5 SECRETS of Adani & Ambani Everyone in 20s & 30s Must Know! *Hard Truths Inside* Ft. Raghu Raman

Summary

The podcast featuring Ravi Kapoor, IRS, and Raghu Raman delves into transformational leadership, the impact of luck, and the intricacies of success in business and life. They discuss how influential figures like Anand Mahindra, Adani, and Ambani leverage their unique traits to inspire and lead massive corporate entities. Raghu Raman offers insights into the attributes that define great leaders—big picture thinking, emotional intelligence, and the ability to turn an average group into an extraordinary team. Emphasizing the importance of continuous learning and personal development, the conversation also highlights actionable advice for young professionals on cultivating effective networks, leadership, and discipline in their twenties and thirties.

Highlights

• Leadership can be developed; it's not just an inborn trait. 📖
• Great leaders communicate the big picture to inspire and unify teams. 🌟
• A balance of luck and personal effort defines success in various fields. ⚖️
• Networking is about true connections and relationships, not just numbers. 🤝
• Maintaining mental and physical health is vital for personal growth. 💪
• Reading deeply and consistently helps in improving cognitive abilities. 📚

Key Takeaways

• Leadership is both innate and teachable; it's shaped from birth through experiences and training. 📚
• Successful leaders see and communicate the big picture; they're emotionally intelligent and lifelong learners. 🎯
• Luck plays a significant role in success, sometimes even more than skill or hard work. 🍀
• Building real relationships and networks, not just contacts, is crucial for personal and professional growth. 🔗
• Discipline in reading, physical health, and cultivating depth in work can set you apart in today's shallow digital age. 🏋️‍♂️

Overview

In an engaging podcast, Ravi Kapoor hosts Raghu Raman, who shares insightful truths about leadership and success. Raghu, who has experienced various leadership roles across government, military, and corporate sectors, emphasizes that leadership abilities can be crafted through experiences and training rather than being just innate qualities. His conversations with top leaders like Anand Mahindra reveal their shared ability to visualize and communicate broad visions to inspire large teams.

Raghu Raman insists that significant success in business or any field often brings together equal parts of luck and prepared action. Through vivid anecdotes, he describes how prominent personalities have maneuvered their paths by seizing opportunities and displaying a remarkable capacity for emotional connection and continuous learning. These stories underline the philosophy that personal and professional achievements are deeply interwoven with the networks and relationships we build.

A key focus of the discussion is the emphasis on self-development through disciplined reading, maintaining health, and mastering deep work. Raghu stresses that in the age of social media, pursuing depth and real understanding is a pathway to standing out. Readers are encouraged to forge genuine relationships beyond superficial networking and adopt ritual habits that foster growth.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and Leadership Insights The chapter titled 'Introduction and Leadership Insights' delves into the nature of leadership, questioning whether it's an innate ability or a skill that can be developed over time. It emphasizes the importance of personal interaction in leadership as opposed to impersonal communication like memos. Furthermore, it touches upon the economic environment in India, suggesting that investments flow to areas with the easiest business conditions and highest returns on investment. The discussion also briefly touches upon the current status of national security, indicating its relevance in the broader conversation.
• 01:30 - 03:30: Leadership Traits and Challenges The chapter 'Leadership Traits and Challenges' emphasizes the importance of building genuine relationships over mere networking. True networking involves forming meaningful connections rather than just collecting contacts. Leaders are encouraged to present a version of themselves that others find appealing and trustworthy. The text also reflects on the concept of responsibility, suggesting that individuals collectively constitute 'the system' they often blame. It highlights that personal growth often stems from learning through losses rather than successes.
• 03:30 - 05:30: Impact of Luck and External Factors on Success The chapter discusses the impact of luck and external factors on achieving success. It begins with an introduction where the host welcomes a successful guest to the podcast. The guest is described as one of the most successful people known to the host, highlighting the privilege of speaking with such a distinguished person. The dialogue hints at a lighthearted exchange, with the guest humorously suggesting that the host should meet more people if he considers the guest the most successful person he knows. The introduction sets the scene for a deeper exploration into the role external factors, such as luck, play in one's path to success.
• 05:30 - 08:30: Importance of Reading and Cognitive Development The chapter titled 'Importance of Reading and Cognitive Development' discusses the achievements and impact of an influential figure. This person has authored a famous book, reaching a wide audience and inspiring many through public talks. They have significantly contributed to government operations, notably by establishing the intelligence framework known as Nadgrid, and have experience in the military sector. Their career reflects a strong commitment to progress and innovation.
• 08:30 - 12:30: Building Networks and Leadership Development The chapter focuses on the theme of building networks and leadership development, highlighting the roles of pivotal leadership. It discusses reaching high levels of business and corporate leadership, spotlighting interactions with prominent figures like Anand Mahindra and the Adani and Amani groups. The narrative suggests the speaker, having achieved significant financial success, has ticked all the boxes of conventional wisdom and success, prompting a reflection on the true measures of success.
• 12:30 - 16:00: Decision Making and Emotional Intelligence In the chapter "Decision Making and Emotional Intelligence," the speaker reflects on the influence of external factors versus personal effort in decision-making. They candidly express a belief that success is not solely due to personal efforts but is equally influenced by external factors such as luck and other people. The speaker emphasizes a balanced perspective, suggesting that life presents everyone with similar opportunities and challenges, and it requires both individual effort and external factors to achieve desired outcomes.
• 16:00 - 20:00: Cultural Influences on Decision Making The chapter discusses cultural influences on decision-making through the metaphor of playing cards. It highlights the strategy of adapting to situations using a wise saying, 'when life deals you a bad Ramy hand, take out three cards and play tiny.' This suggests a cultural philosophy where individuals make the most of what's available by changing their approach rather than sticking to a potentially unsuccessful strategy. The narrative emphasizes flexibility and adaptability in decision-making, influenced by cultural wisdom.
• 20:00 - 23:00: Conclusion and Future Insights The chapter emphasizes the significant role that luck plays in success. Luck is not just about random chance but involves finding the right mentor, having supportive influences, and avoiding mistakes through timely guidance. It highlights how close calls and serendipitous opportunities contribute to one’s journey.

