“…while Ikigai was useful, I felt at a granular level, it did not take into account the balance sheet elements of life (health, family), it did not take into account transitions. So, I said, let me try and put something out which takes into account some of the other richness and the complexities of life.”

Welcome to the Story Rules podcast with me, Ravishankar Iyer, where we learn from some of the best storytellers in the world, find their story and unearth the secrets of their craft.

Today we speak with Deepak Jayaraman, India’s foremost expert on the topic of maximising your true potential as a leader and a human being. Deepak is the force behind the popular ‘Play to Potential’ podcast, wherein he has conducted over one hundred interviews with global luminaries such as Vishwanathan Anand, Ramachandra Guha, Daniel Pink and Stephen Covey.

Late last year, Deepak released his first book, also called Play to Potential - and it is a fascinating read. It is not just a compendium of interviews or themes – the book features some powerful original thinking by Deepak on how to approach the challenging problem of finding and journeying towards your true north as a human being. 

Normally, when we speak of finding your purpose, the Japanese notion of Ikigai comes to mind. But in this book Deepak shares a breakthrough new framework called ‘FLAVOUR’ – which is a more nuanced and wholesome approach to finding your purpose and direction, as compared to Ikigai.

Having said that, in this conversation, my focus is not so much on the book’s contents, as it is about Deepak’s storytelling skills and approach. We discuss topics such as:

- How Deepak would figure out the right source material for his ideas

- His use of the Rule of three, to distil complex insights into pithy, short structures

- Deepak’s varied and stellar use of analogies to explain abstract and difficult concepts in a relatable and easy-to-remember manner. Thinking in metaphors seems to be Deepak’s natural spike as a storyteller, and I would urge you to buy the book, just to enjoy the rich analogies that he uses

- The use of vivid personal anecdotes and evocative quotes

- We also talk about the source of his unending curiosity and drive to share insights on his podcast and other platforms.

In short, in this conversation, you get a bunch of life and career advice, AND you also learn a bunch of storytelling techniques. I’m sure you’ll find it of significant value. 

Let’s dive in.

Show notes:

Play to Potential book on Amazon

Deepak's website and LinkedIn page.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storyrules.substack.com

“Yeah, I think there's a little bit of a tyranny of "Or" that is implicit in your question, Numbers OR anecdotes, you know? As you say, in Indian spirituality, if you examine a problem deeply enough, the contradiction should vanish. So I'm often asking people that what is the story that the numbers are telling you that you're finding resonating in your anecdotes?”

Welcome to the Story Rules podcast with me, Ravishankar Iyer, where we learn from some of the best storytellers in the world, find their story and unearth the secrets of their craft.

Today we speak with Rama Bijapurkar, a leading market strategy consultant, best-selling author, teacher, and leader on several company boards.

For decades, Rama has been a keen observer and insightful commentator on the Indian consumer market. She's written several books, including her latest, ‘Lilliput Land: How Small Is Driving India's Mega Consumption Story’.

Rama's career path is fascinating. With a background in physics, she transitioned to market research and consulting, and became a highly sought-after expert on consumer behaviour and business strategy in India. Any MNC entering the Indian consumer market would have either read Rama’s books or gotten her advice on how to approach this unique and challenging space.

In this conversation, we explore Rama's fascinating perspective on the Indian consumer, her storytelling approach, and the insights she's gleaned from her research and experience.

We discuss the power of anecdotes, the importance of credibility, and the importance of analogies in storytelling.

Rama's ability to connect the dots between data, anecdotes, and real-world observations is fascinating.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone keen on understanding the Indian consumer, changing market dynamics and the power of storytelling in business.

Let's dive in.

Show Notes
Lilliput Land on Amazon
Rama Bijapurkar’s personal website and handle on X

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storyrules.substack.com

“Storytelling is not about glibness. Storytelling is not about verbosity. Storytelling is not just about your confidence or doing it though it is an important aspect of it. Storytelling is fundamentally about the clarity of what you are saying."

That is Nitin Seth, Co-Founder and CEO of Incedo Inc. and author of the recent bestseller, 'Mastering the Data Paradox’. This 600-page tome provides leaders with a detailed blueprint for making the most of the data opportunity in the AI age.

I often say that ‘data is the new oil, storytelling is the new refinery’. Well, this book opened my eyes to the multiple layers of refining that data has to go through before it is ready for the storytelling step.

In the book, Nitin explains why managing the data explosion is so challenging and what large firms should do to win in the data-first world we live in. He proposes a ‘Unified Solutions Framework’ – a 13-point plan for success. The comprehensive framework covers several diverse aspects including customer problem definition, managing multi-source data, building your data stack, data security and quality, data culture and managing data talent. 

