Ep3:Culture, DEI and People Leadership ft. Sudeep Ralhan

if your life were a Netflix series what would it be called inclusion is the key to Innovation and growth like I'm not an HR leader I'm a business leader who happens to be wearing the Hat of HR or people that irrespective of whether you do something right or wrong you're going to be abused I lead my own life and um even if it be my own mistakes at least they are my own I wanted to go back in time and talk to us about your journey the camera is always on and you're always a star can you ride the wave or you going to get crushed by it exactly

is the choice that all of us have they would not follow you for the just because you're the manager people figure out what works for them and they find it there's a lot of confusion out there in terms of how to build a meaningful career that's not easy let them feel welcome mhm let them feel included one of my favorite questions was why have you joined here but when it boils down to how do you act during tough times that's when character really shows up you were talking about the growth of the organization at large it is not just limited to Talent alone hire the best

people make sure you give them loads and loads of context make sure that we have got people with the right sort of values and then get out of the way you've always loved content is that the reason why you join [Music] Netflix The Hustle Group Company let me introduce you to the hustle Group Company it's a Lifestyle brand that's redefining Street Wear through the power of fashion self- belief and resilience the second one being discover dollar which is an Eid driven tech company that helps Brands and retailers recover

hidden dollars from overpayments and leakages dog now's intelligent platform empowers businesses of all sizes to rapidly collect manage govern and collaborate on the data front transforming your documents and making sure there's an impact on the business bottom line all in a secure and a single environment hello everyone welcome to another episode of the innovators and disruptors podcast I'm your host ab tandan and today we have a very special guest s ran the privilege of Hosting suep who is a true true Trailblazer in the world of HR and organizational

leadership with over 20 years of experience sparing a lot of different Industries like Tech fmcg BPO startups and so on and so forth media entertainment as well now so deep has has been at the Forefront of driving Innovation inclusion and cultural transformation welcome to the show thank you you're very very kind thank you it's it's really nice to be here thank you so much you know sad you have so much of experience you know across different domains yes I am very old that's true I am very old that's true no but there's a lot lot of amazing experience that

you've got and across different Industries so let's first address the elephant in the room okay is it okay to stay at your partner on a working day you know maybe that's the reason I'm single you never know uh that could be the reason but um on a on a on a more serious note I think everyone is getting too distracted by some of these statements I feel um we are actually at a fabulous time in in our uh overall ecosystem where everyone can find what works for them and the way we think about movies that every movie Finds Its Own audience right uh similarly

companies find their own talent pool and vice versa so I think U people figure out what works for them and they find it so uh I don't think there's one right rule for everyone okay and um I haven't stared at my partner's face I'm guessing like I said that's the reason I single but yeah okay uh fair fair I think uh I recently had an episode where I was on a Sunday saying at my wife's face a lot more uh and she did put up a story on Instagram to Showcase to the world that he does that right so some browny points to me uh but in all these years of uh experience in the HR domain uh you know

what in your growing up I wanted to go back in time and talk to us about your journey as a kid while you're growing up and what eventually some of those pointer some of those uh learnings that got you interested and intrigued about HR domain and choose this as a career choice well I think the choice of HR domain came much later but you're absolutely right the core sort of work ethic principles values get formed as you're growing up you know I I grew up in a um in a family that was very different from the rest of the world around us you know as as you know you

know our family love books our family love movies um it was we also had very strong women role models in our family which Shar my worldview from right from the very beginning um my childhood was also I mean we also went through a lot of turbulent times right lots of ups and downs lots of turbulent times um workwise financially my father uh Health was not okay and he passed away at a very early age and therefore life was really a roller coaster but at the same time there was a foundation of love and security

and acceptance which like I said shape my worldview so you know you we were brought up to read we were brought up to inquire and have an independent point of view and that's a core value for me we were brought up to be uh respectful of everyone irrespective of whatever identity they came from uh and therefore inclusion is a very strong part of my ecosystem right um agility just out of this year roller coaster that you're on so you learn to be resilient you learn learn to be agile uh so that's important and you also realize that in order to genuinely stay humble and not get

overwhelmed by too much stress in your life you need to have a sense of humor and I think that's uh that's helped me good stad so all of these values were were critical and then later on um when I was you know doing my MBA and I uh was figuring out my specialization I actually switched so I was going to do marketing and everyone was doing marketing and everyone was chasing after the same jobs and um if there's any if there's something that I definitely never want to be is is be like a sheep right just following and and uh giving into peer pressure so I decided to uh

take up HR because I felt that a my love for people psychology uh uh Dynamics all of that comes into play and honestly um HR what that time this was 20 plus years ago was just stting to emerge as a career option and I felt I would rather be first and foremost there rather than follow what everyone else is doing and starting from that point a till date most decisions that I've taken academic as well as career decisions that I've taken have been against the wishes of many people around me uh except my family who've always stood by me but many of my you

