Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Resources:

Tanvi’s book, Deep Collaboration: Five Crucial Conversations to Accelerate Team Performance Across Silos, comes out on 27 March 2024. You can pre-order the Kindle version now at https://amzn.to/3OCZ0kH.

More about Tanvi’s work is available on her website at https://leadersupgraded.com. Listen to her podcast, Leaders Upgraded, at https://leadersupgraded.com/podcast.

Our host, Maureen Metcalf, posts a newsletter every week on LinkedIn. You can subscribe here.

Maureen’s latest book is Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI. You’ll find details about it at https://bit.ly/LeaderInAI. Her other 10 books are available on Amazon here.

Books we’re reading for fun or personal development right now include:

• Everyday Ubuntu: Living Better Together, the African Way by Mungi Ngomane. Hardback (https://amzn.to/48Doh6j) and audiobook (https://amzn.to/48YCRF4).
• Nerve: Lessons on Leadership from Two Women Who Went First by Martha Piper & Indira Samarasekera. Paperback (https://amzn.to/3tOtzg4) and audiobook (https://amzn.to/41OYdT5).
• Jilly Truit murder mysteries by Beverley McLachlin:
  • Full Disclosure – https://amzn.to/46TxW6Q (paperback) https://amzn.to/46VDL3Q (audiobook)
  • Denial – https://amzn.to/46YCbhs (paperback) https://amzn.to/3GJc0AA (audiobook)
• Women and Leadership: Journey Toward Equity by Sherylle J. Tan & Lisa DeFrank-Cole

NOTE: As an Amazon partner, we may make a small commission from books you buy through these links.

Guest(s):

Guest(s) Bio:

Dr. Tanvi is a multi-award-winning keynote speaker, executive coach, author, senior faculty, and program director at Singapore Management University (Executive Development). She uses a combination of head and heart-based tools for upgrading leaders and culture transformation. A certified Storytelling coach, certified Conversational Intelligence coach, and certified Culture Talk Tools coach, she takes a 360 intervention approach with clients such as Accenture, Mastercard, Dyson, Coca-Cola, Gap Inc, Microsoft, Merck, Electrolux, and many others.

Dr. Tanvi is known for combining the best of corporate execution focus with the depth of academic frameworks to create the shifts needed to lead in the world of disruption. She is the first Asia-based leader to be listed on the Game Changer list by Workforce Magazine (USA). Her ideas have been published and quoted in Forbes.com, Harvard Business Review, Business Times, Economic Times, BBC World, and other global publications. She is the author of two books and listed as the top 200 global influencers on leadership by People Hum in 2022 and 2023. Dr. Tanvi is also the only Asia-based HR influencer to be on the SAP global influencer HXM list. As President of the Asia Speakers’ Association Singapore (2021) she was also the first woman of colour in that role. She considers learning to accept herself as an imperfect mom as a noteworthy achievement.

Transcript
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Speaker 1 0:00
What’s your story? Everybody has one. Every organization does too, but very few leaders tell those stories. Heck, you might not even realize you know those stories yet. Storytelling is one of the most effective ways a leader can motivate, build passion, and communicate, that’s where today’s guest comes in. Dr. Tanvi Gotham sees their stories, then tells them. She shares her story, plus a few tips. In this episode, that kind of communication is a key leadership trait we teach at the Innovative Leadership Institute. We communicate that, and a lot more of what we can do for you on our website@innovativeleadership.com That’s our story. This

Maureen 0:56
is Innovating Leadership, co-creating our future. I’m your host Maureen Metcalf, the founder and CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute, where we help leaders be future ready. Helping us with that mission today is Dr. Tanvi Gautham, executive coach, author, and senior faculty, and program director at Singapore Management University. We’ll be talking about head and heart-based tools for upgrading leaders and culture transformation. Tanvi, we’re delighted to have you with

Speaker 2 1:25
us. Matt, very happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Maureen 1:28
You use a combination of head and heart based tools for upgrading leaders and culture transformation. What does that mean?

Speaker 2 1:36
Head based tools are what most people are quite familiar with, because these are left-brain tools, we are talking hard metrics, we are looking at quantifiable impact of the work that we are doing, and that’s traditionally been the case when we are working in organization change or leadership development, etc. The heart-based tools, I think, are relatively new when we talk about transformation and change, whereby we start bringing in tools that may have been outside the mainstream of leadership development. So, to give you an example, I do a lot of work on storytelling, which there was a time when it was looked at as this touchy-feely, do I want to do this? What are we talking about? Is this like a bedtime story session now to people actually realizing the role of harnessing the power of emotions in the workplace? So, storytelling is a very right brain tool. So, what I try and do is combine left brain and the right brain, but if you were to ask me, I’m very partial towards the heart-based tools, for sure. I see the impact is deeper, it’s longer, and it’s far more fun and interesting, at least for me. It is.