Nitin knows what he’s talking about. After leading the Mckinsey Knowledge Centre and Fidelity International’s operations in India, he was the COO at Flipkart. Currently, as the co-founder and CEO of Incedo Inc., a Data and AI consulting firm, Nitin works with leaders of several Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies to help them navigate the data-first world.

In this conversation, we dive into three broad themes.

One, Nitin’s own journey as a storyteller. He starts with an evocative IIT-Delhi story when he roused a bunch of lazy hostelites into cheering for their badminton team (just like the movie Chichhore!). He speaks about his work convincing sceptical audiences - from union workers to board members – at large companies like Tata Steel. Nitin also shares a ‘failure story’ of when his pitch to a senior internal audience at McKinsey did not work, and what he learnt from that experience. 

Two, we move on to the contents of the book itself. Data is a paradox – most organisations want more of it, but don’t know what to do with the amount they have. They are spending hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more on data transformation projects, but the impact of the spend is questionable. Nitin cuts through all the noise and brings some clarity to this messy world of data. Some of his key insights are
- The importance of KPI Trees or Issue trees as a starting point in a data project
- The need to think of data as products you make with the user in mind and not as an asset that you have control over
- The need to connect, or integrate insights from data like a ‘sutradhar’ or narrator

Finally, we speak about the implications of the book for data professionals. Nitin speaks about the need for data professionals to develop 'T-Shaped' capabilities. Depth in one or two specific areas of data (for instance an industry like insurance or a function like CRM) and breadth in horizontal skills like problem-solving and storytelling.

Personally, I was also mighty impressed by how Nitin worked outside his main office hours from 10 pm to 1 am for 3 years to find the time to write this book. 

I’m sure you’ll walk away with several rich insights and ideas after listening to this fascinating conversation.

Let’s dive in.

Further links:
- Nitin's website and LinkedIn, Twitter profiles
- The book's website
- Incedo Inc

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storyrules.substack.com

“I think the biggest takeaway for me has to be about the storytelling bit of it and how important it is to tell a story. And I think I will not even take the credit for it. I will give most of the credit to Sajith because of driving the whole process, right? If you look at him, he has done it three times. So the driving of the story, how do you tell a story? What is the story? What are you trying to answer? All of those things are something that I learned along the way.”  - Anurag P, Blume Ventures

In this episode, we speak with Anurag Pagaria and Nachammai Savithri (or NS), co-authors of the Indus Valley Annual Report 2024.

The Indus Valley Annual Report (now in its 3rd year of publication) by VC firm Blume Ventures offers the most definitive story of the vibrant Indian startup ecosystem. Several decades later when historians study the origin of this phenomenon during this crucial period in India’s economic history, I have no doubt that the Indus Valley reports would be among their go-to sources

While the report’s authorship is led by the inimitable Sajith Pai, I thought it would be useful to speak to the folks who would have done the bulk of the research and creation work for the deck. (Incidentally I have already interviewed Sajith on this podcast earlier – a must listen episode).

So in this conversation, Anurag and NS get into the weeds of how they picked key themes for covering in the report, how they went across the research process, how the draft storylines were crafted, the review and refinement process for the narrative and finally the visual element in creating the deck.

Several fascinating takeaways for students of data-storytelling emerge from the episode:
- Simple tools work for research and retrieval: The three of them just used basic G-Suite tools for the project
- Leading with the story: Once a reasonable amount of data for a theme/sector was collected, the first step was to create a skeleton storyline and refine it before making the slides
- Connecting the dots: The team would not look at sectors in silos. Instead connections were made between similar patterns across sectors and geographies
- Following Data Storytelling basics: Clear messages on top of slides, connecting messages across slides, using transition slides between sections
-  Simple visuals: No fancy graphics and charts – just simple column, bar and line charts to explain the message in the easiest way possible
- Using engagement elements: Evocative images, tweets and quotes from credible people to make the content engaging for the general reader

I am sure you will derive a lot of value from this in-depth conversation.

Let’s dive in.

Show Notes:

- My post analysing the storytelling techniques used in the report
- Steve Jobs Interview – on the importance of story at Pixar:
- Sajith Pai on Story Rules Podcast
- Anurag on Twitter and LinkedIn
- Nachammai Savithri on LinkedIn
- Blume website, Twitter and YouTube

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storyrules.substack.com

"And he gave a very (interesting) thought experiment. He said, go to your Facebook, remove all your school friends, remove all your relatives, remove all your college friends, work friends. And, if you're able to get 10 people after removing all of this, then probably you're lucky. Okay. I think that had a very profound impact to say that, you know… It was true, right? You know, because all the people that I knew, we're all from the same college, same school, same town, blah, blah, right? You know, you would never have like a Swiggy delivery executive as a part of your Facebook friend list, right? You would never have someone who is a farmer as a part of your WhatsApp contact list, right? Which means that, you know, our worldviews are generally also limited, right? So research allows you to break away from that and meet other people and gives you an opportunity to learn about their stories."