5 SECRETS of Adani & Ambani Everyone in 20s & 30s Must Know! *Hard Truths Inside* Ft. Raghu Raman Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 So do you honestly think that there is something special about the individuals? Leaders have the ability to look at that big picture. You cannot inspire people by sending them memos. It has to be with personal conversation. Is this leadership inborn or is it actually teachable? Leadership is actually forged and shaped right from the time we are born. How easy do you think it is to do business in India? Ease of doing business is like flowing water. Wherever it's easiest and there is highest ROI, the money will flow there. What is the status of national security now? We
• 00:30 - 01:00 don't focus on the immediate parimeter security boundary network. How much truth is that? Networking is not just getting phones and numbers. It's actually getting relationships. I think you have to sell a version of yourself that people want to buy. At the end of the day, we blame the system, but who is the system? It's us. It's the individuals in the system. Because in our long life, we will lose a lot. And it's actually the losses that mature us, never the gains.
• 01:00 - 01:30 [Music] Sir, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. And and for the privilege of speaking to you. And let me qualify that. Why the privilege? The privilege is because you are one of the most successful pe people that I know. And here is here is your report card if you will allow me to do that. Of course. But that means you need to get to know more people. Yes. If I'm the only most sir. According to Wikipedia and according to the internet, there are very few people in your league. And I'll again like I said tell
• 01:30 - 02:00 you why. You have written a book that is famous read by people. It's a dream. It's a bucket list item. You are famous. Millions of people have seen your talks. You have inspired people. So impact checklist. You have worked in the government where you laid the foundations of India's intelligence architecture in the Nad grid. You were the CEO of Nadgrid. You set that thing up military where you played some very
• 02:00 - 02:30 important pivotal leadership roles. Business may corporate leadership may up you have reached the pinnacle. You were up shoulders with Anand Mahindra with Adani and Amani and the tycoons of uh I mean the the biggest of the biggest people. um you I am sure are financially also very successful and um so I think all the checklists of conventional wisdom of conventional success are ticked let me try and gauge up success
• 02:30 - 03:00 may what extent on a scale of 0 to 10 do you think were external factors like luck other people etc and to what extent was it you I'll be honest this is not humility I think this is common sense right I can sit here and say it was all me and all the listeners you and me also diland no it's complete humbuck I would say it would be somewhere 50/50 I think life deals us all similar cards
• 03:00 - 03:30 right similar cards and how we play those cards and what is the philosophy we use while playing those cards you know a very wise man once told me that when life deals you a bad Ramy hand you know Ramy those 12 cards then take out three cards from it and play tiny. So it's also the cards may be dealt to you and those cards may be bad for that game but within those 12 cards there'll definitely be three cards that you can pull out and play another game right so to a certain extent I would say
• 03:30 - 04:00 definitely 50% is luck and luck by luck I don't mean luck also means finding a right mentor luck also means finding an Mahindra who's willing to take a bet on you luck also means uh being in a situation and coming this close to committing something that would have been morally moral turpitude or that would have been unforgivable and having someone hold your hand and say don't do that. That's that's not something you should be doing. All of it is luck. So I
• 04:00 - 04:30 would consider 50% luck definitely and 50% or maybe less than that maybe 60 luck and 40 of how those cards were played. And it's again not something that those cards were played right every time. I think I made a lot of mistakes and from those mistakes I learned okay next time if these cards come this is the way to play. So I yeah I would qualify this as u uh a lot to do with luck and some to do with how you handle the cards that you come to you and also how you listen
• 04:30 - 05:00 to some of these mentors how you pay heed to their advice. So speaking of three cards, three cards that you have been dealt with that you have played with business, government and and the armed forces. Very few people have been in all three places. I know many people who have been to there are a lot of army. I mean you yourself have left the government come out into the corporate sector. Two. Yeah. But three I was very very lucky. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. I just
• 05:00 - 05:30 wanted to let you know for all of my audience, for all the students, for anybody who's preparing for exams, for anybody who's doing anything academic, cognitive science or psychology, I will put all of those insights into an email, a series of emails, and I will send you those emails to help you along your preparation journey. To get access to this, all you have to do is sign up. The entire thing is free. I will continue to support and help and I hope that it leads to tremendous success, tremendous value for you. Thank you very much. All the best and I'll see you there. Like I mentioned
• 05:30 - 06:00 the link for joining this community, the syllabus of life community is in the description. It is in the pinned comments. All you have to do is start and I'll take care of the rest. Thank you. But also you're very uniquely positioned to tell us about how they operate or actually. So let us start with the first putty which is the uh business of the corporate world. Now you have rubbed shoulders with the biggest tycoons like I mentioned Anand Mahindra. He took a bet on you and that's where I think you got your break in the I got my break there. Yeah. And the Amani and the
• 06:00 - 06:30 Adani with just the biggest possible names that there are. So do you honestly think that there is something special about them the humans the individuals or do you think that 5050 matrix how they place that remaining 50% is I mean cards were dealt to every businessman more or less hundreds of businessmen let's say not every business hundreds of business tycoons and and matter of fact uh uh while two of those leaders you spoke about were second
• 06:30 - 07:00 generation leaders one of them was first generation yes who was not built any cards He printed his own cuts, right? So definitely if you look at not just these three but let's take the leadership of the top say 100 entities they could be anything they could be a business they could be whatever that control group obviously has some traits which have to be common right even if I took the civil services list and they may come from all provinces and different financial background which they do different
• 07:00 - 07:30 gender this that different subject lines and all but when they end up in this list of 1600700 after I don't know how lacks you know apply and get in there has to be something common amongst them and those common traits I have found across these three domains you spoke about whether the military the corporate or the private sector or the government those traits are first principles of leadership and they are the same okay traits what are those traits sir well first I think I have noticed in all these leaders I have worked with and not
• 07:30 - 08:00 just these leaders you have named I've worked with uh you know home ministers I've worked with three Home secretaries I've seen them you know as a fly on the wall you know watching them taking decisions decisions under huge pressure mostly decisions between two wrongs there's not a right or a wrong decision those decisions get handled at director level joint secretary level when it comes to a secretary or to a CEO CXO top level it's usually a decision between two wrongs and you have to you will have
