Leadership Lessons: Master Influence By Being Intentional

Ep.42 Dr. Karuna Ramanathan

[00:00:00] Surbhi Dedhia: Hello, Dr. Karuna. Welcome to the Making of a Thought Leader podcast. It's absolutely my pleasure that you are on board today. 

[00:00:07] Dr. Karuna Ramanathan: Thank you Surbhi. Thank for having me on board and it's really a privilege to be able to share some thoughts and I'm sure we are gonna have a really interesting conversation.

[00:00:15] Surbhi Dedhia: Oh yes, absolutely. And when you said interesting, exciting conversation, these are the key words that I'm looking at as well. When we spoke last, you were sharing so much about being intentional and drawing those experiences from your life's work.

[00:00:31] So I, I feel that is really very exciting conversation to have today. But before we get into all the juicy bits on that, I want you to share with the audience, your rich illustrious background. When did leadership come to you first? When did you get to that point of thinking about leadership and knowing leadership, 

[00:00:54] Dr. Karuna Ramanathan: I stumbled on it quite accidentally.

[00:00:56] It was always interesting to play sport in school and to be the class monitor and to be the class prefer. I saw many of us would've gone through that and you begin to think that you're a little different and maybe you, you can take charge of people and you can get them to do something and at age of 15 maybe some power goes to your head and then you have all, all of us have those stories.

[00:01:14] But at the age of 19, I made a choice to actually, sign into the military for a career. And I was in the Navy and I was very lucky. It was accidental. I'm gonna use the words accidental, intentional here. It was quite accidental that, that I got sent to the, uh, UK Royal Naval College, uh, where they trained midshipmen.

[00:01:34] And this was back in 1984 that I suddenly realized that there was this thing called leadership and it was a pretty darn serious thing. And for the year that I was there in the south of the UK, it was of course military training every morning and all that stuff.

[00:01:50] And you go through all that character building and, and it dawned on me somewhere towards the end of that year that actually you can't not be a leader on a warship, because at, at the end of the day, if your men and women do not trust you when they sleep, and likewise when you go to bed, you don't trust people around you, uh, it's unlikely that you're gonna get much rest and you're gonna get ill.

[00:02:14] So it's a, it was a very high calling and at the age of 19,20, you know, Surbhi that actually came across and hit me like a ton of bricks. I became, very aware of the accountabilities associated with the profession. And from that point onwards, I started taking it taking it not as book knowledge, but as a relational quotient, which then means do people actually, trust you enough.

[00:02:39] Mm-hmm. And, and you don't have to be nice for people to trust you. You just have to be fairly real and, and fairly respectful. So along with that, I went on to serve in the Navy. Of course, I went to school in between, I went to the university, but I would come back and actually pick up the career.

[00:02:54] And I ended up 19 years in the Navy, uh, from the age of 19 up until 38 and I had the privilege of commanding two warships. One small one and one big one. And at that time, life was really fun in your mid thirties and you feel that you have all this power and status and standing and the naval profession is a glorious one.

[00:03:16] And I had to step off it because it was a decision point that I had to make. My children were young, they were six and nine and, and it was a difficult decision, but I had enough of time at sea and there was almost a decade of time at sea. Mm-hmm. And I then stepped into the military headquarters for about two years, and there was an opportunity and I was, I was grateful enough to be considered for being part of the core team that went into the Centre for Leadership Development in Singapore, and that's where I picked up some of my basic textbook leadership knowledge after having spent 19 years in the Navy. So, whatever I saw, experience, and most importantly, Surbhi, whatever I failed to do, became quite real. Mm-hmm. In trying to understand the philosophical underpinnings, the academic underpinnings, the traditional underpinnings of leadership.

[00:04:04] Over almost a decade and I retired from the military in 2014. Armed with that knowledge and almost completing a PhD in leadership, uh, which I was able to do part-time, and I went into government for three years. Mm-hmm. And almost three years in government in Singapore.

[00:04:20] I was Singapore government's most senior principal organizational development consultant. Is a mouthful, but what it simply meant was I designed and facilitated conversations among some very senior people to be able to come to agreements and collaborative positions regarding whole of government initiatives.

