Inspire Someone Today
Inspire Someone Today
E158 | The Playbook of High Performance | Anindya Dutta
We explore the habits that make success repeatable: focus on the moment, remove ceilings, and bring your best every day. Stories from sport and business show how to turn uncertainty into an edge, lead diverse teams, and build cultures that outlast a single win.
• elite mindset as presence, no ceilings, daily best
• intrinsic motivation after the peak
• translating sports principles to team leadership
• embracing change as opportunity, practicing resilience
• Virat’s fast-bowling bet and Mandela’s jersey moment
• developing mindset through simple, repeatable habits
• pivot from banking to Two Roads, outside-in lens
• leading diverse global teams with standards and trust
• integrity and attitude before skill
• balancing passion and profession with time choices
• failure ownership, cultural bias, and AI honesty
• future skills: digital mindset and data-led judgment
• sport as a classroom for leadership humility
Be the best version of yourself that you can be. And when you do that, you automatically lead by example. And then everyone follows.
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So, an elite performer typically we would refer to someone where they have consistent success. And people who have consistent success, in my observation, don't set ceilings. They go in to do something, they do it well, they succeed, and then they try to see how they can move on to the next level by doing something different, by continuously improving. And that is what separates someone who's easily satisfied from an elite performer. And that's true of leadership, that's true of leadership in business, that's true anywhere else. Because technology is uh is one of the biggest things that is changing around us uh at the moment, right? It has been changing for decades, but now the pace of change is enormous, right? For me, change gives opportunity.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome to Inspire Someone Today Podcast, a show where we dive into the stories and insights that has the power to create ripples of inspiration in your life. I'm your host, Shrikan, and I'm thrilled to be with you on this journey of inspiration. Hey my dear listeners of Inspire Someone Today. From the role of the stadium to the silence of the boardroom, performance is a universal language. Whether it's an athlete chasing glory or a leader tearing an organization through turbulence, the rules of high performance remain strikingly similar. Clarity, resilience, and execution under pressure. Our guest today, Anindya Data, has spent his career translating lessons from the world of sport into frameworks that helps leaders and organizations to thrive. As managing partner of Two Roads Group, he helps businesses unlock cultures of excellence, rethink leadership, and navigate change in today's fast-moving world. It's an absolute joy, An India, to have you on this episode of Inspire Someone Today. Welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you, Shrikant. It's an absolute pleasure being here and thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_00:So, what better topic than to get started with the mindset of elite performers? For somebody who has been very closely associated with this An India, I'd like to jump into this particular topic right away, which is what do elite performers do differently in terms of mindset? And how can today's leaders, corporate professionals, adapt from these habits?
SPEAKER_02:There's a lot in common, which is why I do the work that I do, uh, which is bring, you know, the lessons that I have learned from uh observing, watching, high-performing elite athletes, but uh elites in any space, basically, what gets them to succeed? And, you know, there are a bunch of things that they do, but some are absolutely common to them. And they all honestly sound simple. So there's there's no rocket science about it. It is just that we don't necessarily focus on that because we are busy with doing whatever that we are doing in our careers. So the first is to focus on the moment. There is no athlete in the world or no high performer in the world in any field, whether it be a fighter pilot, whether it be a tennis player, uh whether it be a golfer, a cricketer, whatever, who does not succeed by not focusing on the moment. Because to the exclusion of everything else, there is a past where they've had failures, there is a past where they have had successes, there is a future where there might be a big tournament coming up, there might be for leaders a big moment with your boss coming up. But what matters is are you here and now in what you're doing? And can you perform at your best in this moment? And because the best high performers, uh, the elite performers do that well, that's why they succeed. And that's what every one of us as leaders needs to do as well when we're when we're leading teams. I would say something that helps elite performers succeed consistently over a long period of time, because no one really looks back at someone who's had one success and calls that person an elite performer. So an elite performer typically we would refer to someone where they have consistent success. And people who have consistent success, in my observation, don't set ceilings. They go in to do something, they do it well, they succeed, and then they try to see how they can move on to the next level by doing something different, by continuously improving. Right. Uh, and that is what separates someone who's easily satisfied from an elite performer. And that's true of leadership, that's true of leadership in business, that's true anywhere else. And the third, and probably something that people do very regularly to be an elite performer is be the best that you can be every single day. Don't try to be perfect because perfection doesn't exist. Every elite performer will tell you that there is no perfection. Because if perfection existed, they wouldn't get better. So every single day, just do the best that you can and walk away from it saying that I've done my best. Maybe I've not won, maybe I've come second, third, whatever, but I've done my best. And to me, these are three of the of the many things that uh that separate elite performers from the less and which leaders in any business, in any field, can easily learn.
