An evening with Dr Pavan Soni
Introduction
On Thursday, January 2, 2025, we had an insightful session by Dr Pavan Soni, Founder of Inflexion Point, Bestselling Author, and Adjunct Faculty at IIM Bangalore & ISB Hyderabad. Dr. Soni shared practical tips and insights to navigate today’s chaotic career landscape. He explained how we can take control of our professional journey using proven frameworks and strategies.
Design your career
Dr Soni began with a brief reference to his book, Design your career. Talent is getting wasted in organizations. When students enter the corporate world, they get a rude shock. They have to unlearn what they have learnt in college. Also, a colossal amount of their energy is spent in fighting organizational politics. During a life span of 75 years, we spend almost 25 years sleeping. But next to sleeping is working. When we spend so much time working, we can't leave our career to accident. We must design our careers. We must have a well thought out plan.Three key elements
There are three elements for career success:
- Lead self
- Lead others
- Lead change
Lead self: We must understand the central driver we have in our lives. We must answer the question: Why are we eager to wake up early in the morning and go to work?
Fear: One potential driver could be fear. This is to some extent due to evolution. Our ancestors faced various dangers. So, they had to be weary and cautious. But many of us are driven by fear even today. We are afraid that if we don't show up for a meeting our boss will be unhappy. We are afraid to log out before our boss logs out. We are afraid that if we don’t do something right, we will not be promoted. The problem with fear is that it exhausts us. That is why we are seeing so many people in their 30s and 40s developing chest problems, hypertension and various other avoidable, lifestyle diseases.
Greed: The second driver is greed: wanting more. For example, many entrepreneurs want a higher valuation. The problem with greed is that we do not know what is enough. So, we work long hours to earn more and more. But in the process, we compromise our family life and strain our relationship with family members.
Duty: The third driver is a sense of duty. It is better than both greed and fear because we are doing something in a clean way, without selfish motives. The only problem is that duty implies a sense of reciprocity. We will do our duty only till we get reciprocity from the other side. We show up for work if we get salaries. We will do something outstanding only as long as we get a recognition or reward.
Love: The fourth driver is love. We do something because we love doing it. This is a stronger and more desirable driver than the other three. If our primary driver is not love, then we are just short-changing ourselves.
No job consists only of love. Consider parenting. There is a greed factor: My child should become good. My child should take care of me when I become old. There is a fear factor: What if I'm doing something wrong with my child. What if something wrong happens to my child. There is a duty that I must cook for my child. But the underlying factor is love.
Similarly in our job we would have some elements of fear, some elements of greed and some elements of duty. But if the underlying element is love we need not worry much.
When Dr Soni was writing his book, all the four factors were playing out. There was the fear of not being able to submit the manuscript on time. There was the greed that the book should do well and make a big impact. There was a sense of duty that he must write 250 words per day. But the underlying driver was love for writing.
If there is something which we love, then everything else can be taken care of. We should design our career thoughtfully and systematically around the things we love to do.
Lead others
To lead others, we need three critical skills.
Attention: The first skill is attention: drawing attention and having attention. Without attention we cannot produce anything of substance. Unfortunately, in today’s hyperactive world, our attention is getting severely diluted.
Empathy: We need to be empathetic to be able to understand people's problems. We should be able to do this even before they tell us their problem or even realize their problem. As the saying goes, people will not care about what we think unless they think that we care about them.
Creativity: Empathy is about understanding the problem. Creativity is about solving the problem.
For the very first time our competition is no longer with the incoming batch. Our competition is with algorithms and not with people. Attention, empathy and creativity together will enable us to deal with the onslaught of AI and Chat GPT.
Lead Change
Whenever we encounter any situation in our life our response could be Ignore, Control or Confront (ITC).
Ignore: We must develop a healthy disposition towards ignoring things. Say we are driving on the road, and somebody brushes our car or bike. There's no point in engaging with this person. Whatever we may do now, the damage will not be undone. But at least we can save our mental energy to do something much more important with. About half the things in life fall in this bucket.
Tolerate: if we can't ignore then, we must tolerate. For example, if we are learning guitar, our guitar teacher may tell us to do certain exercises which are very painful. But we may tolerate the pain till we develop thick skin on our fingertips. This covers another 40% or so.
Confront: The last 10% is the most crucial part: C or confront. We confront very selectively and only when we feel there is a very high probability of going out and making a huge difference in the world.
Develop a thick skin.
When we want to do something different or new, people will often criticize us. We should develop a thick skin and ignore such criticism. We cannot please everyone. If we make a mistake, we should forgive ourselves and move on and be prepared to make a new mistake.