Maureen 2:52
Can you give us an example of how you’ve used storytelling, because I’m thinking of a range of places, from I tell a story about the future we’re trying to create in a visioning process. Yes, that kind of create the story that you’re creating, or for a leader, tell us the story about what your most successful day will look like. Do you have a couple examples?

Speaker 2 3:15
Yes, in fact, it’s so interesting because somebody just emailed me right before our call saying, can you recommend a book on storytelling, and I’m like, well, what do you want to use it for? Because it’s such a remarkable tool in that it has so many applications. I always tell people doing storytelling is like learning to use a box of crayons. Once you’ve learned to use a box of crayons, you can color the sky and the tree and the birds, or you can color the buildings and the people in it, whatever you want, once you’ve mastered the technique, there’s so many applications, so you’re right, so one of it, of course, is when you start doing future visioning, what might the firm look like, what might the product look like, what might I look like, you know, is one way to think about it, How do I create inspiration in the workplace by sharing my own story, which also you mentioned is another way to do it, the third way is, of course, the whole narrative of transformation. So, when we get on with the journey of creating the future, and you’re going through the roller coaster of the ups and downs, and the inevitable setbacks, and the milestones that you achieve, etc. How do you keep people moving through that transformation by using story as a narrative tool is another way to think about it. Some of my clients use it in their go-to market strategies. So, I’ll give you an example. I had one of my CEOs who called me and said, “You know, we revamped our business model to try and move up the value chain, and we’ve got these new products that we are launching, but my account managers are still talking to the clients as though they are selling ballpoint pens, so you know this whole move on the value chain is great, but we haven’t been able to talk about ourselves in a way that conveys the value proposition that we are bringing to the table, and so being able to understand what’s going on inside. The company that is different, but now for the customer to see that value proposition and for them to want more of it, that’s a completely different application of storytelling, and that’s also another very good example of the left and the right brain, because in the left brain we would look at what’s going on in a particular geography, what’s the market conditions, what are the pushback, what’s the current story in the head of the customers who are buying the products, and then how do we kind of shift that story to a new direction, and a lot of identity work as well, because if you do storytelling without shifting your identity, there is that slippage that happens, because then I’m telling you a story for the sake of telling you a story, it’s not aligned with the identity that I have inside of me, so there are quite a few different ways of using one

Maureen 5:44
of my favorites is Junior Achievement of Central Ohio, and they help kids prepare for the business of life, and so their CEO talks about one of the fifth graders, she happens to be talking to the person who was previously the CFO of limited brands, so big role, and she comes out and she says to him, “You wouldn’t believe how hard this CFO job is. I’m a CFO, and he inquires, “Like, tell me what a CFO does, and they get in this conversation, and it’s just so brilliant to see him interacting with this young person, and specifically, that this young person is in fifth grade already starting to understand some of the foundations of business, and as he unfolds the story, you see this kind of more senior man from Princeton, serious, successful, and this fifth grader, right, just talking about how hard her day was, having to manage the finances, and that story just for me brings to life what happens there, and wouldn’t you want to invest in that? I aspire, but have not yet come up with a story about our firm that is as compelling as the CFO, who’s a board member, and this fifth grader.

Speaker 2 6:59
Should we try it now? We should, it’s always fun to try and improvise at the moment. I don’t know, see where we will get, but maybe we might get a step closer. And one of the things in trying to find this kind of story is always to ask the origin story, right? Why did you even get started in this field? What were you trying to do? Do you remember a particular moment in time, but you’re like, yes, this is it.

Maureen 7:24
I do remember some facets of that. I worked in change management, large consulting firm, started my own firm, moved from change management to leadership, because so often we manage the heck out of projects. It’s not that they weren’t project managed, but sometimes they delivered fabulous results, and sometimes they didn’t. And so the project management approach wasn’t sufficient to solve the bigger problems. I had just gotten certified in all this leadership stuff. I went in and talked to the division president, and he slammed the door, and he’s six six, and I’m five three and he’s of a stature of someone six six and I am small and I felt incredibly small at that moment because he slams the door and he says tell me who it is and I’ll kick their asses I’m like is there a window I can jump out of because otherwise I have to go through that large man and I’ve just now said something and I’m not going to tell him who it is I don’t remember how I got out of that room, but it was not through a window. Fast forward, in that organization, the project was successful. All but one of the senior leaders were gone, like nine of them gone. These leaders work so incredibly hard, they don’t invest equally in developing themselves as leaders, so technology leaders get better at technology, physicians get better at medicine, but if half of your day or more is spent doing leadership tasks, then wouldn’t you also invest in leadership? Hence, the name Innovative Leadership is helping leaders innovate what they lead with as much passion as they innovate their products.