SPEAKER_00:That's great call out, I mean focus, challenging the status quo, being the best. And again, watching all of these uh elite athletes in close quarters, what do you see of the intrinsic motivation or the inspiration they have? Somebody prepares for four long years to perform in an Olympic show for probably a day or half a day, or in some events it's a matter of seconds. And once that is done, they go back for the grind, like you said, challenge the latest co and do this for the next four years, right? So, where do they draw these kinds of inspiration? What motivates them to kind of keep going?
SPEAKER_02:They need to go within themselves because if you let outside noise come in, it is very, very difficult to do. Right? It's like, you know, the maximum number of accidents, deaths that happen in mountain climbing is when someone reaches the peak and is climbing down. It's not on the way to the peak. And that is so true, whatever you do in life, whether you're an athlete, whether you are leading a team, whether you're running a business, whether you're the CEO of a company, when you reach highs, the tendency is to then let your focus fall, uh, let your motivation go down because you know you've been there, done that. And what elite athletes do best is they say, okay, that's done. What can I do next? So I've done the 100 meters in 9.8 seconds, if you're in bolt, for example, right? How do I make that 9.75? How do I make that 9.70? And that's what drives elite athletes, elite performers to go the next step and do the same thing over and over again and for the next four years. Like, you know, if if you're a rower, an Olympic rower, right? To your point, it's it's a matter of a minute, two minutes, a few seconds, right? They live with the mantra of what can I do to make the boat go faster? And it's proven if you go across Olympic Games for I think decades, in a given race, every Olympic gold medal has never been won if it has not been 10 seconds faster than the previous one. So you've always got to go for it. That's the motivation.
SPEAKER_00:So that's a motivation. That's a beautiful metaphor there. So from this, what can the current state leaders sink in, soak in in terms of techniques around decision making, in terms of managing the teams, in terms of their own resilience to a lot many things that is happening around them?
SPEAKER_02:It's these. Uh they have to inculcate this in themselves first and then in their teams. That the process of continuous improvement, of not setting ceilings, of being the best you can every single day. These for me are the three major things that any leader needs to do in their own leadership journey, but also inculcate the same in their team. Because the only way, as I said, uh, you know, at least in my mind, that winning makes sense is when you do it sustainably, time and again. Right. And the only way to do it in a business environment is actually to perpetuate it within your team. Because in the end, what is the leader doing? A leader is helping a team succeed. And if the team doesn't succeed, the leader doesn't succeed. So whatever you do yourself, you cannot do it in isolation as a leader. You need to make sure that it goes within your team as well.
SPEAKER_00:And as you're navigating through this, an idea in the business world, the resistance to change is natural. And I have heard you also talking about that while the resistance to change is natural, resilience to it is a choice. Absolutely. Can you elaborate a bit more on that?
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. Look, um change is a constant, right? I mean, it's it's a cliche when you when you say that the change is a constant. But it is a reality. You know, I've had a corporate leadership uh uh life which is about three decades uh long. I'm doing what I'm doing, which to me is is helping corporate leaders navigate the paths, the journey that they are on. And through that, the one thing that has been constant is change. So the only way to deal with change is to embrace it. If you don't embrace change, if you fight it, it's pointless because it's much bigger than you. So if you embrace change, you know, we all hate changes, right? So we hate operating system changes, we hate system upgrades to talk about it in uh in terms of technology, right? Because technology is uh is one of the biggest things that is changing around us uh at the moment, right? It has been changing for decades, but now the pace of change is enormous, right? For me, change gives opportunity. Anytime you see change, if you look at you have two ways of looking at it. You can look at it negatively and you're going nowhere because change is bigger than you, or you look at it positively and you look at it as an opportunity. What can I do with this change to do things differently, to achieve things which I could not have achieved without this change? So an opportunity knocks, open the door, right? You you take an example of what's happening with um artificial intelligence, with machine learning today. We may not like it, but it is what is going to help us increase productivity. It is what is going to help us do things which would otherwise not have been possible. We have to find new ways of doing business. We have to embrace that change. And you talked about resilience, right? So for me, resilience is not something you're born with, right? Every one of us has resilience within ourselves, but the degree of it is a learned skill. And you have to practice it. You have to make sure that the resilience within you comes out. And this is one way of doing it. When you when you see change everywhere and it's uncomfortable, be comfortable with the uncomfortable, because that's the only way you are going to really succeed.
