[CTQ Smartcast] Curiosity and the Art of Storytelling with Prakash Iyer
(Read the shownotes below or skip to the transcript)
Those of us who have listened to a trademark Prakash Iyer talk know he has a great ability to use stories to connect with his audience. What's the story behind these stories and what makes him curious?
CTQ’s Harish and Ramanand find out in this and more, in their open-hearted conversation with Prakash Iyer, former CEO of Kimberly Clark Lever and former Executive Director at PepsiCo, who now is an author of ‘The Habit of Winning' and a certified leadership coach.
Some of the interesting topics we cover
Being curious and how to be curious
‘Reading for profit’
Exploring ideas and building on them
How to present better
How to pick stories, remember stories, and how to tell your story
His days as Executive Director, Pepsi
How to connect with an audience
What makes an entrepreneurial mindset
Working smart in a gig economy
The Power of Consistency in getting a habit going
READ THE TRANSCRIPT OF THIS EPISODE
[Start of Transcript]
[00:00:00]
Prakash Iyer: It used to amuse me no end that you'd have a colleague who thinks nothing of spending Rs. 7-, 10-, 15-thousand on a new pair of sunglasses, or Rs. 20,000 for a new phone, but wouldn't ever think of spending Rs. 5000 on a training program on his or her own, because that's what the company's got to do for me. That mindset of 'training me is the company's responsibility,' I'm hoping that it has changed in the last decade. But I don't think it's changed enough. I don't think it changed quickly enough. I think we need all of us to recognize that, 'I am nobody else's concern. I'm my own responsibility. I'm my concern.’
Harish Kumar: In this CTQ Smartcast, we talk to Prakash Iyer, motivational speaker and author, who in his last role in the corporate world, was the CEO of Kimberly Clark Lever. He spent three decades in the corporate world, selling everything from soaps and colas to yellow pages and diapers. But what he loves most is to draw on his experience and share lessons and stories on what it takes for each of us to become as good as we can be. So here we go - a conversation with certified leadership coach and uncertified cricket junkie, Prakash Iyer.
Welcome, Prakash, to this episode of the CTQ Smartcast. I'll actually speak out of the introduction that you have given, which is 'author, speaker, certified leadership coach, and uncertified cricket junkie.' I think that sums it up for us and sums up what we're going to cover today as well. So, welcome, Prakash.
Prakash Iyer: Thanks so much for having me here. It's such a pleasure to be talking to you both.
Harish Kumar: The secret of all these things [00:02:00] that you've just mentioned in your introduction, we will definitely get to your speaking and storytelling and all those things. But I think at the heart of all these things, is that you are an extremely curious person. I think that's what leads you to do all these things. So tough question to start with, what makes you so curious?
Prakash Iyer: I'm guessing that this curiosity is a good way to hide ignorance or not having too much knowledge. I'm excited about the world around us. I guess, I've also been pretty conscious that I'm not necessarily the smartest guy in town. That realization came pretty early I'm guessing. Therefore, I figured that that's not a bad thing. There's a lot that you can learn by just asking people what makes them tick or how they do it or just understanding something that you may not have known. I would probably trace this back to perhaps early in my life. I'm guessing it could be as a kid growing up, it could be at work that I was lucky that I might have had parents and a boss and teachers who probably didn't put a penalty on saying, 'How come you don't know this?'.
For me, not knowing something was an opportunity to know, rather than a badge of inferiority, or any such thing. At some place, you figure that there are some things you know, and that can be pretty cool. So you start feeling good about the fact that you know a few things. That makes it easier for you to manage the stuff that you don't know. I don't think it's a conscious plan to say, 'Okay, starting tomorrow, I'm going to be curious or that I have now figured I'm curious.' I don't think it [00:04:00] works like that. It's probably just one of those things that I like to ask. I like to figure out what's happening. I like to connect the dots, maybe. That's the other bit, which is by asking what is this and what is that, I manage to put them together and that might make me say, 'Wow, I still got something out of it.' Maybe that's the way it worked for me.
Harish Kumar: Like how it goes between these star players... and I think we are going to come back to a lot of these cricketing analogies today... like how it goes for the star players who just know how it is done. Whereas the coach is someone who will actually break it down of what makes that great batsman so great. We're going to pick your brains; we're not going to let you just leave this curiosity bit so easily. We're not going to let you go. What quenches this thirst for curiosity? What do you see as actions, or how it gets manifested in your daily routine?
Prakash Iyer: Two, three things happen. One, like I said, I like to ask questions. Naturally, I love conversation. So, if I meet someone, and that someone could be very different from some stuff that I might be doing, but I will still find similarities, in the sense that I probably have questions that are in my head, or I'm curious. I want to understand what makes that person tick, or how do they do it? Or 'Wow! How do you do that?' And that, 'How do you do that?' could be something as simple as ‘My goodness, I love the way you chop onions. You do it so well. How do you do that? What makes you do it?’ So, I guess asking questions, striking up conversations... [00:06:00]
I'm also a bit of a sucker for generally checking out stuff. I try to find answers. It could be reading something, it could literally be saying, 'Hey, great, how do you explain that?' So, maybe try and ask what's happening over here? What else do I do? I tend to spend a lot of time dreaming, I think. My wife certainly accuses me of suddenly getting distracted or being switched off. But I think that's part of my routine to say that I'm trying to think about something and maybe listening to one thing or watching something, I set off a thought which says, 'Hey, how does this connect with something else? Or does this explain something else? Or if this happened, what would be next?’
These are possibly conversations that I'm having with people, or I'm having with people virtually, which could then mean reading a book or listening to somebody or watching someone else speak. It could even be a conversation in my head, where I'm trying to say, 'Okay, so what does this mean?' Maybe a bit of all of this helps me to say, 'Okay, maybe we are getting closer to an answer.'
Harish Kumar: You know that we love our quizzing. Since you mentioned curiosity and questions and checking out, we are going to spice this conversation with a few quiz questions. To make sure that there is something that is actually at stake, you know about reading compounds, you were a member of our first batch of reading compounds. We're going to ask three quiz questions through this conversation. For every quiz question that you get right, you actually get a spot that you can give to someone. So there's something at stake for these quiz questions.
The first question is one that I wanted to [00:08:00] get out of the way as soon as possible into this conversation: The first-ever Tamil song to be nominated for the Best Original Song at the Oscars, was from a film that was about the life of whom? By the way, you can also talk to Ramanand...
Prakash Iyer: Phone a friend and ask him... Was it about a gangster in Mumbai?
Harish Kumar: When you hear the answer, you are going to probably say yes, but no.
Ramanand: Let me help Prakash with a hint. It's a much more recent movie, and it's about the life of someone who has a connection to you.
Prakash Iyer: Who has a connection to me?
Ramanand: Yeah. So that rules out gangsters, hopefully.
Prakash Iyer: It's also recent, and that's a bit of a bummer for me because I'm not sure I'd figure this out, but let me try and see where this takes us.
Ramanand: Let me also give you a hint that it was based on a bestselling Booker Prize winning book.
Prakash Iyer: Okay. Is there a Life of Pi, Piku, Iyer connection somewhere? There is?
Harish Kumar: Yeah, it is Life of Pi and the song is by Bombay Jayashri, Pi's Lullaby. What is Pi all about? Where did you get that nickname from and did you also remember the value of pi and all of that? Tell us more about pi. [00:10:00]
Prakash Iyer: Pi actually started when I was in business school. My pet name in business school became Pi. I still remember that in one of those tougher quizzes, I got a 3-point something grade, 3.14 as it were, and there's a dear friend of mine who used to set cryptic crosswords. A terrific guy called Jake, you guys should know, should meet maybe. But I remember a reference to this, and then it became 22/7. I guess that's been a bit of me. A lot of my old friends still call me Pi. So, that's kind of stayed.
I remember I thought of a very cool one in the early days of Gmail, I got myself a twentytwobyseven@gmail.com, as my email address, and I discovered how sometimes we think something is very cool. But it complicates the hell out of everybody else who hears it. Here I was thinking it's twentytwobyseven, and a number of people would say, 'I sent that mail to twentyfourbyseven, it never reached.' Or they would put in numbers, and it would not reach. There was just chaos around it. But just to make the point that I thought it was very cool. But you know, sometimes the best laid plans do tend to go wrong.
Harish Kumar: Continuing our thread on curiosity, what is it that you like to read, Prakash?
Prakash Iyer: I've been a big nonfiction reader throughout my life. I must confess that I feel ashamed sometimes that I read very little fiction. And as I discovered, in recent times too, that people who write actually read a lot, and I read a lot, but I don't read fiction. I've never really been hooked on it. You can tell me that this is the best thing there is, but it just doesn't grab me. That's been a bit of [00:12:00] a pity. As a kid growing up, while my friends were probably reading Hardy Boys and Enid Blyton and all of that. I don't think I actually read too much of that. I probably read Noddy and Big Ears and stuff like that as a little kid, and then very quickly moved on to not reading too much fiction.