Speaker 2 9:05
I love it. You know that story of you, the five five meeting the six six, what made you stick on even in that intimidating moment? Right, because there was a little bit of identity threat, and then there was almost sounds like a physical threat, but there you were, and I think following the train of inspiration on what made him stay is what would end up making the original story. I mean, for me, the origin story started way before I was born, way before, about 200 years before I was born, and it’s the story of these two brothers who lived in a village in India, and they decided to go cross the river in search of knowledge, and at that point in time, if you crossed the river, you basically were excommunicated from the tribe, and they decided to go in search of higher learning, and they came back, and they wanted to get. Help the villagers and all that, but people didn’t let them back in, and so these two brothers ended up setting up their own villages, and I happened to be in the lineage of one of those villages, and my grandmother would tell me the story over and over again to help me remind me of my roots, and now when I look at the work that I’m doing, it is no surprise that my focus is around leading in a world of disruption and helping people leave the shores, leave the villages that they are a part of, and not be afraid to set up new villages, and I didn’t make that connection till quite a while, because the story that my grandmother used to tell me was just a story till I sat and reflected on, like, oh my god, the seeds of my life were being spawned way before I was even on the planet, and in some ways I think I can’t help but engage with this conversation of what does it mean to be needing in the world of disruption, and you know people are so infatuated with the word disruption, it is hard work, people who are in the trenches of disruption will tell you it’s not free, but you know this as

Maureen 11:06
you say that one, it’s incredibly inspirational, because I can imagine these young men and the struggles of leaving a village, they didn’t jump on an airplane, I’m imagining because that wasn’t an option, they were they were either riding, probably on an animal, or walking. The heartbreak of being not welcome home,

Speaker 2 11:27
and that’s again going back to the whole heart-based tools and head-based tools. Intellectually, you get it. If you got to leave the shores, they say, if you want to build the future, you got to lose sight of the shores that you have, but when you come back and you’re not accepted in the same community that you went to seek knowledge or ability to help them, and they’re the ones who don’t accept you back. That is true heartbreak, and so to deal with that heartbreak, to not personalize it, and then to set up something from scratch, it’s not easy. It’s not easy, and we talk about pioneers and first mover advantage, and all that happy stuff. What we don’t talk about is how many pioneers don’t survive. What we don’t talk about is how many first mover advantages don’t last, because the second movers catch up, and you know, take the field that you created. Yeah, sorry, but this is not the fun part, but this is the

Maureen 12:21
part that we don’t talk about in the archetypal, the Joseph Campbell archetypes, and the hero’s journey. They’re always welcome home, right? There’s no hero’s journey story that I’ve heard. Lord of the Rings, he comes back in the ring, they don’t say you can’t stay. Yes, Wizard of Oz, Dorothy doesn’t come back home, and they say, ‘Nope, you left, you’re out. A

Speaker 2 12:43
brilliant observation, that’s brilliant. I love it, and it sparks two thoughts on me. One, should these brothers have been better at storytelling, in which case they could have sold their idea better? Right? That’s that’s definitely one thought that I have around this, but you’re right, it’s always an acceptance back, and maybe this is the shadow side of venturing out, you know? You may not get accepted back, and then what’s the plan then?

Maureen 13:11
Or you may not make it back in that era. How many didn’t make the journey, as you said, pioneers in the US? Yeah, many of them died. They just died.

Speaker 2 13:21
Yeah, that’s true.

Maureen 13:23
So, not to take a dark turn in our conversation, but then to tie the thread back to what people are navigating now. So, I was reading something in Ink or Fortune or something yesterday about Microsoft and what they’ve done in the last 10 years to exponentially increase their income, and it was taking fast follower positioning. If we think about someone like Microsoft being a fast follower, they’re following someone, and presumably your point, someone created something, and then you think the behemoth Microsoft comes after me, I’m gonna get gobbled up positively or negatively. Now, for some of them, that’s a brilliant exit. For others, they’re roadkill.

Speaker 2 14:09
At the end of the day, I have to say that in the mainstream media, there’s only a particular type of metric that we celebrate. The person who kind of made it back, we don’t only celebrate the ones who didn’t make it back, but move the ball a few yards down. I mean, Super Bowl is coming, so I’ve got these metaphors on my mind, but you gotta keep moving the ball forward. And I remember, you know, when I was doing my PhD, then the chair professor of our department, Jim Craft, remember him telling us that, you know, your contribution as a PhD dissertation to the field of academia is going to be less than 1% likely, but it’s that everyone who adds that 1% that helps it get to the 100% and I think that there is value in understanding the role of the one. Ascent, and it almost feeds into the inclusive workplace conversation, where we start realizing forms of contribution that aren’t always the person who crossed the finish line, and I was reading a book where they were talking about health care reform, and the person they were interviewing said, we know for a fact that the team that started the marathon is not going to be the team that’s going to finish the marathon, but we know that we have to start it in order for someone to finish it. I was so overwhelmed when I read that, because I completely get it, and I think the people who make that paradigm shift are the people who are really attuned into the contribution and service as a legacy mindset versus I, me, myself, and how far is this going to get me, but not everybody makes that switch,

Maureen 15:54
and as you talk about identity, think about what we glorify in the media. Now, I started a company that turned into Twitter, or I started a company that turned into Snapchat, and those are one in a billion, probably. But that’s what we idealize, and if that’s what we idealize, then normal people have limited opportunity to view themselves as exceptional, because most of us will not start and exit a company for a billion dollars. Yep, most of us will move the ball down the field four yards, and then someone else picks up the ball, but the reality is sometimes it goes backwards. That’s the more reasonable expectation, not that I’m going to be an influencer, and everyone’s going to care what I wear on a Friday night.