Welcome to the Story Rules podcast with me, Ravishankar Iyer, where we learn from some of the best storytellers in the world, find their story, and unearth the secrets of their craft.

Today we speak with Dharmesh Ba, a behavioural researcher who writes the popular India Notes newsletter and is the founder of 1990 Research Labs.

I came across Dharmesh through leading India-based VC Sajith Pai – who dubbed him as ‘Indus Valley's chief anthropologist’ (though Dharmesh prefers the term ‘ethnographer’).

In simpler terms, Dharmesh is an expert on the art and craft of understanding user behavior and motivations, through detailed personal interviews - so that we can design better products and services.

Why is this important? I remember an interview from Oct-2019 of Kalyan Krishnamurthy, the CEO of Flipkart, where he stated the importance of this task. His key point: The e-commerce puzzle had been solved for the top-tier users in the country – the top 8 cities. But for the vast middle and bottom tiers, product managers would need to completely reimagine every aspect of the product from the ground up. They can only do that by a comprehensive understanding of user behaviour in their context and environment.

Dharmesh and his team are among the ones at the forefront of this initiative – to understand user behaviour. Their clients include leading corporates and non-profits which are building products and services for these hundreds of millions of aspiring Indians… and Dharmesh and team are doing the critical and under-appreciated task of deeply understanding their world.

They do this through in-depth, well-researched and structured conversations with the users. There’s a lot of science and craft that Dharmesh uses to ensure that the interviewee trusts him and is willing to share the true reasons for their choices. We will learn about them in this podcast conversation.

And while we will learn about interviewing techniques, analysis approaches, and presentation tips, the overarching message I could glean after speaking with Dharmesh was – be curious, empathetic, and respectful.

It’s a must-listen conversation for anyone keen on conducting detailed user interviews, analysing the responses, and coming up with clear recommendations – for product design, research, employee well-being – multiple use cases.

Let’s dive in.

Show Notes:
Dharmesh on LinkedIn and Twitter
Link Tree with most popular links and work by Dharmesh
India Notes Newsletter

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storyrules.substack.com

This is a different type of podcast episode: one where I'm the one being interviewed!

“So, as a storyteller, you have three things in your hand to make an appeal right, you've got the data or the logic. You've got the emotional appeal to your audience. Most importantly, you've got your Ethos, your reputation, your credibility.  And if you make a series of wrong recommendations based on quick (assessments, thinking), 'I'm very, very sharp and I have got this great intuition', it may go on well for some time, but eventually, the probability will catch up with you and when that happens, then you will realize that, oh, (and) the audience will also realize that ‘We can't rely on your word anymore. We'd like to see more evidence, please'”

That was me on my own podcast (yup, it's weird to be quoting yourself).

As I said, this is a different kind of podcast episode. In this one, I’m the one being interviewed, and the interviewer is Harish Bhamidipati, a good friend, and the co-founder of ​Choose to Thinq​ and ​Align by Design​. (Incidentally, his firms do some unique, highly valuable work for startups and big companies – and you should check it out through the links).

In the conversation, Harish spoke with me about my ​recently published long-form essay​ on the crucial role of Causality in storytelling.

The conversation was the brainchild of Harish (and his wife Sirisha) who felt that the 17,000-word essay may be a bit daunting for folks who don't get time to read... and they may appreciate an audio conversation about it.

But instead of a plain reading of the essay (which would anyway be difficult given the visual elements embedded in it), we decided to have a conversation about the essay.

We talk about two broad topics:

1. A deeper dive into some of the key messages of the essay and the implications for different stakeholders.

2. My process for writing this long-form piece: The initial idea to write it, the research process, structuring the piece, actually writing it, adding visual elements, and finally editing the write-up.

So - in case you haven’t had time to go through the essay and would like a quick overview - or would like to know more about my reading, reflection and writing process, go ahead and listen to this deep-dive on: ‘​Causality: The Elusive C at the Heart of Story​’.

Show notes:
-  Essay link 

-  Ravi’s YouTube video on how to up your storytelling game post ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot

- Harish’s work – Align by Design (a transformative leader alignment program that  enables organisations achieve unparalleled growth) and Choose to Thinq (enables companies and individuals to continuously build future relevance)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storyrules.substack.com

“When I do the corporate workshops, most people start from this point of view. They are about 35 to 50. They are probably in the peak of their career-related progress, they are doing well, they can easily get their next job. It's not a big deal. They are very well connected offline or online. They’ve networked well, they attend industry events; perfect. Everything is going swimmingly well. My only concern or the only point that I start with is, think of personal branding as insurance. When would you take life insurance or car insurance? When things are going well; when you have money, you will take insurance.”