• 08:00 - 08:30 a demography that you will upset no matter what you do it's like planning a meal for thousand people you will never have a satisfaction industry more than 60%. But you will get a satisficing score. It'll never be a perfect score. So one I think these leaders have the ability to look at that big picture and to know that to achieve my objective I'm not going to be able to make everyone
• 08:30 - 09:00 happy or to make every checklist you know I'm not going to be 10 on 10 in popularity. I'm not going to be 10 on 10 in terms of empathy. I will have some hard edges, some soft edges. I think that's a realization that they have. Okay. Second, I believe they are extreme people persons. Extreme. There is an extreme sense of the amount of time that I have noticed these leaders spend on grooming leaders actually physical time uh getting interested in their lives
• 09:00 - 09:30 knowing what is their uh family background. Uh one of these leaders I've often mentioned he used to work at remembering names. He had more than two three thousand leaders with whom we'd be like interacting literally on a daily basis. And for anyone I mean for you me whatever it takes you two to three years in a corporate where there's a churn also happening people are in different locations global to enable a sense of
• 09:30 - 10:00 bonding with that individual and the bonding has to be done on zoom it has to be done across continents across timelines it's emotional intelligence 101 it has to be there is no way a person can get 50,000 60,000 two lakh people to see the same dream that he or she sees without emotionally connecting with them. You cannot inspire people by sending them memos or PPT presentations. It has to be with personal conversation that inspiring the guy. These leaders
• 10:00 - 10:30 have an ability to take two fingers, put it inside your throat, go deep inside and find something and pull it out which even you didn't know you had. And that's why they have the ability to take a team of fairly average people and make them do extraordinary stuff. I mean look at Jio's launch in five to seven years. Change the face. True. All the this what you're doing right now. Yes. This wouldn't have been possible without Jio making internet free. Internet without mainstreaming the future. Without mainstreaming the future. Right. So now
• 10:30 - 11:00 to galvanize literally lacks of people to lay millions of kilometers of cable to put up thousands of you know towers and to do it against adversity to do it against a you know timeline that you have to to do it as a last entrant into the market. Yes. Right. Yes. it. You may say anything, okay, money, this that, but it does require the ability to motivate 50,000 people to pick up a net. You can't pick up a net by yourself. You
• 11:00 - 11:30 have to get 50,000 people arranged. You have to time it together. You say, "Okay, on my count of 1 2 3, everyone will lift up." Now, you need that sense of camaraderie, the sense of EQ, the sense of discipline, right? that on my count of three everyone lift up and it's lifted up and in seven years time it becomes one of the number one brands is not in the top 10 brands but go right now that ability cannot be done without EQ and I think they are extremely
• 11:30 - 12:00 voracious learners they they are lifelong students so that if I paraphrase makes four first thing they are able to see the big picture that means they can zoom out they understand trends and patterns I want to qualify that not only are they able to see the big picture, they're able to show the big picture. Okay. Okay. They are able to communicate to the last man down below that what role he is playing in that big picture. So, so the first is big picture and the ability to first see it and then to have
• 12:00 - 12:30 that vision articulated articulated communicated so that everybody sees it. Second is closely related extreme emotional intelligence and an emotional connect with people. The third is uh a realistic assessment of their weaknesses and their strengths. I would include that as a second point that if you are, you know, if you own that person, it's like children, you know, yeah, you have kids, you know, he's good in maths, good in geography, but not good in this, not good in that. You're not trying to make everyone good in maths. You're not trying to make everyone good in uh geography. You're going to say, okay, this guy who's good in maths, I'm going
• 12:30 - 13:00 to leverage him in the finance function, this function, audit function or whatever. this person was really bad in maths but is creative thinker I'm going to put him in marketing innovation or whatever. So it's point two that when you know your people down to that level you are putting the right piece at the right place in the chessboard at the right time. Got it. Got it. And the fourth is viciousness. Yeah. Is there anything else you'd like to list? I think I mean there are I'm sure many many other qualities that uh will come as I think about it but I think these four basic quadrants or the basic uh
• 13:00 - 13:30 pillars rest everything is a flavor of it the interesting thing for me here is that I am wondering if this is replicable is this leadership inborn or is it actually teachable I believe that virtually of course there'll always be one gifted person in any field in any field there's a gifted cricketer, there's a gifted musician, there's a gifted What should we call this gift? This I wouldn't call gifts. Uh maybe
• 13:30 - 14:00 they are gifted but you can have maybe two people gifted, three people gifted. You can't have 100 people gifted. So basic let's let's let's take let's take a organization which by and large India respects and says okay the armed forces they have they demonstrate leadership definitely at the junior level which is you know much more uh whatever now there's no way that the UPSC can identify and locate 1,000 you
• 14:00 - 14:30 know level five leaders and put them into themademies it shows us that if you take well adjusted thousand men and now increasingly women and put them through a training pipeline from the other end of the pipeline you will have by and large a thousand level five leaders which means it's a teachable skill which means it's not something that a person is born with innately but it's something that can be taught and I do believe leadership can be taught you believe this like of 100% 100% I mean leadership
• 14:30 - 15:00 to me is uh otherwise we are in the wrong profession what are we doing here because then it upsets our locust and I if believe that it's a leader has to be informed that stop schools, stop education, stop mentoring, stop coaching because either he has it or he doesn't have it right I don't think that's true I think leadership is actually forged and shaped right from the time we were born a brother sister what happens in our childhood you had I'm sure a young friend who was in school or college with you was running around like a kid and
• 15:00 - 15:30 one day his father died and that day he suddenly grew up and that because he became the you know sardar of the family the eldest of the family and the moment that pressure came on his shoulder shad and all his face changed he aged overnight that's leadership that is situational leadership and it's been thrust on him that the entire family's load has now come on him he cannot be the kid anymore he can't be running around goofing around cutting classes anymore he suddenly becomes much more focused and may have to leave education to get a job may do a night education to
• 15:30 - 16:00 be able to do a day job where did all this come from where did all this uh intensity sense of responsibility ownership come from person was exactly the same till yesterday when his father was still there as a father figure. The person was exact all the DNA CNA qualities were same but one day when that hand went away from top and he realized that this entire family is now depending on me there is that switch that happens is the same person. Yeah. So definitely leadership cannot be something that you are born with. Maybe