Speaker 2 16:46
It’s interesting you bring up that word, influencer, because you know I’ve been very fortunate in that I keep getting into, you know, those lists. I’m sure you’re on some of them, or many of them, the top 50 influencers here, and then the top 25 influencers there, and all of that. And when I see myself on one of those lists, of course, it’s nice. Who doesn’t want to be on one of those lists? But it just feels to me like my mandate just got bigger. My grandmother, you know, clearly such a big influence in my life, and she’s like, so you know, whose life got better because you were on that influencer list? And if the answer is I, me, myself, well, that’s a very limited use of your influence, and so every time I’m named, I’m like, okay, so you know to whom much is given, much is expected. So, suppose I shifted, because you were on that list, that is a very different conversation from, yay, me, look at me, I am on that list. Yeah, we know you’re on the list, and therefore, so what now?

Maureen 17:40
I love the question, Whose life got better, and what are you going to do with this influence? And you’re doing a lot, so tell me your story now.

Speaker 2 17:49
I literally finished writing a book on deep collaboration. It’s interesting, right, that I’m writing a book about collaboration when I was one of those people who initially grew up on, you know, if I have to leave and do this on my own, I will, and I don’t care. The final chapter in my book is the confession on, I can’t believe I’m writing a book about deep collaboration, having started as someone who would roll their eyes internally if I had to do anything which required collaboration with anybody else in the corporate role, so I would say that it’s testimony to my own growth mindset and my ability to not be afraid to be wrong and update my own mental model, I suppose. So that’s the thing that has been consuming me. The book is called Deep Collaboration: five conversations to accelerate team performance across silos.

Maureen 18:40
So let’s do the story exercise. Let’s assume this book is brilliantly successful, and ask your grandmother’s question, What impact does that book have on the lives of the readers?

Speaker 2 18:54
Well, I’m hoping that it ends up being a catalyst for a far deeper engagement with our work than we are currently allowed, more so in the pandemic, and then post-pandemic, the way we are changing business models, the way we are thinking about cross-salo collaboration, in a bit to kind of reconfigure how we provide value to our clients, we could go about it in two ways, we could go about it in the here’s the market share, it’s 10% make it 15% This is a new product. Now we have commercial supply chain, need to collaborate and go forth and multiply, which I think is the old paradigm that has also always been done. But the deep collaboration approach takes a wholehearted approach to the concept of collaboration by asking what’s the source of inspiration and this question of whose life is better because you’re doing this beyond the 5% more market share, and it weaves in conversations of not just what will this project end up doing for the company, but what will this project end up making of you. As a person who’s engaged in this collaboration, bringing the human being back into the conversation of work is a sub theme that runs through all the chapters, so whether it is expanding your sense of the capabilities and values you have or how this connects with who you want to be in the workplace to learning to think more strategically, there are many, many different threads, but to answer your question, I would say that this is an excuse. The deep collaboration conversation is an excuse. It is masquerading as a way to accelerate performance, but what it really is helping teams sit together and have deep conversations about the work that they are doing, how they are doing it, how do they want to do it, and what needs to be done differently.

Maureen 20:55
I love the idea that in a world that’s fairly binary and people are like, yeah, you don’t need to worry about making a profit or do the right thing, and it’ll all take care of itself. That’s not always true. So, being clear about this is our goal increasing, and how do we do that with heart? Yeah, seems like it is a more reasonable approach in a business context to actually move the impact and address an issue of depression and anxiety, in part that if I’m doing something that’s meaningful, so there was a Harvard study, 75 year longitudinal study, and followed them through their lives, the one thing that was most impactful was meaningful relationships, and this deep collaboration seems like an opportunity to have meaning, which helps our depression and meaningful relationships that also helps our health and our ability to contribute.

Speaker 2 21:58
I have the proof copy of the book right here, and the dedication page says dedicated to my son and his generation. May you inherit workplace cultures that honor your potential and humanity at a deeper level.

Maureen 22:10
Beautiful, beautiful.

