Exponential connections: Power of communities in organisations
Today, we face a great paradox: being simultaneously connected to tens, if not hundreds, of people through social media and yet feeling disconnected, lonely and alienated at work. In this episode, Saugata Chatterjee talks about how organisations can leverage the power of communities for greater participation, knowledge exchange and transformative relationships.
Source: Unsplash | Artist : Mario Purisic
Subscribe & Listen: Spotify | Google Podcasts | Apple Podcasts
About Saugata Chatterjee
Pic: Saugata Chatterjee
Saugata Chatterjee is a multifunction and multidomain business leader working at the congruence of social good and business profit. He served in sales, business and leadership roles at global and Indian companies.
At the moment, Saugata's building a platform with a set of co-entrepreneurs, which is touted to be the world's first platform of its kind, designed to help businesses build effective communities.
Resources
Global Well-Being Survey Report by Cigna
America’s Loneliest Workers in Harvard Business Review
About Peter Block
Transcript
Sowmya 00:07
Hello and welcome to The WorkWise Pod, a weekly podcast in which your hosts, Deepak Menon and Sujatha Rao talk about how we can make our workplaces better, not just more productive, efficient and impactful, but also fairer, more empathetic and fulfilling. In today's episode, Deepak and Sujatha are talking to Saugata Chatterjee about how organizations can leverage the power of both internal and external communities. Saugata is a multifunction and multidomain business leader working at the congruence of social good and business profit. He served in sales, business and leadership roles at global and Indian companies. At the moment, Saugata's building a platform with a set of co-entrepreneurs, which is touted to be the world's first platform of its kind, designed to help businesses build effective communities. Stay tuned.
Sujatha Rao 01:04
Deepak, I attended a Theory U workshop last week, right, a workshop conducted by U-Lab. And we had about 10,000 people from across, I think around 135 countries who had joined together on this U-Labs webinar at the same time. And a lot of people spoke about their sense of anxiety, the sense of loneliness and feelings of alienation, and wanting to connect with others to bring about sort of more fundamental changes in themselves, but also in broader society. And that got me thinking, because, on the one hand, we are more connected than ever right now. Right? We are digitally connected. We are connected through social media, I mean, we are connected virtually to people around the world. So we seem sort of paradoxically, at the same time, to be deeply connected, and yet feeling deeply disconnected. That's a bit strange, isn't it?
Deepak 02:07
I think it's the paradox of our modern times, this duality of connectedness and disconnectedness. You also mentioned about loneliness and alienation. The loneliness at work study by Cigna in 2020, reports that on an average, three out of five Americans, and four out of five young Americans.
Sujatha Rao 02:30
Yeah, and I think this kind of data, echoes in studies from other parts of the world, right? We know that there are numerous studies on you know, loneliness, leading to stress and burnout. In fact, in India, the Cigna 360 Wellbeing Study found that nine out of 10 workers say that they are stressed. And these are pre COVID numbers. I mean, it's astounding. This seems to be a epidemic or a pandemic in its own right.
Deepak 03:00
Yeah. And the loneliness at work study also reported that one of the key determinants of loneliness, or lack of frequent meaningful interactions. Saugata, what is the way out?
Saugata 03:12
Yes, this is actually a very interesting dichotomy to explore. Perhaps the reason why we feel disconnected, while technology can connect us is really because technology is connecting us only to a marginally larger circle of people. Earlier, we could connect with 50 people, but with technology, now we can connect with 500, but it is still limiting. And to dramatically change that horizon, the future is to figure out how we can meaningfully connect a network with perhaps hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of strangers. And this is where communities come in. Communities are large groups of people who you don't know, who are strangers, who literally, you know, do not know anything about each other, but to come together around something in common.
Deepak 04:02
But why communities?
Saugata 04:03
Yeah, I mean, in the sense that the communities provide us a purpose that is larger than our transactional objectives and day to day realities. The communities bind us together gives a sense of, you know, support. Tt provides a diversity of viewpoints, it makes us feel included. All are very crucial things to combat the sense of isolation that, you know, Sujatha you were just talking about, and I think that's, that's really the value of communities or something, it makes us believe and feel a part of something larger
Deepak 04:39
So this is the difference between communities and networks.