SPEAKER_00:I think as a human species, we like certainty, hence, we are resistance to change. And like you rightly said, opportunity comes when you embrace uncertainties. It is not in the certainty. And again, having worked with business leaders, with sports athletes in close quarters, are there anecdotes, stories that you have witnessed in close quarters where folks have turned uncertainty into opportunities, into stories that we can kind of say, wow, that is something that we need to kind of uh practice or follow.
SPEAKER_02:There are so many sports stories around, right? I mean, we we all know them, we look at them, uh, we don't necessarily talk about them. For me, one of the things from observation as far as sports is concerned, and I'll talk about something else which is connected to sports, but which I am strongly influenced by when I look at what happened, not at close quarters, but but you know, looking at it in the past in terms of what happened. But if you look at Indian cricket, for example, Indian cricket struggled for decades, and we could not find a way to win consistently abroad because we did not know how to take enough wickets to make that happen in foreign conditions. And that uncertainty, that frustration remained with us for many, many years. But it was Virat Kohli, when he became captain, who first actually decided to do something specifically about that. His stated aim was to win abroad, and he realized the only way to win abroad is take 20 wickets. The only way to take 20 wickets is through fast bowling, because then you can get the top order out. And along with the rest of the ecosystem that was happening in India, he completely embraced taking on fast bowlers in his team as the linchpin of his attack. And that changed completely the trajectory of Indian cricket, if you like, in terms of winning abroad. The mindset we discovered just with Boomrah, for example. You know, so it's just completely changed the way Indian cricket is played today, the way foreign creams look at us uh when they look at uh Boomrah, Asiraj, uh Akash Deep, whoever's you know, coming through the system, and uh and they take it as a given. But it wasn't a given 10 years ago or 15 years ago. It was something where a deliberate change needed to be brought in. And Virat saw that opportunity and brought it in. If you look at how sports has been used in the past, I mean, it's a story that many people will know if you've seen the movie Invictus, which is a real story. And for me, you go back to 1995, Nelson Mandela has, you know, just taken over, come out of prison, taken over as the as the president of South Africa. South Africa is still struggling with apathe, just coming out of it. So, what does he decide to do? The rugby world cup is going to be held in South Africa. Rugby is a white sport, the rugby jacket, the springbox green, is recognized as a symbol of apathead. And he decides to take up Rugby World Cup as his challenge to bring his people together. And I'm not gonna, you know, give the story of Invictus, go and watch it. If you haven't, it's an amazing movie from an amazing real story. But basically, what happens is South Africa wins the World Cup against all odds. But before that, what Mandela goes through with the captain of the team is incredible because he gets the whites to understand that the blacks are not monsters because sport brings them together, gets the black townships to understand that the white players are not monsters because he brings them to the townships. And then on the day of the final, Mandela walks out in a spring box jersey with the world watching, right? And it's just incredible what you can do when leaders do things like this to change things. There's uncertainty, there's challenges. But then you come in and say that I'm gonna change this, I'm gonna treat this as an opportunity and create uh a new trajectory. That's what good leaders do.
SPEAKER_00:Wonderful. Two beautiful stories that narrated out there, Virat Kohli's as well as uh Mandela's. I I think one consistent theme in either of these, you spoke about mindset, right? How important, how critical those mindsets are. What's your take on developing that kind of a mindset, the mindset to win, the mindset to challenge some of the changes and thrive in those. So, how can one go about developing those kind of mindsets?