[00:04:37] And there are plenty in Singapore. Yeah. And then after that, and this was in 2017, I stepped out on my own and, and became a entrepreneur and a self leader. This is going to be entering the seventh year. I still do pretty much the same thing. My core purpose in life is to help as many people become better versions of themselves.

[00:04:55] And, and, uh, therefore I have just had that privilege of working with people over the last 39 years, uh, in. Four distinct contexts, different, very different contexts for leadership, and I'm a little concerned about that because we fail sometimes to realize that leadership is highly contextual and you cannot afford to take one practice from one context and apply it quite so confidently in another context. Surbhi, I hope all that crash cost made sense. 

[00:05:25] Surbhi Dedhia: Crash. Yes. It's, it's like a crash course that's the right word that you've used. I, you know, as you were saying all this, I was like really keeping up with you in terms of wow, what all that you have done in life so far.

[00:05:40] But most importantly, I think there was a common thread that I stitched over the course of your background that you've been pretty intentional or, or you've been, like, whenever the opportunities came, you said yes and you took it into your stride and what I'm curious about at this point is you said these different pockets that you, you know, dealt with like the government, the military, and I'm separating both of them is for a reason.

[00:06:06] Um, and then the corporate and then the individual leadership. So, did you see any kind of a difference in how they're construing? And I think that's what your last message was, that it not only is contextual, it comes from within right. So how was it different? Let's start with the definition. Like what was the definition of leading a warship different than leading a country to, leading a corporate? 

[00:06:33] Dr. Karuna Ramanathan: There's a few major, um, age old constructs in the context of, of military leadership. And firstly, I will take the position that leadership is inherently, or it was born in the military.

[00:06:46] Uh, the profession actually amplified the need for leadership. The need to take men and women into harms way. He is been there for centuries in the start of time, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, what would compel a person to be led by another into a potentially difficult situation, worrying for his or her life, and, and that is a.

[00:07:07] It's quite an amazing concept because it's the entire training around developing leaders is actually based on that. We are careful in who we select based on training everyone. So that's typically militaries all around the world. They train everyone and they select a few. Yeah, and with that comes the larger underpinning, at least the values side of the profession. And in 1958, Samuel Hackett, I think coined the term unlimited liability. So Surbhi we have to understand this. It's unlimited liability. That means every military leader, mm-hmm. Is or has internalized the need. To put his or her life down for a cause and or for the men and women around him out.

[00:07:50] Now look at how high a ask, I mean, people are not born this way. Maybe they are okay. But, but again, this is very trainable at very high cost. Mm-hmm. For a specific purpose in eventually, sadly, of hostility and war and may it never come. But to imagine that that. Uh, definition of leadership can actually apply in other contexts that we are so commonly used to is almost unfair.

[00:08:16] Mm-hmm. I'm sure you have friends and relatives and acquaintances who have done time in a military, they will wax as we do, just how powerful leadership is. What good leaders must do, how capable, and the term I'm going to use is how capable these leaders are because indeed they are. I mean, history is replete with examples of men and women who have served beyond the call to the extent of putting their lives.

[00:08:41] Now, the other side of the, the equation lies government, and government simply is a bureaucracy. Just like the military is largely a hierarchy, a very visible one. The government is actually organized around necessary bureaucracy and bureaucracy. The language of process comes into play. Protocols, rules, and all those other things.

[00:09:03] Right. The SOPs. Yeah. And, and it's very hard to expect someone to actually demonstrate those qualities of leadership in a military inherent, military context in the government. Mm. In fact, if you put a military leader and we have those who are actually retired, if you put a military leader in the context of government, he or she might struggle initially because they might just be lost around the swarm of bureaucratic movements and wonder why people are not being themselves and why they don't step up. Now while we see capable leaders in a military, we see far less capable individuals who are in leadership positions in government, and I want to get to that defence because simply they don't need to be as capable in that context. Mm-hmm. They don't need to take care of the people. They don't need to put their lives on the ground. Yeah. They don't need to operate with that level of trust.