Speaker 2 22:12
So that’s my hope. What kind of workplaces are they going to be entering? You know, it’s so interesting, because I went back to the Silicon Valley for the first time since the pandemic. It’s interesting, because the layoffs are not completely done yet, and there is still, in some companies, the whole debate about work from home and work from office, and somebody joked, like, oh, the answer is simple, if you want them to work from office, you just need to pay them more, and I’m like, really, I’m not sure the answer is as simple as that. For the simple reason that you have got this young generation who is clearly a lot of them are not facing some of the choices that the previous generations have to face around going to work or there’s no way you will want to be able to take care of themselves. A lot of them have moved up, no social mobility and all of that, but also that their value system is very different in terms of looking for a sense of meaning and purpose in the workplace, that is an expectation that they have, which for a lot of other generations was an afterthought or thought that wasn’t allowed, so there is this one group which is like, oh, I don’t want to leave my dog at home, what do you mean, I have to come to work, my dog has been my companion, and people like, what do you mean? You’re talking about your dog. Well, it’s important to them, so go figure, right? That’s one group, and you can’t throw more money at it. Then you have the other group, and I’m, of course, making God’s generalization of someone who’s intergenerational expert listening to this podcast, they’re probably going to send me a deal and tell me about how it’s more complicated than I’m sharing, but I think it’s still a valuable dichotomy. There’s the other group, which includes a generation that went through the pandemic that had an existential crisis and asked themselves, there’s got to be more to life than doing work. And so now we see all these studies about, oh, we are willing to take a 20% pick up, provided we can spend more time with our family, et cetera, so no, I don’t think that throwing more money at this is going to solve it. I think anyone who’s saying, well, just pay them more and they’ll be back in the workplace, that’s not the answer.

Maureen 24:11
I love the idea of naming this as an existential crisis, because it seems like we are struggling to just mandate people go back to work, or if you work in the office, and if you’re not in the office, you’ll get fewer promotions. I was just on a call this morning where they were talking about, do we have to feed people lunch every day they come in, or just one day a week. You know, as leaders in companies, we’re grappling with, is there a tactic to solve it rather than the it to your point is a much bigger question about why do I work and what do I get from work.

Speaker 3 24:50
Yep,

Maureen 24:50
and what’s the story of my life? If I took it through the lens of what’s the story of my life now, it might be easier to answer the question. What does my organization bring to the world? What meaning do my people get from being here? And how do we work together? The collaboration, some in the office, some at home, some with the dog, some not, to make my multiple stakeholders as satisfied as possible. My clients get service, my employees feel cared for and engaged and happy and healthy. How do all the stakeholders have their needs met?

Speaker 2 25:27
I agree, but you know, I think that the reason they’re concerned about whether we should give them lunch once a week or every time they come in, or whatever was the variation they were grappling with, it’s because it’s so much easier to try and answer that question, isn’t it, about the logistics of lunch delivery versus what’s the purpose of the workplace, which requires some deep conversations and reflections on who we are and what we want to become, and who we are becoming in the process, and you know, we’ve traditionally not asked these questions, we don’t have the skill set, and our excessive obsession with left-brain stuff makes it easier to solve, serve lunch, yes or no, versus you serving the purpose of the world, which you know there’s a much more difficult question.

Maureen 26:13
And to their credit, frankly, it was a budget conversation and a tactic not stepping back and asking the bigger question, which I know I fall guilty of often, like this thing comes up and I don’t step back and say, okay, let’s stop and look at the entire landscape, I just want that thing off my to-do list. Are we stepping back, and when should we? How do we look at meaning and purpose in the workplace? And if the only reason you’re coming to the office is because it’s mandated and we give you bagels, then either we’re doing something incomplete, or a few of the people in the room are the wrong people.

Speaker 2 26:48
Yep, I have to agree. It’s interesting, because perhaps it was my over optimism that I thought, having been through the pandemic, that when we all come back, that we would all be on that corner of the room, which now is ready to engage with these questions, and maybe I was just being a little bit naive in that in some of the companies that I see the emphasis on going back to what was would make you believe that they never went through the experience of the pandemic at all,

Maureen 27:20
oversimplification, but I do see kind of a camp that wants normalcy, that we had a level of instability, and we just want to go back to something that’s quote normal.

Speaker 3 27:30
I get it,

Maureen 27:31
and there’s another camp that had truly an existential crisis, and is saying, why do I do what I do, and it’s not necessarily all age related. I wonder if a lot of the retirements were also saying, I’m not going to do this the way we’ve done it. I don’t have to. I’m whatever age and have whatever economic foundation, and I’m going to take some time off and figure it out. I may or may not go back to the workplace as it’s evolving the dynamics of who’s in and who’s out, and what that door looks like is interesting right now. Yeah,