Saugata 04:44
Well, yeah, let's look at you know, teams, committees and things like that. If you look at a metaphor, which I like to use. If you look at a pool, and if you look at, you know, bubbles forming in the pool, all of the teams, committees and everything else are like bubbles forming and disappearing. And the pool is a community, you know. And we really need that sense of the pool. Networking is an English term, it can be used in many different ways. But we have grown to use it in a manner of personal networking: who you individually connect with, who you individually know, it can be your friends, that can be a network, it can be your team, that is also another, you know, professional network. But how many people can you really network with? There is a limit to that. I mean, Facebook says that 350 is the limit of an average circle beyond which you start losing track. So you know, the future is really going to be that how can you transcend that limit? But meaningfully? How can you connect with, you know, the larger humanity, people who share your concerns and priorities? And yet do that meaningfully? Because physically, we have always been limited. So how can technology open that vista up? I think that's really going to be interesting.
Sujatha Rao 06:02
I actually like the pool metaphor, Soggie, because it's sort of indicates that the pool continues to remain even when the bubbles disappear, right that are emergent bubbles that come in, and then go. And so there's a longer durability about the pool, and the more transient notion with the bubbles, right? They come, they fulfill a particular task, and they disappear. I want to take this idea a little further and sort of start thinking about it in the context of organizations itself, right. And I want to draw on this thought, from Peter Block who talks about communities in the context of organization. And he says that most sustainable improvements and community occurs when citizens discover their own power to act, right. So when citizens are not dependent on others, right, professionals or elected leaders to do something. And they sort of reclaim what they have delegated to others. And in the context of organizations, he says, that is the sense of middle managers becoming citizens, right. So in essence, he's talking about the stability of the pool, but who owns that, right, who takes on the ownership of that, that community within an organization? So how does the idea of community further the concept of organization,
Saugata 07:26
That's the direction that really I think, in the future, we will, in various different ways explore quite a lot. And I'm sure there is a lot of learnings in the future. Buthere is how you know, I'm looking at it. We all know that when a community comes together, it is a transformative force. Right, a large number of people, like I said, most of them, a huge majority of them, being strangers, supporting and helping each other, ideating together, pulling in the same direction, it can be inspirational. And there has been occasions where led by individual leadership brilliance, like individual charisma or individual effort, or more or less, you know, not scalable incidents, but inspirational nevertheless. Around that, a lot of that kind of community coming together has actually happened, be it in, you know, various political scenarios, socially, or, of course, in certain pockets in organizations as well. But the real question is that how do you move such a coming together of people such a spontaneous, you know, self supporting inclusive community formation in an organization? How can you move it to reliable, consistent model, and I think that is where all the thinking will happen in our future, because we have really extracted the maximum juice that we can out of teams. And as we talked about, teams are just a microcosm, the community is the macrocosm in an organization. And while teams are effective and efficient, how do you really make the potential of the entirety of the human resource that an organization employs, their ideas, their knowledge, their emotional quotient? How do you bring all of that together, rather than be confined to just the temporary episodic thilo of a team? I think that's really, you know, what excites me personally quite a lot. And that's where the future is, I think.
Sujatha Rao 09:41
So if we just dig into this a little bit more, what kind of communities can be observed across organizations right, inside and outside? Just so we can help our listeners understand, conceptually a little bit more about, you know, the differences between teams and what we are talking about as these more enduring communities.
Saugata 10:04
Yes, well, communities are a set of people who have come together for because they have something in common. That what they have in common could be a common identity could be a common goal could be a common concern. So there are many kinds of communities and they're all around us, like, for example, customers of a brand, or employees of an organization, as we have been talking about them. Quite a lot of voters in a constituency; students and alumni of an alma mater, neighbors in a locality, attendees of an event, that's a powerful community, especially with COVID. Now, you know, we are seeing a shift in the way that community will behave perhaps. So these are all communities, and they all in different ways, overlap with and impact organizations. However, that said, one thing I wanted to mention is that while we clearly understand that these are communities, and these are larger ecosystems, if you will, than let's say our team or a committee, which are very task focused and transactional, that you know, metaphor about the pool and the bubbles. So the community is something you know, these are longer term assortments of ecosystems or macrocosms of people coming together around something in common. But how many of them are actually, you know, what is the difference between the concept or the idea of a community, which we clearly understand, which is easy to understand; and the reality of the community in the sense that how well are they actually working as a community.
