When I was about 8 or 10 years old, a friend of my father visited us from Delhi. For me, living in Madras at that time, Delhi, land of the Red Fort, Rashtrapati Bhavan and the Taj Mahal, was this faraway exotic place – no, I didn’t know where it was but it was up north somewhere.
“He gave me his visiting card, and I remember gazing with wonder at the 10 degrees listed after his name. After he left, the introverted younger me still found the courage to tell my father that someday, I too want to have 10 degrees after my name.
Well, that didn’t happen – it took only 3 degrees for me to know the difference between education, being educated and learning.
And as the grey hairs abound – though not necessarily the grey cells – I realise that learning is lifelong.”
When I turned 40, I gifted myself tennis lessons – after having watched the sport from the days of Vijay Amritraj and Ramesh Krishnan, I decided to learn to play myself. Playing tennis transformed me, occasionally bringing out the competitor in me while helping me enjoy the game and its nuances even more – and making friends in the process, especially in a new country. I now have a lifelong friend and soul sister who lives in South Africa/London, joined together by our mutual love for “our boy” Nadal.
I was once asked, “Why are you so passionate about playing tennis now? Are you going to play at the Veterans in Wimbledon?”
I wish!
I take inspiration from Martina Navratilova, tennis superstar. She was asked by a reporter how she felt about playing at 48 and she replied, “The ball doesn’t know how old I am.”
You need to stop yourself from stopping yourself.
Every game – sports, business, and even life – is actually played on a 6-inch ground – the space between your two ears.
And age is just a number.
So what happened to that childhood dream of 10 degrees? By the time I was in senior school, I had added wanting to be on the cover of Business India to it. Well, now I am a CEO – Chief Everything Officer – at my company, Soundbytes11!
The transition from finance and banking to setting up two companies and getting into Organisational Consulting, Business Storytelling, and Personal Branding has been rewarding.
Working with leaders, I realised that some of the most effective leaders share examples to make their point. Working with clients, I heard:
“Our leaders are not impactful in communicating change and inspiring action.”
“Sales folks are not connecting to our clients.”
“Analysts are only talking data and not moving to insights.”
And thus started purposefully, deliberately, and systematically applying story techniques in an organisation to counter these problems and deliver business outcomes.
My career has shaped itself to focus on integrating these aspects – going beyond numbers and having the Big Hairy Audacious Goal of helping leaders and teams harness storytelling and turn up 100% human at work.
In high school and college, there is an emphasis on learning and using big words. I think I got full marks on many assignments in school and college because I successfully complexified simple arguments. But in the “real world” after school, you realise that while using fancy language is nice, smart people are those who can make the complicated simple while preserving nuance.
Developing this “hip-pocket skill”, as Indra Nooyi calls it, is what I do today in my work with a global clientele:
Adam Grant, in his book Think Again, describes the concept of “habits audit”:
In a turbulent world, there’s another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn.
My journey in Pottery making taught me just that. I am a left-hander. I remember my first day on the wheel, when I asked my Shifu (expert/teacher), “So, you are right-handed and are showing me how the wheel works from that perspective — what adjustments do I need to make?”
I vividly remember her reply. “You have never worked on the wheel before, so how does it matter? Learn it the way a right-hander would!”
It was a great lesson to unpack what I carried and learn without bias. In the words of Jennifer Garvey Berger:
If you are shackled to who you are now, you can’t recognise – and reach for – who you might become next.
This has helped shape my portfolio career, spanning Consulting, Advising, Teaching, Coaching and Helping (Mentoring) – it is my C.A.T.C.H. phrase!