[00:09:57] They just need to make sure they don't make mistakes. They are, they have, they operate at the highest levels of integrity and basically not loyalty, but integrity. And they're two different systems, so the. Leaders in position in the government are actually quite unfairly faltered for not demonstrating that kind of qualities and, and it sometimes hurts to actually watch how good, uh, Responsible people actually, brandish round is not very good leaders.

[00:10:26] And, and, and, and, and the leadership ask is actually very high. So that's between the government and the military. And you can see very different contexts. While we have unlimited liability in the military, actually, when you look at a government, most governments, I think all governments are accountable to people.

[00:10:41] The entire system is accountable to people. No single individual is accountable to a person, you know, and then, and it's so you say, why don't you step up and be accountable? There's no need to be accountable. Now let's get to academia. It's interesting. I spent, uh, while I was doing my PhD, I've taught in two universities and it's always marvelled on me as to how.

[00:11:01] How interested academia is in defining something and I'm here to tell them very respectfully, you can't define leadership. I mean, we can, it's a process of influence it. There may be styles, there may be a, a few of these things, but, but I really, really don't think we are better off defining leadership because it is highly contextual.

[00:11:21] Now, in that sense, actually we might need. To be a little bit more circumspect around how we look at academic definitions around leadership, particularly those that try to prove what good leadership looks like. Mm-hmm. And finally, with organizations, uh, there is this. Fantasy laden notion of the universal leader.

[00:11:41] Right? Yeah. And, and I, I'm here to also tell you that, that we all leaders are human beings, and that's also not possible. We just hope that people treat people each other with respect and, empathy and humility. I hope that it gives a sense of the different contexts. 

[00:11:54] Surbhi Dedhia: From a very foundational aspect, it puts in perspective that how leadership pans out differently in different scenarios and that where there's a need for being accountable, where there's a need for trust, where there is a need for just directing people to do right. Yeah. So this example, definitely sets the ground for what I'm gonna ask you next. There is an aspect all the listeners of the show mostly are business men and women. And what happens is, as a business owner, there is a need to take the charge, need to take, lead the business.

[00:12:31] And they're not trained to a leadership course or anything. Usually, you have a product or a service and then you are just marketing and you assemble a team that will help you do that. And in this situation, how does one kind of understand the context of leadership and through, through all that you have decoded in this niche, what would be like your top three or four ideas that you would want to share for business owners in terms of leading their businesses? 

[00:13:04] Dr. Karuna Ramanathan: I think it's very important to understand for CEOs is it, is it broken? But what we mean by broken is some parts of it are in dire need of corrections. We need to really wonder what's going wrong. Uh, the processes are not, not very clear. The, the SOPs are not dated. There may be some issues with the way money is being spent.

[00:13:26] Some people are actually incompetent, and so all that is broken. I mean, you have to fix that, and a lot of that, whatever is broken, can be fixed from the inside. Which then means you, you, you find out what's happening. You set up your internal audits, your audit committees, you get all that done. You actually might get your HR department do some things.

[00:13:47] If it is broken, it is not going to be able to grow. It's like a potted plant. I mean, you can't grow a plan in a broken pond. So, then you actually need to ask yourself how long it's gonna take me to fix this? And in some cases, fixing can be very fast. I mean, if you got a process consultant, and there are many of these consulting groups out there who actually come in and tell you, do this, do this, do this, because you'll get much better, faster, and you could do that. And then, so all that for the C E O is leadership. It's leadership because he's demanding or she's demanding that it gets done and it needs to happen.

[00:14:20] Yes. Now the problem starts potentially when a leader is faced with transformation. And transformation is a need to take essentially a good organization and make it great or even better, you know? Mm-hmm. And that is probably where I see, to answer your question, Surbhi, we come around the question. Most CEOs overestimating their knowledge and their power.

[00:14:45] There's a lot of that happening because simply by actually sharing, look, we need to get this done, let's explain why it's done. That's, that's not how people actually shift. There's a lot more that's needed and they need a lot of help, and there's an equation that we use the more ambitious transformation agenda, the greater the need for a leadership collective.