know people who would Mentor me or wish me well uh starting from my professors at that time to you know mentors and and leaders now have uh disagreed with me on my career choices uh but you know I use my own sort of algorithm in my own mind to figure out what's the right thing for me to do and again going back to the core point of having an independent point of view having a sense of conviction uh I go ahead and and do it and therefore I always say you know I uh I lead my own life and um even if it be my own mistakes at least there my own and I and I live spend learn by them

yeah I shouldn't hold reget and that's such a that's I mean you think of it a lot of people talk about it but they're not necessarily following this right it's a profound statement in that sense of it and uh to a lot of points that you made it resonated because when I was growing up uh my father also spoke very highly of you saying that you know just look at sad as a role model right so I've been hearing that from a very young age and I understand uh the journey that you have had right uh understand in a sense that I know what you've to you know how you built your life around it

and that's fantastic right you've been inspiring us for a very long period of time and I remember when I was 10 years of age uh you handed me a lot of these books that were your books uh and I was introduced for the first time to a lot of Classics I think the first one that I read read was the mutin on board HMS Bounty and that created my love for books as well so thank you so much I didn't want to public te yeah yeah Pay It Forward I mean you have to create and instill that love for learning in books in in other people I mean that's what people did with me uh coincidently today

morning I was looking at a video of one of my earliest English teachers who had a major impact on my life uh she once embarrassed me in front of so many students by making me repeat a word in a particular tone as practice for a speech competition and she made me repeat it in front of hundreds of students for like 30 or 40 times and I was telling my nephew today that she's one of the people I respect so much because she instilled that love and she still that discipline in me uh and she's now also an art critic so she posts a lot of videos about her love for art and what

she does uh but I think there are just so many people and you know when people talk about influences and so on yes there are lots of great people that we can think of and and you know Statesmen and so on but I honestly feel that it is people that we meet like this and especially in my case teachers who I think have had a profound influence in my way of thinking and my work ethic and my discipline amazing that's so so amazing uh I I you know I heard you see a very interesting statement that you know while you were pursuing your MBA you said that you know you didn't want

to choose marketing but I also realized that you have stated this out that HR is a function of marketing is a marketing function yeah yes right so so how I mean how how did they finally converge no because I genuinely I'm very passionate about marketing that's why I was planning to specialize in marketing and i' had actually started working and advertising in marketing even during my graduation so while my graduation was going on so that's the reason why initially I was thinking and that passion for marketing has stayed till date and I realized that some of the

marketing principles especially about putting the consumer at the heart of everything that you do or putting the customer at the heart of everything that you do can apply to all functions and especially HR so that's what I always talk about a that I'm not an HR leader I'm a business leader who happens to be wearing the Hat of HR or people and second the function that I lead is a marketing function which means if you apply the core principles of putting people at the core of every decision of thinking about how you are creating a product and a brand that sells itself

rather than you trying to push it down you know uh to people uh and then follow through in terms of you know datadriven decisions uh insights and research using the right MVP model of kind of piloting and and building on things I think all of these principles work beautifully for HR so that's been become like sort of my manra over a period of time where I try and sort of reinforce these principles even in the HR function funs no it it it makes a lot of sense at the end of the day you you're taking decisions uh when I remember you know you were leading uh the function uh at at Walmart Walmart

Tech India there was there was a hyper growth phase of Walmart and I remember that you know when we had those conversations as well you were talking about the growth of the organization at large it was not just limited to Talent alone yeah right and keeping that in mind there were different strategies that you had you know you had taken up of acquiring Talent as well as part of how the talent will contribute to the overall growth of the organization in India right or globally as well so very very very fascinating and in fact it does make a lot of sense when you put it

this way that you know you are a business leader who's wearing a HR hat and more specifically a lot of uh the leadership perspectives that come in when it comes to data driven decision making or objectively looking at the overall impact at a at at a global level or at organizational level then you have to look at it in and in Singularity in that sense of it and then take you know the necessary decisions forward uh but but that also brings me to another question you have worked across so many different companies and they're all in different domains if I can take the

liberty of saying so a and show to uh GSK and then Walmart right uh upstocks and now Netflix right so very very different I'm sure that I've missed a few in between earlier than that as well so across these uh different Industries I'm sure there must be something which must be very different when it comes to the ER function yeah and there must be there must be some things which must be completely identical do you want to talk a little bit about how these all converge as well as they all diverge at some places yeah so my love for sort of

um diversity comes in many forms including in careers right where I think I'm privileged enough to be in a function where one can sort of transcend boundaries and work across different Industries and I've really loved doing that so obviously the context changes every single time um you know when you're working and you're thinking about learning in an environment like an Accenture where you're thinking about learning for say 150,000 people and engineers and how do you upskill and build competency for that right versus you think about learning in say a GSK