• 16:00 - 16:30 some people are born with a very nice voice but that doesn't mean they don't require training to be able to go to the next level. So I genuinely believe leadership is a teachable skill and we can really create some amazing leaders if we have a good program. When I say program, I don't mean you know a a good process whereby they are converted from uh average mediocre leaders to exceptional leaders. It can be done corporate houses ad risk management
• 16:30 - 17:00 advice. This is your area of expertise national security organizations. But can we bring your expertise down to the level of the individual the real person the the viewer who's actually listening to this? So sir my question on that question number one IQ intelligence important factor it is genetically
• 17:00 - 17:30 oriented circumstances What is it that he want? He wants some guidance. How would you start to explain the framework of what that person should do given that that person around 25 30 years old maybe has started a job maybe
• 17:30 - 18:00 hasn't start he doesn't know what he's going to get into what is waiting for him out there AI national security ad so let me first tackle that question that you asked about IQ or basic intelligence right so you're true you're right that basic intelligence is a derivative of gene genes. It's a derivative of good nutrition. You had a derivative of uh good ambiance that you had, good education, good inputs and all of that. And not everyone is lucky
• 18:00 - 18:30 enough to get all of them. Having said that, I do believe a 20 year old or an 18 year old for that matter, I I would believe around 17 18. I think at that stage a kid I call him a kid but yeah a young adult can do a lot of things not only to just improve their intelligence but to improve their overall
• 18:30 - 19:00 capacity I think the first thing that they have to do it might sound really cliched but they have to read a lot read a lot read a lot and when I say read I don't mean reading Twitter or reading blog posts so to my mind there are four kinds of reading there's one reading which is at Twitter India And there just a piece of information that comes to you and you read that piece of information right tidbits. The second is uh uh oped kind of a editorial which we were taught if you remember when we were
• 19:00 - 19:30 kids our parents used editorial roar and all that but oped by definition is somebody's opinion correct right and then you have a long format article like a caravan or a front line or whatever which will take one issue and do about 16 20 pages on it maybe on millennials maybe on AI maybe on depression or whatever and if you read those 16 pages not only you have a fair idea but you also know what more to read and who else to go to to find out more and then you finally have books. Yes, I genuinely believe that these leaders or rather
• 19:30 - 20:00 these youngsters who want to have a more enriched life should devote a lot of their time to reading books. Mhm. Because reading books does four or five different things. The first it actually creates your cognitive intelligence. Why? So suppose I tell you I want you to visualize that there is a speedboat that is rushing towards an island. It's dark and dark waters and choppy waters and these two men are standing and the boat is jumping up and down. Now if I told this story to say 10 people all the 10
• 20:00 - 20:30 will have different boards they'll have different two people there. Now this is the opening scene of Shutter Island which is a book by Dennis Lan. Now if you read the book you have to cognitively develop the image in your head to visualize the whole thing. But if you watch the movie Steven Spielberg has already done it for you right. So the the synapses that are firing in your brain are not even 100th cuz you're just passively watching. You're not creating. So the first thing reading does it it actually it's like doing push-ups for the brain. When you do trigonometry in
• 20:30 - 21:00 school or calculus in school the purpose is not to for you to use calculus in your life. It is for you to do those push-ups to try and solve abstract problems to try and so I think reading is first step cognitive. Okay. The second, it is a fundamental building block to discipline especially nowadays. True. Because you will have to put your phone aside. You will have to say I'm not going to get up from here until I finish 30 pages. I'm going to take notes. It's a exercise of self-restraint. And
• 21:00 - 21:30 self-restraint is funible. If you can restrain yourself in one area, the muscle of self-restraint builds in all areas. Very true. So a kid who is capable of dedicating himself is also the kid who's unlikely to be attracted by somebody. Why don't you try this cigarette? Yeah, it's really nice. I much to do it because his willpower muscle is being developed doing a good piece of work which has dual benefit. One of course he's reading. Second is strengthening his willpower muscle. It
• 21:30 - 22:00 reminds me of the marshmallow test. Exactly same thing. Yeah. What how do you self-gratification? self. Of course, that marshmallow test has got a lot of nuances to it which is not um it's not as obvious as it seems. You know the marshmallow test for the listeners where they ask uh a child that they put two marshmallows in front and then they ask the child that you can eat one immediately but if you wait for 10 minutes then you get the other one and of course experiments have proven that children who can delay their gratification do very well in life. The
• 22:00 - 22:30 problem of this experiment is it puts the onus of everything on the child. Now if the child comes from a deprived background where adults have not kept their promises. It comes from a background where something has been told and it has not happened. you and this is a very important aspect when we're dealing with millennials you know because I I do a lot of uh these sessions on working with millennials and usually when you're working with millennials the people our age will rather my age you're much
• 22:30 - 23:00 younger they will often talk about uh these workforce nowadays they are entitled they want instant gratification they don't have the patience to do this and all of that and somehow they apply as if all of this is happening because of the And I very often ask these leaders that how many divorces did you have in your family when you were growing up. Today you go to a kindergarten school and you'll see 30 40% of the kids come from broken or breaking families. Now when a 3 4 5 year old child has seen the
• 23:00 - 23:30 two pillars of her life break the covenant to each other then what are you expecting them to have long lead patience and they won't be transactional when they have seen even the closest people in their life being transactional. So I think the first aspect for us to recognize is that it is the environment which shapes in the marshmallow experiment also it is not all on the child it is also on the
• 23:30 - 24:00 environment. If the environment has been very very volatile, if the like you know if you ever go to an orphanage and you are sitting in an adoption there the when the parents are adopting the often orphanage people will tell the parents that when you take the child home and if you notice that the child steals some food and keeps it it's okay. Now this indoctrination has happened because of environment environment. So it's not a he's not a stealing kid. He's
• 24:00 - 24:30 not a kid but he knows that if he doesn't keep one chapati for later he may not get it or if he doesn't take one more piece of cake and keep it. So a lot of it is the environment how scarcity mindset is a scarcity mindset and it is a scarcity reality for them. It's not a mindset. It's a scarcity reality. Right? Actually, most of India, most of us have grown with a frugal mindset. You know, we come from fairly modest families where the father would come this that so there is that mindset of frugality which we are ingrained in. And
