.?

As we grow a team that reflects this new mix of skills, we are thrilled to welcome Nirmal Deshpande (Nim) as our inaugural Managing Director. Nim brings with him almost two decades of experience helping purpose-driven organizations across the public and private sectors achieve their marketing, product management, and organizational transformation goals. Nim will work closely with the global leadership team to enable GBL to amplify our impact, develop new capabilities, and advance the mission of persuading private sector stakeholders to invest in worker-centered interventions that are also good for the bottom line.

Senior Communications Manager, Satyavrat Krishnakumar sat down with our MD to get a better sense of why he believes in the GBL mission and what our funders and partners can expect from his expertise;?

Satyavrat:? Let’s start with a simple question, why GBL and why now?

Nim: The mission, first and foremost. How can you not be inspired by the mission? GBL is proving how targeted investments in the wellbeing of workers can power bottom line business growth. That’s a revolutionary thing. As someone who has spent years working closely with large corporations in many capacities, I know that businesses are filled with passionate people who genuinely want to do right by their workers, but financial incentives don’t always make those decisions easy or viable. By identifying, evaluating, and scaling solutions that improve the lives of workers and business bottom lines, GBL is re-writing the calculus to motivate businesses to view impact work not as philanthropy but as a financial imperative.

Satyavrat: As you’ve mentioned, you’ve worked extensively with various private sector stakeholders; what is your elevator pitch to engage businesses when it comes to taking care of their large workforces?

Nim: Put simply—doing the right thing has never been so profitable. In several high-impact areas from reducing gender gaps to building life skills to increasing financial inclusion, our interventions make for more productive workforces and workers that are also capable of securing happier livelihoods.

Satyavrat: You’ve had quite a varied career leading up to your role at GBL, what has that journey looked like and how does it shape what you bring to GBL?

Nim: I’ve had a lot of zigzags in my career so far. I’ve managed and launched advertising campaigns for brands and social impact organizations, I’ve advised Fortune 500 companies as a management consultant, led teams of design consultants to help legacy firms transform their user experiences, and run product management at a fintech startup. Across all of these tremendously fun experiences, I most often find myself helping drive organizational focus. I tend to start with a few key questions:??

1. What are we trying to accomplish as a cross-functional group of minds?
2. How are we rooting our work in empathy for target populations and partners?
3. How can we make the most of the team’s considerable expertise?
4. What sort of culture do we want to build for our team and our broader brand?
5. What’s the simplest and most compelling way for us to tell our story to the world?

To help answer these questions I have to play many roles—from counselor, analyst, and mediator to designer, writer, and CEO. But regardless of the multiple hats I wear at any given time, I’m always focused on enabling my teams to do their best work, with dedication, focus, and happiness.

Satyavrat: What lessons would you bring from the world of product and UX into the world of economic research and development challenges?

Nim: I’ve long thought of GBL as a design firm operating in stealth mode. We dive deep into the human realities and needs of workers and businesses. We brainstorm and design programs and products. We make sure they drive impact. And then we scale them up. So in that sense, we have a lot of similarities with disruptive startups seeking to bring new ideas, products, and business models into the world. But I do think we’re trying to do a much harder thing - creating mutual value propositions in some of the most resource-constrained environments. Our advantage is that by starting with rigorous research, we’re able to validate and quantify the benefit before we have to invest in scale. Looking ahead, we do need to develop the ability to simultaneously manage time-intensive and rigorous research with much faster product development cycles. With the right processes and mix of academic and business talent, I think it’s entirely possible for us to funnel all the findings and value propositions that we uncover from the field into the venture-creation process in real time.

Satyavrat: We have been seeing a slow uptick in mainstream coverage of the condition of blue-collar workers. What do you feel are some issues that require urgent attention but don’t make the headlines?

Nim: I’m very heartened that general awareness of the issues workers face seems to be growing. But I also think that while it’s common for businesses to think of white-collar workers as assets for whom investments in wellbeing are important for quality, output, and retention, sadly that same philosophy doesn’t extend to all workers. I think despite the best intentions, businesses and the general public often view blue-collar labor as somehow less deserving of investments in individual growth and wellbeing. GBL’s research proves that cultivating the wellbeing of ALL workers, not just highly skilled workers, has both personal and business upside, and that’s a mission I’m honored to get behind.

Follow Nim and GBL on Linkedin to stay updated on our future plans! To know more about Good Business Lab’s approach to worker wellbeing, visit our website. You can also reach out to [email protected] if you have any questions about the new role or our new MD and/or would like to discuss possible collaborations with GBL.