SPEAKER_02:Well, you know, I I go back to what I told you in the beginning, right? That there are certain things that one needs to do to develop that mindset. We all have it in us. It is just recognizing that what are the things we do well, what are the things we need to continue doing well, and perhaps what are the one or two things that we can learn from others which we can embrace and then make it a habit. It doesn't take a huge amount. It it just takes one to step back, look at things, and say that these are the three ways I want to behave, these are the three things that I want to do, and then just go with it. So it's difficult to say anything else about mindset other than that it's a simple thing to do. It looks like a simple thing to do. It's a more difficult thing to do in in practice, but if we make those shifts one shift at a time, uh give it time, uh it works. And the more we observe things which are happening outside our own environment and learn from them, the faster that changes. The more insulated we are. And I know, you know, I worked with uh companies, I speak to companies where the first instance when they bring me in is to actually say that can you come in and give us great examples from our industry that will help us get better? And my first response to that is the last thing in the world you should do is look at your industry, or ask me to look at your industry. You know your industry best. That's not why you brought me in. You bring me in to look beyond the obvious to tell you what's happening in the world that you're not looking at, and what can you learn from there to change the way you're doing things. So I think changing, changing that, removing the very narrow focus that we tend to have in what we are doing. Look at sports, uh, look at uh you know great uh figures from uh from history, look at look at Alexander, look at uh Mandela, look at Gandhi, whoever, right? There's lessons to learn everywhere. Pick those up, use them in your practice, and and you're just going to be a much better leader. And all of them, the core of all of that is mindset.
SPEAKER_00:And we'll kind of dig into that mindset of the person who has kind of lived through that in close quarters, and that is you an India, is you made a significant pivot from banking to founding uh two roads. What gave you the confidence to take that leap? And what would you say was your mindset shift when you kind of took this leap and started doing what you're doing today?
SPEAKER_02:Getting comfortable with the uncomfortable, like I said before, right? That's I think the first thing one needs to do when one makes a pivot like this. So the day I decided to leave banking, I literally decided not to have anything more to do with it, which doesn't mean I don't use my skills. I I still work as a consultant with sovereigns for creating um capital markets in frontier countries, and that's a very interesting part of my job. But my passion always as a leader was in the whole concept of leadership. Now, I was in banking for 27 years. I was lucky enough to be given my first leadership role when I was one year into my career. And uh so I led teams for 26 years, small teams, medium-sized teams, huge teams all over the world. And it just gave me an enormous appreciation of the benefits of leadership, but also the challenges of leadership. And the thing that I wanted to do when I got out of banking at some point in time was to work on senior leaders and how you shift behaviors by looking at a lens which is an outside-in lens. Because the one thing that leaders have is ego in plenty. There's no getting away from it. Ego leads to arrogance. And I've seen that through my career. There have been moments when I've let ego get better of me. Fortunately, not too many of them as a leader, but I've seen it often enough. So I wanted to do something about that, which was the foundation of two roads, which is why I wanted to work on leadership. What happened parallelly was that about 15 years ago, I started writing. And um I started writing on sports, uh, sports history, and I delved into a lot of leadership lessons. I started interacting with a lot of great sports persons. And my idea in starting two roads was to bring the two together. So bring my passion for leadership along with my passion for sports together, give an outside in lens and come back to business and tell leaders that look, I have the experience. So I know what the problems are. I don't know all the solutions. But what I can do is I can give you a perspective which comes from outside. I can give you the lessons that come out of that, and you tell me how best are you going to use it in the work that you do because you understand your work better than I do. So I can make that correct, and we can together work out how you take better decisions and how you make those behavioral shifts to make your business better and you as a leader better. And that's really how it came. So it's it looks far-fetched when you look at that pivot, but the links were there. So these were these two links which came together. Now, honestly, I know, and a lot of friends have told me it's enormously difficult to do what I've done because you really do cold turkey one day and move on. But it's intellectually extremely rewarding. And I'm very happy that I made the move that I did. It's an absolute pleasure when I when I go in and work with leaders and their teams, and uh I see them getting excited, and I see them actually figure out what are the shifts that they want to make and commit to those. And those changes come from sports, they come from armed forces, they come from other businesses. Uh so it's got nothing to do with what they already know. But suddenly, sitting in that room, they find one or two solutions to problems they've been struggling with because they've looked at it differently.
SPEAKER_00:So definitely. Kudos to you for taking that leap of faith and having led teams yourself across geographies, across different uh cities. What have you learned about unifying diverse multicultural teams? And in today's day and age, what does great people management look like?