[00:15:04] So the CEO's challenge, there will not necessarily be the strategy but the strategy built collectively by his or her and earn first lieutenants. Here's the C-suite. Here's the C minus. Here are some of the people who actually hold power and they need to come together and that is something that most CEOs are either uncomfortable doing.

[00:15:26] Mm-hmm. Or they assume they can just do it in one afternoon. And then that's really where a lot of us, a lot of people who do the kind of work I do actually lend our benefit. You know, I mean, I give our time as external facilitators of this conversation once that's. Son, the CEO is actually in a multiplier effect because the people in that collective are able to move things for him or her.

[00:15:48] Now, the third problem with CEOs is even while we are doing this, is they often, while they overestimate their knowledge, they overestimate their power, they underestimate the influence of the middle managers. Mm-hmm. And the middle managers have tremendous, as you know. Surbhi you and I have worked in the middle of organizations, the people we go out to lunch with, you know, the people we actually travel with in the car.

[00:16:10] I mean, the things we say, you know, in the water coolers and all that. Actually, uh, the informal dynamics that takes place in any organization. And basically, if you don't harness that, it kind of potentially deteriorates into a whole lot of problems, which now is come commonly branded as culture. Mm-hmm. So, CEOs cannot shift culture. They can't fix culture. Middle managers fix the culture. And so middle managers are often underestimated for their influence and also for the information they hold. So, CEOs might need to watch that for someone taking over. There's a wealth of knowledge and information in the middle of the organization and they're not gonna tell you until and unless they see the need to actually kind of bring that up.

[00:16:55] So it will be very good then, as a third point for CEOs to think a little bit more about how to harness the. I call it the engine room in an organization, akin to the metaphor of a ship. How do you actually harness the engine room? Because if you don't, at some point they might look like a problem.

[00:17:13] And that's also, I say the middle is where the action is, and the middle is also where the inaction is. Which then means that you actually experience resistance to change in the middle, right? So, so, so there is just three points. One is fix whatever is broken. Two when you're growing, don't think you can do it on your own because, uh, this whole.

[00:17:33] This whole obsession with vision. And I think Ronald Hyer says it nicely in his book, leadership on the Line, he is prof. of Harvard, he says, you know, ambition and lead envision after a while tend to look the same. So, it's a single leader's ambition, cast envision language that actually is never going to help the organization go anywhere because it's just an idea and it's a determined idea, right?

[00:17:54] But it's a lot more to build a collective. And the third point is, The power of the middle. They are your engine room. . 

[00:18:00] Surbhi Dedhia: Yes. Yes. That's wonderful. So, when we say about harnessing the engine room is there and of course it is only when they're willing to open up, how do you make the culture come out and tap into that, like how does it work? Does it work top bottom, or does, does it need to be, have like an external consultant come in and do it for them?

[00:18:22] Or it has, it takes like a leader within the middle management to then, be collaborative with the top management to share these ideas. 

[00:18:33] Dr. Karuna Ramanathan: As an OD practitioner or consultant, I will tell you that those things are a little bit difficult to deal with where the group dynamics becomes a very, very difficult and sometimes concepts like marginalized, cancelled out, and you have all those power dynamics that happen in the middle. But getting back to the question, covid was a terrible thing, but it actually showed up a few things.

[00:18:55] We need middle managers. Who are these people? These are your managers in appointments. They are your supervisors. They are project managers. They are team leaders. Look at it, survey maybe 30, 30, 40% of an organization. Yeah, we need them to accept the responsibility, not just for the work but increasingly to be responsible and accountable for the people who are actually within their charge. The simple way to unlock that is, every middle manager can become a leader, not in position, but to harness the influence and to harness the information. So, we see a couple of steps first. In order to do that, you need to help people cope.

[00:19:40] Managers themselves cope. And that's all that mental health and that burnout and the work from home. But the second is once they get past that barrier and they're a little bit more positive and, and all this is trainable and how you see the narrative in the world, I'll come to narrative in a bit.

[00:19:55] Then you get them to become a bit more adaptive, uh, how they work with others across the organization instead of just, uh, working up and down, which just so used to a typical manager, as you and I have, be, have been experiencing before, we look up for instructions, and we look down for the work.