My early memories of enjoying fiction would have been R. K. Narayan. That is something that I really loved, and therefore, Swami and Friends, and trying to figure out what happened to Malgudi Cricket Club and that MCC and the English teacher and the vendor of sweets. So, I was a big R. K. Narayan fan. In some ways, I think as a kid, I had this thing in my head that someday maybe I will get on to building my own Malgudi. Or I'll actually retire to a small town somewhere and then write about what's happening over there. That's what grabbed me. Perhaps at some level, I'd like to say that it's also influenced the way I might write today, which is that I try to keep it simple. If you read Swami and Friends, or you read a lot of R. K. Narayan, there isn't a big word. There are often references to local sounds and sights. What they eat, the way he'll describe it, or what happens over there. That was a big influence, perhaps.
But I quickly then started reading a lot of... for me, the newspaper became a big thing. And magazines became a big thing. If you ask me who are writers I might have admired and I'll tell you this, I have no shame in admitting Bikram Vohra, who still writes a weekly piece in The Times of India, the third edit as it were, and it's a funny piece. I used to love the guy's style. I guess he's a nice old man now, but I used to love his style. I still remember that in the Sunday Express, maybe 50 years ago, or 45 years ago, he wrote a piece on money, which I just loved. It was a series [00:14:00] of statements followed by star, star, star, and another one and then another one. It's not as if the whole piece is connected. It's each line almost saying something, it is about money. And still, they do some of those lines. It was lines like, how we tend to look at people who got money. There was a line like the Kapoors are such lovely people. They have two Mercedes Benz cars. Lines like that, and how when your servant steals or is suspected of stealing 100 rupees, you report him to the cop to pick him up and thrash him to death in the police station. But when Mr Mehta steals a few billion from the company, all that happens is a polite call from the police station saying ‘Sir, if you don't mind, you might want to go and get yourself a bail because somebody is trying to put you in trouble.’ How money makes the world go wrong, as it were. For me, that was interesting.
I would love India Today and some of the writing that happened over there. Some of the great writers today used to write... Rohit Brijnath, for example, would write something. I don't know if you remember, there used to be Dilip Bobb and Sunil Sethi, who would write some amazing stuff. And I would say, 'Wow!' There's a story here, which is that a lot of my reading was about the real world. It wasn't an imaginary world other than the R. K. Narayan bit. It was also writing, which was trying to say, ‘Hey, here's what's happening in the world.’ It's addressing your curiosity at some level to explain what's happening. It was trying to tell you what's going on, and perhaps solve it in some way. So I would read, perhaps, with a view to saying, does this make me better informed? Does this help me to understand my world a little bit better? A lot of my reading, right from then, has been nonfiction. And maybe there's something else that happened, which is that I don't know where I read this. But I read a line somewhere which said that people read for one of two reasons, either they read for pleasure, [00:16:00] or they read for profit.
Maybe confession time, but for me, reading was not about reading for pleasure. I could do 100 other things for pleasure, perhaps. But for me, reading was for profit. So I wanted to learn something, I wanted to learn something new, I wanted to get better at something. I figured that there were a lot of books that could do that for you. That you could read and actually learn or benefit. Maybe that's driven my reading habits. So I read a lot of nonfiction, and don't read any fiction. Like I said, I'm ashamed to admit it, perhaps at the level to say, 'Hey, maybe I read a bit more of fiction. Maybe I read poetry.' For me, poetry is other than what I had to read in school, and I know the poem about daffodils but haven't really read too much after that.
Harish Kumar: Has it changed your reading habits? Have they changed after you became an author? Did you deliberately make any changes to your reading habits?
Prakash Iyer: Good question, I probably changed. There's been a change in my... how do I put it... book-buying habit, not so much the reading habit. I've tended to buy a lot more books, which I think might be, 'Wow, this is done well. So let me try and understand.' Or this seems to be a genre that's doing well, getting interesting. But I've often struggled to really change my reading habit in the sense that if I don't enjoy it, I give up pretty quickly.
Maybe there's something else that's changed, which is that perhaps, this whole area of the interplay between psychology and everything else, I think without my realizing it, that's become an area of interest. It's not like I woke up one morning and said, 'Wow, that is something I must try and understand and get better at or learn.' But increasingly, I have found that the interplay between economics and psychology or finance and [00:18:00] psychology, or even sport and psychology, that's become a space that excites me. It also excites me because I find that what people have done is to take psychology to understand why we do the things we do? Why do we behave the way we do? And apply that perhaps to economics and finance, and I love that people apply it to why there was fraud at that hedge fund, and they try to relate it to psychology, but I try and relate it to saying, 'Hey, how does that impact you and me and the world around us?' And that's become something, so maybe there's been a bias towards that genre in recent times.
Harish Kumar: What about other media formats like podcasts and documentaries? Have they been part of your curiosity diet? Have you thought of them as part of your curiosity diet?
Prakash Iyer: Documentaries not so much. We must come back to saying whatever I watched on television or on Netflix, listening has been a big part of this for me. It started maybe 25-30 years ago, when someone gifted me a set of audiotapes. I used to work in Dubai in those days, and someone gifted me a set of audiotapes from Brian Tracy. It was a program called the Psychology of Achievement. I just loved it.
If you live in Dubai, I'm guessing it's still true, but in those days, certainly when you were in Dubai, you drove a hell of a lot. So you didn't have a driver. You would drive yourself to work, you would drive yourself to meetings, and therefore I would spend a lot of time in the car and instead of tuning into the local radio station, I would have these tapes in my car and I started listening to Brian Tracy and this program and it had a huge influence on me. I loved it and then I became a [00:20:00] sucker for these audiotapes, which would be available. This was in some senses, think of it as a podcast, version 1.0. I would listen to a lot of it, I loved it. And then I started listening to Jim Rohn and Zig Ziglar, a whole lot of people in that genre. It's something that I've enjoyed.
That's been a part of my diet and that's morphed into, let's say, listening to podcasts. I was a bit of a sucker for TED Talks, maybe five years ago. But I must confess, and it's a bit sad for me and perhaps for that three-letter organization, but I don't know why, it doesn't excite me as much now. But certainly, I think podcasts have been a big part of it. I like to listen and I like to watch. And maybe in some ways, what's happened is that as someone who now speaks a bit, this helps me in two ways. One is, of course, that I'm trying to listen to how people are putting it together, and even their style or the things that they might do. I'm still learning something from them and saying, 'Wow, that was pretty cool. And that might be interesting, too.' So maybe that's also something that happened there.
Harish Kumar: On this note, any skills or habits that you recommend to young professionals to build in terms of building their curiosity?
Prakash Iyer: I think it's a good idea to try and create a routine of some kind. For me, I go for a walk every morning. My wife and I go for a walk and we work for about an hour. The first 15 minutes we've agreed is conversation time. It's about oh, why didn't the kids call, or if they called, what did they say, or anything else that might be happening in our lives. But after that, [00:22:00] it's podcast time. I'm listening to something. I think it does two things, I'm curious, I want to listen, I enjoy the listening bit. But it also makes sure I go for a walk. Because it's the only time I'm listening, I'm not listening when I'm sitting at home or at work or in any place. So that's my listening time.
I would strongly urge people to listen and to try and combine it with something else that they might be doing so that it becomes a bit of a routine or a habit. Now, it could be that if you work out in a gym, for example, maybe there's a way to make that happen. There's a hack that I learned very recently, less than six months ago, but this is something you guys must have been on for years and you never told me: just to listen to it at faster speeds. This is something our good friend, Amit Varma, I learned from him. Of course, it's easier to listen to Amit at that speed than it is to perhaps some of the other people who, in any case, speak very quickly. But it's been another good hack. So you actually get in that one-hour podcast inside your 40-minute walk or your 45-minute walk.
Ramanand: In fact, in the mutual group, we're all part of Amit's course. I think we were discussing living life at 2x, you listen to Amit or other podcasts at 2x, you want to do that to others as well. Anything can be too slow after that... Prakash, I had a question for you, based on what you said about both the audio cassettes as well as buying some of these books, is that you're probably both a consumer and you're also a student at the same time. Those two hats seem to be active at the same time. There is this slightly meta-level at which you are observing some of these developments in media in terms of content [00:24:00] for its own sake. Again, has that always been the case? Or is that something deliberately added to your routine? At the end of it, it's almost like a collection of this is what I learned. And this is how they conveyed it.
Prakash Iyer: It's a good point you make, Ramanand. I think for me, maybe that's something that is the way I process things and which is to say that in everything that I'm seeing, I tend to have a dual-lens with which I'm looking at it, and genuinely. For example, if I see something in action, I'm seeing 'Wow, I'm seeing a skilled professional at work.' And that could be just to say that you're watching Tewatia bat the way he does for the Royals, but I'm not only looking at that, I'm also thinking of what was this guy thinking in his head? What does it tell us about what's happening? When he behaves in a certain manner and maybe there is that aggression at the end of that game or whatever, there is something happening. So I think two things are happening. One is I'm seeing what's happening and enjoying what's going on there. But I'm also saying, is there another story? Is there a backstory? Is there a lesson from here that you can take away? Maybe that's something that happened.
