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Shape the Future of Work

Shape the Future of Work

By SemcoStyle Institute

Each episode, we learn from experts who have shaped the future of work to make it awesome. They share how they solved business problems and achieved results. We explore how they tapped human potential in a way that made people find purpose, achieve mastery and gain autonomy.
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How Leadership, Talent and Culture are the New Drivers of Growth!

Shape the Future of WorkNov 27, 2020

00:00
26:57
Value of culture from the lens of an investor - Importance of a person behind the paper

Value of culture from the lens of an investor - Importance of a person behind the paper

Ramakrishna KV (Ramki) is an NIT Warangal and IIM Bangalore alumnus with more than 3 decades of industry experience. Barring a short stint with Tata Motors early in his career, he has been primarily in Venture Capital and Private Equity with organizations such as ICICI, Carlyle, and Kotak. He is currently an advisor to Kotak PE and has served as the CEO of Kotak PE as well.

In this Podcast, Ramki shares with us his perspectives on the people's side of the business that influence his decision making and his experiences as an investor and key stakeholder in his quest for understanding the 'person behind the paper' as he calls it. Ramki believes in a balance of understanding the qualitative (people, organization, culture) aspects as much as quantitative (product, growth, market) when making investment choices. In this podcast, he touches upon insights on why it is important to understand how leaders and entrepreneurs treat their people, how they demonstrate trust and confidence in their everyday conversations and understand/preserve the culture of an organization.

He also shares perspectives on how an investor looks at investments vs. M&A situations and understanding cultural nuances that can impact investment decisions, how senior lateral hires can integrate and build teams within a new organization, how expectations need to be matched when a professional joins an entrepreneurial venture, promoter and professional alignment during growth (alignment of shared interest or finding common ground), the decision process for onboarding a leader, how allowing new senior hires who bring their teams can be risky and how culture shifts and dilution can be managed through an open dialogue. He also speaks about interesting inflection points for an entrepreneur with investors such as Growth vs Dilution of stake and how with an alignment of interest it can be achieved and about entrepreneurs willing to build an organization both in terms of depth and breadth of management.

Jun 02, 202133:09
Processes drive high performance if they are designed to drive efficiency and not to bring controls.

Processes drive high performance if they are designed to drive efficiency and not to bring controls.

Neeti Sharma is the President and Co-Founder of TeamLease Edtech Limited which is a leading Online Learning Solutions Company that enables Universities to launch and manage their online programs and provide solutions for enabling CSR led social impact training projects. She is also the SVP and Co-Founder at Teamlease and is responsible  for skilling and upskilling programs with state and central governments as well as offering vocational programs through Teamlease Vocational Skills University.

She has worked extensively  for more than 3 decades in the Education, Employability and Employment space and is the rare combination of a skilled business leader, education industry thought leader and entrepreneur.

In this Podcast, she shares with us on how organizations can build trust with first time employees through a range of practices ranging from open and fair communication, continuous workforce development, employee engagement based on a foundation of values - in a nutshell 'Trust begets Trust;. She also speaks about Alternative controls which in her experience is about allowing employees and customers access transparently to information that they require as part of their stakeholder roles. She says - Centralized Processes and Decentralized Relationships with customers & employees is easy to state but is the practical way to balance expectations.

May 04, 202131:51
Its not just about the mind, but also the heart!

Its not just about the mind, but also the heart!

R. Gopalakrishnan or Gopal as he is fondly called, has been a professional manager from 1967. He has served as Chairman of Unilever Arabia, as MD of Brooke Bond Lipton and Vice Chairman of Hindustan Lever, as ED of Tata Sons and several Tata companies. He also serves as an independent director of listed companies, Akzo Nobel India, Castrol India, and Hemas Holdings PLC, Sri Lanka. Gopal mentors start-ups and is actively engaged in both instructional and inspirational speaking. He has authored six books – the most recent three, about how Indian companies grew to be successful. We want to discuss how companies, especially in the Indian context, succeed or crash, and how to bring the heart and not just the mind, into organizational transformations.

Mar 05, 202133:17
Krishnakumar Natarajan: Installing "Trust" as a Competitive Differentiator

Krishnakumar Natarajan: Installing "Trust" as a Competitive Differentiator

Krishnakumar Natarajan or KK as he is called fondly, is one of the co-founders of Mindtree and was until recently the Executive Chairman of the company. He is currently Managing Partner at Mela Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund in India. In this episode, KK shares how as a founder he had to establish trust as a fundamental aspect of Mindtree culture, both as an early start-up and as it grew.  He talks about how to operationalise trust and not merely letting it be a slogan; and how trust is even more important as the workforce becomes younger and crowded with millennials. 

Dec 17, 202029:31
How Leadership, Talent and Culture are the New Drivers of Growth!

How Leadership, Talent and Culture are the New Drivers of Growth!

Forbes calls our guest for this episode, Abhijit Bhaduri,  one of the most interesting globalists.   Nearly a million followers on LinkedIn and Twitter follow him. He  just got chosen as one of the ‘Top Voices To Follow’ on LinkedIn.  His new book, Dreamers and Unicorns is now in stores and on Amazon

He calls for a complete rethink about how people are engaged in their hybrid workplaces - with home working continuing post-pandemic. We also discussed how we need to start looking at algorithms and robots as part of the talent mix!


Nov 27, 202026:57
Systematic Innovation is not an Oxymoron
Nov 12, 202024:41
What does it take to be a brave leader? Learn from a global top 100 executive coach!

What does it take to be a brave leader? Learn from a global top 100 executive coach!

Our guest for this episode, Himanshu Saxena, CEO of Center of Strategic Mindset, is ranked as one of the top 100 executive coaches in the world. He talks about how many leaders have forgotten that they are already brave, and have to rediscover their courage from within. 

Himanshu has had six diverse and contrasting careers, starting from being an Exploration Geologist to Military (Retd. Colonel, Indian Military), United Nations (Geopolitical Advisor in Rwanda & Congo), Consulting, Corporations and Entrepreneurship. In his last corporate assignment, he was the Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Leadership Development for a 20 Billion USD Global Technology Firm. He formulated and implemented strategy for 23 Industry Domains and groomed 350 leaders for top leadership roles, including 27 CEOs.

Himanshu is the Founder & CEO of Centre of Strategic Mindset (COSM) a full-spectrum, boutique Consulting organization in Strategy, Leadership Development, Design Thinking & Innovation, Executive Coaching, Mindfulness & Culture. You can find out more about his firm here: https://cosm.co.in/

Oct 29, 202024:51
Creative Innovation - There are no playbooks.

Creative Innovation - There are no playbooks.

Innovation is necessary to shape the future of work.  Our guest for this episode, Gaurav Johri, has led teams to innovate under different circumstances. Gaurav is the CEO of Doppelio, a start-up that has innovated in reducing the time and cost of testing distributed field control equipment. His company has been selected by NASSCOM, under the Digital India Initiative. 

Gaurav talks about how there really is no playbook for innovation. What is needed is a humble spirit willing to learn and the courage to change is what is needed. He talks of how big companies are also innovative. They  struggle only in adapting their business model to breakthrough innovation.

Creative Innovation is one of the principles of the SemcoStyle Framework.  The framework and the associated road map for implementation has been used by companies to transform themselves into high performing firms with purpose-filled employees. In sharing the experience of leaders like Gaurav, we hope we help you fine-tune your own leadership of your teams when it comes to innovation. 




Oct 13, 202025:27
Stakeholder Alignment - Srinivas Uppaluri ex-CMO, Infosys, on how he got his stakeholders to align for success
Sep 30, 202028:16