context where you're talking about you know 400 sales people who are driving half a billion dollar worths of sales and how do you build their capability it's it's dramatically different and that's where your own problem solving skills and your agility comes in so I think all of these um companies that I've worked with have obviously different levels of scale complexity pace and so on and that's what makes it exciting for me that I'm able to apply sort of my mind to different problems at different levels uh but I think what over the time I've

also realized that there is more to your question more similarity than differences because I've also been privileged enough to work with great companies and the one thing that all of these great companies have in common is the focus on people and right every single organization sort of recognizes that they fundamentally their power their superpower or even the lack of it comes from how much of capability performance engagement their talent has and um and that's been great I mean as an HR person what more could you ask for because I know that uh HR people in many

organizations have to fight for a seat at the table right have to fight for having a share of voice in the room uh thankfully I've never had to do that because you work with organizations that already recognize the importance of talent and culture and then the roots to get there is different right the way a Walmart thinks about culture and people could be very different from the way uh a GSK things are very different from the way a Netflix things right but uh the focus is absolutely the same the root is a little different which is what makes it exciting that's amazing in fact uh

you know that that brings my thought process I me perspective to another place which is cultural ethos yeah right uh a lot of organizations when I like for example when I started working I started working in accent show and since you worked at accent show you could probably relate to this but I've had my fair share of work experiences in various large organizations too and I've seen that that focus on people sometimes is a little superficial as it's supposed to be right and that's where you can see through the policies and understand what are the policies

which are there for the sake of it and what are not right but the youngsters the young folks who are joining these large organizations they get impacted by it because some of these organizations which are not very people friendly or where do not have meaningful policies and which are being actually applied then they are exposed to toxic work environments as well yeah and that normalizes the whole toxic work culture for them which means that you know going forward when they step out of their first large organization into other organizations they bring the same toxic

culture to all the other places thinking it's a normalized way of leading Life as a EDR function and I'm sure you know since you have been a champion of cultural ethos of diversity equity and inclusion as well how have you tackled some of these challenges and you know have there been some very interesting policies that you know youve deployed you know I policies are just a sort of final representation so to speak right um and like you said all good organizations will have policies and they are unless you are a really unique company

like a Netflix which has its own sort of cultural EOS uh you would most policies end up looking like borderline copy paste of each other right um but where they really come alive or not is through daily role modeling and behavior and I think that's what a lot of leaders and organizations sort of tend to miss that culture is not about having a fancy set of values written on a wall or great policies on portal it's about daytoday actions and behaviors and you know one of my favorite uh sort of things that I say to leaders is the camera is always on and you're always a star and it is

surprising how many leaders forget that fact because what leaders are doing and saying on a day-to-day basis is getting sort of cascaded down right and the same behavior is getting replicated and even Amplified makes sense right um you know when I joined GSK and I would talk to uh sales Executives and I would do these sales visits and consumer visits which I loved and I would talk to sales Executives and I would one of my favorite questions was why have you joined here and uh why are you here and they would give me different reasons they would talk about the brand and the

culture and the company and career Etc and something that not one not two but quite a few people said to me uh and I'm going to speak in Hindi now so I'm sorry for that because I I can't replicate the tone in English but what they would say is and it was something so basic to me because I was coming from exenta where you know there was no at all uh but I realized that they were coming from other companies and they were good brands by the way they were coming from and they were just used to a culture where it was okay for managers to shout at them where if the targets were not

met in the evening they would get like a really bad call from their leaders and their managers and get called out in meetings and borderline abused right and they thought it was okay until they came to a company where it was not okay and they said oh my God right and they stayed and they stayed with us and they built their careers with us and that to me is a powerful uh it's it's a powerful memory for me because I hold on to that memory when I speak to for example startup Founders sometimes H and Everyone likes to talk about culture right favorite

topic of everyone everyone wants to talk about culture and and say nice things right but when it boils down to how do you act during tough times that's when character really shows up true right very true um what is the behavior that your people are observing how are you cond conducting yourself how are you showing up right that's when the rubber hits the road and culture truly gets formed so culture doesn't get formed by policies it doesn't get formed by values these are good Baseline things to have but culture is getting formed by day-to-day actions and that I feel is

something most people tend to miss so I have taken it see I feel that my job as an HR person is obviously to run the people engine right you have to hire you have to you know do Performance Management and learning and all of comp and all of that stuff but you're also a custodian of culture right and this moment that I just spoke about the GSK moment is one of many moments that stay with me uh because I have to keep reminding myself that culture is not strategy in a deck culture is about day-to-day behaviors and that's what I try and sort of not only practice myself

obviously but also when I'm coaching and partnering with my leaders trying kind of building that point again and again game honestly that's that's how I view it amazing that that's really amazing and Brilliant points for a lot of uh leaders out there who listening to you specifically in both both types of organizations right be it startups or large Enterprises that it's their behavior that really molds uh the way the behavior of the youngsters were looking up to them right was you know probably reporting into them genzi today is very