• 24:30 - 25:00 ironically, even when we come into abundance, we still have that mindset of of frugality. Right? So, the first point I would tell this 18year-old that you must get into a habit of reading, right? Get into habit, a diligent habit that two hours every day, one hour every day and look at it this way. Graduation. Imagine if you read one book a
• 25:00 - 25:30 week. You are getting 50 to 48 four degrees plus four more to spare every year. You have to be better than the guy who is not reading. I will actually just add one more point in a world where nobody is paying attention. Do you know how easy it is to succeed? 100% because all you need to do is pay attention. That's it. If there are a couple of books I would recommend one is deep work which teaches you how
• 25:30 - 26:00 to do deep work and another book called shallows which shows you the trap that we are falling into where everything is shallow for us. We want a quick you know summary of this. We want Gmail summary. You just have to press the button. Somebody would have poured their heart out. An employee would have told you woo all summarize. It'll give you two lines. You lose GP. No, that's what I'm saying. But you lose all the nuance, all the effort, the spelling mistake the guy made, the place where he repeated a word or he
• 26:00 - 26:30 repeated a sentence to stress that point. All of that is lost. All the nuance is lost. So the second aspect other than reading I would tell the youngsters is that you must also pay a lot of attention to depth. The devil is in the details. Devil and the god also is in details. Not just the devil. The god also sits in the details. Right. Third I think is young people should do two kinds of healthy training. One of course the physical health they have to train. I
• 26:30 - 27:00 mean that is the age when you are sort of building your disciplines. I've usually found that youngsters who get into sports, any form of sports, usually don't abuse their body with cigarettes and alcohol and all of that because in a way the body becomes kind of a temple for them. Mhm. And if you're interested in weightlifting, you're interested in martial arts, a friend can't really tempt you, let's have a beer tonight or whatever I have to run in the morning
• 27:00 - 27:30 and all. There is a check and balance. So that's physical health. The other is also mental vibrance. How mentally vibrant are they? And cynicism I, you know, I don't mind a person being cynical. But pess pessimism should not be brought in the guise of cynicism, right? We know that there are nine things likely to go wrong before one thing goes right. And that's what leaders are meant for. Leaders are not meant when everything is going away. Everything is going well, company is
• 27:30 - 28:00 doing well, organization is doing well. Excel sheet will run the organization. It is only when things are not working, when morale is low, you know, orders have been stymied, some other competition has come, they poached your person, you had an accident in the family, some loss of money, someone has betrayed you, that's the time real leadership is called for because you are in a so to my mind any tragedy that happens whether it's a loss of something, I think a young
• 28:00 - 28:30 leader or a young person should see it as battle in population for the future because in our long life you're you still have a long life ahead of you. We will lose a lot. We'll lose a lot and it's actually the losses that mature us never the gains. It's the losses that make the losses that make us softer, more sensitive, more empathetic. Never the gains. The gains make us more arrogant, more you know I did this I they make us eye
• 28:30 - 29:00 specialists. It's the losses which actually bring us much more uh make us much more vulnerable. And I think if they follow these three four things where they're looking after their mental health in terms of vibrance in terms of making the brain that they have more and more powerful by adding layer after layer after layer of knowledge and by the way each book that you read is also cross-pollinating. It's the network effect. It compounds. Yes. It compounds that effect. So you you you can do
• 29:00 - 29:30 crosspollination with more building weight. It's a bit like if you have got a crayon set which is 48 different colors. The nuances of the painting that you'll paint will be far richer than if you had just three colors. Right. Second is of course their uh physical health, mental health, reading and they should build networks. So how exactly do you think they should do that? I think they should do it by cultivating friends not with a you know quid proco attitude. One, I think all young people should actually have diverse set of
• 29:30 - 30:00 friends. Usually what happens is we become very homogeneous and they stick being your you know buddies all throughout. Now that is by definition a homogeneous group. If you're living in a DDA colony as I lived then pretty much everyone in that area would be similar financial status this that they come from different parts of the country but more or less the same layer. I think we should go a couple of layers below. We should go a couple of layers higher and by higher I don't they should go and
• 30:00 - 30:30 attend India Habitat center dialogues sessions book releases better you'll meet some elderly people tell them uncle I'm a young student I liked what you said can I write to you and ask for some advice I have found it's very very easy to get mentors if you go to a person and ask them and the person gives you a task and you do the task 10x and come back to him the guy will take you on because they're also looking for that fire in the belly kind of people who
• 30:30 - 31:00 want to take the legacy that they have created and carry it forward. I actually spoke about it in another podcast that anybody who tells me you know that mentorship mentor I said they revert back to me. Now the interesting thing is when I made the statement on the podcast I got a lot of people writing to me that give me the list of those 10 books right and I have given a list of that 10 books to at least 300 people by now and maybe two have got back to me so it's less than 1%
• 31:00 - 31:30 less than 1% so I would urge these people that your foundation actually there was a gentleman called Baradoshi he was my CFO Mr. Baradoshi is now a member of the RBI. He told me this sentence a long time ago. He said the big bucks of your life and obviously you're not talking money per se but he said big bucks of your life will come in 5 years of your life at some five years of your life. Every day until those five years you have to spend preparing yourself for those five years. So I think that is the age when they're
• 31:30 - 32:00 preparing their brain, they're preparing their body, they're preparing their networks, they're preparing their relationships to create a very rock solid foundation that they can keep leveraging. It's almost like a trampoline which they can use to jump and keep going one orbit, two orbit, three orbits higher. That's what they should be doing right now. They shouldn't be worrying about national politics, what's happening in, you know, China and Germany and what Trump is doing. They shouldn't be forwarding crap like that. I would strongly
• 32:00 - 32:30 urge anyone including myself that one of the best parameters to see where you are headed is to just calculate the amount of time you're spending on your phone. On the phone. On the phone. Yeah. When I phone I mean social media I mean or or wasting time on the phone. Let's put it this way that you might have noticed that is very very difficult for us to concentrate nowadays. that ability to concentrate is gone. So
• 32:30 - 33:00 a very good way to see if our mind is disciplined and has the ability to focus and give it 100% on one task is to see how much time are we able to stay away from our phone. If we cannot stay away, it's almost like a fix that we need. It's almost like a chain smoker. It is an addiction. Of course, it's an addiction and like any addiction, it's a test of will. And like any addiction, it is the environment that will help you.