Deepak 11:38
So Saugata, what you're saying is that communities are enduring relationships that outlive projects and programs, they are built around a common purpose, have a common sense of belonging, and there is an intention and directionality to them. What examples do we see of communities within organizations?
Saugata 11:55
Yeah, so communities, you know, an organization, when we look beyond, you know, traditional boundaries, it's an extended enterprise. If we look at every enterprise collection of stakeholders, each of those stakeholder sets are overlapping communities. For example, of course, employees are a community and they exist across teams, they exist across locations, campus and all that. Then on the other side, the customers of every organization, they are a community as well. At the same time, there are partners, alliances, they are a community. Gig workers, something that is coming up, you know, very prominently as individuals discover the financial ability and emotional need to not be tied down to you know, long term commitments, and they want to explore a diversity of you know, options, a lot of contract or gig work and gig workers are going to come across different levels of the organizations. They are a community. You know, an organization or investors to organization, they could be, they're a community. So all of these people are, you know, overlapping stakeholder communities, which are directly connected with an organization. And then of course, there is a indirect set, like the society affects an organization, political circumstances affect an organization. And there are many other, you know, outer circle communities, if you will, which also overlap with an organization in various ways over time.
Sujatha Rao 13:27
So talking about customers, Saugata, I mean, we do have very, very interesting examples of communities emerging in organizations that are customer led community. I mean, I'm thinking back to the example of Lego and sort of the trouble that Lego was having in the late 2000s, almost facing bankruptcy, because of competition from video games, and internet and so on. And then Lego did something quite remarkable, which is that it invited its customer community of fans to actually start becoming a part of the building process, right. And they did it by sort of introducing this idea of the Legos Idea platform, which allowed Lego fans to submit ideas for possible LEGO sets. And these proposals or ideas were voted for by other fans, and the ideas that received the top votes that actually selected for production into LEGO sets. And we came up with some very, very interesting LEGO sets, like, you know, the women of NASA play set and a playable Lego piano. And the product that was actually selected for design, the idea, the fan received 1% of the royalties. So remarkably, Lego went from, you know, this closed innovation process. through which they were designing, to successfully transitioning to building with an engaged community. And this has been remarkable, because, you know, they actually surpassed the metal to become the world's largest toy maker. So you're right. I think that a lot of such kind of examples around us that show us the, the potential of communities, and different kinds of communities in the organization, including these very powerful customer communities.
Saugata 15:36
Yes, I think that's very well articulated, actually. But that there, there has to be both a sense of belonging and a sense of purpose. So there has to be engagement, you know, between community members, and there has to be alignment to the purpose. So that's really well articulated. And I think the real challenge I feel that communities have is that this sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, for it to spontaneously catch fire, is there. But I think it happens when one of those two dimensions is really overwhelming. So for example, if there is a sense of, sometimes a concern, or even outrage, we have seen, you know, communities form,. In fact, we are seeing communities, you can call it mass movements, for example, happening in many organizations. Just before COVID, we saw a whole bunch of organizations really walking out and taking up, you know, basically making their voices heard about the practices that they do not identify with, or injustices, or discrimination that they have observed in the organization. So it needed something like that, to bring the people together. That shows us that the community, you know, always is there, but to bring them together, to galvanize them to move/ transition from the concept of the community, to the reality of the community to actually make everything real, I think that needs those kinds of triggers today. And our challenge would be how to move beyond that, and how to not have to be dependent on Black Swan situations or, you know, like I said, perhaps the other side could be a individual brilliance and charisma of, you know, leaders that suddenly come up from time to time. How do you get rid of dependence on such events and make the community come together, you know, more consistently? I think that is the real question.
Deepak 17:53
Yes, Saugata. We don't really need a black swan kind of an event for organizations to engage with communities. And this has got me thinking, can communities repurpose organizations - the values, the business model, the mission? Do communities have the power to do that?