Q&A
Dr Soni always had a choice between being a full-time faculty and running his own startup and being a visiting faculty. He chose the latter. He has always believed that life is a portfolio of careers. if we work for only one organization then our emotions are tied to this organization. if something good happens we feel happy. if something bad happens we feel unhappy. But when we have a portfolio, the ups and downs compensate for each other.
Financial Freedom keeps us intellectually honest. Dr Soni runs a company not so much to make money as to remain intellectually honest. He can write things which he would not be able to write as a part of a larger institution.
For about 7 years, Dr Soni’s day job was in Wipro. His weekends and evenings were devoted to teaching. Teaching did not pay much. On the other hand, Wipro was paying well. Dr Soni wanted to understand whether he could become a good teacher. He realized by 2011 that he really looked forward to teaching.
Instead of continuing with Wipro and not really achieving anything big, why not do a PhD and get into teaching, which he was passionate about ? He got into the PhD program of IIM Bangalore campus and resigned from Wipro. He did not try to finish his PhD in a hurry. He realized that in the long run nobody would remember how many years he took to do the PhD. People would remember what he produced.
For almost 22 years Dr Soni has been totally focused on this topic of innovation culture and creativity. This was a part of his work at Wipro, a part of his thesis at IIMB, a part of his company Inflexion Point and a part of his research, writing and teaching.
While we need to have a portfolio, the portfolio needs to be around a theme. If we can really devote ourselves through the ups and downs and the highs and lows to that particular theme, then we can really make a massive impact on society.
Dr Soni provided very practical tips to the participants. It has become fashionable to say that we are living in a VUCA world (volatile, uncertain complex, ambiguous, world). But was the world not VUCA about 100 years back? In 1918 we had the Spanish Flu which was more severe than Covid. We had two world wars and the Great Depression. The world has always been VUCA. But the only difference between then and now is that those days, the world was the village. Today the whole world is our village. So, many things are occupying our mind, and we are feeling more and more concerned, helpless and worried.
As a matter of fact, this is the most peaceful time in the entire history of human existence. It is ironic that while we have peace around us, we don't have peace inside us. This is because we tend to occupy our mind with lots of things. So, the first advice Dr Soni has for all the students is to exit as many WhatsApp groups as possible. WhatsApp is bombarding us with information about which we can’t do anything. We must try to reduce our zone of concern and increase our zone of influence.
The second advice is to develop tangible skills: attention, empathy and problem solving. It doesn't matter what course we are doing. 50% of all the professions that our children will be doing when they enter the job market have not been invented yet. So, we must learn attitude. Professional skills can always be developed at a later point of time. What we cannot is our attitude.
We study Trigonometry, Pythagoras Theorem and mensuration, in school or college. They may not be useful to most of us in our professional life. But the hard work which we put in, the tenacity of problem solving and the analytical skills we pick up while learning these subjects are important skills for life.
The only competition is with ourselves. Daily we must ask this question: Am I better today than I was yesterday? Am I more knowledgeable, calmer, more responsible, less agitated and broader in my thinking? If the answer is yes, we are heading in the right direction.
It doesn't really matter where our colleagues are. We have no idea what their script of Life is. Each one of us has our own script of life.
We should exit as many groups as possible because we don’t really need so many people in our life. We should study well whatever we are studying and ace the exam. What we are studying doesn’t matter. What matters is the ability to study.
For most of us, Covid was the biggest disruption in our living lives. But if we look at the behaviour of people today, at the airport or at the railway station or in shopping malls there is no trace of Covid.
Dr Soni narrated a thought experiment. Somebody went into a cave in December 2019 and came out of the cave in January 2023. When the person came out of the cave, seeing how people were behaving, he would have no inkling of what Covid was and what disruption it caused. This example shows that humans can withstand major setbacks. Indeed, that's why we are surviving.
When we are in the fifth class the biggest problem is the half yearly exam. But in the 10th standard that exam looks laughable while the board exam is the biggest problem. But in 12th standard that 10th standard exam looks simple. So, the problem that we are grappling with today, will start looking puny to us, only one year from now. With our current level of thinking, today’s problem looks unsurmountable. But with tomorrow's level of thinking the current problem will look very puny.
Whatever happens is for our good. We should operate with this positive mindset. We should also learn to compartmentalize problems. They should not take up all our mental bandwidth. If we become successful, we don't take all the credit. So, when we fail why should we take all the blame and punish ourselves?