very differently oriented if I if I at least this is my thought process that they're very differently oriented and I think uh there has to be a a more meaningful mechanism for for them to go about learning things yeah in terms of how we shape that because they're the Future Leaders in the country right and I agree no I think and I think uh to your point uh I know there's a lot of debate and often controversial debate about genzies versus Millennials and stuff like that and um you know I keep going back to the fact that if you think about yourself as a marketing function

then you can't blame the talent pool for for example uh interviewing with six companies at a time holding three offers and so on and so forth I mean one can debate the merits and demerits of doing that but the point is what that reflects is a deeper Behavior or a mindset that these people don't necessarily Trust you and the companies anymore right and that is the trust that one needs to sort of rebuild at this point because the capacity especially with the information explosion with the fact that you know everyone is exposed to uh

practices across the world 100% of the time you can't pull W people's time eyes all the time you can't BS your way out of difficult conversations right you have to be candid you have to be uh courageous in the way you you speak and approach this generation and if you aren't they'll see through it yeah right and what you see is a backlash of that happening right now so I completely agree I think companies need to sort of tailor their communication their style to a generation that I feel is obviously tremendous potential and like you said the leaders of tomorrow right uh but

also will not easily fall for um Regular corporate speaker right you have to be a little bit more transparent you have to be more honest you have to be a lot more direct but so coming to genes and younger generation or Future Leaders as well s how would you I mean a lot of these audience members who going to be hearing us and hearing you speak about HR as a function would also want to understand a little bit more about career options today there have been there there are different Trends technology volatility is changing a lot of things there's a

lot of confusion out there in terms of how to build a meaningful career is there a right part to it of course is there a path in the first place is there right path or there are multiple right paths so if you can just you know share a little bit of perspective around how do you build a career in a much more complicated environment that we are seeing these days yeah you absolutely it's a pertinent and clearly top of mind for everyone right now you know uh till some time ago uh any good organization worth its Sal would would have extremely um you know beautiful

presentations and Frameworks to Define how careers can get built and how much time you spend at each level and so on and so forth um no organization today can afford to do that because like you said there is just so much changing all the time and every second week we are seeing new research coming out the these are the top 30 jobs which won't exist 3 years later these are the jobs that don't exist today which will exist three years later and there is only so much of uh you know astrology that one can do to figure out uh what is going to exist and what is not going to exist true so I

think for an individual to sort of cut out all of this noise and um and focus on building the career I mean these are two or three perspectives that I would have right a you need to build agility as your core skill and mindset um anyone who's expecting uh steady steadiness in terms of career uh a predictability in terms of career uh are just fooling themselves right right any interviewer who's asking questions like what do you want to do five years from now uh like in terms of specific things of which position do you want to be they are living in a

different Paradise or a different Multiverse is all I I can say right there is absolutely no way one can predict where one can go uh and in fact that works both ways it sounds scary but it's actually the opposite because the opportunities are so much right right you see people doing so many wonderful things today you see you know people of a certain age taking up roles and positions which till 10 15 years ago would only be done by people who had like 20 years more experience than they do right and that is possible because the world is changing at such a rapid

Pace that it is your professional skills like your agility your ability to lead your ability to collaborate your ability to harness technology that is playing the key role in your success and not quote unquote the number of years experience you have which is becoming or the quote unquote The Institute that you belong to or the quote unquote batch that you belong to these are becoming more and more outdated Concepts so you have to fundamentally agile okay right you have to be able to be a bit of a hustler that you're able to spot and take up

opportunities as they come up you also you know it's like steering a car so you can only steer a car if you know which direction you're moving in so you can't Define Milestones but what you can do for yourself is directionally know what you want to do and in all my coaching conversations the toughest question that people find is when I ask the question saying what what do you want what are you looking for right and it is the toughest question people are just not able to figure out that answer right I think getting that answer right is 50% of the problem solved the second is like

I said build the agile mindset think about yourself depersonalize dehumanize things and think about yourself as a product and a brand okay right like any product even you have a life cycle so what is unique about you hm how are you going to sell yourself to the world uh and how do you break out of the Clutter that all other products and all other brands around you are pitching for the same thing right what are you going to how are you going to evolve a little way down the line so I think these these the this this mindset of viewing yourself as a product and a brand can truly make

your sort of career life cycle much longer uh and like I said you know there is no such thing as a corporate ladder anymore so one gets used I mean look at the career you've had right you've done such diverse number of things with different kinds of companies and so on and I see most people now successful people now being able to do that the thing is safe choices will make safe careers but there are no safe careers anymore true so safe choices are only going to land you into trouble you have to lean in into a little bit of risk you have to push yourself out of the comfort

zone and accept the fact that there is not going to be a corporate ladder there is going to be a very lce type framework and you have to be a hustler and get opportunities as you go along very true I mean today if you say that you you have to be at a particular rule for three years before you can be considered for a promotion your question why yeah and the thing uh in the middle management that I've observed is that they just cannot explain why and then they question the senior leadership why why 3 years at a particular role and there are always