Saugata 18:14
I think that's, that's a really good question. And my answer would be, I think that is where the real power of the community lies in the sense that if we are right now speaking purely from an organizational perspective, and let's say if we look at employees. Then to have your employees be able to shape your culture rather than just the top of the pyramid, the management, always determining the culture and spreading the culture top down, the ability for an inclusive growth of culture, development of, you know, the whole way in which the organization works, or even the priorities that organization looks at, if that can come inclusively from across all internal silos, I think that will be really transformative. That will motivate everyone, that will give everybody a sense of belonging and ownership that we can only dream of today, in scenarios where we try and generate that to top down initiatives. And I think that's where the real opportunity lies for all of us in the organization. And even the other aspect of this organization is that if you look outside the employee community set and look at the customer community for organization, they're also equally exists a transformative potential. We keep saying that, as an organization as who are selling something in a b2b or b2c context, we must listen to the customer and that voice of the customer needs to essentially be amplified through community. Because the voice of the customer is nothing but the aggregate voice of a multitude, who are united by the commonality that they are all your customers, they're all buying from you. And, you know, the community's power to shape you as an organization, be it from the outside as a, as a customer community, or be it from the inside as an employee community is transformative. And I think that's really, you know, you hit the nail on the head, Deepak, when you say that, you know, that is why perhaps we should be looking at
Sujatha Rao 20:44
So Saugata, when you were talking about listening to the voice of communities, right customers or even broader societies, I think we have very, very strong indications today that communities can make their voices heard, right. I'm thinking to the example of this activist venture fund called Engine Number One that, you know, has been fighting for companies, particularly oil and gas companies to be much more sustainable in terms of their production, right, and their policies on oil and gas production. Very recently, Engine Number One, although it has only point 02 percent of Exxon shares, won the support of other larger investment firms to demand that Exxon change its policies on fossil fuels, and non sustainable energy strategies. And it specifically argued that the Board of Exxon needed to have independent voices with the skills to make that energy transformation. But Engine Number One didn't just stop by saying that right? They actually nominated four independent members to the Exxon board. And in the recent shareholder meeting, at least three of their nominees have already won the board seats. I mean, this is clearly signaling the community's intention is to force the company in some, in some sense, to change its stance right to change its policies, in this case about oil and gas production. And I think it's a pretty good example of how communities can repurpose organizations. And if organizations can, sort of in a sense, understand that community is bringing in a diversity of opinions, and that this can enable companies to become more inclusive or at least understand perspectives and opinions very different to their own sort of cemented positions than I do think communities have the power to repurpose organizations themselves?
Saugata 22:47
See, let me look at it from the perspective of diversity and perhaps even look at inclusion. You see, scale brings diversity, right? When we on tracked our vision, and the diversity is the first casualty. And that is the problem of non inclusive viewpoints. And that also is a problem of tunnel visioned organization who are careening down pathways they could easily have avoided if they had access to a scale of perspectives, and therefore diversity of viewpoints and a community because it is no longer about the microcosm. And because the community is always about the macro universe, therefore community brings diversity. And that diversity impacts everybody from gig workers versus FTs you know, full time employees, "management" versus you know, even trainees. So across hierarchy, across kinds of employees, even across, you know, boundaries of the organization, perhaps just like you said, Sujatha, including, you know, external stakeholders like partners, suppliers, customers, and so on. That's how community can change narratives of organizations and really push them or at least show them alternative and perhaps better directions strategically to pursue rather than what they can see just by traditional top down mechanisms.
Deepak 24:32
I have a feeling that a lot of modern day workplaces are going to revolve around skills knowledge. And the managers, traditional manager roles are going to be more designer roles, designer of workplaces, designers of getting work done through this combination of full time employees and gig workers. And, and once you find that a person has a certain expertise in a skill, they are reached out, even if they are not even no longer working within the organization. So that sense of community, you can't stop it at the organization's door. It kind of expands, it expands to fill people, and wherever they go, you're still part of a community. Let's say a community of Python developers and you've been working together on a Python code, and you see that somebody has become, has been very good and she moved out to a different organization. You still find that people are still interacting on Python, and they get talking to her if they get stumbled upon something. So I think that idea of mastery - people are going to get connected to people with knowledge power. And that will draw the community out of the organization in any case,
Saugata 25:46
Yes. And also, I mean, it's interesting. So allow me to just jump in. This example, let's take of this Python developer community. Actually, you know, the paradoxical reality today is, at least with most communities, or most organizations that I am familiar with, is that it's easier for you to step out of your organization, and be a part of a Python developer community. Like in forums like Stack Overflow, for example, it's easier to find that community outside your organization, rather. So ironically, inside your organization, inside your organization, you might be a part of, you know, 1000s, or even hundreds of 1000s of people who are maybe you know, because you are part of an IT services, or IT product company, you are part of, you know, a community. And inside your organization amongst 1000s and hundreds of 1000s of your peers, there is a Python developer community. And when you are working in a project in your organization, for your organization, your support from the Python developer community is so much stronger outside the organization. Imagine how transformative it would be even in this limited area, if you could easily, effortlessly, meaningfully, without manual effort and time spent, be able to tap into all the knowledge and wisdom of Python developers inside your organization. And those numbers will be in hundreds, if not 1000s, depending on the organization you are in. So how can teams be supported by the community inside the organization is you know, largely untapped potential.
