Podcast Themes

Jeffrey speaks about how he came around to studying Power. He also goes on to speak about the kinds of career choices he has made and what he has said No to over time as his Power increased over time.

Ayse speaks about how long it takes for somebody to design their life. She touches upon the benefit of leveraging others’ perspectives and how we can accelerate our design process. We connect the dots with an insight from Herminia Ibarra.

Ravi refers to the work of Charles Handy and says that in the future, there will be three broad kinds of work – Creatives, Caregivers and Custodians. He goes on to say that it is critical that we map ourselves into one or two of the three and develop deep capabilities to ensure that we are the top of that particular field as there is a significant risk of commoditization if we are an “also ran” in a field.

Dorie speaks about the life cycle of becoming an expert in an area. She speaks about 4 waves involved here – Learning, Creating, Connecting and Reaping. She also speaks about the criticality of transitioning from this to the next wave once we exploit the full potential of that space.

Darleen speaks about how organizations are beginning to think about the role of the office in the future. She provides her perspective on the insight from Charles Handy who said “An office will be like a club: a place for eating, meeting, and greeting, with rooms reserved for activities, not people”

Ashish discusses his perspectives around how we should educate ourselves for the future. He speaks about STEM versus Liberal Arts and the role each plays in informing our mental models.

Marshall speaks about how he has thought about staying relevant over the 40+ years in the profession. He speaks about the Buddhist concept of starting a new life with every breath. He speaks about how we need to think about each breath, each moment and each day as a new beginning and not live in the past.

Atul speaks about how he is coping with the changed situation given Covid-19. He speaks about how he had to cancel several of his shows that he had lined up in Canada and the US and head back home as the world started shutting down its borders in front of his eyes. He also shares some thoughts on what he has been doing to stay positive, adapt to the times and move forward.

Jennifer speaks about the tendency we all have to over-estimate the evolution we have had till date and underestimate the evolution that’s possible from here on in our lives. She says that a 30 year old will think that 20-30 was a period of tumultuous change and 30s is likely to be smoother. The same person 10 years later is likely to say that 30-40 was transformative but 40s would be a cake walk. She speaks about why this might be the case.

Raj speaks about his journey to becoming a researcher of happiness. He speaks about how he thought about his journey after graduating from IIM Calcutta and how he came to the US. He also speaks about how he started out with a deep interest in marketing but has gravitated towards teaching happiness over a period of time.

Lynda speaks about how we are moving from a 3 stage paradigm (study-work-retire) to a paradigm where we are going to be moving across these three phases in a fluid manner over our lifetime. She speaks about the key insights from her influential book – 100 year life – that she authored with Andrew Scott (Professor of Economics and former Deputy Dean at London Business School).

Kartik speaks about how we all could be thoughtful about equipping ourselves with some basic level of literacy around AI. Even if you are not in a technology-led company, it is likely that you will be impacted by AI in some shape or form as a leader, as a consumer or some other form.