Speaker 2 28:06
I mean, Singapore has a very high population of expatriates, and we’ve got so many companies headquartered in the region, and number of people who decided to just leave and go back to their roots, and that was also to your point, seeking the familiar. I think what it is, is that companies have not fully understood what reintegration into our relationship with work means after the trauma that we experienced during the pandemic. We have not created that opening to have that conversation. Now, some of my clients have had those conversations with, because you see, as well, senior leaders were front lining the pandemic and trying to keep everything for normal, and you know, etc. but they were human beings undergoing this extreme level of trauma themselves, and not every company created that space to have that conversation, which was definitely part catharsis, but definitely also opening up a space for showing up as more human in front of other leaders with whom I’ve only ever discussed market share or territory or technology implementation, as the case might be, and I feel the teams that wow the space and time to have that conversation definitely move the needle forward in terms of what do we want versus the ones who kind of just skip that step and say oh the office is open now and you know you can’t come back to work and yeah we’re serving lunch so something around the understanding of the psychology of post-traumatic growth, as the term goes, and depending on whether companies were equipped to handle that or not, may be influencing their response at the moment. I assume that these conversations you’re talking about are the conversations you wrote about in your book, they. Influenced what I’m talking about, because the inspiration was to keep the humanity of the conversation front and center, but there are five specific conversations that teams need to have, and just, you know, touching upon them really quickly. The first one has got to do with deep inspiration, which is, you know, why are we doing this? Where do we want to go from here? Who am I becoming in the process of engaging with this? What’s my inspiration for being here to begin with? And how does this take me one step closer to who I want to be? So that’s the deep inspiration. Then we have the deep learning conversation, which kind of gets into the whole need for the polymath and the integrated thinking approach we need in organizations, which is not my work, is HR, and that’s what there is, and I don’t need to understand anything else about anything else. I think those days are gone and over with. So, deep learning is a lot about that. The third one is deep friction, which is about, you know, how do we navigate the deep insidious conflict that can start coming in when we keep glossing over not talking about the things that we need to talk about, and it shows up in different manifestations. The fourth one has to do with deep strategizing, which is how do we take a strategic conversational approach to problem definition and problem solving, and the final one being daring, which I think is some of what we were talking about. On how do we master our relationship with risk and uncertainty, and our approach to rest and recovery, as we navigate what we are not familiar with, and makes some of us say, I want what it was, and give it back to me, versus others who are like, no, let’s go forward and explore what they might lie. So I kind of think of these five conversations almost as if I can use a metaphor, like the premarital counseling that I wish most people went through before they got married. So that marriage was more successful because collaboration is hard. Collaboration is hard even within our team, forget about between our teams, and I just felt that they were tripping over themselves, because in the absence of understanding and conversations around these things, they were kind of going around in circles, whereas if, if you and I have had a chance to talk about it, then when it comes up, our ability to navigate it is that much easier.

Maureen 32:19
We talk about seven mindsets associated with innovative leadership, and one is innately collaborative, and the idea that to solve the problems we’re facing right now, which we’re both pointing to, are disruptive. We haven’t seen them. The climate change issue, the data says, as of yesterday, last year was 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial times. That’s the number set in the Paris Climate Accords that we were supposed to not go above. At this point, we’re there, we don’t have the solutions to it, and that’s just one of the issues we face. We’ve got war in the Middle East, we’ve got Russia invading Ukraine, all of those impact our supply chain and our sense of hope. So, how do we collaborate? Who’s coming together to help solve these? How are these countries coming together to collaborate to solve big problems. It seems so timely that you’re offering tools,

Speaker 2 33:27
and you know, in the opening of the book, I started recalling the incidents about sharing about a virus somewhere out there in a remote village in China, which was not going to be my problem, because it was their problem, and that the Chinese government would deal with it, and lo and behold, famous last words, it is everybody’s problem. I think we just don’t realize how interdependent the world is now, whether it is economically or otherwise, and I think it has been the absence of deep collaboration conversations, for example, deep strategizing, which I define as the application of strategic thinking, and the element of mutuality to problem definition and problem solving. Mutuality is making sure that we are not solving the problem for one person at the expense of the other, and if it is coming at the expense of the other, then that is a conversation that needs to be had. You can’t just gloss over it, and you can’t say, “Oh, you know what, collateral damage, too bad. It doesn’t, and ultimately it’s an intricately linked web, which is why, where you know when you talk about the armed conflict in different parts of the world, I just wonder if people had the skill set to have some of these conversations, how would they have been approaching it? So we got to start somewhere. I mean, my sandbox happens to be corporate, that’s my field of impact and influence, so you know, I suppose I’ll start there and.

Maureen 35:00
I would love to do a podcast specifically focused on your book and dive into those five questions, because they seem so crucial right now, and our audience is also predominantly corporate. If we look at who moves the needle and the impact our corporate leaders have, some of them manage PNLs that are larger than countries, so our listeners are making a huge impact in the world,

Speaker 2 35:28
and the poor mandate of doing well by doing good. I suppose they have more influence than they may even dread us.