Deepak 27:30
So if if you're noticing that people are able to reach out to people outside the organization, that means that internally, the hierarchy plays havoc with the idea of a community.
Saugata 27:44
Yes, that very well could be an issue. That very well could be something that forward thinking organizations need to work on. And also, inside the community, you see that fundamental problem of, you know, the fact that individually, no one can manually, so to speak, interact with hundreds and 1000s of people, you know, it's just not possible. So however good your individual intent might be, or the management intent might be, you need a disruption of some sort, to, you know, overcome this age old limitation that, you know, I, as an individual, can only digest, can only manage, you know, an interaction with a limited set of people. So today about Python, tomorrow about something else, how am I going to be effortlessly going to be reaching out to my community and get support, has to be more than manual effort to there has to be a technology print there. And current technologies have been just mimicking, you know, me reaching out to people. And so therefore, they also are not great. I mean, they,we can find ways to do that, but they're not great in letting me connect meaningfully with hundreds and 1000s of my peers inside my community. So I think as much as management intent is important, I think that technology plumbing is also going to be crucial, equally crucial, going forward.
Sujatha Rao 29:13
You know, as I listen to you, Saugata and Deepak, talk about this, a thought that has been sort of playing on my mind is we seem to have developed organizational structures and processes in some sense, historically, to be traditionally siloed. Right to, in essence, actively prevent the rise of what we are, today referring to this internal community, right, this diversity of voices, the multiplicity of support that can actually create far more flourishing workspaces, right. So I don't feel so alone. I seek out the help internally, and it's an enduring community. We seem, in some sense, to have got the book wrong completely on this right? We've sort of deliberately structured them to be non community. And the pathway towards community seems extremely optimistic. And I'm going back to a point that you were talking about, Saugata, is that we understand the concept. But what about the practicalities of it? So what do you think could be some first steps, right? What are some ideas or tools or pathways that you know a listener? Who says, I really want to try this out now, right, I can see its transformative potential? How can people begin? What could be some easy first steps, what could be some tools that you could recommend that we start thinking about?
Saugata 30:41
Yeah, I think ultimately, it all boils down to exactly that Sujatha. It needs to be like I've been saying, it needs to become real, the concept is inspirational. But the reality seems to be challenging to achieve. And, you know, we have all often been slaves to inertia. We find it difficult to break out of the way we have traditionally been thinking, break out of the processes that we have employed, and so on. And I think it is important for the leadership to, you know, take the lead, literally in this area. And it all starts in their mindsets, first, you know, clarifying the opportunity, but first realizing in their heads, that what a massive transformative potential is lying untapped. And once the leaders really understand, then they can spread it downwards in multiple different ways. And that, I think, is the first thing that I'd like to talk about. After that there is the aspect of looking at the larger part of the pyramid, the rest of the community, you know, many of them are going to face this viscous drag of inertia, I think, even more than leaders who are perhaps able to see things from a higher vantage point. And therefore, they might be the first ones to change their mind, and open up their horizons, by the masses, so to speak, in the organization, I think there is a real challenge there. Because the more elaborately crafted, more carefully defined processes you're following, more elaborately crafted box that you are inside, the tougher it will be to pull yourself, bootstrap yourself, so to speak, out of that box. But it is going to be you know, with leadership, encouragement, I think it's a journey that organizations have to go through. That's the second point. And lastly, I think technology has a big role to play, because it must make it possible, because normal technologies that we have, we they're fantastic in creating efficiencies and effectiveness inside teams, for example, inside the circles of our own personal connections, which in the organizational context is typically teams and departments, and so on. So a lot of good collaboration technologies are already there. I think that area has been, you know, all the juice in that area has really been extracted very efficiently already. But we are really looking at the next generation technologies, which will be able to push the boundaries, beyond teams, which will be able to make teams take advantage of the larger community, that entire organization, the entire resource of the employees', you know, knowledge and ideas, and so on, so forth. And for that there is new thinking and different models, social networking technologies are not going to be the solution. Because, you know, in social networks that exist today, you can form groups, but they are all very manual effort intensive. And you know, while inside the team, it is all very personalized and meaningful. The minute you go outside into this concept of groups, you emerge into non personalized flat spaces where very rapidly things become noisy and cluttered and irrelevant. And you tend to block them out, engagement drops over time. Usual problems we have all faced. So we need to, you know, push the boundaries of technology, and figure out new kinds of technology that help you connect with very large number of people effortlessly and meaningfully. You know, I think that's basically the role of technologies that is going to come up in the future.