Our children do not have any obligation to live up to our expectations. Khalil Gibran in his book Prophet says that we are from our parents not of our parents. So, we need to understand that our children are from us and not of us. And that is a crucial difference as Dr Soni explained.
Our children have no obligation to finish our agenda. Every child comes with a prarambh or a rebirth. There are previous births that the child has gone through. It is only by accident she's born in our family. The karmic composition of the child will define the destiny of the child. Nobody knows about the fate of Albert Einstein's brother or Mary Curie’s sister or Abraham Lincoln’s brother. Had it been about parenting, the siblings of Abraham Lincoln, Isaac Newton and Marie Curie would have become equally famous. Lincoln, Newton and Curie were exceptions born in ordinary families.
The only job of a person who's holding the bow is to put as much effort on the stretch the string as much possible. But it's the almighty who decides the direction of the arrow. Our job is to ensure that the stretch is proper. But parents often decide the direction of the arrow.
Good parenting is not about leading from the front but about leading from the back. We should tell our child to climb the tree and stand ready to catch him if he falls. We should not climb the tree ahead of the child and show the child how to climb the tree.
So, we must be humble enough to realize that we are gardeners. We are not the genetic code of the seed. We must do our duty and allow our children to blossom and not impose our choices on them.
Suppose we want to be a leader. There are two ways of going about it.
Present Forward thinking means we continue doing what we are doing earnestly, honestly, diligently and hope we will reach there. Future back thinking means that we set a cutoff date. We decide to become a leader of a team of 20 people by January 2027 and write it down on a board or diary. This approach works because at a very subconscious level we are reminding ourselves that we must get there. That is also why chanting verses from holy books like Bhagavat Gita helps. When we chant mantras, we are reminding ourselves to come back on track if we are doing something wrong.
After writing down what we want to be, we should ask three questions. What should we start doing today? What should we stop doing? What should we sustain?
The trickiest part is stop. Many of us are not clear about what to stop. If we talk about leadership then one of the things that we must stop doing right away is micromanagement. If we micromanage, not only are we choking our own bandwidth, but we are also never allowing people to make mistakes. And if people don't make mistakes they'll never grow.
The biggest career fallacy is that we are not ready yet. No one is ever ready fully for a job. We may be ready to the extent of not more than 70%. We will get ready only on the job. Between readiness and intent what matters is intent. This means we need to learn to take half chances.
Dr Soni never had any inkling that he would ever become an author. His first book Design your thinking was an outcome of serendipity. Someone from Penguin reached out asking if he would be interested in writing a book for them on design thinking. If Dr Soni had told them he was not ready yet, they would have gone to someone else.
The second misconception is that our boss or spouse or HR is responsible for our career. We should take ownership for our career.
When we are trying to aspire to become somebody big in the organization, we will obviously end up having a lot of stuff on our plate. This stuff must be managed well. By thinking creatively about who else and what else could be done by delegating, automating or completely eliminating it, we can simplify our life and do better quality work.
Dr Soni provided a few examples. A friend who recently got promoted got himself a chauffeur. Another lady who became a mother got herself a cook.
The Germans are very good at using time productively. German organizations have the concept of 10-minute meetings. All meetings in German organizations are typically scheduled for only 10 minutes. Meetings can be extended in increments of 10 minutes only. But this rarely happens. The Germans realize that whatever can be done in 20 minutes, or 30 minutes can also be done in 10 minutes.
We should be clear about the things which we can do better than others and hand over the other things to other people. This way, we are not only making things easier for ourselves but also growing people around us and making them more accountable. Senior execs and political leaders can manage pressure only by delegating, automating and prioritizing on a daily basis.
The best way to engage employees is through a compelling purpose. Dr Soni provided the examples of ISRO, St Johns Medical College and the Défense Service Staff College, Coonoor. In these organizations, employees work hard, and nobody complains about work life balance.
In the corporate world people are sitting in an air-conditioned office, and enjoying all sorts of comforts like vending machines, cafeterias, etc. Yet, they are complaining about work life balance. People sitting in the Kashmir Valley, managing a mortuary, or doing a night shift at Sriharikota do not have any problem. The difference is a sense of purpose.
In many companies, managers and bosses and leaders simply threaten employees by telling them what might happen if they don't do something. They do not explain clearly how they will benefit if they do the task, other than getting a better performance rating. Reducing everything to quarterly performance is not very inspiring.
Napoleon Bonaparte very famously said that a man will not give his minute to us. but he will give his entire life for a coloured ribbon, the badge with that medallion. So, if companies can communicate a clear purpose to their employees, things will fall in place.