Maureen 35:36
Let’s jump to another one of your concepts that we haven’t hit on yet. Future fluidity,

Speaker 2 35:42
future fluidity is this idea of being able to meet and navigate the future, whether it meets our expectations or not. The idea is grounded in the discussion on foresight, which I’m sure many of your listeners might be familiar to, is very different from forecasting. Foresight is not about predictions, it’s about preparedness. The future fluidity was a term that I coined during the pandemic, because when the pandemic happened, I had all these people on the podcast, and the media is like, oh, so what’s your suggestion on how do we navigate the pandemic, and I’m like, excuse me, it’s my first pandemic as well, so I had to kind of think about the ideas that I had and how we could do this and start giving them a nomenclature that was accessible to people, and so that’s our future. Fluidity was a term that got created. People love the idea of being prepared to navigate the future, whether it meets our expectation or not. I mean, if it meets our expectation, then obviously we were quite prepared, but if it doesn’t, that’s when we have to, in real time, start improvising and figuring out what’s our plan now. For leaders, it’s very, very important to make sure that they remain future fluid, their teams remain future fluid, and their companies remain future fluid. The way to do that, because that’s always the next question that I get, as well. How do you propose we do that? But I would love to hear your thoughts on the concept of future fluidity, and maybe what would be your thoughts on how we might do that before I end up sharing mine, because you also spend so much time thinking about the future. I don’t want to make you biased by telling you mine.

Maureen 37:19
I haven’t given exact thought to this question, but a lot of even how we structure our podcasts is we listen to futurists and we feature futurists, so that we have a sense for what are the possible futures we’ll be facing,

Speaker 4 37:35
right?

Maureen 37:36
So I may not have known that Covid 19 was going to happen, but we’ve been talking about scenario planning and viruses for a long time. I had an exercise a decade ago, back then it was bird flu, you know. We have known that something would happen, and so we did this exercise with our clients, and then we got over that and did something else, and now we have a COVID pandemic that’s way worse than we imagined. The bird flu, and when I was teaching in an MBA program, I taught scenario planning.

Speaker 3 38:07
Yep,

Maureen 38:07
but if I zoom out and look at the national and the global trends, and especially now with AI and volatility, things are just going to be different than we imagine them, no matter how many scenarios I look at, and how many stories I craft. Part of what I need to help leaders do is, yes, we have to have purpose. We have to have a general strategic direction, and we have to be both resilient and the idea of anti-fragile that I’ve got to have the capacity when stuff hits me, I can respond effectively and potentially use those to my advantage, which only happens if I’ve got enough bandwidth that I’m not falling across the finish line every day, so exhausted that I’m lucky to get out of bed the next day, and so emotionally exhausted that when something happens that’s actually to my advantage, I can leverage that opportunity for good, rather than feeling like I’m in a Mad Max movie, and I’m the guy under the wheels of the thing, rather than driving it, until we’re able to get back to a point of some sense of health and thriving, we’re not able to do the creative problem solving to create the world we’d like to see.

Speaker 3 39:23
Yep,

Maureen 39:23
so I don’t know if I answered your question. That was a lot of words.

Speaker 2 39:28
Yeah, I know. I think you did. I think all of that feeds into being future fluid. When I think about, well, what’s the answer, which is where some of the inpatient executives go to, because they’re like, okay, I get the philosophy now. What do you want me to do about it? I love what you said about, you know, if something good happens, are you ready for it? Because very often we prepare a lot for what it would like if we fail, but we don’t prepare a lot for what it would like if we succeed, and succeeding brings with it its own pressures and demands, much as we love this, like. Sets, do we have the capacity for it? So I love that, and so I’m going to pick on that thread of bandwidth that you were talking about. The way I tend to think about future fluidity is it’s about expanding your range. So how do you have an expanded set of capabilities? Some may want to call it a portfolio of capabilities, that’s an over simplification, because it is, yes, portfolio of capabilities, but it’s also portfolio of experiences, because if you have not had exposure to that experience, you’re going to turn to it and say, what, well, what is this? I don’t understand, because I don’t have a frame, I don’t have exposure to what this possibly can mean, the more you can expand your range, whether it’s through experiences or it’s through exposing yourself to thinking which is very different. I oftentimes read books or attend conferences that have nothing to do with what I’m doing, and this was pre-pandemic, by the way. It wasn’t like, okay, I woke up, and I decided I’m going to do this now. It’s pandemic, but you know, reading books on fintech or attending a conference which is not to do with leadership development. I love going back that idea of being a complete beginner and not knowing what the answer might be, and then starting to see patterns and starting to understand. Okay, so that’s how they are framing it, that exposure and experience and portfolio is the answer to what allows you to be future fluid, because I mean, wouldn’t I have a million dollars or a billion dollars if I could define exactly what permutation and combination the future will show up with. So one of my favorite questions to ask my clients when we are doing some of this work, is imagine that tomorrow morning your entire customer base is wiped out. What’s the plan now? Because we just don’t imagine that on what happens, we rather imagine our product disappearing, or we imagine some new technology coming in, but when you put it in the visceral terms of your entire customer base is wiped out, suddenly it becomes more real, right. So that’s what future fluidity is about. How do you plan to meet this now? And then I always give them the example of Nokia was a paper mill, not a phone company, and Michelle and rated restaurants come from a tire company, nothing to do with food at all, so even the ability to imagine what more we can become is part of the future fluid conversation.