[00:20:10] We look up and look down. Now we look across on the left and right because the information and the knowledge we need doesn't just rec reside with us and it's fast being accepted, right as work becomes more complex. And for some of them who are actually very energized, uh, these are the high-octane types they call the talent pipeline talent pool.

[00:20:29] Uh, some people are actually looking at promotions. Well give them some change work. Let them lead the transformation projects. Let them become change leaders. Now, inherent in all this is the power of narrative, and it's often confused by many well-intentioned. CEOs, uh, that it, all it takes is to stand up on a rostrum and spend 45 minutes explaining why a change or transformation is, is necessary.

[00:20:55] That's not how it works generally, that's rhetoric for large part. When someone's looking at you after three minutes on a rostrum trying to make a point and worst still over PowerPoint slides, people switch off. They see the psychology of it is the meeting is work and I will just have to stay away from it. So that I don't end up taking any part of this that I don't need. I mean, that's what's going through most of our minds, right? Yeah. We are in a defensive mode. What needs to happen is to enter the common narrative. Every organization has a narrative in use. Mm-hmm. Which means there is a perspective.

[00:21:28] Any perspective might be marked by time or might have present, or it might be historical as to what really this organization is about. So, culture actually comprises a narrative in point. Let's call that the common narrative. The common narrative needs to be understood.

[00:21:46] Leaders need help to be able to take that common narrative apart and look at it. I mean, if you, if you're going to measure culture, you can't be putting out a questionnaire. Of say 42 questions because he pointed out that that simply measures the climate at that point in time.

[00:22:03] It doesn't go deeper. So as a dialogic OD practitioner, we build conversations and stories and we get the highs and the lows, and we do those mappings. Per into how people might actually be collectively seeing things in the middle of the organization. That's why managers are so powerful when you get them together in a room. And then, the common narrative emerges. In our work for the last seven years, uh, with, with organizations what the c e O thinks the organization is about and what the managers believe the organizations are, are actually quite fundamentally different. 

[00:22:38] Why is this now important? Because understanding that is the first step to preventing some other thing that tends to happen. When we say that managers resist change, what typically happens is a counter narrative starts to grow. Mm-hmm. That counter-narrative is about anxiety, fear of losing their jobs, having to learn new skills, having to kind of accept machinery, being displaced, being uh, I don't know, the whole lot of stuff.

[00:23:05] And so really if you don't watch the narrative and you don't work the stories and you don't allow the stories to surface, and people would love to tell you that. Then you are at risk of having a very covert counter narrative pop up quite accidentally, and suddenly it looks like there's huge resistance in place for any kind of good change that is planned.

[00:23:25] Surbhi Dedhia: So much now being spoken with all the artificial intelligence and generative AI coming in place. So, everybody's kind of fearing that, oh, will my job be gone in another, uh, few years if I don't act upon it?

[00:23:39] So yes, there is this constant counter narrative. Yes. You're right, what you said from the middle management perspective it is so easy to have a complete counter-narrative. Yes, there is a mission vision all of that, which is kind of re uh, enforced at regular intervals.

[00:23:57] But I think what happens is this counter-narrative, which can really weigh our decisions in terms of. Willing to change, willing to transform, being together as a team, moving in the same direction together. So, who does the storytelling now? Like who gets this counter narrative to just stay there and not become such a big, uh, issue, but who does the storytelling and who gets people to move?

[00:24:25] Dr. Karuna Ramanathan: Yeah. Years ago, when we started working in his space, to simplify things Steven Dennings work out of the World Bank, he actually coined the phrase springboard story. Mm-hmm. And it was in 1999 when he was, in the World Bank and he had difficulty convincing, the board on some changes they wanted to make in some humanitarian work in Africa, I believe, as the story went. And he actually demonstrated how the springboard story would actually help people understand the benefits of an intended change. When we Google it up, you can see it. What it simply means is say it goes like this. In five years, time, imagine in the year 2030, we are getting through, we are visiting Africa, and we see this, we see this, and he says, it's so elegantly, right?