If I take your example right now, if I'm listening to a podcast, and I'm probably saying, 'Wow, I love the way'... If you listen to Malcolm Gladwell in his podcast, he will not start by telling you, 'Hey, welcome to my podcast. And here's what's happening...' It will talk about how Jill was driving with her kids, in her Toyo truck on what could have been a lovely holiday. [00:26:00] Then there's a screeching sound and then there's a call to SOS. And then what happens is what I want to talk to you about today. Bang! Come back. I'm saying, Wow, what a good way to... this is like moviemaking now. You start with the end, or you start with something else, so there's a desk technique here, there's music, how are you doing this? What else is he doing over here? So I'm probably saying, great content. But I'm also saying, 'Wow, there's an interesting way to do it.' Something else that I've learned is, if you look at TED Talks, a lot of the great TED Talks had an element of show.
Classic example of Bill Gates opening up a box and saying, here, the mosquitoes are in the room now, I'm just thinking, ‘Wow, what an idea!’ So, it's not only about him making a great point, but look at how he made it, and therefore it's not to say that I was itching for a chance that I can go to a large corporate event and open a box of mosquitoes, but to say, what's my mosquito equivalent? Is there something that we can all learn? To be honest, there's a lot of good stuff out there. I don't think each of us needs to be sitting in a cave and meditating to come up with that big idea. Because chances are, if you've meditated in the cave and came up with the big idea, you will discover someone has done that, been there done that several years ago. That's not a big deal. But how do you take that idea and either popularize it, socialize it or even build on it is also an interesting thought?
For me, I think this whole idea of saying, when you are now speaking, can you show them something? So even when I'm speaking somewhere, I love the idea that you can bring in another dimension. It's not only about what's on a slide, or what you're saying. It's also about what you're doing. It's also about what you'll be able to show, can you pull something out of your pocket and say, guys, I've got something for you, and you pull it out. I've seen this, I do that sometimes. I have something in my pocket, and I say, I've got something for you. [00:28:00] And here it is. I can tell, I wish I had those meters on people's hands, I can tell that suddenly they've now tuned in, the guy stopped sending that message and saying, 'Okay, let me see what's going on here.' Maybe there's something that can happen over there. That's maybe something I've learned here.
Harish Kumar: I think that's a nice segue into the next section before which I'm going to ask you a question, the second question of our episode today. Let me try to take a different kind of a shot at how I present this question. Let's do the story format. 1936-37, Ashes series, Don Bradman is the captain and Australia have actually lost the first two tests. As expected, the newspapers are saying captaincy has started affecting Bradman's batting and by his standards, it's not that great a series till then, and third test at MCG again, Australia struggling, first innings and something very drastically starts affecting the match, and Don Bradman then takes a decision, which to my knowledge has not been replicated exactly in that way again. Australia went on to win that match, Don Bradman probably saved his captaincy because of that and the rest is history. What happened there? What did Don Bradman do there?
Prakash Iyer: This is the one that gets me the $10 million, right?
Harish Kumar: Yes.
Prakash Iyer: I don't remember the rest of the details in terms of the year and stuff. I think this is that classic game where Australia is out early, for a low score, 100-something, and England also struggles. The wicket is bad and so what [00:30:00] Bradman does is to flip the batting order, and send numbers 11 and 10 to open the innings. He comes in at five or six or seven, and scores a double 100 and wins the game for Australia. I think it's never been done again. It's a great story because it tells all of us that in our lives, sometimes you need to invert it or look at it completely differently, and you will find spectacular results. I think it's a great story. I'm guessing that's the answer to your question, right?
Harish Kumar: Yes, that is perfect, Prakash. We'll take a quick break now and move to the next section, which is on the storytelling part.
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Harish Kumar: Welcome back, Prakash. Let's move to the next section, which is going to be around stories and the art of storytelling. Hard question to start with, do you think it's too simplistic to draw upon stories from popular culture and sports and try to apply them to the world of business or your career?
Prakash Iyer: I think inherent in your question is a sense that ‘simplistic’ is bad. I'm just trying to say maybe simplistic means something which is different from simple. [00:32:00] I'm actually saying simple is good. At some level, it can be assumed that... the criticism for storytelling can be that it tries to make everything into saying... because I think we all love to think that our world is unique, and our situations are unique. No matter what parallel you show a person, he'll say, 'Yeah, but that's different.' I think that's one way of looking at it. But maybe the other way of looking at it is: it is different, but maybe there is a small similarity. Maybe there's a solution to your problems in that small similarity. Even if it's not a solution, maybe there's a way to think about it, which can come from that little wedge of similarity that might be there.
I have found storytelling to be very powerful. Certainly from a communication standpoint, I think it's an extremely powerful way to do it. I'm guessing that what happens sometimes is that what doesn't work is when you start telling people, let me tell you a story. That perhaps gets people to switch off and start thinking, 'Ah, this is now a story. This guy doesn't understand what I'm trying to do or he doesn't understand the complexity of my life. And he's reduced it to the hare and the tortoise.' But if you don't do that, then I think stories, metaphors, parallels, trying to juxtapose another context or situation into what's happening. I think these can be pretty powerful to get a message across.
Harish Kumar: Do you think this is missing in the leadership styles of a lot of leaders when they're trying to communicate a message to their people, and get them motivated?
Prakash Iyer: I guess people are catching on to it. I wouldn't say it's missing. You see storytelling everywhere. Increasingly, people are discovering that it's a powerful way to do it. [00:34:00] They're also getting better at it. Maybe that's another interesting message, which is that sometimes we think something is not good. Not because it's not good, but because we don't do it well. Therefore, our ability to do something well suddenly makes us see it and say, 'Oh, that's a very good thing to do.' It's like saying that there was a time when people thought that unless you put a lot of fat into food and fried it, until you did that it wouldn't be tasty. People didn't know how to make healthy food tasty. Therefore, you could argue, there was a whole school which said that come on, the choice was between healthy food and tasty food, until someone came along and said that doesn't have to be that way. You could have healthy food, which is also tasty. Maybe that's a way that gets around.
Similarly, if you don't tell a story properly, and if you don't do it well, and if it's not the right story, you could argue that storytelling is not effective. But that's because it was the wrong story or not told well. What I'm seeing right now, I think, is more and more leaders, not just leaders, thanks to what's happening around us, all of us are consuming and creating a lot of content all around us. I think we're all discovering that storytelling can work. We are trying to get better at it.
We are seeing examples of it around us to say, 'Hey, someone's doing it pretty well.' And maybe that's helping us to try and figure that look, it's happening. So I won't say it's missing. I certainly think it's increasing. Could we see more of it? I think the answer is yes. The problem there again is, and maybe inadvertently, I talked about healthy food and tasty food. But I think that's what happens. We tend to think of it as, 'I'm this data-driven guy, show me the facts. I like the data. I don't want the story.' Therefore, implicit in that is someone's telling you a story, is ignoring the data, is ignoring the fact, and started telling you an airy-fairy story. It's this compartmentalization, which is the problem. The minute [00:36:00] you realize that you can actually combine the two and you can use the data to tell a story. When you tell a story, that data gets communicated in a far more effective manner. I think the minute you realize that, that's when I think the magic begins to happen.
Harish Kumar: What's your favourite story about storytelling?
Prakash Iyer: What's my favourite story about storytelling? My favourite story about storytelling is perhaps how I once told a story in school. I was in a school debate. The reason I'm saying it's my favourite story is because as I'm trying to think back on my life and say, 'Where did I hit upon this thing, that storytelling can be an effective way to get your point across?'
I was in school, and we were in the inter-house debate. The topic for the debate was, the goal of education is employment. You know how school debates would be, classic. I was in the opposition. My dad, who I would thank for bringing me into this whole idea. I was talking to him about what I would say, and he hit upon an interesting thought for me to say that, it's not about yes or no, it's not about whether the goal of education is employment or not, but about using the word 'the' right at the front, which is it says, 'the' goal of education, not 'a' goal. Therefore, to say that education will only exist if we would need employment. If you don't need employment, you don't need education. That was the kind of thing. The way he explained it to me, the throwaway line was, think of it as elephants and animals. If I told you all elephants are animals, you would agree, right? All education will help you with employment. But if you told me that all that education does is get you employment, that is being stupid because that's like saying all animals [00:38:00] are elephants. I thought that was a good one.
So, I went into school the next day, and I used this elephant and animals story. I don't think anybody remembers anything else from that debate, except for that one line. And I said, ‘Wow, that worked.’ That has perhaps stayed with me. Therefore, going to work, talking to a stockist and trying to tell him to sell more of our soap. I probably found a story, which might help him to say, maybe there's a reason to do this, or talking to my own team and saying, let's go out and kill the other guy. Maybe a story helped. Perhaps stories have then stayed with me for the rest of my life, and they worked for me. That's the story that I use here.