Deepak 34:55
So what we're learning is that leaders must really understand the transformative, massive transformative potential of communities, and then communicate this understanding to the broader organization. And leaders must watch out for the organization's tendency to resist change, and hence have to design this movement from hierarchies to communities. And what you're also saying is that technologies can support us in this movement. So Saugata, what examples do you have of technologies that organizations can explore?
Saugata 35:31
Well, I am a part of a very exciting project that we are driving. It's called Foreva. And what we do is that we have changed the technology narrative from our social network where, you know, users are looking to surround themselves, pick, you know, other users and surround themselves with users that they find meaningful. So typically, teams or people you want to follow and so on. That's the social networking narrative. So we have changed that narrative. And we let users surround themselves with topics that matter to them, whether it is an individual employee's goals, or learning ambitions, or concerns, or interest or expertise, and so on. And there are many ways in which you know, we can form a large cloud of topics that surrounds you, for example. And using those topics, we can leapfrog across silos, we can connect organizations and employees, you know, who are strangers and who do not know each other who do not even need to know each other. The idea is not to create social networks, the idea is to make the community support each other, the entirety of the community, not just the 5% of the community that you know. So we are doing initial work there. And we are making the first strides with a few organizations who are excited by the potential of what we can do. And I'm sure more technologies in this area is going to come up. Essentially, interest networks, or something like creating a Stack Overflow kind of a forum, mashed up with something like Instagram, if you will. And all of it applied to a closed user group of hundreds or 1000s, or hundreds of 1000s of people, which is a community. So I think that's really what I can talk about Sujatha.
Deepak 37:36
So my last question, What got you interested in this?
Saugata 37:41
That's a long and strange trip, actually, I've been down. So essentially, how it started is very personal. You know, what happened is, my mom, she was a Parkinson's patient for 17 years. And as I'm sure all of you, I mean, both of you know that Parkinson's is not just tough on the patient, but it is also tough on the family, especially the last part. And it was quite difficult for us, and especially my dad. And I'm talking about, you know, 2006, 2007, 2008, that kind of a period; early days in terms of, you know, connectivity, in some sense, but, you know, Facebook, and all of those were very much there already. Now, one of the things me having a, you know, I had an ego of being a digital native. I have been, you know, from the days of AOL and Yahoo onwards, I have been very much connected online, I felt that I would try and find families who have experienced Parkinson's, and connect my dad, especially, to such families for interactions and learning, you know, and support, perhaps, and it was really difficult. And it was really surprising for me, because I thought it would be easy, but it was not. And I did find forums and this and that, but they were all dead content, in the sense that you couldn't really have a conversation with anyone. And it was really a lot of effort, manual effort, on my part. And of course, for somebody like my dad, you know, it was out of the question. So I pretty much realized this concept of, what I later came to term as the prison of our personal networks, prison of our first degree of separation. That, you know, it is so difficult to you know, when I needed to connect with other Parkinson's families, ultimately, I had to ask my friends and they knew somebody and laboriously we had to cross over from first degree to the second degree and one or two families we found out that way. And this magical tool called the internet and all these forums and groups and everything that I thought would just open up magically, so many boundaries will collapse; t was equally difficult for me to traverse that. In fact, I found a few real families to talk to in real life only through my personal network rather than through the internet. Now, that may be, you know, a very personal anecdote, but it really, that's when I started thinking about the need for connecting, you know, 99%, that we talk about the 1%, exploiting the 99% of this entire world. And that's most strongly because there's 99% is so disconnected, they can't talk to each other, no matter what the technology is. And the technology of today still is confining, still is making you create circles around you, which are your invisible prisons, and you still remain disconnected from the 99%. So that's where it all started, Deepak, for me.