[00:25:09] It's all in his books. Now, leaders need to learn not to explain the vision, but to build a story around the vision. Because that gives people hope. And it does not strike fear. It does not put people in a difficult position. It does not kind of make them anxious. It's storytelling, business storytelling. if you are a gifted storyteller, good for you. And there's some CEOs, well like that. Certainly, there's some politicians who are like that. Yeah. But, but for most CEOs, because they're largely the management sorts, we can teach them to actually think about storifying their intentions.

[00:25:50] Mm-hmm. And, there's some very good models out there. Now let's get to the middle. So, when CEOs are taught to tell it in a story, maybe they go back to, oh, a very good example of this was the late Steve Jobs when he did the Stanford commencement address, I think in 2 0 0 6, and he told a story in three episodes of his life, and he made a lot of sense, right? I mean, compressing his 30 years or 40 years into, into a 12-minute story, and CEOs can be trained to do that. One day programs to help CEOs to think of an alternative way to spend the 30 or 40 minutes they have on the stage to dump the PowerPoint and to just hold the mic and tell the story.

[00:26:31] Okay. Now the middle managers group is really powerful actually need an opportunity to actually emotionalize to come out and share.

[00:26:40] To actually raise their fears, their frustrations, their near misses. And these are stories from the trenches in an organization. Uh, now they are really valuable because when you can do narrative mapping on them, themes would arise, T H E M E S.

[00:26:57] And you find that that is really, really powerful data. And what does it do Surbhi? It actually allows us to estimate the rate of flow. I'm gonna use systems language now. When a strategy is formed and is pressed down like in a waterfall and a timeline is drawn, it is the pace of transformation. The pace suffers from execution, which is determined by the flow.

[00:27:20] So it's metaphorical, it's like water flowing. The more roadblocks of stones you receive, you put out the flow. Flow rate should be fastened, but ultimately successful transformation is about getting pace and flow in a nice balance, you know? Mm-hmm. And the people who are gonna dictate flow. Are not, the CEOs are not the department heads Yeah.

[00:27:40] Are not the C-suites. They are the real people who actually underestimate their influence and underestimate the knowledge they hold. And this Surbhi comes out over and over again in stories. Mm-hmm. We run dialogic od type sessions to actually build the stories, but. There are many, many forms of it, but, uh, and I know there's a lot of positive psychology around yay stories, you know, appreciative inquiry and all that, but I actually specialize in the pain stories.

[00:28:07] I, I, and it gets us going very fast. Most of us come to work hoping to be successful. We seek fulfillment. We want to make sure we earn a good day's wage, and we wanna go home to where happiness is typically in families, right? So, we get very annoyed when things don't work well at work and we become quieter and quieter, and stories actually help to bring that out.

[00:28:29] Surbhi Dedhia: That's so wonderful. That's really wonderful. Dr. Karuna, you made such an important point about the middle management and there is like always this gap between the top and, the middle management. On the podcast what I have spoken so far, through the different episodes is that we encourage the business owners and leaders to grow their own thought leadership Now.

[00:28:53] There is another word added to leadership here called thought. Right? So how can, um, through all of our discussion that you said, the narrative, the story, uh, you know, the middle managers and bringing that all out in, uh, a cohesive work environment, how can, uh, leaders or even the middle managers be very intentional and go forward to build a very good, strong narrative?

[00:29:23] Dr. Karuna Ramanathan: So, it all starts with, who you choose to be. I mean, I always ask this question, right? Who do you choose to be? Now, a lot of leadership programs Surbhi that you and I have gone to, we might have ended up, who am I? Well, what's my legacy? Uh, what has been my life experience? And, those stories are important depending on where you are in life. And, and for some of us actually from a personality, from a psychological needs point, we might be more predisposed to reflection, but most people struggle with that because it might be a bit too existential for most people. 

[00:29:56] Particularly middle managers now your success at work depends pretty much on what you choose to do. Your happiness at home depends pretty much on what others choose to do with you.

[00:30:13] Okay. So, if you can, if you can, if you can just wrap your head around that, then intentionality becomes a natural concept that we can link to success at work because we go to work. Not, um, I'm gonna hurt some people here at a risk, but I'll just say, let's unpack that a bit. If you are, if you are only happiness is at work, then I think, uh, basically there's a lot of work that needs to be done.