• 33:00 - 33:30 You want to quit drinking, you better go to a place where you cannot get liquor. Because if you're thinking I'm going to have liquor in my house and I'm going to exercise my willpower not to drink it. Then willpower is a muscle. It'll get weak. And when it gets weak, it'll give way. So I think four aspects once again to reiterate. One reading which also by the way improves this discipline. Second their physical and mental health. Third is the network that they build and fourth their ability to develop this quality of deep work
• 33:30 - 34:00 where nothing distracts him until he finishes that piece of work. Very rare quality. Extremely rare quality. If anybody can practice this will be head and shoulders and torso above their peers. Interestingly has nothing to do with the IQ. It actually has matter of fact I'll tell you something. Anybody who follows this has a lot of action. Has a lot of action. It's like a couple friend of mine whom I know where the husband once
• 34:00 - 34:30 was talking in a public forum and he said you know my wife is the smarter one between the two of us. So you should always listen to her. And I said this thing same thing to him. I said a man who marries a woman smarter than him is not very dumb either. He's he's a smarter guy. He's smart. He's smarter. So it's a bit like that that anyone who can follow this protocol has to have a high IQ and he will become not only high IQ, he'll also become high EQ
• 34:30 - 35:00 because he's learning so many different stories from so many different avenues. His brain is opening up. He's knowing that it's not black. There is opposite side to it. Diversity is not without its downside. This is not without its black side. Spectrums, you start to see spectrums. you you start to see the same object from different angles and that makes you much more empathetic because you know every object has a different angle not just the angle that I see it from
• 35:00 - 35:30 yes you know many times when I'm in a session or something I'll ask someone that okay who knows this and nobody knows this someone will make a statement nobody knows this or who is afraid of public speaking everyone is afraid one guy will make a statement everyone is what is he doing he's superimposing his belief on everyone overgeneralizing not it's not even generalization. He said it is not correct because he's not doing what I'm doing. And um one question about point number three which is to build networks. Two questions
• 35:30 - 36:00 actually. One, how important is it for Gen Z or the millennials to learn how to market themselves? That's one. Second, when you talk about building networks, people normally say, you know, it's commonly understood and believed network networking to MBA. Yeah. How much truth is that? Is there definitely there is. So, let me answer the uh second one first which is yes
• 36:00 - 36:30 networking that is that is one way of looking at it because a person so what is networking? Networking is creating relationships in ecosystems that are not that are different from your ecosystems. But all of this is totally dependent on how much of stickiness you created with them. You can go and attend a whole one year in ISB and go with the same two dom friends and come back with the same two dom friends and be nothing other than you'll have an alumini address
• 36:30 - 37:00 ISB.edu address that's about it. But if you're a person who took that time, energy, effort to actually build relations and building relation means you have to work. You have to help that person. You have to empathize with that person. You have an exam tomorrow morning and someone has lost a close family member. You'll sacrifice that this person will remember it. That's developing a network. So it's not just collecting proper investment phone numbers of people and adding them to your WhatsApp group. It is actually and
• 37:00 - 37:30 you know I want to go back to that sentence the end of the day you spoke about that 20 25 people in your eco that is actually your world do you really give a damn what Donald Trump thinks about you but you will very much give a damn what your wife's you know father thinks about you right because that is something that is your immediate that is your world that is your immediate what your child thinks about you is more important to you than entire government of Rwanda thinking about you right so I would again come back to that that networking is not just getting phones
• 37:30 - 38:00 and numbers. It's actually getting relationships. It is getting people who are interested in your stake and who would like to see you succeed. Getting that blessings, getting that good mojo coming, getting a sense of ownership of a person who says, you know what, let me figure out a way to make this happen. That is networking. Got it. Okay. And the second part of the first part of the question actually how important is it that they learn how to
• 38:00 - 38:30 market themselves and and how important is sales and how does and how and how does one learn this. Okay. So I will tell you my answer to this. I think a leader or an individual you compare him to a torch right. A torch has got a battery it has got a bulb and it's got a reflector. Now if your focus is on polishing the reflector while the bulb is dim then the reflector will only reflect the dimness of the
• 38:30 - 39:00 bulb. So you actually have to go back to the wattage change the wattage. If you change the wattage of the bulb you have to change the battery. And if you change the wattage and the battery the third step is polishing the reflector. So marketing oneself is first becoming deep. First having read those 100 books, first having an opinion which is a founded opinion, not a WhatsApp opinion but a founded opinion which is based on certain facts. When you have reached that point, you'll be surprised.
• 39:00 - 39:30 Radiation will happen automatically. Matter of fact, I give this as a very good example of what is impact. Impact is you sitting in a flight and from Delhi to Bombay and suddenly realizing that the person sitting on your right is let's say for sake of argument Anand Mandra. give this example very often at the end of that 1 hour flight how will that dialogue end what will be the dialogue will it be Mr. Mahendra asking you Ravi I really like this idea can you send me a note on this or can we look at formalizing this into some sort of a large scale education
• 39:30 - 40:00 program that can be done for the workers or whatever or can I ask Anish to get in touch with you whatever this would be it or would it be sir can I have a selfie with you now if you have to leave an impact on him it can't be I'm an IRS officer who left and started a podcast it has to be deeper than that you have to have an opinion about how you see India's doctrine changing how it shaped you have to have an opinion which will interest a person of his caliber that is impact. So now if a young person thinks he will market or she will market
• 40:00 - 40:30 herself with a dim bulb and a weak battery by polishing the reflector then you'll only present how dim you are. I think the work that they have to do is the first part which I said that you first work on your to get that when you start getting into that habit of reading disciplining yourself that they just start showing in your persona. Mhm. You can actually make out Revi. I think you put two people in a room. One has read a hundred books, has
• 40:30 - 41:00 experienced some of these life lessons, the other is reading WhatsApp. From the way they ask questions, from the jokes they laugh at, from the line that they summarize, you can make out who is deep and who is shallow. Now the shallow person no matter how much she tries to market herself or he tries to market herself it'll be only shallow marketing. It'll be look how much I've got insta I've got followers I've got this I've got you know what they're doing they're taking a
• 41:00 - 41:30 nail and they're hitting it once here once here once here once here and I said but it's not going through. Yeah. They have to keep it in the same spot and hit it six times and then it'll go through. So I think that consistency of first working on yourself getting that caliber in place and then marketing yourself makes sense. But if you think I'll first market myself I'll do that and dance and this and that sha you know whatever I do this I do. Lot of youngsters nowadays want to start their professional career in a corporate by developing strategy.
