LEADERSHIP ESSENTIALS: Dreamers and Unicorns podcast Summary- Abhijit Bhaduri and Ravi Venkatesan

Continuing my summary (from previous blogs- 1 and 2) of Abhijit Bhaduri's Dreamers and Unicorns podcast with Ravi Venkatesan.

This blog is about the summary of third category- Leadership Essentials.

Section Summary from the podcast:

• Article reference: 7 jobs of a CEO- HBR article by Pepsi CEO
• How does leadership change in journey from being Dreamer to Unicorn?
• Dreamer stage (Start-up stage):
• Chief Salesman of the company: You are selling your dream, your vision, your aspirations.
• Selling to investors, customers, the first few people.
• Doing lots of experiments to find Product-Market fit: pivoting madly till you get there.
• Worry about cash: it's a race against time. Your burn rate vs your learn rate.You want to learn faster than you are burning cash.
• Unicorn stage (High growth stage):
• Putting processes so that organization doesn't hire a wall.
• Worrying a lot about talent. Biggest risk is that a job will outgrow the person.
• Making sure that you are not the biggest obstacle to the success of the organization. Learn to be self-aware and manage your own weaknesses. Build a team around you that is strong at what you are not.
• Well begun is half done.
• Good bosses are an exception, not a norm.
• One of the most important thing to do is bet on people. The idea of whether people are ready now is nonsense. Throw people at the deep end of the pool and see what they come up with.
• Taking feedback and getting feedback:
• If you have a fixed mindset, you tend to be very insecure and any feedback feels like an intense personal attack and such people don't welcome it. Cultivate a more open mindset that says- feedback is how you learn. You should train yourself to welcome feedback. It's never personal and it's just data and you can decide what to do with the data.
• Build a team where there are x few people that will speak truth to power. You should have people around that will keep you grounded and honest. Staying connected with younger people, the front line employees is a useful thing.

My Sketchnote Summary:

coming soon