Frameworks in place which tries to answer or address these concerns by saying this is the am of maturity in that capability that you need to build and so so forth but the question from the other side is always this if we are able to create a certain amount of impact exactly that is expected for the next level promotion why is that not happening then yeah so can I can I respond to that that's exactly what's been happening right uh so these models that were created by companies they were excellent thought through models and there was a reason

why there was a two years somewhere a three years somewhere a four years somewhere or there was a rotational aspect saying a person has to do XYZ roles before being considered for this right the reason for that was that you were making sure that people had the right kind of experiences impact and learning before they got to the next level now the world changed so what people hung on to were those structures saying 2 years 3 years 4 years forgetting that you know it's not about following it in Sp letter it's about following it in spirit right and to your

to the exact exactly the same thing that you just mentioned the manager's response doesn't have to be you have to spend two years to do this before you get considered for the promotion it has to be about you have to demonstrate XYZ impact before we think about you taking up a bigger role and that's the right ation to have with anyone of today's generation and whether the um the journey to that XYZ impact takes one year or two years or 3 years depends on the individual right right uh so but that that's the that's shift that that needs to get created now I agree no

that's fantastic all the young viewers who listening to S right now there a fantastic piece of advice do follow this I hope I haven't uh boil the ocean too much for them I'm sure this is going to be superbly valuable right because there's a lot of confusion out there and this this Clarity would help them a lot um s you're also a Dei Champion you've been champion in this you've been very passionate about this for a while interestingly over the last couple of months if I'm not wrong there's been a lot of push back on di uh you know Frameworks and you know activation

aspects that you know we've been seeing across us and that has had cascading impact across the globe what are your views around the same in us or how what's the impact that you're seeing in India as well do you agree with what's happening uh no I don't think anyone who's passionate about thei would agree uh but I I'm no expert to comment deeply on what's happening in the US but I do still believe right that any great organization uh has understood over a period of time that inclusion is the key to Innovation

and growth you know in my early parts of my career so I you know as I grew up like I said I understood what being the other was because I was always different from everyone else around me I was always the nerd I was always the one you know reading instead of playing I was in a boy school so you can imagine how much of uh borderline bullying that I went through but I also saw a lot of Acceptance in my family amongst my teachers for the person that I was so I saw both sides of the coin on what being not included can do to you

and what being included can do and the kind of potential it can unleash true and over the early parts of my career you know I I heard this in one of my earliest roles where a woman leader uh spoke to me and use the words I don't belong here H and you know I heard I have heard variations of that statement H in so many different forms right uh sometimes it's related to gender sometimes it's related to the ethnic background you come from uh the language that you speak the orientation that you have and I have heard it in

many different forms and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to connect the dots and realize if that there are multiple people in an organization who believe that they quote unquote don't belong you are not going to be able to harness the potential I mean it's as uh basic as that right I'm not even going in the altruistic Direction I'm not even saying oh it's very sad I'm not putting a modal judgment on it I'm just saying as an organization you are missing out on a huge part of human potential within and outside your organization true I do believe companies get it hm

how they will activate it is I think what is changing right now okay so I believe that um you know first of all we we need to not get over indexed on what's happening in the US and those these are large influential companies and global companies but uh remember they are still just one part of the ecosystem right in India for example companies like say grige uh have done a tremendous amount of work or even infosis for that matter have done a tremendous amount of work on Dei and done fabulous work there so you know we we shouldn't get over indexed uh and

secondly like I said there is an opportunity now to reframe on how we are going to drive inclusion in the future maybe you know so far we've been very programmatic about it uh we have used representation as our primary sort of indicator or metric uh and so on and and we've been sort of sort of activist about it right which is fine but if we shift the lens a little bit to making it more business Centric and saying what makes sense for the business and the definition might change therefore and you don't have to copy paste programs anymore right right um I remember in an

earlier conversation you and I were having uh I'm actually going to put words in your mouth and speak on your behalf but you spoke about you know how people used to talk about quote unquote diversity candidates oh yeah it's it's one of my pet peeves right it's one of women's professionals pet peeves who wants to be reduced to that verbiage of being called a diversity candidate but that was unfortunately a byproduct of uh representation numbers that many companies chased targets that were given uh and so on so maybe this is an opportunity to hit refresh yeah and uh

say that we're going to become less about programs and representation uh but more about creating inclusion at the ground level and make sense of what works for the business so make it a lot more business Centric I mean that's what I would like to believe and I and I do believe that because people are still passionate uh forget about not just HR leaders or dii leaders but uh Business Leaders I know any Progressive business leader still realizes and understands that inclusion is key so I'm I'm hopeful thank you you know I I would like to have a similar view