SPEAKER_02:When you run diverse teams, you know, at one point in time, I was running a team with people from 37 countries. And uh for me, it was a very, very interesting experience because you don't necessarily have the experience of dealing with all those cultures. So you come in as a leader, not necessarily with the knowledge of why it is that they have evolved in the way they have. You can only see the present for all of them. So, as a leader, I think there are two things when you're faced with that kind of a situation. One is you spend people time. So you spend time with the people you have in your team. Uh, in my case, I didn't depend on the leaders who were reporting to me. I went out and actually met the teams with the leaders as fast as I could, which gave me a great appreciation of what they do, where they come from, what the culture is like, and allowed me to meet as many people as I could in that in that bigger team. And the one thing that I took away from that and and which I've always held dear, is that a team needs to be diverse. And when we are talking about diversity, I'm not talking about purely gender diversity. Yes, gender diversity is a big part of it, and that's what we tend to tick the box on, but that's not all of it. So for me, when you talk about diversity, you're talking about gender, you're talking about culture, you're talking about thinking, the way people think, because someone in your team might think very differently from you. And for me, that has great value because it is when people think differently that you do things differently. And that's when teams achieve real magic. Age and experience, um, I was never a leader who wanted to have the youngest, freshest mind in my team. I wanted youth and experience combined in my team, because both of them bring great value to the team. So embracing diversity is a big part, I think, when you manage large diverse teams. The other thing is when you are managing teams across regions, across countries, even across states, if you're in India, for example, think and manage at a global level, at a macro level, but act locally. You have to have faith, you have to have trust in the people who are managing teams locally to tell you what is best for their suppliers, what is best for their customers. Because if you lose sight of that and you try to impose one size fits all, it doesn't work. I've worked in hub and spoke environments uh enough in my life to know that. But the moment you because in the end, I think what leaders forget is that how is your success measured? Your success is measured by a sum of all parts. If your teams do well, you do well. If your teams don't do well, you don't do well. Honestly, I mean, what is the value of a leader? The value of a leader is not the revenue that that leader brings, because that is actually created by the team. It is how well you set your team up for success to achieve that. These are a few uh things, and and probably one of the biggest things that I always maintained in any team that I run, was before skills, before experience, comes integrity and attitude. If you do not have integrity in the basic character of people in your team, if you don't have the right attitude of the people in your team, you don't have them in your team. You know, as someone I worked closely with, a special forces leader in the in the Indian Army. Uh, he told me once that I never had anyone in my team who I could not trust with my life when I went into battle. And that's how all leaders should be.
SPEAKER_00:That's so profound, isn't it? So true. These are the foundation building block of uh what good leadership has to be. Arinja, you touched upon some very great points. Something that is on the back of a lot of our listeners is what I'm going to bring it up to you. Which is you seem to be have very elegantly managed both profession and passion. Many of us struggle to pursue that. Pursue passion and profession alongside, but you kind of seem to have mastered it. What is the secret source? What can you tell our listeners? Saying, how do they pursue passion at the same time, keeping professional journey intact? How do they continue their professional journey at the same time as just their passion?
SPEAKER_02:I discovered my passion relatively late in life, which was um which was writing and which was uh writing on sports. I mean, all of us who are in financial services or in or in any industry write a lot. We have no choice. As we as we grow up in our careers, you you write all kinds of reports, you write uh you know, reports for bosses, you write reports for clients, whatever, right? I always enjoyed writing, but I didn't know how much I enjoyed writing until I started writing about sports. So when I found that passion, and when I found much to my surprise, that people actually enjoyed reading it, and they wrote into me to say that. I wrote four books while I was still working. And the way I wrote that was I stayed up nights, I wrote on weekends, uh, I woke up early in the morning to write. So, you know, you have to find time to indulge your passion. We all have time. It's how we use it. Our standard excuse in not indulging in our passions is to say we don't have time. We all have time. It's about how you use it, how you employ that time. And I like to believe that at least for a period of my life, I balanced it reasonably well. Uh, you can speak to my wife and ask her if I did, she'd probably say no. But you know, I like to think I did. Uh so there you are.
SPEAKER_00:Great. So everybody has this equal amount of time. How you make use of that time is the secret sauce out there, uh. The first of the part of three questions for you. If you had to distill your three biggest lessons in leading across borders and cultures, what would they be?
SPEAKER_02:So I think the first is get the preparation process right, and outcomes will follow. And if you hold that true for yourself and for your teams, you're going to succeed no matter where that team is, what they're doing, how diverse they are, and how different the businesses are. So get the process preparation right and the outcome will follow, and instant that in your team. Everybody gets that. So that's one. The second is as a leader, especially when you're managing teams which are not necessarily in front of you, but spread out everywhere in the world, in the country, in the region, whatever. Lead by example, take ownership for things that haven't gone right, take ownership for things that have happened with your team for which the team may be blamed. It could be a sports leader, it could be Be a business leader, it does not matter. Do not publicly blame others for failure. The moment you do that, you're setting yourself up to fail. And you do that even more when you are leading a team where the people are not with you. It's very easy to put failure blame on others who are not in front of you. Final thing is we are never going to always win as a team. So as a leader, I think the message that needs to go to the teams and the message to yourself is not that I'm going to be perfect, I'm going to win all the time, but win more than you lose. Get more deals than you lose deals. It is a percentage game, right? In the end, it is about a high percentage game. So if you think about it, a cricket umpire who gets two decisions wrong and is pulled up for it, that umpire in a test match may have got 60 decisions right. So two decisions wrong is a very small percentage, and that will never bother him. However, if he's given 12 decisions in a one-day match and got two wrong, that is a high percentage which you need to take care of.
SPEAKER_00:So true. Just a very intriguing question as you're talking about winning and failures. Is the attitude towards winning different in different cultural setups or attitude towards failure also? Or is it universally the same?
SPEAKER_02:The attitude towards winning, I don't think is very different across cultures. Everyone wants to win. We all want to win. Attitude towards failure and owning up to failure, more importantly, because if you don't own up to failure, you can't fix it. You can't find what is wrong and then go and correct it. Owning up to failure is a big problem in Indian culture. It is a huge problem. It's a less of a problem in the Western culture. It's okay to fail. For us, to own up to somebody else that we have failed is culturally very, very difficult to do. And that is the reality. And we have to change that because failure is a part of life. Failure is a part of business. Failure is a part of sport. As long as we win more than we fail, as I said, it's fine. So when you fail, put your hands up and say, this didn't work, I'll do better next time and move on. And we have a problem doing that. And we need to fix that.
SPEAKER_00:So very true. And it's reflecting just not in the sports, it's reflecting in the society, it's reflecting in the culture if you don't own it up.
SPEAKER_02:And the other thing is which which is again culturally, I won't say it's it's only India, but it's it's in a lot of places. And you actually see that very interestingly in what's happening with AI right now, is when you don't know something, basic human nature is to pretend that we do and give an answer anyway. And that is something I have a huge problem with. Because if you do that, you are completely defeating the purpose of getting better and continuous improvement. Today, if you look at some of the answers that you get from AI, and I'm I'm this is an open warning to people who are using AI mindlessly today for whatever questions they have. If you take those answers literally and you believe in them, there is a problem because increasingly over the past few months, AI, the best AI platforms have been throwing out rubbish uh answers because they do not want to say they do not have an answer. So we need to fix that. It's AI hallucination, if you like, and we are going through that at the moment. We need to fix that because AI is picking up how the human brain behaves, how what we feed into it. So true.
SPEAKER_00:Anindia, if you were to fast forward you 2035, what three pieces of advice would you give to the future self of Anindya?
SPEAKER_02:So I'd say first, be thankful for everything in your life. Everything that's happened, everyone who's helped you in the the way to get where you have, be thankful to that and to them. Because you wouldn't be there without all these people and all those events. Right. I would smile at the wonderful memories that I have. I would bury the bad ones because it's pointless, right? Holding on to the bad memories doesn't help anyone. Smiling at the wonderful memories, I think, has a lot of value. And then, you know, hopefully I'd be enjoying the moment, the present, whatever it is bringing me at that point in time. There's no way you can change the past. So hopefully I'd not be worrying about it too much. There's no way you can predict the future or what's going to happen. So try and enjoy wherever I am, whatever I'm doing in 2035. I will hopefully try my best to enjoy myself and be in the moment, if you like.
SPEAKER_00:I I think you have not only watched elite performance in close quarters, you have responded like one. So thank you for doing that.
SPEAKER_01:That's very kind. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_00:For an author who has authored so many books, Anindya, if you were to share three books or resources on leadership, what would you recommend?
SPEAKER_02:So I'm probably going to be a big bit biased uh with that because the the books at the top of my mind, in one way or the other, involve sport. They may not be the usual books that people would talk about. The first for me is James Kerr's Legacy. I think it's just one of the most incredible books ever written. It's for those who don't know, go out and you know look for it, go and buy a copy if you can. Legacy is about the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team. And what is special about the All Blacks is that over a period of a hundred and a hundred plus years, I think it's 150 years of existence of playing test matches in rugby, which is, you know, not five days, but uh but they're real test uh of metal, they have a 79% win record, which is just incredible. No team in the history of the world in any sport has ever won 79% of all the matches they have played over a century. So legacy is about the things they do right. What is the culture that exists in that team? What are the things that go down from generation to generation, which they do differently, which allows them to go out on the field and win as they do. And much of it is about life. It's not, it's about, you know, it gives you life lessons, it gives you business lessons. It's not about the sport. It is about doing things right. So Legacy for me is one of the best books I have ever read. The other is, which Indian listeners may not be familiar with, it's a book called The Score Takes Care of Itself. It's written by an American football coach called Bill Walsh, who's one of the greatest NFL coaches in the in the history of American football. And what it talks about is the messaging that I have been trying to bring forth over the past hour or so, which is that if you get the preparation process right, the outcome takes care of itself. So, what are the things that we as human beings, we as leaders, need to do from everything from attitude to integrity to making sure we get the process of what we are doing right, we prepare well for whatever we do in life, how success is assured if you do that right. It's again an incredible book, which is which is worth reading. The score takes care of itself. And finally, a book that a lot of people will be familiar with, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. Again, that draws on sport as well. It's one of the books where Covey draws wildly on sports. So, you know, everything from discipline to taking on personal responsibility, so ownership, uh, to collaboration to time management, all the things that great leaders do, successful people do in whatever field they are. So for me, these are these are three books I would strongly recommend for anyone uh to read.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you, Anindya. Lovely recommendations. Uh, you have already picked my interest to kind of go and pick two of the three. So we'll for sure have a look at it. The last of the part of three questions, Anindya, if you had to give three micro experiments that keeps you centered, what would those three micro experiments be? So if you have a great idea or if you have any idea, write it down.
SPEAKER_02:It doesn't matter whether it's in an online journal, it's in a post-it note, uh, it's in a notebook, just write it down because sure as hell you're not going to remember it when you need it, right? So for me, that's that's something I try to do as much as I can. I write, I write these down. For me, the second one is is about we as human beings. And a lot of people may not appreciate this, but I call it saying thank you to the lift man. Every time I walk into a lift or I walk out of a lift or someone opens the door for me, I say thank you. It is not about the liftman. It is not about the person who opens the hotel door. It is about showing respect to people for what they are doing. If you expect people to show respect to you, you have to show respect back to them. And that's something I, you know, I learned early in life. And I'm very thankful to my wife because from day one, she's had that. And watching her, it's reminded me every single time that I need to do it. And I'll tell you recently I was at Bombay Airport taking a flight very early in the morning, and one of the bathrooms, it was the cleanest, most spotlessly, you know, immaculate public bathroom I'd ever been in. And this includes, I lived, you know, for a very long time in Singapore. So I can tell you they have very, very clean public facilities. This was really clean. And there was a person standing there who was in charge of that cleaning, and he looked like he took a lot of pride in his work. And people were walking in and out ignoring him. And I had a flight to catch, but you know, on the way out, I just stopped and asked him that, you know, are you in charge of cleaning this? Do you really uh I said, thank you, because you know, you've just done a wonderful job at 6:30 in the morning, coming in, seeing this, seeing someone do their job that well when no one else is watching is an amazing experience, and and I commend you for it. And, you know, he was so happy because not many people stop to do that. Uh, but we should, because that's what we need to respect. Someone doing their job well when no one else is watching. And the third is what I what I spoke about just now that don't hold on to the past. If people have done wrong to you, um, you know, this is this is the way I treat life, if people have done wrong to you, you don't need to forget it because it's difficult to forget. Some, you know, hopefully you'll forget it, but it's difficult to forget, so you don't need to force yourself to forget it, but forgive them. Forgive them not because of them, they don't matter, but forgive them because of your own mental health. Because if you sit with it, it is just going to stay there. End this with a story which is which actually was was very, very funny, and um, it's not got anything to do with me. It's the first time I was meeting Michael Holding, the great West Indian fastbowler. And I told him my first statement to him was, Mikey, I've hated you from when I was seven years old. And he was just completely taken aback. And he said, Why? I said, Because, you know, I saw you injure and decimate the Indian team, My Heroes, uh, at Sabina Park when you were bowling into the ridges. And he just burst out laughing. And he said, you know, it's been almost um 50 years. Spani has forgotten forgiven me. Perhaps you can find a way to do the same. I loved it when he came back with that.
SPEAKER_00:That's a superb, superb story. Uh, thank you so much, Anindia, for sharing uh these wonderful micro experiments. I'm sure this is a wealth of knowledge for all of our listeners. We're trying to do something different on this uh show, which is while we talk everything about the now and the present, we also want to kind of look at what is over the horizon. So, from that standpoint, while we had touched upon some great elements in terms of mindset, in terms of leadership, all of those things, I just want to draw your attention on a couple of other things. Over the horizon, what's your advice for young professionals? Today's 25-year-old listener is tomorrow's CX Who. What's one mindset shift that they must make now to stay relevant?
SPEAKER_02:Whenever you have an opportunity that comes to you, however difficult it might seem in the beginning, put your hand up. If you don't put your hand up, you are never going to do things you've never done before, achieve things you've never achieved before. For me, it worked in my career. I mean, I moved around everywhere, I did a lot of different things. It wasn't easy. Uh, it wasn't easy to move, it wasn't easy to constantly move, it wasn't easy to constantly have new teams to work with, new bosses to work with, and all of that. I built, including two roads now, five businesses from scratch. So you are basically doing something which you've never done before, but which no one else has done before as well. But put your hand up, do it the way you think it should be done, embrace the changes, embrace the challenges, and just go for it.
SPEAKER_00:Great. And India, over the horizon, technology, AI, and global disruptions or reshaping the work. What qualities will matter more than degrees, titles, or even experience?
SPEAKER_02:I think what's going to matter most, again, we go back, you know, the whole this whole hour has been spent on mindset, right? But but it is it is really important. I think more than the technology itself, more than the changes that are going on, it is about having a digital mindset because we are going to be in that atmosphere over the next few decades. There is no way of getting away from that. There is, you know, zillions of amounts of data out there. There is no getting away from the fact that your experience, your knowledge, the collective intelligence in your team is a very small part of the total intelligence that is available from the data which is there. So anything that you do going forward, any decisions that you make, the first point of call, first port of call has to be what is the data telling you? And then use your experience, your gut feel to filter out from that and take the right decisions. So that is a change in mindset that needs to be there for the future to create a winning strategy for the leaders of the future.
SPEAKER_00:Ability to decipher the quantum of information that is available and work cohesively as a team.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. And it's it's not even about the quantum of information. There is there is so much information, much of it's rubbish. Much of it is rubbish from your perspective because you know it's not useful to you. It's useful to someone, right? It's useful to a marketing firm, it's not necessarily useful to you. But to discern what is useful from there and take the decisions based on that, that is the leader's job. That is what a good leader of the future will do.
SPEAKER_00:The last of the world, the horizon question, Anindia. What role do you see sport playing in shaping leadership and culture at large?
SPEAKER_02:There is no better learning ground for leadership lessons. There really isn't. I mean, you can go and read 100 books on leadership written by management gurus and it'll teach you nothing new. There is nothing new that has been invented in terms of leadership or management in the last 2,000 years. All the lessons were there 2,000 years ago, 5,000 years ago. It is how it is presented today. But if you go and look at sports arenas, if you go and observe and try to learn from what leaders are doing right, there is so much to learn. I mean, you watch the final of a championship, you watch the winning team, don't switch off the television, wait until they've gone on stage to accept the trophy. Look at how the leader behaves. You have an MS Dhoni, a Virat Kohli, uh Rohit Sharma, to name three in very recent Indian cricket terms, who would never be found in a photograph of a winning team holding the trophy in the middle. They would be in the side somewhere. It would be the youngest member, it would be the substitute who was sitting in front holding it. Don't take credit for what your team has done. You'll always get the accolade as the leader. You don't need to ask for it.
SPEAKER_00:That's a beautiful way of wrapping all of these things up. Is the leader is one who doesn't have to be in the spotlight if he can, if he or she can enable the teams to be in the spotlight. Anindya, this has been one heck of a conversation on so many aspects, but I would definitely take back the element around mindset as a fundamental of this particular conversation. Before we wrap up, this show is all about creating a ripple of inspiration. What is your inspiration today's message to all the listeners?
SPEAKER_02:Be the best version of yourself that you can be. And when you do that, you automatically lead by example. And then everyone follows.
SPEAKER_00:Be the best version of yourself, and that creates the path for everybody to follow. So that's the insights from Anindya, the managing director of two roads. Anindia, wishing you best of everything, wishing you more success, and continue to inspire all of us through your work. Thank you so much for taking time and sharing your thoughts with me today. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Inspire Someone Today. This is Srikal, your host, signing off. Until next time, continue to carry the ripples of inspiration. Stay inspired, keep spreading the light.