Harish Kumar: That's a fantastic one. What is the nicest thing that a reader or somebody from the audience has said to you about a story that you told?
Prakash Iyer: What's the nicest thing? I'd probably say that, after I wrote my first book, I started getting some emails from people I didn't know. I remember getting an email from a guy in an engineering college who says, 'I'm sitting in our electronics lab, it's like 2:30 a.m. I just want to tell you, that up until now, I've been blaming my parents for sending me here, and I hate what I'm doing. I think they've messed up my life. But I just finished reading your book. I'm telling myself that come on, stop blaming them, take control of your life and do something. I think you've got me thinking about it. And I'm hoping that starting from tomorrow, my life is going to be different.' I thought that was very powerful for me, because that's what I was hoping the book would do. [00:40:00]
For me, satisfaction was that if even one person felt that something I'm saying over here can change his or her life, I would probably say, 'Wow! Job done. I really got what I wanted.' To me, that was a pretty strong feeling of saying, wow. That probably put me on the path of saying that maybe there are more people who need to hear what I have to say. Maybe there is some sense in this. This is not something that the poor kid would get to hear in his or her engineering college, indeed, in any college. Therefore, maybe this became a reason why I want to do what I want to do. I still can't remember the name of the person who wrote me that email. I'm sure I can find it. But maybe that was the kind of thing that got me started to say there's something special in what's happening out here.
Harish Kumar: Coming to the uncertified cricket junkie bit. What's your favourite cricket story?
Prakash Iyer: My favourite cricket story is something I use a lot. So I'm not going to use that. I'm going to try and find some other story to tell. Honestly, I think my favourite cricket story is the one I'm going to try and discover tonight when I watch the game. In the sense that I genuinely think that it's interesting that as a country, we are full of cricket fans, and everybody enjoys the game. I think a lot of what happens in a game in some way simulates what we have experienced in our lives, the highs and the lows, and the grabbed opportunities, the missed opportunities, teamwork in action, selfishness in view. You see a bit of all of this and for me, I'm a big cricket fan, and I obviously enjoy watching the game. But for me, it's also interesting to try and say, what's going on in people's heads? What's happening here? Is there something that we can learn from here? [00:42:00] That's to me, therefore, what I would say is working.
Since you asked me a specific question on what's my favourite cricket story, and then I'm taking the shortcut, the easy way out. Let me try and push myself and say, I'll tell you a story which I really thought was special because typically when we think of cricket stories, we tend to look at Don Bradman and Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev, and World Cup triumph for India versus Zimbabwe, the great stories of great cricketers making the impossible possible or dreams coming true.
But my favourite story is actually as a kid, I used to watch a lot of cricket in Mumbai. I had this six-month break, ICSE schools in those days, you finished in December, and then your college only started in June. And I spent those six months going to Azad Maidan and Cross Maidan, and then to Wankhede and watching cricket. That's really what my day was all about. There used to be an umpire in those days called Swaroop Kishen. Don't know if you remember, this guy, the Hardy kind of figure. As a kid, because you were watching cricket in these small grounds or even at Wankhede Stadium where they were, it was a first-class match, no crowds. Your access to these people was a little bit better. You could ask for autographs, for example. I would get autographs from everybody. I have a great collection of autographs. But my favourite autograph was actually from Swaroop Kishen, the umpire. Interestingly enough, when I went to him, he asked me, 'Why do you want my autograph?' I said, big fan of yours, which of course, what I would have said to most people. But having said that, I genuinely thought he was a good guy, an interesting guy. He signed an autograph for me. But before he signed, he wrote three words. He wrote, 'Pause and Decide'. Then signed his name on it. I said, wow, what a cool thing to do. [00:44:00]
In that entire set of cricket autographs, there isn't a single other autograph where somebody has written something other than signing the name, and half of them scribble barely legible signatures because you're signing on slips of paper for lots of people. But Swaroop Kishen took the trouble to write, 'Pause and Decide'. That taught me a few things, which is to say that do that extra bit and make a difference. So don't just sign your name, say something. That is something that stayed with me. I think the whole idea is that as an umpire, you pause and decide. That makes a huge difference to the quality of your decisions. That's what he's tried to tell me. But it also became a mantra for me because I thought I don't think too many people go out and get Swaroop Kishen's autograph, so I have learned something which not everyone knows.
For me, pause and decide became a mantra for my life. If I make a decision, if I have to say something, I remember Swaroop Kishen's words. Just pause and then take that decision. That one extra split second makes a huge difference to whatever it is that you're doing. That worked for me.
Ramanand: Maybe there is a space in the market for stories about umpires. We don't have enough of them. I'm sure there are some supremely interesting stories there. I'm quite curious to know, how do you talent spot a good story? Because you have scouts for cricketers, you have scouts for execs. But you have a knack for talent spotting good stories. What do you do? We have already talked about the fact that you have your radar out, when you watch something, you read something, but what do you do after that? You write it down somewhere, or do you make that connection to that metaphor instantly? Tell us a little bit about it. [00:46:00]
Prakash Iyer: One of the things I've learned is, and maybe that's just about also giving away the fact that I'm growing old, but the memory is a terrible thing. I struggled to remember. One thing I do now if I've read something or seen something, I quickly write down a couple of words or a keyword that will help me to remember that story. I typically use the Apple Notes function on my phone, because I have found that when I'm on a podcast, for example, I don't have access to something else, I don't want to make it too sexy and too complicated. So all I do is I just make sure I write down. Because it has the simple touch function, it allows me to figure out what I need to do about that story. That's something that I try to write down.
For me talent spotting the story really is about saying is the story interesting in itself? It's interesting for me, because it has sparked off a thought. I'm not sure where this will go at that stage. I'm not sure how this will relate. The task ahead for me will be to try and say, 'Okay, great story. But what's the point? What is it trying to tell you?' But for me, if I feel I've heard something, which is interesting, or read something, which is interesting, I would probably put it down there. Then I try to figure out what I can do with it? What do I do with this story? What is it that it can tell you? Sometimes I think that's the interesting bit. And sometimes, it can lead you to a place where you don't know what's the next step. Sometimes you're lucky because you can make a very good connection with something that's happening in the world, or something that people are talking about or struggling with. Then I say, 'Wow, there's a great connection here.' But sometimes it's not so clear, but when you read it, you know it's a good story.
The real [00:48:00] talent spotting for me is not necessarily in a story. It's often in a line. It's just one line somewhere, which you read and you say, 'That's interesting.' Then you try and say, 'Okay, what does that tell us?' And I just write down that line, because I'm hoping that that line will now spark off a story somewhere. It will give you something to try and work with. So I have lots of half-cooked stories with me in my notes, which is to say that I've written something. I think it's interesting. I don't know what to do with it right now. But it's there because I'm thinking that someday, it will become something else. And maybe there's another one here, which is interesting for me, which is I've often found that you can have a line or a story and you can say 'Yeah, but what does it mean?' It doesn't get you anywhere.
But if you sit down with it, and you tell yourself that now I need to turn this into a story. Or I need to turn this into a 600-word article that I want to write, you will discover that connections happen, you will discover that you make sense out of what is over there. So, to be honest, it's not as instinct, or intuitive as it might sound. Sometimes it's about just sitting down and saying 'Hey, I think there was an interesting line here. Now let's try and really make something out of it.' This sitting down on a seat and trying to say let me make something out of it actually gets you results, which will surprise you. They certainly surprised me.
Ramanand: In fact, what you just said reminds me a lot of what many people, especially stand-up comics have spoken about or humorists have spoken about wherein you have a line or a punch line and you build everything around it. Sometimes, you have a story in search of a punchline. I think those of us who've watched you on stage, one additional thing that you bring in is the connection with the [00:50:00] audience. So also being able to figure out what resonates with an audience, and there are different audiences that you address. Staying with that comparison with, say stand-up comics, because you're collecting material as it were, you're developing material. Except for maybe P. G. Wodehouse, no one in the history of creativity has been instinctive. Everybody has sat down and worked at it. Do you also have a small comedy club equivalent, where you try out your material? Are you trying it out at home? How do you develop it before it reaches the stage and therefore, the audience?
Prakash Iyer: Two or three things happen. The first is when it comes to written stuff. I have a very high editorial standard to clear, which is my wife. She typically, right from the time I wrote my first book, reads every little bit of what I write. I think it's an interesting one for me, because on the one hand, I'm trying to write for an audience, which might be corporate, or business-oriented, that's pretty much where I'm talking to, and the wife is everything, but that. She does not look at it from that perspective. But she does look at it and say, 'Hey, does this make sense to me? Is it simple enough? Do I find a word I don't understand?’ Those are good filters for me, because the intent for me is not to try and construct complicated sentences, which reveal what a great command I have over the language, or to use words that I like and I want to tell you that I know what it means.