around H being hopeful from the ecosystem but I have seen you when we talk about diversity like you mentioned uh you know women are still considered diversity candidates one but from an inclusion standpoint I still don't see enough of actual execution Pur at I mean the there written policies versus actual implementation of those policies but even women in the country even in large organizations Fortune hunted organizations a lot of times right their pros and cons I've seen for example if you talk about a matle uh India is one of those better of

countries in terms of policies of six months of matle but there's 15 days of pack leave that means you're expected as a father to work and the mother can take six months Gap to take care of the baby it's not equal parenting and if a father demands for more they look down upon you I mean why do you need to be at home to take care of a kid yeah this is something that I've personally gone through yeah I seen a lot of times uh when we talk about inclusion of women you know iwd International women's day is a perfect

example you know I've found it ridiculously funny year on year as a corporate leader I've been asked internally by the ccom team a iwd is a week away so now we would want you to record a state about who is the woman which inspires you the most and why because the next 10 days we're going to be running a lot of campaigns to promote women in the organization and women at large rest of the 355 days there's no conversation about this so even inclusion from a women's perspective so far I see a lot of these Fortune 100 Fortune 500 companies not

really meaning it the way it should be you know taken I mean they're not taking as seriously as they should forget about other clusters of diversity and inclusion that we talk about that for example I would have no issues with when I was hiring I had no like you mentioned right I completely align on that fact that you know you talk about business impact whoever can that you know whatever kind of talent can bring that kind of a business impact for that particular role bring them in it doesn't matter which state country geography ethnicity language gender orientation

that they belong to you bring them in because they're going to bring you you know they they're going to be one of the cold members of the team they're going to create impact business impact outcomes and that's why you want them there for the talent that they bring in but I don't see a lot of people do that I'm just putting it out there well you know I it's it's it's going to sound like a painful cliche but it is true that like everything else inclusion is also a journey and there are different different companies and different

individuals for at a different stages of it um let me first respond to your point about iwd and stuff like that while I also cringe sometimes at uh the tokenism uh around some of these events I will not also shy away from saying that these dates and these events continue to be important for a certain reason yes yes over a period of time sometimes we have tend to reduce them to tokenistic gestures but having said that there is a reason why and symbolism is important right so even if there' be a day or a week in a month in a year when you

pause and reflect on the journey that uh uh women have had in the workforce or during Pride think about the journey that people from the lgbtq plus community Comm have had or in in December think about the people with disabilities you've had and many other such dates in a day in a year it's an important time so for example the conversation you just initiated about how much of progress to women truly see on the ground and whether policies have actually moved in tantum or not is a good conversation to have around iwd because that's the right time to focus

your energy there instead of like you said you know doing token IC gestures but um that's why I think these dates and these events continue to be important uh though I would like to say that we can make them a lot more meaningful and not tokenism um on the first point like you said uh there are different companies at different stages of the journey U lot of companies do have extremely well-meaning policies and practices but um it takes time to execute because you know you also have to remember that the people executing policies and practices on the ground are

also people who come with their own baggage and their own biases and their own Journeys and so on and so forth right so um you know when I um took a break last year people said oh you're brave that is so brave of you nobody calls a woman brave for taking a break uh she has to take a break sometimes to look after a family or you know get married and relocate somewhere else and so on and so forth uh nobody calls man taking a break oh my God yeah how come you're like you're so

brave for taking a break but it it's a double-edged sword because it also means that men in our ecosystem can't take a break because that's the that's the perception and what would Society say right uh which means that right from the beginning you are creating this gender uh inequitable uh sort of ecosystem very true so like I said it works both ways and until we also see I think deeper changes in our ecosystem we will not be able to see those deeper changes even within the companies even if companies drive because remember ultimately the people

implementing those policies and practices are people who are also coming with their own baggages and mindsets and that baggage and mindset takes a lot of time to change makes a lot of sense in fact reminds me of one of the shows I'm forgetting the name of the show right now uh I think this was produced by Sumit vas mhm and uh it was on parenting very recent show that I saw and very very interesting take on it because one of the male protagonists he is a stay-at-home father and they were using abbreviations for that and I was loving it because while this guy was dissed

upon by a lot of people and his close e system saying that you know how can you be working how can how can you not be working how can you be staying at home and taking care of a kid when your wife goes out to work uh I think it is a problem that I see a lot of men go through yeah uh and and I so relatable and since we're talking about content and movies and shows is that I mean I know you said that you know you you've always loved content is that the reason why you join Netflix a big reason I won't deny that you know obviously hugely inspiring organization and

culture and all of that stuff um but I will say that uh you know obviously my love for movies and um uh and content is a big big reason of uh why I'm so passionate and why I'm there at Netflix for sure amazing so you're driving U organizational health and culture at Netflix and I'm assuming that you know while you're driving this uh from an Indian perspective too it it must need to align with the global thesis and there would be a lot of uh Indian nuances to it as well how you how you dealing with this do you want to share a little bit of a perspective around how