• 41:30 - 42:00 They don't know airporting. They know nothing about the strategy. I think that's uh that's silly. You cannot work, you cannot land into a strategic position. You have to work your way to a strategic position by being tactical, operational, strategic for a certain number of years, for a certain number of marination. So coming
• 42:00 - 42:30 back to your question, yes they must market themselves but their marketing should be silent marketing. I would say that I'll give you a trick that I've done from very early stage of my career. Okay? And I am guaranteeing you if any one of the listeners youngsters does it within one month in any meeting you're sitting in the back like that take copious notes who said what what were the decision this that as soon as the meeting is over
• 42:30 - 43:00 make it into minutes and send it to the meeting organizer not to the senior most guy to the meeting organizer I used to do it as a matter of practice I remember third fourth time suddenly I'm being shouted at where the hell are you waiting for you to start the meeting and I put him on the list. Yeah. As a very junior leader, I used to be in meetings which are very senior because I just earned my way there by being the noteaker and the notekeeper and then someone said and I said sir you had actually told him to do it last time and ah now I'm suddenly the meeting
• 43:00 - 43:30 coordinator also. It's as simple as that. So I come back to the word marketing yourself as selling yourself. I think you have to sell a version of yourself that people want to buy. Yeah. Can I paraphrase that? Of course. I think uh what you're saying is give value. Give value. Give absolutely deep value. Deep value. Not promise of value. Not promise of not promise. And obviously that corresponds to what you said
• 43:30 - 44:00 earlier. Correct. think and you know I'll have this and I'll have font I'll change this these are all cosmetic things they're completely cosmetic things right right now coming to sir something very interesting which I read when I was doing my research you you you have spoken about diseases which affect organizations you are have spoken about uh corporate dysfunctions and I'm sure you are talking about decision making
• 44:00 - 44:30 when you say that yeah decision making operations and scaling so many issues. Cognitive biases. When it comes to decision making, the most important decisions that an individual takes invariably are emotional. All decisions that human being takes are emotional. All they will justify it later with rationalization. Post rationalization postac. What can we do? What can we learn to make sure that those decisions
• 44:30 - 45:00 are spot on? Can we include frameworks? Can we have some metrics to go along with iterience sample with your permission? Age, who you end up marrying or who you end up spending your life with. Two, what sort of work you end up doing? Very important. And three, what is your legacy? Legacy, let us take only the first two. primary relationship with your spouse or your partner or
• 45:00 - 45:30 decision. Honestly, I don't think I'm qualified to speak on these decisions very specifically, but I can give you some general principles that work. First is an acknowledgement, a real acknowledgement that close to 99.9% of the decisions we take are emotional decisions. Of course, there's no such thing as heart. That decision is also coming from the brain only. heart doesn't take any decision. But it's that emotional side. It's not the rational side. The limbic brain, the emotional
• 45:30 - 46:00 part of the brain which touch, feel, how do this coffee would taste very very different if the cup was heavier. It would taste very very different had it been packaged in a way even costing more. Right? So that's got nothing to do with the taste. It's got nothing. It's it's the general feel that I've got. How do I experience that entire does it feel a certain is this? It's it's everything. It's it's a combination which happens. Now one of the things that we should do
• 46:00 - 46:30 these two decisions actually are completely two different categories. One of them is highly highly well I won't say reversible but highly expensive to reverse and I don't mean expensive just from the money side but from the trauma side and if you have babies then you know and the other the other side to it also that if it is a bad decision the rest of your life is like hell or or near hell fastest way to hell is this now my point is that you should look at
• 46:30 - 47:00 certain decisions in a way of its implication that what will be the implication of this decision okay can you reverse this decision job is not a problem it's a good problem it's a good framework matter of fact job I I know of some people I I know of a person who joined an organization that I was working for and he had this whole starey dreams when he joined the organization two years time he was totally disgusted
• 47:00 - 47:30 and had you not done this throughout Now you would have been thinking what if I had taken that offer what if I had taken that offer. So it's good that you went down the wrong path realized it was the wrong path and came back chapter close. So that decision of a different kind those decisions you can experiment with. Those decisions you should actually experiment with. You should go out on a limp and see because it's reversible. Reversible decisions reversible. First is is it reversible or near irreversible. Okay.
