#podcastdiaries: Learnings from Avnish Bajaj and Deepak Jayaraman

I have been an avid consumer of podcasts and always in search of the good ones. Like books, good podcasts helps in shaping one's opinions and perspectives. Unlike books, podcasts often spread knowledge in a conversation mode between two or more achievers. A few years back, I got hooked on to podcasts as a source of learning driven by urge to use my commute time. Bangalore is notorious for it's pace of traffic and the commute times tends to be longer. But podcasts and audio books are the perfect allies in longer lonely commutes. I often wonder why there's hasn't been many business models to help people do high value activities during commute. Well, let's keep that discussion for a different day.

One of the podcast series that I am hooked on to, of late, is called "Play to Potential" by Deepak Jayaraman. A part of his intro from the podcast page reads -
'Deepak is a certified CEO Coach and is an alumnus of IIT Madras, IIM Ahmedabad and London Business School. His detailed profile can be found at https://in.linkedin.com/in/djayaraman'

The recent podcast that I listened to while on a recent flight was Deepak's conversation with Avnish Bajaj. Avnish is the co-founder and Managing Director at Matrix Partners – a Venture Investing firm, a firm that he set up around 11 years back. He did this at the back of a successful exit from Baazee.com when he sold it to eBay for USD 55 Million.

Here are a few of my learnings:

Definition of Passion:
What would you do with your time if you have all the money you need in the bank?

Education vs Learning:
- The pace of growth mostly depends on how fast you learn what is not taught.
- Most of the things can't be taught, they have to be learned.
- Self awareness and ruthless desire to learn and get better and stay at it is the key to long-term success.

Importance of time and commitment:
- Best founder's don't waste time. If the original market moves away, they create a new market.
- Best people meet or beat their commitment every time. Is the founder doing what he committed he will do?
- Book recommendation: Super forecasting. Anticipating events and taking action.

Evolve your judgement muscle:
- Book recommendation: Defining Moments.
- In early years, entrepreneurs makes 'right vs wrong' decisions. In later years, it is more about 'right vs right', that's where the muscle of judgment comes in.
- Jack Welch book. Hiring run rate. Make a note of who said what during hiring and check the outcomes say a 6 months back. Tells a lot about leaders judgment. Establishes a self learning loops.

Passion, Skill, Opportunity framework for careers:
- Japanese concept Ikigai: Passion, Skills, What the world needs, what the world is willing to pay for. 3rd and 4th combined can be thought of as opportunity.
- Book recommendation: Ikigai (Japanese) Where to play is at the intersection of passion, skills and opportunity.
- Money is the bridge between the needs and the wants. Interestingly, the wants often start disguising them as needs.

A tip if you are changing careers:
- Before changing the role or the profession, do consider talking to someone who has done that very job. Specifically ask- what is a day in the life of, what are the causes of stress.

On managing relationships:
- Focus on the right level of relationship, at right depth with right kind of people.

More book recommendations:
- Mindset, by Carol Dweck
- Give and Take, by Adam Grant

Some more of my inferences from this podcast:
I found the definition of passion such a profound way to discover what we are born to do. If we choose to cut the crap, the life truly is short enough to not do what we love to do.

I have seen people often consider completing formal education as a sort of end. Whereas the reality is that education is a journey and we should look to learn from every situation, people we meet, and commit to learn every day. Our tutors and mentors also cannot teach us everything under the sun. Our power to receive from every situation eventually defines how far we go in the game of business and life.

Source of the podcast: https://www.playtopotential.com/speaker/avnish-bajaj

#podcastdiaries: Timeless Skills for the New World

Recently came across this wonderful podcast between Ravi Venkatesan (former CEO of Microsoft India) and Pankaj Mishra (CEO of factordaily.com). This conversation revolved primarily around how careers of future will evolve.

Summary of conversation:

Rebooting the Core Career Principles:

New world requires core career principles to be rebooted. What are the new principles?

    1.      The reason we were born on earth is not to have a job; most of us are searching for the reason as to why we were put on the earth. The job is only a means to that bigger end.

    2.       The biggest obstacle to your success is you. Learn to get out of your own way.

    3.       Be the CEO of your own career.  You better take charge of your career because nobody else will.

    4.       Don't get fooled into thinking that you have a lifelong career. At any moment, you need to be able to prepared to be independent and stand on your own 2 feet. If you prepare yourself for that you are going to have much better ride.

    5.       The chances of you getting a great job by pursuing it are not so great. Its far better to make yourself attractive and let the jobs/opportunities come your way.

    6.       Stay away from the sense of entitlement: Nobody owes you anything.

What are those Timeless Skills that will sustain any disruption ?

#1 Learning Ability (Learning Agility):

If a person is thrown into a situation that they have never seen or experienced, how quickly can they figure out what it takes to succeed. Learning agility is a muscle, the more you practice, the stronger it becomes.

People who have learning agility

1. tends to be intensely curious about everything,

2. they tend to like to read,

3. they tend to like new challenges,

4. they don’t like predictable things,

4. they like ambiguous situations.

No matter what you know today, in 2 or 3 years it is going to be obsolete. The ability to forget and relearn new things goes a long way.

Each time you take a risk and put yourself out of the comfort zone, learning happens. That's how this muscle called learning agility develops. Repeatedly throw yourself in a completely new situation. This is one of those horizontal skills that you can see that will never be obsolete.

#2 Ability to lead:

Second skill that is going to be timeless is the ability to lead. No matter how much automation is there, there would always be people around and the ability to lead them to do amazing things is a very precious quality. What limits the ablity of an organization to grow- it is frankly the number of leaders it has. Leadership is not the same as position of people in authority.

Most people could be a leader, they have the latent potential but a very few end up harnessing it. The first step it takes to become a leader is to take ownership of something.

#3 Ability to manage yourself:

The biggest obstacle to your success is you. Sooner or later, we each become the barriers to other's success. We have to learn to get out of our own way.

It takes high degree of self-awareness.

Metaphor of a giant balloon: Think of a giant hot-air balloon which has a huge lift, thats your potential. You could be anything but this balloon is held down by thick ropes or chains. These chains are your weaknesses, your fears.

Don't create stories in your mind that are self-limiting.

People who are able to succeed beyond luck are the ones that are able to see whats holding them down and gradually unshakle themselves.

Here's the sketchnote summary i drew for the podcast: