PVPF 2024

Interview with Rajesh Srivastava, Author of "The 10 New Life-Changing Skills"

on Oct 27, 2022

Rajesh Srivastava is an alumnus of IIT Kanpur and IIM Bangalore. He spent over three decades as a manager in various sectors like beverages, food, commodities, personal care, and education. He was the President of J K Helene Curtis Ltd (a Raymond Group Company). Rajesh then moved to education and became an adjunct faculty at IIM Indore and COO of SP Jain School of Global Management. He now works as a consultant and holds workshops for companies like Siemens, Mercedes Benz, Reliance, and IE Business School (Spain), among others. Throughout his career, his writings have appeared in various publications, including Outlook, Telegraph, Mid-Day, Business Standard, and Mint.

Frontlist: How have these Life-Changing Skills mentioned in this book transformed you as a professional?

Rajesh: I have achieved professional success by applying these life-changing skills during my career. Here are two examples.

Creativity: It is a learned skill activated when traditional thinking is bypassed, and the imagination is allowed to wander freely to import, combine and connect ideas in new and imaginative ways to come up with big ideas.

I used ‘creativity’ to come up with the name McDowell Signature.

I was flipping through a magazine when I noticed an advertisement for Signature Bindi. That got me thinking - Signature Bindi feels so incongruous because ‘bindi’ is vernacular while ‘Signature’ is western. But McDowell Signature sounds so cool! My subconscious mind had miraculously made a connection between two dissimilar ideas, bindi, and whisky, in a new and meaningful way.

Smart Problem Solving: The business world is littered with problems. Smart problem-solving skills arm us with perspectives, tools, techniques, and frameworks to come up with smart solutions.

When I am stuck on big ideas or need a second opinion, I ‘step into the (big) shoes of people' I admire & respect. I do this by posing a simple question: What would Steve Jobs do? I pose the same challenge to Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk to get more options.

Here is an example. I wanted a second opinion on whether I had reimagined the deodorant market correctly as ‘perfume.’

I crafted the following question: how can the deo category be reimagined to reignite the market?

This question I posed it to the three stalwarts & I wrote down their likely responses:

Jeff Bezos: Identity the pain points customers face with the existing best-selling deo. Then design a deo that reduces or eliminates them.
Steve Jobs: Create a better product that gives a pleasurable customer experience.
Elon Musk: Challenge the tradition of the industry.

Based on the directions given by these giants, I arrived at the following decisions:

Young people of opposite genders want to come closer, but body odor (BO) drives them apart. I needed to reduce or eliminate this pain point.
Create a better product by formulating a recipe that has more authentic French perfume. It will enhance the users' mood and give them a pleasurable experience.
Challenge the tradition of the industry by marketing deodorant as 'perfume.'

I amalgamated their thoughts into a cohesive strategy and concluded that the deodorant should be sold as 'perfume.'

Today 'perfume' has become a generic benefit of the deodorant category & the category has grown 1000x since I reimagined it.

Frontlist: Creativity, one of the higher cognitive skills, is too overrated. Everyone aspires to be creative nowadays. Do you think this skill can be acquired, or is it just innate?

Rajesh: Creativity is a learned skill and, through practice, can be mastered. Everybody should aspire to acquire this skill.

There are several factors that enable creativity. Here is a partial list:

Unbounded curiosity: This requires people to reawaken the child in them by renewing their friendships with 'five' childhood friends: Why? Where? When? What? How? If this sounds complicated, follow Albert Einstein's advice: Question everything!
Keen Observation: To sharpen the sense of observation, learn to:

* Slow down

* Refrain from multitasking

* Observe everyday things with a fresh pair of eyes

* Be mindful of what you are doing. This will help you be present in the moment

These simple strategies will help set your mind free to form associations and be creative.
'No' Time: It is the quiet moment in which people can isolate themselves from the noise and distractions of the world. During this time, they can take a walk or spend some quiet time alone. These moments relax them and are ripe for creative thoughts to take birth.
Positive Environment: It helps us think more clearly and creatively. In this environment, our brain accesses learning, wisdom, and experience and can combine them in new and unexpected ways. It results in free-flowing creativity.
Bombard your mind with new experiences completely outside your chosen field. You can do this by:

* Seeking out ‘new’ people, places, and experiences

* Increasing the diversity of your acquaintances. You are exposed to different viewpoints and perspectives in their presence

* Cultivating varied interests

Modest constraint: Constraint enhances creativity. It forces us to think in ways we may skip in prosperous times. But there is a caveat: constraint should adhere to the Goldilocks’ Principle, which is that too much constraint will choke creativity and too little will give it free rein. When it is just right, it spurs creativity.

If the constraint is self-imposed, then it spurs even greater creativity.

In the 2000s, the Audi racing team desired to win Le Mans under a self-imposed constraint: it could not go faster than its competitors. Working with this self-imposed constraint, it developed diesel-powered cars requiring fewer fuel stops than gasoline-powered cars. Audi went on to win Le Mans three years in succession.

Freedom to fail: New ideas are born through experimentation. Experimentation, by nature, is prone to failure. Permit yourself to experiment and fail. But learn from each failure.

Apart from learning from your own failures, learn from other people’s failures as well. After all, you can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.

Healthy body: Focus on getting sufficient sleep, nutrition, and exercise.

* Sleep offers the body and brain time to restore and recover.

* Regular exercise reduces anxiety and improves the quality of sleep.

* Nutrition leads to a healthy body and a healthy mind.

These three are the basics for brain functioning and ignite our creative side.

Frontlist: At the end of each skill chapter, you've mentioned a chart to make it more comprehensive. How did you decide on the layout of penning down this book?

Rajesh: While studying at IIT Kanpur and later at IIM Bangalore, I used to summarize everyday class sessions into summary notes. Just before the examination, I merely went through the summary notes and did well on the examination.

I followed the same technique while writing this book. At the end of every chapter, I have given a summary of each skill. If a reader wishes to get a quick recap of the skill or to re-acquaint it, then all she has to do is go through the summary, and she will be up to speed with the skill.

Frontlist: How can this book assist corporate employees in developing new-age skills and motivate them to relinquish their comfort zone?

Rajesh: The earlier 3 Industrial Revolutions (3IRs) created blue-collar and white-collar jobs, which required people to carry out instructions, not question authority and follow the time-tested systems and processes.

Now, we are in the midst of the 4th Industrial revolution (4IR), also called Industry 4.0. It is creating ‘green collar’ jobs, which need people to 'think, reflect and act.' To develop these abilities and perform the green collar jobs efficiently, it is critical that professionals develop certain skills - the 10 new life-changing skills:

1. Creativity

2. Innovation

3. Critical Thinking

4. Framing the Right Question

5. Smart Problem-Solving

6. Lifelong Learning

7. Storytelling

8. Influence Without Authority

9. Humanness

10. Entrepreneurial Spirit.

If corporate employees do not possess these skills, then they will be like birds whose wings are clipped, and they will not be able to soar. Therefore it is in their interest to learn these skills so that they come up trumps in their professional career.

Frontlist: How have influential leaders marked their presence in our society, and what change have they brought into any ordinary person's life?

Rajesh: Influential leaders have leveraged these skills to change the world for the better – forever:

Steve Jobs came up with the idea of smartphones which has changed the world forever.

Elon Musk has deployed these skills to get the world to embrace clean transportation and dream of colonizing Mars.
Jeff Bezos has revolutionized retailing.
Jack Dorsey has got the world to communicate through 280 characters (read: Twitter).
Reed Hastings has changed the way we entertain ourselves.
Mark Zuckerberg changed how we interact - socially.
Larry Page & Serge Brin have changed how we 'search.'

The list is long of influential leaders who have deployed these skills to make our world a better place.