• 47:30 - 48:00 Second is when I will change this decision will it impact other people negatively? Marriage is also a reversible decision but will impact a lot of people negatively. Yeah, job is not a job. uh uh uh you know so many friends of your well you are an example who cleared the civil services went ahead did it 12 years and then realized not a mistake you realized okay fine I did it for this time now I want to do something else and there's so many of your classmates coursemates and
• 48:00 - 48:30 all that who will continue secretary ambassador whatever now he has decided or she has decided to have that longitude you have decided to take something and realize that this is not working out for me but these are decisions which don't have any earth shadow ing impact on anyone. You're still running a house. You're still everything is fine and so it all works out. It works out. But some decisions are not like that. Some decisions are you you you take a decision and then even if you reverse it you will cause a lot of damage. So first I think is
• 48:30 - 49:00 dividing it into two and then taking a cold some decisions you have to leave time. You should not take a decision in a hurry. You should as they say sleep over it. or at times you should assume that you took the decision and the decision went wrong. So there's a nice word which is the opposite of postmortem. It's called premotum. So before the death happens, you assume
• 49:00 - 49:30 the death has happened and what would be the implication of that. Right? Also sometimes it will be very good if you can do I'm sure you play chess but do second order and third order of thinking. Mhm. So very often we think if I move like this, Revi will move like that, right? And then I will move like this and then Ravi will do that and then I will do this and then Revi will do that. But Ravi may do something else in the first one, right? So my entire game play now goes down the drain opinion coming from a psychology background and of course you are very
• 49:30 - 50:00 well versed with organizational psychology. There are some numbers that are conspicuous by their absence which I don't think your homework is complete if you don't know those numbers. There are some psychometric tests which are powerful enough to have some predictions of some life outcomes. Big five compatibility. Yes. Big five. Compatibility. Compatibility workility
• 50:00 - 50:30 reliability. So of course I fully agree with the broad general principle of what you've said. No doubt about it. I mean then we can even go to astrology and say horoscopes whatever. I mean whatever instrument we not I'm not talking about purely uh esoteric instruments but even hard psychological instrument and you are aware that a lot of these instruments are actually designed for the white American male they are not designed most of these instruments that are being run by the big five they're not designed for a Indian ecosystem they're designed for a western ecosystem
• 50:30 - 51:00 and a western ecosystem always lords a single hero you look at any Hollywood film any western movie it'll always be the hero who do by himself and that's a very American DNA because that's how the country originated. The country originated with explorers and you know mavericks and many cases criminals. So individualistic culture very individual because that's how the country was shaped. But if you look at the east we have a very communal culture community culture that's the correct word community culture. Why? Because you can't grow rice on
• 51:00 - 51:30 yourself. You can't you have to flood the whole field over there. People have to work together. they have to plant together, they'll harvest together and they will divide the grains proita collective collective. So it's a collective DNA for us. I mean in in the US it's a very common thing that you'd hear in the west that you know after finishing 12th class the kid wants to take a gap year to discover himself discover you're my son his brother so and so sister so there's no
• 51:30 - 52:00 need to discover because you are part of a grid right so to a certain extent those decisions that you were talking about they're also influenced by a lot of ecosystem those tests are influenced by a lot of ecosystem but I fully agree with you that there is and by the way corporates are doing it. They're not just doing it at selection level. They're also doing it at team building levels. They're saying in a team of five, you should have one guy who is a maverick, one person who is like this. So that there is diversity in a team. It happens all the time in special forces
• 52:00 - 52:30 teams. Special forces teams are organized in such a way that there'll be language specialist in it. There'll be someone who's a paramedic. There'll be a weapon specialist in it. They'll explosive specialist in it, a navigator. and they will have uh dual skills so that they can provide redundancy. So you carefully craft a team and then you also look at the psychological aspects of that team. I I I remember a long time ago we had an instructor in the academy and the orders were being given and one of the person was giving okay s duty man I'll put you know he named me and named
• 52:30 - 53:00 another coursemate of mine and our instructor said that you should know your troops really well and he told that guy said if you put these two guys in guard duty by the time you come back they would have shot each other and if you don't know that chemistry between them then you're not even placing you may both talented people but they have a chemistry between them right and that chemistry also has to be factored So some of these instrument definitely do tell that but you we both know you're a clinical psychologist and you we both know that these instruments are not P&L sheets they're balance sheets they tell
• 53:00 - 53:30 you about the state of mind on that day when you're giving the exam on that day when you're doing the test and on that day if there is a huge influence on the positive side or negative side it will reflect in the test. So yes, if you're administering a battery of test, matter of fact, many good companies, they never hire a person with one or two interviews. They will do an interview in a different setting. They'll call the person for dinner. They'll call the person with a junior. They'll ask the junior to give the feedback of how did he interact with you when he was coming
• 53:30 - 54:00 up into the building. What was his demeanor? They will do a fairly 360deree before they take the person. I mean before they craft the team, before they construct the team. So yeah, these instruments are very powerful and I'm kind of uh happy that now these instruments are being used in a more analytical way rather than that gut feel which used to happen. You know, I like this guy, you know, he seems to be a good guy. Lot of which was he looks a lot like me. Yes, he thinks a lot like me. Yeah, totally.
• 54:00 - 54:30 So if you look like me, think like me, walk like me, then you have to be a good guy. So I suppose that brings me the to the end of my questions. Um, I think it's safe to say that we covered much of this system level thinking that you mentioned because we went from the level of the government to the corporate to the armed forces side. You talked about national security and then down to the level of individuals which for me I think is the most important impactful part. Individuals make up the system. At the
• 54:30 - 55:00 end of the day we blame the system but who is the system? It's us. It's the individuals. the system and it was for me I think a challenge that I had given to myself to get somebody like you who has had that expure exposure at that elite level and to extract insights which the individual watching this can use and to whatever extent um I have been able to do that I think um I'll be happy with the outcome if it actually benefits people and I'm sure it does but it for sure number one has given me a few frameworks you have highlighted and
• 55:00 - 55:30 you have numbered a number of your um suggestions which is great. Uh you have left me inspired and also you have displayed not only the the metrics of your success which which we started off with but the level of humility that you have. Well firstly thanks a ton. I mean it's almost I'm I'm blushing what you're saying but uh honestly I think what you are doing and I'm not because you said I'm countering it or whatever India
• 55:30 - 56:00 doesn't have the luxury of producing engineers in four years 5 years what we need people who are able to learn quickly who are able to learn from experience of others and putting together a repository like this and and I genuinely believe we don't have the time our youngsters don't have that time We'll have to hit the ground running. True. And I always say this, you know, Indian army
• 56:00 - 56:30 anti-aircraft that training continues for 6 weeks, 8 weeks, 2 months, 3 months. Housewives in Ukraine are firing it after 24 hours of training. Right? So we are in that situation right now that a lot of our youngsters will have to hit the ground running. We'll have to earn a livelihood as soon as possible. and yet will have to keep educating themselves. Yes. And I think the platform you are providing them is the only platform they can do it because they can't enroll into a a formal college. They can't enroll and and you know uh lose the opportunity
• 56:30 - 57:00 cost in many cases of daily livelihood for which the family is depending and I was just reading about your uh reach and touching lives. I I'm happy to be one of the episodes in that in that journey. I was just going to say that the platform is only as good as the people who come on come on it and I mean if I can get the best and you are the best then I think the purpose is solved and the platform is justified. There is not enough time for me to wait for part two
• 57:00 - 57:30 for this. For now I push this one out. I'll request the audience to let us know their comments and what questions they think I should ask you for the next time because there will be a next time. I hope I hope so. I'll be very keen to come back and uh meet you again and uh do another one with you. A great privilege and a great honor. Thank you so much. Thank you. [Music]