Maureen 42:29
Two things come to mind: storytelling and also the balance between doing what you’re good at and really refining that versus companies who kind of lose their way versus having a portfolio of services, and there’s some balance between those two that will work for each of

Speaker 2 42:49
us. Yeah, and storytelling is so much to do with meaning making, and what do we make it to mean? Does we do we make it to mean this is it, or do we make it to mean this is it, right, even? is it, right tonality of it, and it takes courage, and it takes bandwidth. It requires people who’ve managed to get the seven hours of sleep, and the ones who are not waking up to the bloodbath that we are seeing in the corporate sector right now. You know, if any of your listeners are kind of hearing us right now, and saying, okay, these women are really going far out into the future, where no man has gone before, like Star Trek. I don’t blame them at all.

Maureen 43:32
There are times when each of us doesn’t have the capacity to zoom out. You’re just really worried about what are we doing for lunch, do we pay for your lunch or not, and if you’ve just lost your job, that’s the place that you most likely sit, along with asking the question intermittently between how do I pay my bills, is who do I want to be in this next role. I started my company when I lost a job, did I want to be beholden to a corporate structure, or do I want to be beholden to my ability to make it work, and there are days I would reconsider my choice, but those job loss moments can be profound and terrifying. What do you want our listeners to take away that we may not have discussed?

Speaker 2 44:20
I suppose, if I had to put it in a nutshell, I would probably say since you and I both are focused on the future, and I think everybody should be focused on the future, because that’s where we’ll be spending a lot of our time. As I say, I think the ability to straddle two worlds simultaneously without belonging to either is going to be the skill that leaders of the future need. Put differently, the ability to zoom in when needed and zoom out when needed is a core capability, because both those questions are important, and they may be important to a different set of stakeholders, and at different points in time, the lens of zooming in or zooming out one may. Be more important to you than the other, as you will say, but having the ability to zoom out when you are zoomed into a point where you can see the pores of the person on the screen, and the ability to zoom in when you are kind of, you have an out of body experience because you have meditated yourself out of the reality that you are in, to bring yourself back down, and then learning to navigate those things, that is a very, very powerful skill set.

Maureen 45:24
I think of leaders I’ve worked with who do that well, and it’s a skill we haven’t taught. Consequently, as I look at what’s happening in Silicon Valley with shifting the workforce, I’ll call it for people who are exiting, that’s probably not what you call it, but moving investments toward AI from some of the traditional business models. Presumably those executives are zooming out and saying this is the likely future, or the future we want to create. Then I have to zoom in and say that means these tactics. What does it mean for each of our leaders who’s zooming out and zooming in on their own lives, this is the future I want to experience. And am I in the right place? Can I create the impact I want to create? Back to your grandmother’s question, I would love to meet your grandmother.

Speaker 2 46:15
Thank you for that. She was ahead of our science, for sure. I think I’d love to wrap up with a statement that I made many times in the pandemic, which gives us a sense of hope, which is there isn’t a recession that didn’t come to an end, and there isn’t a storm that didn’t run out of rain, so hang in there,

Maureen 46:35
and I’ll finish also with the I’m hopeful if harnessed some of the disruption we’re seeing now will really change how our lives look if we are conscious and making those deliberate choices. Being future fluid, we can create a better future for our next generations that your granddaughter will be saying. My grandmother used to say about you, and how you were ahead of your time.

Speaker 3 47:03
You’re very kind. You’re very kind,

Maureen 47:06
Tanvi. How would people learn more about what you’re writing and follow you?

Speaker 2 47:11
You know, reach out and connect on LinkedIn, I suppose. Let me know that you heard me on the podcast. I’d love to connect with you there. Otherwise, if they wanted to go to the website, it’s Needers upgraded.com.com because who doesn’t love an upgrade, whether it’s an airline or a hotel or life. So, yeah, Leaders upgraded.com And if they wanted to find out more about the book, it’s Leaders upgraded.com forward slash Deep, and they can find out more about the book over there.

Maureen 47:38
Thank you. And when is the release projected?

Speaker 2 47:40
Hopefully the same day my son turns 18, which is the end of March, so we will have two celebrations at the same time.

Maureen 47:48
Thank you very much. And congratulations on moving the book forward.

Speaker 2 47:52
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I loved every minute of our conversation. Thank

Speaker 5 48:12
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Speaker 6 48:44
Welcome back to, uh, yeah, that’s a pepper thing. First up, we’ve got Harrison wrapping his Dr Pepper in a tiny quilt, so it feels at home. Oh, how tender, that’s a pepper thing. And over to Becca, who’s whispering affirmations to her can.

Speaker 7 48:58
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Speaker 6 49:01
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Speaker 8 49:12
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