[00:30:37] Yeah, the large concept of happiness is situated at home, community, religion, hobbies, reading, exercise, whatever. Right? The large concept around work is a means to an and. And for us. We need to try our level best to be successful. That means being intentional in our relationships. Now how do you unlock this is most middle managers, most leaders, most CEOs would want to pursue success. But how you get to it is largely no longer your sales figures. But these days, the multiplier effect is fast becoming evident. In most organizations for profit the multiplier effect is about people and uh, and the currency for that is influence and therefore it's leadership. Mm-hmm. Not leadership position, but leadership. So, the moment you can be respectful of people and the moment you can then be empathetic towards people and when you can demonstrate quite consistently a certain level of humility to people, people regard you as someone they can.

[00:31:47] Generally trust and that makes you a leader. That is a so that's intentional. To be respectful, to be empathetic, to be actually practicing humility to the best of my ability is an intentional act. Uh, it is far easier to do that. We lower the bar then to demand that everyone is authentic, everyone is transformational, everyone is clever.

[00:32:13] Those are so, so high bars, and, and, and there's one more. Everyone is compassionate. I mean, there's a lot of literature around Some people are and most people are not. 

[00:32:20] So let me go back to it. Humility is what people at work need to see more. Mm-hmm. They need to have the sense that everyone is trying their best to be empathetic with each other, which means we truly care for one's wellbeing at work, and you wouldn't have all these burnouts and mental, mental illness, mental health issues.

[00:32:37] But underpinning that, the fundamental philosophy, and I actually truly believe in it, that. Most of us were well brought up by our parents. Right? And so, we are capable of respect and in this case it's professional respect. Mm-hmm. Now, I'll tell you in my work with middle managers, I mean from a, from a leadership work point of view, most managers take to this very well because they realize that.

[00:33:00] I just have to tune myself up a little bit and I'm actually becoming a lot more effective at work in relationships. And even though you don't have to like each other, but you just have to be respectful of each other and let me hold myself back, what kind of skills that I can practice, how can I become a little bit more adaptive and change driven?

[00:33:19] Right? So, so, so that's what where we are right now, uh, we are actually empowering the middle. 

[00:33:26] Surbhi Dedhia: Right. Right. That's, that's interesting. And what happens now when it is the remote work culture and how do people show up in, in this situation? I know, I mean, I'm already thinking that it is going to be so much harder to get people to be more intentional because you are just, In front of the screen.

[00:33:47] Of course it's a personal choice, but when you are in a group and when you are from a position of influence for the leader to convey that and, you know, create that environment, how does this work? 

[00:34:00] Dr. Karuna Ramanathan: It's funny that, that, that, uh, Zoom is called Zoom, and you have 20 people on a zoom. You know, actually it's no zoom at all.

[00:34:07] You're just talking to 20 people and you're expecting them to understand, and most people are tired. I mean, tired, tired, tired. Now I, when we first started to deal with this issue, I used to share that actually there are only two ways of working co-location and remote. So, co-location is coming to the office.

[00:34:24] It's all those practices that we are so used to, and they're all the. Of everything, including sometimes it's over hype collaboration. But just for a moment, let's hold that remote is completely away from the office, which then means that I'm not gonna see you. So, in both these models, there are choices. I choose to go to work, I choose to stay remote. Uh, and, and telecommuting is not an extension of the remote system.

[00:34:49] It is an actual degradation of the co-location system, which means on some days I will just take some time off and, and I would sit somewhere and I'm gonna do my work and, but I'm not gonna do that every day. So now we have a situation from work, from home, hybrid working and all that, and it is fundamentally, from a consulting point, it actually requires a completely different system.

[00:35:12] What it does not do Surbhi is it does not elevate trust. And, and that's I think where a lot of the CEOs and the senior leaders are feeling very uncomfortable because if you do the work, let's assume that you are, you are competent and you are proficient, and you will get the work done. Ironically, most organizations cannot parcel out independent work anymore.

