Podcast Themes

What is common to radio, sonar and the internet? All these technological innovations, like many others, have their origin in war or conflict. Most have been researched and developed at military labs and then scaled up. Start-ups therefore, can benefit immensely from this experience. Hear Raghu talk about the need for a common vocabulary in order to achieve this. Hint: there is also a valuable tip about the “How” question.

Numbers occupy a large part of our mind space when we think of organizations- sales figures, trend lines, market share – the list is endless and often clinical. But what about the stories behind the companies? These legends, usually ignored, are crucial for culture building. Hear Raghu talk about how the army utilizes this powerful tool to build its cultural identity and motivate its people.

Tarun speaks about how companies that have a self-imposed constraint (focusing on values, lower corruption or something similar) are likely to grow at a slower pace than a company that’s focusing on growth in an unrestrained manner.

Alisa speaks about how authentic praise is such an unused tool in Leadership. She speaks about how the team sometimes can start spinning wheels in their head about their performance and their standing if they don’t get adequate good quality feedback.

Pradeep speaks about how kings thought about expansion and consolidation at various points in their reign. It is a little akin to how entrepreneurs think about going after scale and putting processes in place and getting the house in order.

Harsh speaks about how he broke the cycle of mediocre talent that a lot of companies struggle to do. He speaks about hiring his CHRO from XLRI and how he went about building the quality of talent from there.

Harish speaks about how Tata Group walks the tightrope in terms of focusing on Labour AND Capital. He speaks about how some of the benefits of the efficient use of capital flows back to the people who have made it happen. He also speaks about the story of when Gandhiji came to Jamshedpur in 1925 and how it inspired many people.

Harish speaks about how the Tata Group tries and uses Storytelling as a mechanism to reinforce the culture. He speaks about the need for discipline in collecting and telling stories. He also speaks about creating opportunities for the Tata Group members to listen to the stories of some of the legends that lived these values.

Amy speaks about how companies have to work hard to create a climate of risk taking. She alludes to failure parties at Eli Lilly and the Museum of Failure at Google X to talk about how companies have to work hard to take the stigma of failure away to encourage risk taking. Some of the insights, I guess, are as applicable to families specifically in the context of parenting.

Amy teases out some of the nuances involved in the way Psychological safety applies in different contexts. One end being the relatively predictable, repetitive work in the shop floor of an organization like Walmart, the other end being Google X that works on moonshots. She also speaks about the similarity of human beings across some of these very different situations.

Bill speaks about how Amazon drives a culture of risk taking by being open towards failures. He also goes onto speak about the distinction between good failure and bad failure and how companies should ensure they don’t mistake one for the other

Bill speaks about the story behind the evolution of the 14 leadership principles at Amazon. He speaks about how Amazon reinforces these 14 principles in the way it hires, conducts performance appraisals and the way it brings it to life when it comes to making hard decisions.