Storm the Norm

A picture speaks a thousand words. Indeed. But it is what you hear orally that stays with you for time immemorial. Even before video or the written word was a thing, we have evolved for millennia as oral cultures. 

And yet, when you look at it from a business point of view (myopic as that may sound, but hey we’re a business podcast) audio has always been and continues to be a poor cousin to video, and we daresay even to the written word. We’ve heard of movie czars and newspaper czars, but have you ever heard of a radio czar? Have you ever heard of an equivalent of Reed Hastings or Netflix for audio? Heck, even the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos put his bets on video with Amazon Prime and publishing the written word. And for all the hype that the iPod got when Steve Jobs first introduced it, it’s seen as a bit of a quaint anachronism now and Apple is known more for its phone and computing devices. And to top it all, we haven’t seen a single audio unicorn anywhere in the world. 

This is the norm that’s being stormed by our hosts Anisha Motwani and Narayan Devanathan in Episode 25 of Storm the Norm podcast series powered by #GTBharat.

Talking about the medium, its popularity and shifts in way of consumption, the hosts are joined by Prashant Panday, CEO & MD, Radio Mirchi. Vicky Bahl, Partner and Leader, Sales Transformation, sharing GT Insights talks about how despite technological disruption the audio medium has evolved over the years and it is important for businesses to participate in the industry that's snowballing and will continue to stay relevant.

Hey don’t forget to listen to 5 power packed audio-monetization hacks by our hosts to secure the future of the industry.

Is it easier for startups than for established businesses to turn around? Just think about it..mature organisations have established not just a business, but a certain reputation, ways of working, people policies, they’ve figured out ways around the corridors of power as well as versus competition, the company is like a machine (whether well-oiled or not), bound by systems and processes. A startup turning around is like someone on a motorcycle doing a u-turn, while an established business is like a long train that has to go in a different direction all of a sudden. You can’t just switch tracks abruptly, especially if there are no tracks laid out in the new direction in the first place. You’ll just derail the whole thing.

But the real pivotal (pun unintended) question that we challenged Rohit Kapoor, CEO-Oyo with is much more fundamental; ‘Why do startups need turnarounds in the first place? And is it easier, as our thinking so far seems to indicate, for startups to turn around than it is for established businesses to do the same?

We also have perspectives from Siddhartha Nigam, National Managing Partner - Growth, Grant Thornton Bharat who has shared insights on how start-ups go about executing the turn-around.

Listen in to what our guest experts had to say & lots more. 

Creativity needs chaos. Structure constrains lateral thinking. And so, many professions have no option but to think inside the box. Or do they?

The “creative professions,” such as advertising, art, music, entertainment, writing believe they have the corner on creativity, relegating many professions to the doom and gloom of Boring. Is it their ego that perpetuates this condescension or is their disdain justified?

“Doomed to be deemed boring: Not every profession can be creative.

”That’s the norm our hosts Anisha and Narayan explore in this episode of #StormTheNorm. And IP Lawyer and strategist Safir Anand decided to light a grenade under this norm to explode it, not just storm it.

It’s one thing to identify a norm, and another to find practicable hacks to storm it. But you could do worse than apply this one, to begin with!

“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day,” said Mark Twain.

Intrigued? Click play to find out how this can be not just palatable but will in fact help lay out a delectable course for creativity for the rest of the day.

For the GT Insights module, we have our expert Ashish Chhawchharia, Partner - Recovery and Re-organisation at GT Bharat, giving a focused take on how businesses can build creativity into their routine, regardless of what industry or function they are in.

Has it become an acceptable norm to prioritise valuation over value creation when running a start-up? If yes, why is this trend embraced like the holy grail? With this borderline trend fast becoming the norm, it’s the right time to find out what gives start-ups the confidence to not bother about profitability in their first few years and what makes their path different from that of the listed companies.

To answer these burning questions and share insights on the norm, we have for this episode, Vikas Agnihotri, India Operating Partner at Softbank Investment Advisers. And for Insight by Grant Thornton Bharat, we have on board Raja Lahiri, Technology, Media and Telecom Leader and Partner, Growth Advisory.

Our experts discuss ways to 'storm this norm', and bring back on table the significance of value creation. Tune into the podcast to get insightful perspective on the starts-up of today and their debatable disdain for profitability.

As the world faces multiple crisis, there is an increasing need for corporates to come together and help the civil society. It is equally important to partner with leaders and ensure to bridge the gaps wherever necessary. Our norm this episode is set in this context: Can laws turn corporates into better partners for the society at large? Or will they turn CSR into Corporate Social Regulation rather than Corporate Social Responsibility? Find out as we storm this norm in Ep. 21

This norm—that the future belongs to the fast—feels as old as time itself. Aesop articulated it with the fable of the hare and the tortoise. Pioneers throughout time became rulers by being the first to get somewhere, or to conquer new lands. In business, we’ve had the idea of the first-mover advantage for a long time. And in a frenzied, VC-fueled new economy, it definitely feels like you’re a loser if you’re not the first out of the blocks.Undoubtedly, social, economic, political, cultural laws shape us. Isn’t that why fast does seem to be winning, and defining the future? Look all around us. That’s what we seem to celebrate. The fastest to become a billionaire, a unicorn to market etc etc.The Annual Special episode, highlighted the juxtaposition of fast and slow, and how the pandemic made us involuntarily choose slow by putting life on pause. Narayan Devanathan & Anisha Motwani explore whether now’s a good time to examine if that was just a blip accentuated by the pandemic or a norm ripe to be stormed. And to do that, we have perhaps the best spokesperson for Slow in the country today. Neelesh Misra is an award-winning journalist and entrepreneur. He’s famously popular and popularly famous for his radio stories on Yaadon ka Idiot Box. And his newest baby is the Slow Movement, an amalgamation of three verticals, Slow content, Slow food and Slow experiences.Followed by five practical hacks from Anisha Motwani on how to succeed fast with a slow pace.For GT Insights, Pallavi Joshi Bakhru shares the key guidelines to build a framework for companies that are on their good to great journey and in believe in business with purpose.

In August 2020, this story about the Choluteca Bridge in Honduras went viral and made many a LinkedIn profile get their 15 seconds of fame. Funnily enough, the bridge was built in 1996, Hurricane Mitch forced the river to change course in 1998 to completely render the bridge useless from the point of its original purpose. But it took a year-long pandemic in 2020 for people to realize that we had all been building our own Bridges to Nowhere while the river of life dramatically changed course.  Clearly, 2020 is our Hurricane Mitch. And 2021 is the year where we figure out what to do with the Bridge to Nowhere. 

Remember, Lewis Carroll’s iconic ‘Through the Looking Glass’. The cusp between 2020 and 2021 feels like we all need to step through a looking glass of our own, to see our world anew. 

With the advent of work / live / play at home era, the impossibility to plan in advance has erased the concept of chronos (as the ancient Greeks called it) or linear time. And because of that, we looked for our identity in the past. As many experts say, yearning—especially in moments of uncertainty—can be really grounding.  And it is this fusion of past and future that gives us five hacks to norm the storms of 2020 as we step into 2021.