Cost to Company

The roots of the founder’s office may lie in bureaucracy, but the allure of it has managed to seep into the world of business.
 

Almost suddenly, the smartest and brightest minds from some of the country’s top B-schools are embracing a whole new kind of an obscure yet attractive career track. ‘Thoroughbred Generalists’ (as one of our guests describes himself), are quickly picking up roles at the Founder’s Office. 

What do people at the founder’s office even do? What are the problems that they solve? What are the problems that they go through?

And fundamentally, what really goes on at the founder’s office?

We speak to Ramya S, former Chief of Staff at Ola and Founder’s Office at Myntra; Adwate Kumar, former Founder’s Office at CoinDCX and Klub; Jayesh Bhatia, Founder’s Office at Ditto Insurance, and Avichal Pugalia, Chief of Staff at Foxtale, to go to the depths of this little-known function of the org.

As it turns out, it’s a little bit of everything. And a whole lot of nothing.

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Hosted, Written, & Produced by Shreevar Chhotaria

CEOs, executives and business leaders have discovered therapy as a weapon to build better products. There are now therapists who are specialised in working with founders and business leaders. There are now therapists stepping into roles that would have been otherwise led by HR.

This is therapy not just as a health care benefit. This is therapy to build better businesses. This is therapy as a strategy tool to get more out of their employees. To hit goals faster, better, and with less collateral damage.

In this episode of Cost to Company, we talk to Piyush Shah, co-founder of the InMobi Group, about how therapy helped him and other business leaders “unlock” their ambitions, and build better teams. We also talk to Veena Sethuraman, VP, Learning & Organisational Development at InMobi on how this journey transpired. And we talk to Aakriti Joanna, founder and CEO of Kaha Mind, and Esha Pahuja Verma of Trijog, about how demand for these services have skyrocketed in the last two years.

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If you’d like to pass on the gift of knowledge this Diwali, check out The Ken’s diwali gifting options here.

Titles are a funny thing. 

In organisations, they’re supposed to denote the work that you do and your position in the hierarchy. 

But more realistically, they’re a currency. 

A currency used to trade respect. 

And when ‘inflation’ strikes, this ‘currency’ is bound to show some side-effects. 

In the Indian context, startups aren’t the only ones indulging in title inflation. It’s the larger corporations too. 

So if everybody’s the culprit, who’s the victim?

In this episode of Cost to Company, we speak to Nikita, ex-manager at a major mobility startup, Harold D’Souza, Director at WalkWater Talent and Diksha*, an HR professional working at a Big 4 consulting firm, who tell us how ‘title inflation’ may seem trivial at first, but can have lingering effects on your career growth. 

*Name changed to protect identity. 

Tell us the things happening at your workplace: new patterns you've observed, changes that nobody's talking about, or even ideas and hacks that revolutionise how we work. The form is linked here: https://theken.typeform.com/costtocompany?typeform

Hosted, Written, and Produced by Shreevar Chhotaria 

Myntra announced unlimited wellness leave. So did Meesho. So did Gojek. Netflix brought its global unlimited leave policy to India. Makemytrip announced uncapped leaves. As did Inmobi.  A number of smaller startups like Nova Benefits, Pega Systems, Zuddl, have all announced unlimited leaves. Even The Ken has an unlimited leave policy.

And you would think that in the middle of the Great Resignation, startups that are giving unlimited leave would see the number of leaves taken go up. You would think that in an economy of people starved of rest, employees would take all the opportunities they’re given to take a break.

But that’s not what’s happening. Anecdotally and empirically, evidence is telling  us, again and again, that unlimited leaves are leading to fewer leaves taken. Which brings us to the question, why? What’s broken? 

This week we’re going to talk about the Prisoner’s Dilemma of Unlimited Leaves.

Tell us the things happening at your workplace: new patterns you've observed, changes that no-one's talking about, ideas and hacks that revolutionise how we work. The form is linked here: https://theken.typeform.com/costtocompany

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Goodbyes are never easy. But they were never this important either.

In a market where great talent is scarce, companies are paying top-dollar to ‘offboard’ their employees in the best way possible: ensuring that their exit is as smooth and uplifting as their entry. 

We speak to Kartik Mandaville, CEO of Springworks and the Arun Vigneswaran, Head of People Practice at xTo10x. While their methods might be starkly different, they’re essentially chasing the same goal: retaining their current employees and maintaining strong ties with the ones who’ve left the ship. 

In this episode, we'll find out how offboarding is much more than just writing a farewell mail and returning your MacBook Air that you had gotten all too used to. 

If your culture is scaled, your employee experience metrics are measurable and your offboarding process is seamless, you’ll not just have ex-employees. 

But brand ambassadors. 

Are other companies finally starting to take notice?

Hosted, Written, and Produced by Shreevar Chhotaria

Every product manager has their own voice, their own style. In the beginning, it’s all about gut instinct, intuition and understanding why humans do the things they do. From that point on, the paths digress. Some communicate as little as they need, some bring all stakeholders on the table with fullest transparency, some bring them on the table for the What and Why but not the How. Some play good cops and bad cops, some dispense information very sparingly, some play with the information they have to dispense. 

Like Sardar Patel, and like Narendra Modi, every product manager has a voice, a method of rallying people, of building a narrative, and of finding what makes them tick. Just like every politician. 

“It’s a chicken and egg problem, honestly.” - Abhishek, a management consultant who recently shifted to Bengaluru. 

As the pandemic slowly begins to recede, many offices are opening up. Employees are (voluntarily and involuntarily) shifting back to cities which house their office spaces. 

But they’re not coming back to work just yet...because their colleagues aren’t either. 

There is intent, but little incentive. 

When work can happen from anywhere, what does Gen Z actually want from the physical office space? Collaboration? Peace of mind? Increased productivity? Beer?

The answers might surprise you. 

Hosted, Written, and Produced by Shreevar Chhotaria 

Bruce Lee says this utterly enjoyable thing. “Showing off, is the fools idea of glory”.

But there’s also the core human need to be seen, understood, recognised and thought worthy by those around us. 

And when it comes to work, there's material benefit, money, promotions and growth, that can be gotten with just the right amount of showing off.

So what is the right amount of showing off at work? What is worthy of recognition and what isn’t? And what are some of the best ways to have our achievements, seen, understood, recognised and rewarded? 

This is an episode about the brag document. 

“As middle management, we know for a fact that there's really nothing much in our control.” - Ishaan*, former manager at a prominent e-learning startup.

In the 4th episode of Cost to Company, we’ll speak to four middle managers who’ll tell us, no holds barred, about what it feels like to be stretched from both ends in an organisation, during an unforgiving year that has inflicted mass layoffs due to the slowdown. 

They’ll talk to us about their struggles, their strife, their confusion. And hopefully, some solutions too. 

How did we get here? Why is the role of a middle manager particularly difficult during a downturn? Do we even need them in the first place?

Listen to the episode as we try to navigate these difficult questions with interesting answers.

*Name changed on request to protect identity 

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Hosted, Written, and Produced by Shreevar Chhotaria

Cost to Company is a brand new podcast by The Ken. We tell you how your workplace is changing before you hear it on slack. Hosted by Sneha Vakharia and Shreevar Chotaria, each week Cost to Company brings to you a fresh narrative, told from multiple perspectives, around significant but underreported aspects of our work lives. Hit the follow button to listen to it first!