But chances are, not you guys, but someone else may not know what it means. That's not the intent. Is it simple enough? I think, certainly the wife is... that's a good way that I do it. Even if I was to look at stories and how they might work for me, [00:52:00] one of the advantages of speaking to an audience is, maybe not so much right now, but certainly to a live audience, is you can tell what's working and what's not. Therefore, you have some sense of stories that, so if I've used a story, I can tell, did this fly or did it not work so well. That's a good test I have. I have also learned something else, Ramanand, which is that, when I wrote the first book, it is interesting that people would come back and very often they would tell me, not that they liked the book, but that they gave the book to their daughter or their son. So, I realized that if you're a very successful oldish kind of person, you want to say, I know this, but I want to give it to somebody else, which is all right, by me, because it's still a reminder for some people, but for a lot of people, it's the first time that they might figure it out.
The interesting bit was that when someone came in and told me, I liked a particular story in the book, I could tell what's happening in their lives. Typically, when you told me that you liked a certain story, it was because that story resonated with something that's happening in your life. It had nothing to do with how good the standalone story was. It was to do with how you consumed it. To me, that was a great lesson. For me, the equivalent of the stand-up comedy club kind of thing, it's not to say, is this story by itself a great one. I would have spent time talking to the client organization to understand what's happening over there. What are some of the challenges, what are some of the contexts? And now, can I find a story which is relevant to that context, or can I say it in a manner, which makes it feel like, ‘Man, this guy has understood our business. [00:54:00] What he said was exactly what we're going through.’ That's what makes the story work.
So, it's not the story in isolation, but the ability to relate it to what's happening in the organization, I found that is key. To go back to the question about what’s the nicest thing somebody has told me about a story. Really, what works for me is when someone comes back, and I get feedback to say that, ‘Oh, it was so relevant to what we are going through or we could relate to it and we felt that you understood what we're going through.’ That's the kind of feedback which makes me feel ‘Yup, I think this is worth it.’
Harish Kumar: Since you mentioned that, I had this question, I think Ramanand also had this question. When we are giving a talk, when a story doesn't fly, how do you deal with that? How do you understand and what do you do next?
Prakash Iyer: Unlike comedy, where there is a very 0-1 kind of thing, in this case, it doesn't have to be that way. There are some stories, if you're talking to, let's say, a bunch of 500 salespeople in an organization, and you tell them a story where your salesman is the hero, you will naturally get an applause from those 500 guys. Because they're saying, finally, somebody is fighting my war or has understood, or you tell the sales guys a story where you make the finance guy the villain, or the factory guy, the villain or best of all, HR, everybody's favourite enemy. That will always fly. But you can't be doing only that. You're sometimes also saying that I've got a story to tell you, because I think there's a message here, which is important. And I want you to see it, and it fits in with my narrative. And I want to tell you this.
Unlike comedy, where you can have this problem of a joke that didn't work [00:56:00] or a joke that bombed. I don't think that happens too much. To me, honestly, the way this can work is, the worst thing that can happen to me is if I don't connect with the audience. So, it's not about a story. It's more about if I felt at the end of it, that I didn't connect, that to me would be a failure. That would make me introspect to say, so what went wrong? Why did I not connect? Also, something else I've learned, which is to say that if you're talking to a large audience, if you've got 700 people in the audience, 1000 people in the audience, watch out. There are some people who you'll very quickly see listening to you, they'll want to look into your eyes, they're shaking their heads, they're laughing. Now, start zeroing in on them. Don't worry about that one chap in the corner who's yawning, even before you started, because that has nothing to do with you. It's probably the fact that he's had a late night, or he's got his own problems, and it happens. Your success is not linked to converting that one chap, although you'd like it.
I used to worry if I found someone yawning, for example, if I'm speaking, I'd worry about it. But you quickly figure out, don't, let that happen. Don't let that impact the rest of what you're doing. If you can find enough eyes, and faces in the audience, which are connecting, which are responding, then you generally get a sense of saying, 'Okay, I think it's working,' and go for it. Sometimes, you can also say it's not working. I might then stop and probably try and change track, or try and say, maybe flip it back to them and say, let me try and understand what is happening. So, try and switch gears, or switch tracks and see if that can work. Maybe that's something I would have done.
Harish Kumar: We touched upon this earlier, you said a lot of people [00:58:00] are now doing more storytelling in the corporate world. But we also see people think that they are not good storytellers. Any tips for such people, how to get better at this?
Prakash Iyer: Just look at other people telling stories, try and listen to other people, and practice it. I think what happens to us is that we think storytelling is simple. It's very easy, I can just do it myself, or I can tell them a story. That's not a good way to do it. If you're, let's say, getting started on the storytelling journey, or if you're in your early days, it's not a bad idea to write it down. Having written it down, it's not a bad idea to take your phone out and say it, record it and play it back. I have found that there are a couple of things that you can do. One is to try and give yourself a tight timeline. Don't imagine and I keep saying, you have no more than 60 seconds to tell a story. So, try and tell your story in 60 seconds.
One of the bigger challenges with effective storytelling is we tend to ramble. Someone has thought that storytelling is epic telling. So, we start thinking, and we feel that the more we tell, the more we will impress the other person with how much we know. That becomes a problem. This is not about trying to impress someone with how much you know, it's not about too much detail. It's about just trying to say what's relevant. You can get better by practicing, maybe even rehearsing it by making sure you're sticking to it. I use the Goldilocks rule sometimes to say, not too hot, not too cold, not too big, not too small.
Therefore, not too much detail, because that can become boring and not so little that people don't even know what you're trying to talk [01:00:00] about, that's something else that can help. Finally, perhaps remember, there's a reason why you're telling the story. The reason is not to show people how much you know, it's not to talk about what a great job you did, there's a message. I think that's a good way to start thinking of your story, which is to say, 'How do I land that message in the best way possible?' That can help us to get it right.
Harish Kumar: Before we go to the next section, our third question. What connects the book, The Zoya Factor to the Param Vir Chakra Awards in 1999?
Prakash Iyer: Yeh Dil Maange More.
Harish Kumar: Perfect. You got all three of your questions right. Anuja Chauhan...
Prakash Iyer: Anuja Chauhan, Pepsi, Yeh Dil Maange More.
Harish Kumar: Vikram Batra said that when he was asked. Perfect, that brings us to the corporate side of your life. We thought, this is probably around the time when you joined Pepsi. We've heard about the stories from your stint at Pepsi. How was that stint? Because when you narrate stories from that time, it seems like a very fond memory. Tell us more about that.
Prakash Iyer: You guys have heard me speak about Pepsi, about my time there. I think it was an incredible experience. It was an incredible organization. I've had the privilege of working for another very large, successful business, which was Unilever. I think the difference was PepsiCo didn't have the benefit of being in this country for that long, and having had a time where we've had some of the best managers, [01:02:00] build traditions, so there's a lot going for Unilever. But with Pepsi, you just come in. You're an upstart, you're up against the world's largest brand. But I think we were an amazing team. They were such a fantastic bunch of people who came together, and we are all very good friends now. A lot of those guys at Pepsi have gone on to do fantastic work even outside.
I think the big difference for me was the sense of passion, about Pepsi, which was not something that you otherwise saw in business. This whole idea of saying, we are out to win a war, and maybe it's partly due to the industry, the way it was, which is that you were just two players. Every time someone went out and had a soft drink, if they didn't buy yours, damn, they went and bought your competitor. I think that lent itself to a lot of fun and games, about the way we might have been.
But again, I'm saying this, I think we had some amazing people. I had a fantastic boss, someone who I had worked with earlier at Hindustan Lever and who, in some ways, has been a mentor in my life. I guess there's a lot that I can talk about what he did. There was something magical about Pepsi, and the passion that it brought in and the kind of people who came together to make it happen. There are stories to be told from there, it was the closest I've come to having gone to the war front, let's say so, maybe that's not the way to look at it.
Harish Kumar: Also the time, when you were actually working with Pepsi, 1998 to 2004, I think? It was also the right time for you to get that sense of high, even in Pepsi's journey in India?
Prakash Iyer: I think so. If you look at what's happening in more recent times, and Pepsi, it's a changed world. [01:04:00] But those were heady days. Here we were challenging for market leadership. Taking on the biggest brand there was. Everything from nothing official about it to Yeh Dil Maange More. Imagine being in Chennai and telling people that you're selling Pepsi, but Yeh Dil Maange More, and your shopkeeper is saying, why are you selling buttermilk over here, etc. But those were heady days. Great fun.
You're right, it was also a time in our lives, perhaps a time in our lives, it was a time in the organization. It was also about a time in the life of a nation. It was a decade after liberalisation had kicked in, this whole idea of a restless India of wanting to do more, of getting excited. It was incredible because if you were on a flight, and you've got conversations started with the guy sitting next to you and if the guy figured you were working for Pepsi, suddenly he had 20 things to tell you about your advertising, about taste, about how I can tell the difference between Pepsi and that other brand, whatever it was. It was fun, great fun.