this happens at Netflix you know so I was actually very very intrigued by the same thing for many years away uh you know Netflix uh the Netflix culture memo uh which got released many years ago really challenged and disrupted the way we think about talent and culture and first the Silicon Valley Tech people took it up and then it became sort of a larger Tech thing and then a lot of Indian startups I had you know last year when I was Consulting I had companies that actually showed me the culture memo and said how do I get this at my company and I you know I had to kind of tell

them it is a journey and you know you don't you don't just switch on a uh switch and and get Netflix culture uh but Netflix um and and sorry I was I was saying that that is what intrigued me as well well because when you read about a company that has such a tremendously unique approach to its culture and has such strong views on what it is and what it isn't and what the values are and aren't you're kind of keen to see like you know what behind the scenes and how does it work and exactly to your point right I mean you it's a global company it's operating in in in so many

different countries uh each with their own sort of ecosystem and very different from one another how do you implement it but I think the answer lay in its culture itself so one of the founding tenants of of uh of the culture is about being strongly aligned and Loosely coupled right and the alignment comes in the way we think about culture think about the kind of people we want to hire think about the kind of values that we want them to uh to demonstrate right and that remains consistent but it is also about saying hire the best people make sure you give them loads and loads of

context make sure that we have got people with the right sort of values and then get out of the way to let them do their best job and I see that getting implemented here on a day-to-day basis our content team for example right uh they are Guided by a very very clear sharp strategy which comes in uh which gets defined globally and interestingly that's separate conversation but even the definition of the global strategy is is being done in a way Bottoms Up right where everyone gets to contribute to it that's amazing but having said that while the clear the strategy is is the

broader strategy is global I see the content team in India taking calls on a day-to-day basis leaning into risk defining who the right relationships are that need to get invested in what the right bets are that we need to take figuring out where the right Investments need to go um and then seeing it all play out and you know it mostly plays out and sometimes if it doesn't you learn and move on but it's a fabulously talented team that is you know working beautifully with each other and across functions getting Guided by global strategy but not getting

constrainted by it the strategy becomes more of an enabler than a boundary or a constraint and I see that getting implemented on a day-to-day basis and culture is a is a living breathing thing right there is no static culture uh so as the as Netflix grows and evolves so does the culture and uh you know if you look at Japan you look at India you look at us extremely different markets but Guided by a common set of values Guided by a common broad strategy but each one doing what's right for their business and that's why being tremendously successful in their own ecosystem so I I

see the I see the balance that you spoke about working beautifully but I also realize that it will constantly evolve as we continue to grow that's fantastic I think people who are listening to us would be very excited about applying to Netflix style I'm sure they already are but they're going to be even more encouraged after listening to you can they go ahead and reach out to you than in that case to the career yes all right so people who are listening to us who want to apply to Netflix please you know just go to the career portal career site and always on the lookout for fabulous

people yeah always you you hear it from the man himself right so thank you so much s on that technology is also one of those factors s that I've noticed over the years which has been so volatile and changing things so rapidly for all the functions all the companies across the globe right that's also impacted culture in a negative way and some large organizations specifically Silicon Valley organization that you were referring to earlier as well right where the last 2 three years at least what I've heard is that the culture uh of hiring and firing has been very

dominant mhm speciically last two three years uh but I also believe that technology can be a very strong enabler do you see technology enabling HR as a function any any mundane task that gets automated because of technology and yeah yeah I mean automation is at a basic level right and that's already started um it started with recruiting a lot of recruiting basic processes got automated and then it start went on to internal Employee Services operations especially for large scale organizations right where that got automated and new platforms got deployed so we already see

that happening and that's sort of continuing to grow but I do believe that even from a people or from a talent perspective uh there's a lot more that can be done with technology and for technology so for example the point that you mentioned about a lot of at least perceptively speaking a lot of hiring and firing that has taken place Etc if one can be a little bit more thoughtful about how you can build the right technological skills in your Workforce over a period of time uh using the build model rather than the buy model is a lot more beneficial to your company but buy

model is easier so you end up firing lots of people and then hiring lots of people because it's easier thing to do but the more thoughtful and sustainable thing to do is to build right and that's a huge area of opportunity because you're also enhancing the skill base of an entire Workforce and India so that's a fabulous thing right uh but even Beyond uh like I said recruiting is already using uh operations and services are already already using but even learning for example right I don't know you could you could validate this independently but I believe that