[00:35:39] There's a lot that's very interconnected and how that work is connected is on data, information, knowledge, and wisdom. Mm-hmm. And when you look at it that way, it's impossible to even fathom how an environment like zoom and funny, they're called these terms, right? Zoom meeting. Mm-hmm. Uh, team meeting.

[00:35:57] Yes. You, you actually have all these fanciful terms, but it's actually quite the antithesis of it. You know, it's actually quite different. In business, as you know, in the, in a corporate world if I need, if I really need to discuss something, it will be face-to-face. So why, what is this? It's about influence and it's about trust and, and that's where complexity actually is better managed. The more difficult things are, the most are more uncertain. Things are people need to come together, but then again, you also have this.

[00:36:26] Organizations saying we need our people to all come back because they need to work together and they need to collaborate together. That's also high ask because people sitting around in cubicles does not necessarily mean they're relating to each other professionally and, and actually worse still, they might relate to each other.

[00:36:41] Uh, uh, I mean, as it happens in an informal dynamics. And then you have that counter narrative that we spoke about, right? Yeah. So, so this. Pretty much a lot of work to be done, uh, in this space. And, and it's a worry to us because when we do, when we do transformation work, I mean, inevitably it boils down to this, it's never about the strategy, it's always about the potency of the execution.

[00:37:04] Surbhi Dedhia: Hmm, true. That's, that's a wonderful, segue to this whole idea of how do you become more intentional to influence. You know, because now it's like the potency of execution. How do you, uh, become more intentional to influence? 

[00:37:22] Dr. Karuna Ramanathan: For the middle managers out there, you are capable of great success.

[00:37:27] Just because you don't see it in others cannot be the reason why you don't want to become more successful. Mm-hmm. And every opportunity to do that, to build a relationship, not to show the work, but to actually become influential with people, for you to be missed, for you to be valuable, is you should not even be worried about ai.

[00:37:51] What is it that you do that others would struggle to do? So that's an intentionality in itself. And so, to use the question I use in my workshops are, who do you choose to become? I mean, be intentional, be planful, it's not just a goal, it's an intention. The intentionality would actually.

[00:38:13] Let us manage the impact better. A lot of times the impact we have on people is not our intention, but in relationships, the intentionality, once managed, would manage impact. 

[00:38:25] To the senior leaders out there. Um, I think we overuse charisma, we overuse power. We over overstate knowledge.

[00:38:33] We confuse that with education. We swirl. It was like I was on a war ship, you know, sailing the sea and where is the captain? The navy’s all over the world will say the most important person in a warship survey is the chef. With him lies the moral of the crew. So, the same thing here is the middle managers. So, dear CEOs, dear C-Suites, it is the middle that you need to work with, not work on and, and that's really, that intentionality needs to be there.

[00:39:01] Some of the best CEOs are people who walk the shop floor, 

[00:39:05] Surbhi Dedhia: right? Right. Wow, this has been so impactful and so nice to have a very fresh perspective on leadership. And I think, uh, the audience is really going to take a lot of insight from this. I have taken, uh, a lot of insight. Definitely. 

[00:39:21] Dr. Karuna Ramanathan: Yes. So kind Surbhi.

[00:39:23] Surbhi Dedhia: I want, audience to know where they can, get in touch with you, Dr. Karuna? 

[00:39:28] Dr. Karuna Ramanathan: Oh, it's very simple. It's Karuna, K A R U N A at k r K. That's kilo Romeo, kilo Kr, k sg kauna kr k sg. And the website is also kr k sg. Uh, you can look me up or you just Google. You'll just find it. Uh, I think I've said too many controversial things and Google has a track on me.

[00:39:51] Surbhi Dedhia: Yes, it is. It is a mark of a thought leader to, to say his thought and be contrary. Contrary, yes. Have opinions about it. So that's that's wonderful. It is such a pleasure to have you on the show again, Dr. Karuna. 

[00:40:05] Dr. Karuna Ramanathan: Surbhi the pleasure's been absolutely mine. Absolutely mine. Thank you for this. The time has flown so fast.

[00:40:10] Thank you. 

[00:40:11] Surbhi Dedhia: Yes, it has. Yes. Thank you. 

[00:40:13] Thank you.