Harish Kumar: We've noticed how you've still not mentioned the other brand…
Prakash Iyer: I thought you said at the beginning, no four-letter words. Fun and games! I’ve got friends who work for that organisation too. So, no hard feelings.
Harish Kumar: Prakash, you've had these different careers, business leader, keynote speaker, and people have had just one of these careers as the only thing that they have done. As an author, stint with IPL. Are these very distinct careers, distinct chapters, [01:06:00] how much of this was deliberate? Was it just 'there's a great opportunity, let me grab it'?
Prakash Iyer: I don't think these are necessarily very disparate careers or choices. I think there's a common thread to all of this. I don't think any of this would have happened if I hadn't had a chance to go and work with the teams that I did and with the organization that I did. I learned a fair bit about what it takes to succeed? I think I learned a lot from leaders, from teams, from ordinary folks about what does it take to get it right? I also saw first-hand that, beyond a point, it's not just about how smart you are. Intellect is good. Having a high IQ helps. But I think there's more. You've got to have this ability to learn perhaps. It's not about how much you know, it's about how much you're willing to learn that will make a difference.
It's not about how much you know, it's about how much are you able to leverage from a collective standpoint? So can you learn? Can you leverage the learnings of other people? Can you leverage the strengths of other people? For me, that became a fun part of my life. If I've enjoyed my work, it's to do with the fact that, I'm hoping that there was that sales guy in Siliguri, who will say that, you said something to me, or you taught me something, and that made a difference. I've become a better person. Hopefully, a successful guy in whatever he's doing now in his life, thanks to something I might have done. To me, this ability to impact other people at work, or to help other people to just get a bit better than they might have otherwise been, that's been a big part of what I've done in my life. That's what's given me my highs.
I guess, a lot of the writing and the speaking has really followed from there to say, [01:08:00] one way to do that was to have had the chance or the privilege to work with an accountant in a factory in Madurai, and then tell him this is how it could be done, or to that sales guy in Siliguri or somewhere else, and the other is to say, 'Hey, maybe I can take all those lessons and put them and share them in a different way.' And that's what the book might have been, or that's what my speaking might now do, where I'm trying to say, 'Hey, I've learned a few things about what it was.' And this is not about saying, 'I have figured it out and I'll tell you what to do.' That's not the intent. Intent is to say, 'You know what? I've seen this work, try it, maybe this will get you to think about it differently.' And very often, a lot of those lessons could be around saying, 'You know what, I think I got it wrong. But in getting it wrong, I learned something and here's what I learned, and maybe now this can help you to get it right.' That's really been the way it's gone for me.
To be fair, the speaking and the writing have really come from there. I guess cricket also came from there, in the sense that here I was, a big fan of cricket and certainly wanting to see what I would do with cricket and business and therefore a chance to go and work for an IPL team was like a dream come true. Couldn't have asked for more. It happened because I didn't have a day job to worry about, in the sense of saying, I couldn't have done it otherwise. So, it worked beautifully for me.
Harish Kumar: Over these last few decades, how have you seen leadership and management change over the years in India?
Prakash Iyer: I've seen two or three big changes. One of them would be, we were very hierarchical I think in our early days, very senior/junior. I must tell you that when I started my career, I still remember my first office Hindustan Lever, [01:10:00] Madras branch. We had two toilets. We had one for managers, and we had one for regular folks. We didn't think it was a wrong thing. I don't think anyone thought it was a wrong thing at that stage. But it just tells you how we've come a long way since then. I think this whole thing about respect for authority because it's the boss, I think that was a big difference.
For me, the difference was stark, because my boss at PepsiCo was also my boss at Hindustan Lever. But in Hindustan Lever, he was always 'sir', nothing but 'sir'. In Pepsi, he wasn't Mr Sinha, he was Suman, which is his pet name. I think that gives you a sense of how this change happened and how the distance perhaps between leaders and teams, between leaders and subordinates, I think just vanished. To me, that is a big change that's happened. I think the second one was that very often, in early life, we were all trying to optimize rather than maximize. We always thought that given these constraints, what's the best possible solution?
Increasingly, in more recent times, and certainly with younger folks, I don't think constraints are easily understood. There is a greater willingness to look at saying, 'Come on, what can happen? Let's aim for it. Let's go for it. Let's think.' Why should we go 20%? Why can't we double it? Why can't we triple it? That thinking has changed the way leaders might look at resources, the way leaders might look at what's possible. It's also made us realize that failure is not bad. Early in our life, a leadership mistake was almost seen as fatal to your career or, [01:12:00] you can't get away with it.
Very often, in a large organization, like Hindustan Lever, you would figure that there was this chap who had got transferred to some side business over there, or didn't have the big role. Why? Because, then you'd link it back to something that he did, which didn't quite work out. I don't think that happens anymore. Because after that mistake, that guy probably says, if it doesn't work here, I'm going to go somewhere else and find a way to get it right. There are opportunities, but even organizations are realizing that it's not a bad thing to have made a mistake. I think the whole idea of mistakes, of failure, I think is seen in a very different light now than it might have been earlier.
I also think that what's happening now with this whole millennial mindset, or aggression, and this 'I want it, and I want it now,' that's changed the way we look at leaders. Earlier, it was always felt that you had to be a certain age before something happened. This was also ingrained. In early organizations, you could tell which grade the manager was by checking if he has a carpet in the room? Does he have a painting on the wall? Which car does he drive? All clues to where you were. It has changed now. That kid is saying, ‘I want to be CEO before I'm 30.’ And I think that has been a terrific driver of progress, where sometimes older people like us can start thinking that I wish the guy would temper it down a little bit, but I don't think we should.
It’s a terrific thing that there is a certain restlessness, there is tremendous self-belief. There's this, 'I have the world to conquer' kind of attitude here, which is very good. It will help us all get it right. I just think that maybe the only thing I'd want to be careful [01:14:00] about is greed. If that can be reined in a little bit and if old fashioned values, some of which I think were good then, are good now and will remain good for the future. If that can be kept in check, we've got good things happening.
Harish Kumar: That brings me to the next question that I had, Prakash. We've seen you give these talks to people, young graduate engineers, 20-odd, 25-year-olds. It's a fact that you're probably talking about an age gap of 30 to 35 years between you and your audience. It's also a fact that you are probably able to connect with them so well. How do you marry these two? How do you make sure that you are relevant? How do you make sure you're connecting with these people? Is there some deliberate thought that goes into it?
Prakash Iyer: Maybe again, this is something that you learn early in your life, and maybe it's thanks to all the Lever kind of training, which is, everything starts with the consumer. So don't start getting excited about the fact that you've got great technology or what a fantastic piece of soap you've built. You have to worry about whether the consumer will buy it? Is the consumer going to enjoy using it? Is this going to solve a consumer problem? That thinking helps you to keep thinking constantly about the other guy, rather than about yourself. This is not about dazzling them with what I know, what I do know. It's about saying, 'Hey, how can I make sure that you find it interesting? How can I make sure that you get what I'm trying to say?' It's not about saying, 'I have this great theory, I'm not sure you'll understand it, because you guys are clearly not [01:16:00] intellectually there.' That's not the way I'm looking. I'm looking at saying, 'Hang on, how can I ensure that what I'm saying is easily understood.’ It makes you go, ‘Wow, why didn't I think of it?’ That's the response I want from the other end, and therefore, maybe you try and get it right.
It's also perhaps to be honest, a little bit of, like I said, I started by talking about being in school and being in a school debate. Even as a school kid, I used to do a fair bit of speaking. Whether it was elocution, and debate, school, college, did a bit of that. I'm saying this in all modesty, but I want to also make the point that you realize that there are some things that are your strengths, that you are good at, and you try to leverage those strengths. If you do that, you'll probably find you're getting closer to your best chance of being successful, or your best chance of finding happiness. For me, that's been the best part of the life that I've lived. I've spent a lot of time doing what I've done, I've had great fun working in teams, having great fun, fighting the cola wars, trying to sell some soap, cleaning babies' bottoms, done all of that.
But, I do realize that something that I can do reasonably well is to be able to tell a story or to be out there speaking to an audience. Therefore, you will learn a few things there. One of them would be to say, don't take yourself too seriously. If you have to make fun of someone, start with yourself, that's a good place to begin. Maybe there are some things that help you to connect and to get that right.
I also feel that there are a couple of other things. One, I don't take myself for granted. So, before every speaking session, I've got those little butterflies in my stomach, as it were. I'm not sure how this one is going to go. I'm not sure, I'm telling myself, I hope I get this right. Therefore, I'm still trying to tune in, trying to get it right [01:18:00] with the audience. That little nervousness is good. Because I don't go out there saying, come on, I've done bigger audiences than this or I have spoken to someone bigger, none of that. I'm saying, 'Gosh, man, I can't go wrong on this one, I must get this one, right.' That creates just the right amount of tension. I'm not saying that I get nervous to the point that I'm going to get it wrong. Because I know I'm good at it. But yet, I'm nervous because I want to make sure I make this as good as I can do it. That helps to get it right.