Accenture for example already has some version of a metaverse that it uses to onboard and train its employees which is so important considering you're talking about literally hundreds of thousands of people right uh that's an amazing opportunity to think about learning and immersive learning particularly now when I think people are really tired of traditional Learning and Development curriculums and how do you make it a little bit more relevant or even workplace workplace we've realized over the years has a very important role in shaping the culture and shaping the

culture in terms of a uh you know reinforcing the culture and two also directing it to what it should be and Technology can really enable a workplace and really allow you to shape the culture the way you want to want it to get kind of shaped you know a colleague of mine recently did an off-site with their team uh nonr right and it was so fascinating they used generative AI to plan their entire offsite to do invites to create stickers to create an agenda to create ice breakers to create case studies uh they were able to use a lot of that so intelligently and that to me

is just one of so many ways that te technology can enable the people and the talent function so I think it's nothing people I know are apprehensive and Afraid in many cases but I actually feel it's going to it's can be a huge game changer if you just allow it to be I'm sure yeah yeah I mean there definitely going to be a lot of changes I've been driving Innovation for a decade now in large organizations and I've noticed this that there's always going to be that apprehension around change but the change is inevitable so it's going to happen it's

about at least what I I looked at is that you know how quickly can you align to that change and understand that you know this can be used for your betterment yeah can you ride the wave or you going to get crushed by it exactly it's the choice that all of us have exactly yeah amazing work from home or hybrid what do you prefer and why hybrid of course I mean it's easier answer but it's is genuinely um you have to harness the power of working with people you have to harness the power of working by yourself and uh hybrid model just makes perfect sense always 70 hours work week

or 45 hours work week or 40 hours work week uh no I I don't uh think in terms of ours as long as my to-do list is getting ticked off that's enough for me so I don't think it double FS okay cool I would I would have appreciate a lot more for the audience if you talk about what do you think about organization's implementation of 70 hours work week well like I said to each their own okay every organization find its own talent pool every movie Finds Its Own audience right so um yeah the two shall find each other makes a lot of sense fair if your life for a Netflix series what would it

be called and what genre would it fall under um well I'm a shopaholic so I could easily make a Confessions of a Shopaholic um you could also make it a a sort of a political uh corporate political Intrigue Story by calling it confessions of an HR professional okay so that could be that could be fun kind of narrating behind the scenes look at some of these topics that we speak about nice very cool if you could swap jobs with any fictional character for a day who would it be and

why um I don't know Calvin and Hobs I think Calin I would love to be Calvin just a six-year-old child chilling out and and creating Menace for everyone you know I I was very fascinated by this book called The Fountain Head years ago so I would love to be in the shoes of Howard roach uh one day so that sounds very fascinating and I think uh if you look at all these uh serial killer murder mystery sort of um um series nowadays um I think just being a little bit in the minds of of people who either do it or detect it would also be very fascinating

you know True Detective or uh or one of these there was this series called Murder mindfully on Netflix uh which has it's a I think it's a French series of a man who goes to a mindfulness class right and how that translates to the murders free he goes on I'm not saying I would like to do that but I think just a day in the mind of a person like that would be very fascinating wow there very interesting thing what's the most bizarre piece of career advice that you ever received did you take it did it work out for you uh no bizarre career advice I don't

take I get a lot of it especially the kind that is sort of uh a lot of noise and politics yeah so people say you know go and say this about so and so person or uh go and throw that person under the bus and all sorts of advice you know so I I normally stay away from that um a good advice that I received last year was when I went through a really crazy roller coaster I was physically emotionally mentally exhausted and my sister uh told me to take a break and I took it and I you know a lot of people don't realize that when you on the hamster wheel it is possible to step off

the wheel for a little bit and I did it and it was it was it was a life-changing moment for me so I'm very glad I took that advice that's amazing no that's actually truly amazing right taking taking that breather can be so helpful I have done that twice now and I think it's really really beneficial we the champions for taking point one last question if you had to Mentor your younger self starting an HR what unconventional advice would you give him uh always have a sense of humor and always keep a glass of wine handy nice

awesome thank you so much this this side is what I was talking about I wanted to get a perspective on the this side of s as well thank you so much s for letting us go a little deeper understand this personality of yours as well as get a lot of understanding about HR function at large and how you've been able to create impact in the lives of L thousands of if not Millions at least thousands and lcks of people so thank you so much for that loved hosting you and uh I'm sure the audience is going to love this conversation and they are going to reach out to Netflix career

portal I'll have to make sure that the the the website is up to withstanding so much of uh pressure and uh and so on but thank you so much uh really really enjoyed being here having this conversation you have asked me a lot of thought-provoking questions I'm going to be thinking about this for a while now so thanks for doing that as well thank you so uh thank you so much sad and on that note I did want to give you a hamper it's not a coffee with curent hamper it's a hamper nonetheless and this is our token of gratitude for being a part of this thank you thank you this

is very sweet thank you so much by the way this is highly personalized okay and uh this is sponsored by cic Design which creates unique personalized and premium corporate gifts that make a lasting impression so I hope you remember us for the conversation as well as the gift I will thank you so much thank you so much thank you I think your Expressions will probably do jce yeah don't capture my Expressions I hope you're not going to capture these weird Expressions but [Music]

yeah feel free to share your perspectives through comments subscribe to the channel and do send us some suggestions as well thank you