Sujatha Rao 40:56
So many of our insights and intuitions and our leanings, and drawings in life comes from a very personal space, isn't it? I mean, for so many of us, we find our pathways in life from these personal experiences, I think that drive us to seeing something bigger than us, and you know, at a much larger space. And I'm going back to you know what, I started off with this experience that I had of being in a workshop with 10,000 others, and just imagining myself to be part of that community. And I think its practical use comes when that community becomes alive, constantly, right? And not, I think Saugata, you refer to it as this, you know, dead spaces where, you know, there's this history of narrative, but nothing happening live. But if you can go back to creating that through the three things that you mentioned, right, the the mindset changes from leadership, the mindset changes, what we would call the mass of employees, right, people all around the organizations who are probably more entrenched in the routine of practice, right. And the more finely curated that routine is, the more difficult it becomes to come out of it. And finally, the technology infrastructure that's getting built all around us, right, and the variations that we have, if organizations can tap into that, and I think at the heart of it is just this exponential potential of transformation, right? And realizing that and but leveraging these three, I think can be very powerful ways of creating more equitable and flourishing organizations. At least I see the potential. So I find that very, very useful. Deepak any last comment?
Deepak 42:42
As you were sharing, I was also reminded that the expression that we used to use for organizations in the past were very mechanistic. Today, as we are trying to become more human, I think organizations have only been focusing on doing. And, increasingly there is a desire to bring our whole selves into organizations, and connecting the being, doing and belonging. And in some way, the communities and the idea of communities is inherent in that. So we'll have to figure out how to be able to do that. And I think this conversation, for example, and Saugata was speaking about how we've built an organization, your way of thinking is very, like from organizations, teams is how we've been doing. And we have to think radically very different for us to be able to make organizations a lot more human.
Sujatha Rao 43:45
I've thoroughly enjoyed the conversation, I think we've explored on themes that are more than relevant today. I think they are actually essential conversations, they're no longer conversations that can be ignored. I think organizations do it at their own peril. We see examples of that in data, ABC examples of it in personal anecdotes, we see examples of it and how organizations continue to struggle with creating those basic spaces, right, of empathy, where people can come together. Thank you so much, Saugata, for sharing your thoughts, your experiences and some of these practicalities more deeply. It's been an absolute pleasure.
Saugata 44:27
Thank you very much for this opportunity for such a deep and exciting conversation and exchanging of thoughts and ideas with both of you, Sujatha and Deepak. I also like really enjoyed this conversation. Every conversation with people such as you, you know, opens up new thinking, new questions in I'm sure all of our heads. And, you know, I think this is a start and perhaps through this conversation, by listening to this conversation, even others might start thinking along these lines and you know, if anybody wants to reach out or, you know, continue this conversation further, then individually or in any other capacity, I'm always open. So, really a fantastic experience. Thank you, both of you, Sujatha and Deepak.
Deepak 45:18
Thank you, Saugata.
Sowmya 45:24
Thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed that. Next week, Deepak and Sujatha are talking to Raj marvella about why and how entrepreneurs struggle with their mental health and what they need to do to ensure their well being. You'll find the resources referred to in this episode in the show notes and more information at our website www.workwisepod.com. We'd love to hear from you. Comment on our website or write to us at hello@workwisepod.com. Credits go to Sanjali Ranjan for the cover art and Derek Clegg for the intro and outro music. Today's episode was mixed, produced and edited by me Sowmya Karun. Don't forget to subscribe to The WorkWise Pod on your favorite podcasting platform. We'll see you next week.