Ramanand: I just wanted to also ask Prakash, is it also true that a lot of the themes that you sometimes touch upon are eternally relevant? People are always looking for a little bit of resonance with someone who understands their problems. Motivation is always a recurring theme. Organizations, even if they've changed, there are some things that stay eternal. Does that also explain the relevance, in the sense that it is timeless? You could make this connection with people a couple of decades, several decades down the line as well.
Prakash Iyer: I think you're right, Ramanand, to a certain extent. There are two or three things to it. One is of course, that what I talk about is in some senses, eternal is relevant because I'm talking about things that are central to our lives. We all want to do better. We want to grow; we want to get it right. We want to be working better in teams. Most of us believe we're actually capable of more than what we've got. There are some common themes here. [01:20:00] But I think there are two or three things that work that are important to get right. Which is to say that I don't think if you start thinking of this as an eternal truth, and then you take it to another level and make it seem like that's how it is, I'm not sure people see that as being relevant.
The important bit is to take something like that and make it simple and make it come alive in your day to day life. Giving it a positive spin. Hope is a very powerful thing to work with, and therefore giving people hope. Being an underdog and saying, the future belongs to the underdog. Therefore, it's for you and me, and making it simple, making it relevant. I think that works. What I try and do is to link it back to my own world, to your world, to our world and say, 'Hey, how does this actually play out on a day to day basis?' This is not, therefore, to suggest to them that I have been there, done that, and I will only tell you about all the great stuff that I've done, that's not the intent. But even if I'm telling you a story about something else, or someone else, I love that Don Bradman story, turn the batting order upside down, I'm sure if I can make that relevant to an organization, relevant to the challenge that the leader is facing, and almost make it look like 'Oh, my goodness, that is such a fantastic analogy for what's happening in my business.' That's when the magic begins to happen.
So yes, the themes are in some senses, timeless. But I think fitting it into a context, creating relevance, resonating [01:22:00] with where the person is, I think that's a good way to make sure that it works.
Harish Kumar: A couple of questions on one of the books that you've written, Prakash. You've written about entrepreneurs, stories of entrepreneurs and origins of big companies in India. Is there anything different about these people? Is there something different about the tribe of entrepreneurs?
Prakash Iyer: There are a couple of things that I have figured were different. The first one, perhaps, is nothing to lose. I'm saying this as someone who's spent several years in the corporate world. I think we tend to look at the downside too much. Entrepreneurs naturally have the ability to look at the upside, and what's the downside? I have nothing to lose. I have nothing anyway. So what's the problem? Let me go for it. Therefore, a good trick to try and be more entrepreneurial is to forget about this downside. We are all terribly worried about the downside of things. The second one is again a corporate mindset. I'm trying to contrast, a typically corporate mindset with a more entrepreneurial mindset, as I might have figured from the people I spoke with.
I think in the corporate world, Plan B, it's this big thing. You are constantly looking at what if this fails? What's option two? What's Plan B. What that does for many of us is that at the first hint of trouble, at the first hint of pressure, we junk Plan A and quickly move to plan B. And being good corporate business school types, even as we move to plan B, [01:24:00] we already have our next version of what's Plan B or Plan C for this one. I think entrepreneurs don't do that. They think as a plan A and there's death. That makes you stick to an idea a lot more. It creates much greater resilience. It creates a greater sense of belief.
We all look at failed businesses and wonder what was he thinking? But I think that's really what happens. They are so committed to an idea or to a business plan that it comes at a price and there are therefore some situations where they fail. But a lot of the spectacular successes in business and enterprise are about people who believed in an idea long after everyone else had given up and said this is not going to work. I think that's something else that actually works for them. I also feel that there is a purpose and for many of these guys, I think there is almost a desire to then change the world or to do something spectacular. I don't think people turn entrepreneurs by saying that, ‘I think this will pay my bills and I can live happier with this, and life will be alright. My kids will go to a good school.’ You think this is going to change the world. There's going to be something big that's going to happen over here. That's something else that we don't always think about in the same way, if we are not entrepreneurial.
Harish Kumar: And I think another take to this is, like you said, they're probably living in a distorted reality, about their idea, about themselves. Is there also the role of luck that plays out, especially when we look at the successes. The successes are the ones who have survived. So there's always a survivorship bias. [01:26:00] How much do people actually give importance or acknowledge the role of luck? Is there a role of luck? If yes, do you think people actually acknowledge that?
Prakash Iyer: It's probably true that there is always an element of luck in what happens. We don't always see it; we don't always acknowledge it. But if you ask me the question in the context of entrepreneurs, I think what makes the difference is that they take luck out of the equation. Because the minute you bring luck in, you tend to start blaming failure on bad luck. Then you start thinking that is the problem. Therefore, maybe the solution is to change the name of the company and add another ‘A’ in the middle or something like that, which is not the way a good entrepreneur would look at it.
I think there is definitely a role that luck plays. But entrepreneurs believe they will make their own luck, that they will work so hard, they will get it so right, they will overcome every obstacle, and they will create their luck. That's probably the mindset that they go at it with. That's the other one, I don't think they tend to say that it was bad luck that it didn't work. They will typically say that it was timing, or I ran out of money or my partner got it wrong. I kept telling him to do it differently. That's the kind of thing that might happen, rather than to say I was unlucky. Don't hear that too often, at least I didn't.
Harish Kumar: On that note, taking it to what's happening these days in terms of the gig economy is this big thing these days. But when you look at gig economy and on what you're doing, even [01:28:00] what you are doing today in terms of taking up speaking engagements, are like taking up these speaking gigs. How has it been for you personally, in terms of dealing with this change? You are now as much of a gig economy worker as anyone else? How has it been for you?
Prakash Iyer: It's been great fun. Before the gig economy, or the gig worker became a thing, I guess I'd moved there. It's a terrific way to live, it's probably the future of work, no question about it, where else can you go and speak to two competitors in an industry and get to know what both of them are trying to do and help both of them to get it right. Where else would this happen? It also gives you wider exposure. I must tell you this, when I first moved out of the corporate world, if you'd asked me what's the one thing I miss, it would have been the interaction on a day to day basis with my team's. Chance to work with some fantastic people, bright people in the office, you meet them every day, you get challenged, that is a high in itself.
But what happens now is you get to meet a wider assortment of people, you get to meet people from different industries, different businesses. You get a chance to say 'Oh, my goodness, I would have never thought that's what happens in this business.' So you get an insight into different businesses, into what other people are doing, the challenges they're facing, the way they are overcoming it. It also gives you a chance to do what you really enjoy doing. Without having to say that this comes with the territory and therefore, I still have to do a lot of other things that I don't necessarily enjoy doing. What I've managed to do in the last six-seven years of doing my own thing, is really have the time of my life. I had great fun. [01:30:00] I have great fun doing what I do, I enjoy it. I love the fact that I managed to reach that engineer in college who was sitting in the lab that day, and who's now come to work. And he says, 'I think you made a difference.' I enjoy that fact. And I certainly think that the gig economy is a good way to look at your own future. Because what it does is it tells you, 'Hey, you're on your own, you're responsible for what's happening, you need to keep getting better.'
Something that's happened in the last six to eight months is this whole idea of getting better. I've had to look at myself and say, what can I do now that I'm going to do a lot more work, virtually? How do I get it right? How do I get to be smarter with tech tools? What else can change? You talked about stand-up comedy earlier, I've tried to say, 'Hey, can I learn stand-up?' Because maybe I won't have a performance as a stand-up comic, but maybe I'll learn a few tricks there, which can help me to get it right in the work that I do. You start taking ownership for your own development, for your learning, for your opportunities, and you're not waiting for someone else to do it for you. But you also realize that you're not alone.
I think the mistake you can make, even in a gig economy, the fact is you're doing a lot of work on your own. But there is support, there is a network out there waiting to help you. You just need to learn to tap into it and to leverage it. That's really how I've looked at it.
Harish Kumar: This spirit of taking charge of your life, taking charge of your career, this is something which people tend to not do, or at least majority of the people in corporate jobs tend to not do. They're like, the company is going to take care of me, the organization is going to take care of my learning. Is there a lesson for people to do more of, learn from the gig workers? [01:32:00]
Prakash Iyer: I think there is. I've tried to say this even earlier when I was in the corporate world. It used to amuse me no end that you'd have a colleague who thinks nothing of spending Rs. 7-, 10-, 15-thousand on a new pair of sunglasses, or Rs. 20,000 for a new phone, but wouldn't ever think of spending Rs. 5000 on a training program on his or her own, because that's what the company's got to do for me. That mindset of 'training me is the company's responsibility,' I'm hoping that it has changed in the last decade. But I don't think it's changed enough. I don't think it changed quickly enough. I think we need all of us to recognize that, 'I am nobody else's concern. I'm my own responsibility. I'm my concern.’
I've tried to say this in another way, which is to say that, I wish people would look at their lives and themselves, the way they look at their businesses. We don't do enough of that. We tend to do everything right for our businesses. If you have a territory, and you need to get stock, you will move heaven and earth to make it happen. You will do all kinds of things. But when it comes to yourself, you don't necessarily show the same ownership. I'm saying this in the context of some very good professionals who get their work-bit right, but who get it horribly wrong, when it comes to managing themselves.
Learning to manage yourself, taking responsibility for your growth, recognizing that your success in the future is not a function of how good you are today, but about how can you get better with time? That's a key point of difference. We need to all recognize it and say this, and since we're talking virtually today, I must tell you this that I was talking to another group [01:34:00] of people, even today when you're doing a call with some people, it amuses me no end, that you see some fairly senior people who will not get a few things right. Which is to say, 'Oh my goodness, how do I share this screen? What should I do? Can you help me? Oh, I think I'm not visible? Can you hear me?' I'm just saying simple things! Come on. You cannot afford to be doing this. It doesn't matter what role you are in. It doesn't matter who you are. I talked about getting a better Wi-Fi connection. You see people talking and saying ‘Sorry, I'm going to switch off my video now because of a bandwidth problem.’ I'm sorry, not acceptable. It's like saying that sorry I'm not going to wear shoes today because they're not comfortable. I'm going to come to this meeting in bathroom slippers because they're very comfortable. You don't do that. Wi-Fi or internet is today's shoe, because those sexy leather shoes that you bought, you're not going to wear them for a long time now. But Wi-Fi is something you're going to use.
So, how do we just get our thinking to change and to say, ‘I need to get better at whatever it is that I'm doing.’ I think that's true for all of us. For everything that people are doing. The world is going digital. You guys have taught a lot of us to do this, which is to say that there is so much content available out there. Go consume it. There's a free book you can read every day. I love the way you guys got us into all of this. You're getting lots of people in the corporate world to discover the power of reading. I tell every guy I meet now to say, get that Blinkist app on your phone. There's a free book every day, it doesn't cost you anything. Even if you don't read the book every day, once a week, if you read a book, that's 50 books in a year. That's a hell of a lot.
How do we get people to realize that now, I can't be using an excuse that I don't have the time to read? Or I can't do it. Whether it's reading, [01:36:00] or it's anything else that is happening in our world, I think we need to take ownership for our learning, for our development. And we need to take action. We need to move to make it happen. I certainly think it's a big thing that can happen, that can change our lives, everyone's lives.
Harish Kumar: One thing that I've heard some people say is, especially on things like learning and curiosity, reading, is that they don't see an immediate return for it. It's impossible to make that connection between what you've read today and tomorrow, somebody is going to ask about this in a meeting, that's not going to happen. What do you say to people like this? Why you still should be more curious and build these habits? What is your answer to that question?
Prakash Iyer: Eating healthy today also won't show up tomorrow. Doing 30 push-ups today also won't show up tomorrow. I would therefore recommend, and there's enough literature now on habits and whether it's James Clear, and his phenomenally interesting book called Atomic Habits, or it's this whole idea of tiny habits and how to change, Fogg and his theories. There is a body of work out there on habits. There are people who've just got so much better at even presenting it. This whole idea of consistency, as being the differentiator, rather than saying did I do a big thing today? Just being consistent with it, how can it make a difference? Whether it's just going back to that old story of the king, and that grain of rice on a chessboard, whatever, take your favourite story. But I think the power of consistency is such a big idea that I think we all need to try and get it right.
I'm thinking that people are figuring it out in their own way. I don't know if it's just a bias in my head and with the people I'm seeing, or it's just that I'm looking for it and saying, [01:38:00] I hope everybody's getting on to it. But I think there is now a realization and maybe it's also to do with saying that when you see something go wrong, and you realize that hang on, that heart attack didn't happen one fine day. It's happened because of 20 years of claiming, I only sleep four hours a day or what a stress, or taking pride in a lifestyle which is not good for you. If you look at young people saying I want to get fit, and I want to stay fit. Now, whatever the motivation for it, I think it's a good way because they realize that if you take care of your body, and you take care of it regularly, you'll see the results. If you don't, you'll also see the results the other way.
Maybe discovering that there is no magic bullet, that it's a matter of just sticking with something, that can make a difference to your life. So I'm hoping that this bit about saying that one book, will it make a difference in my life? For whatever it's worth, something I've used in another context is to say that, every book you read, leave one page below your feet. That one sheet of paper makes no difference, but over time, it just makes you stand a little taller. Remember, the good things in life are always just out of reach. Every book you read is actually taking you closer to those things, which today might look out of reach. Maybe that's a good way to look at this whole idea of saying what does reading do for me?
Harish Kumar: I think that's a fantastic insight. We have had a great conversation, but we will end this with our last section. It is going to be a short one, where we are going to talk about future relevance. We will give you some terms or concepts, and we want you to comment upon what you think is the future relevance of. [01:40:00] So, the first one is what do you think is going to be the future relevance of cricket?
Prakash Iyer: Huge impact on economy, on commerce for sport. I think it'll also bring in a whole new industry, which is around how do we build out the cricket ecosystem? From a jobs perspective, from a careers perspective, young people playing cricket, young people managing cricketers, people being in allied areas, I think it's just going to grow huge.
Harish Kumar: What about mid-level managers?
Prakash Iyer: I think the word level itself will go away. There'll be nothing like mid-level or senior level or junior level. I think levels will go away. It will be about managers; it will be about saying do you do your job well? Do you learn to work with other people? Levels won't matter. Therefore, you should never see yourself as junior or senior, you should see yourself as good or bad, and saying how can I get better? That's the way managers should be.
Harish Kumar: What about coaches?
Prakash Iyer: Biased answer, I think the relevance of coaches or the need for coaches will only keep climbing. It'll get a big impetus as you start getting more and more coaches who understand coaching. And not great cricketers equivalent to great corporate people who say now that I have been a great cricketer, let me be a coach. Discovering that some of the finest coaches may have... John Buchanan might have never played for Australia. Or indeed, several cricketers who've become good coaches weren't necessarily the best cricketers. And I think that's going to come out in the corporate world too. Indeed, in life, where coaching is about helping someone else to get it right, because I've figured what it takes to get it right, as opposed to saying, I've done it myself. So I think coaches will continue [01:42:00] to be relevant, and will be more relevant in the future.
I also think that in the past, there might have been a certain reluctance to admit to saying I have a coach. I think that will switch now to saying almost like a badge of honour to say I have a coach. That will drive it too.
Harish Kumar: What about live events like conferences?
Prakash Iyer: An answer that's going to be very heavily influenced by what we've seen in the last eight months. I'd certainly say that in the short term, you will probably start seeing a bit of a challenge at live conferences, live events, simply because of two things. One is the risk associated with bringing large numbers of people together. Also, the risk associated with getting the entire team from an organization together. It's the equivalent of making sure, I'm sure after that unfortunate tragedy, I guess, for many years, Manchester United would never have flown the entire team in a single aircraft. You wouldn't want to do that knowingly.
But I do think that in the longer term, people need this feeling of associating, of being with other people, of having those conversations outside of that conference, as you stand together and have a drink. I think this whole ability to make an impact or get a message across by sheer grandeur, the scale of a large event, of being there, seeing the lights go off. I think there's some magic in that. I'm guessing that when it becomes safe, it will come back. What might not come back is too many of these meetings that used to happen, where people would travel to cities, just to have a meeting for a day. I think that will come down a lot because you will discover that there's a more efficient way to do it.
Harish Kumar: Finally, what do you think is the [01:44:00] future relevance of stories or storytelling?
Prakash Iyer: Ramanand just used that word, eternal, timeless, and all of that. I think from a future relevance perspective, it will grow. Because what will happen is that people will discover that there is so much data available, there is so much information available, that the key to success is not in having more data or having more information, but about being able to interpret it in an intelligent way in a manner which can be understood by other people. Stories can be a good way to make that connection. It's also got to be about discovering that there is a right side to our brain and a left side, and they don't have to be two different compartments. How can we combine the two and look at life as a single brain? Stories are a good way to connect the two. So I think it will only grow in relevancy.
Harish Kumar: Thanks. This was fantastic. On that note, we bring this chat to an end. It was really great talking to you, listening in, though we have had many of these conversations in the past. It was good fun for us to pick your brains on some of these questions. Thanks a lot.
Prakash Iyer: Thanks so much for having me here. I've enjoyed talking to you both. And as always, like I said, I felt I was talking to friends. It's also interesting because your questions made me think and I'm not sure, I necessarily think of it that way. But I love the way you made me think about some of the stuff that I might be doing. It's not always that we do that. So, thank you very much for that opportunity.
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