Welcome to the Story Rules podcast - today we speak with Karthik Srinivasan, a leading communication and personal branding expert. 

In this conversation, we start with the habit stack that makes Karthik so productive in sharing his work online. We discuss his reading habits, content curation, simple note-taking process, reflection habits, and finally how he articulates his thoughts. The surprising takeaway – Karthik relies on the simplest of tools to ship his work. For those who are stuck figuring out the ‘best note-taking tool’, the 'number one content-tagging system', or the 'ideal productivity app'... stop searching. It doesn’t matter. Go with any tool. Just get started.

In fact, if you are a mid-career leader who is not actively sharing specialised content on social media, a blog, or a newsletter, this episode will hopefully serve as inspiration to get started on your personal branding journey. 

Personal branding is not just about promoting oneself. It's about being genuine and sharing your unique knowledge and perspective with others who can benefit from it. And as Karthik says, you will be the biggest beneficiary of this effort. I loved the frame that Karthik gives of looking at personal branding as career insurance.

During the conversation, Karthik and I also geek out on the evolution of advertising as a means of storytelling - especially how adverts have transitioned from being forced on viewers to being on-demand.

We then discuss some common tools used in advertising, such as:
- The element of surprise to hold the audience's attention, 
- Using emotions to form connections with the audience, 
- The use of framing, 
- Analogies and 
- The need to start from where the audience is. 

Finally, Karthik shares his nuanced thoughts on the emerging use of AI in advertising and marketing, using some relevant examples. 

It’s a must-listen conversation for anyone keen on personal branding and modern advertising trends.

Let’s dive in.

Show Notes:
Karthik's website and profile on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram

Karthik's talk on mastering the 9-second attention span

Ads discussed in the episode:
- Ad of Asian paints
- Sudha Murthy thing
PhonePe ad campaign featuring Alia Bhatt, Aamir Khan
- Semiosis
- Brooke Bond ad
- Spotify ad
- Birla Pipes ad
- Thai ad
- Rahul Dev ad
- Jaguar light fittings ad
- Cadbury 

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storyrules.substack.com

“Some amount of anchoring and mooring toward identity is important. But that’s the word – your identity should be a mooring: it tells you who you are and from there you can depart to wherever you want. It tells you where you started and which direction you want to go in. But if instead of being a mooring, it becomes a straitjacket – you are held together and your mooring is also a radius beyond which you cannot move, then it becomes naturally constraining.” 

That is Nitin Pai, founder of the Takshashila Institution (A think-tank and school of Public Policy based in Bangalore). Nitin is a public policy intellectual and has been my go-to thinker on the topics of geopolitics, defence economics and public policy choices.

Nitin once said - “The stories we tell ourselves shape the reality we live in” – and it is this avatar of his as a teacher – and student - of narratives that I wanted to know more about on this podcast.

In this episode, we dive into several topics around narratives and storytelling:

• Nitin talks about how narratives are at the most fundamental level about identities and how that means - we can become prisoners of our own narratives. He shares the evocative analogy of how narratives can serve as a mooring or an anchor for who we are, but can sometimes also become a straitjacket, severely constraining the space that we as societies create for ourselves
• On public discourse, I liked Nitin’s frame of the four levels of stories that societies (and organisations) can grapple with.  Level one being the story of ‘Who we are’, our identity; Level 2 deals with ‘What are the key problems’ that we want to focus on, Level 3 being the ‘What are the right Solutions for these problems’ and Level 4 that dealing with ‘Where do we want to go’, our vision. Unfortunately, a lot of societies often get stuck at Level 1, making very little progress on the higher levels.
• In sharing these stories, there are two broad types of narratives that Nitin says we can use – narratives of hope and narratives of fear. While narratives of fear can get short term electoral gains, over time, people become tired of being fearful… and look forward to more optimistic narratives.
• Nitin also shares why the medium of narrative dissemination also matters – specifically, how Nitin himself started with blogging, then got into Twitter in the early 2010s, how he got disillusioned with it and what alternatives he’s exploring now.

We also geek out about the meaning and utility of frames and frameworks in storytelling.

Finally, Nitin shares why everyone should read philosophy and fiction.

It’s an eye-opening conversation.

Let’s dive in.

Show Notes:
Nitin Pai's website
Nitin on Twitter, Mastodon, LinkedIn
Takshashila Institution website and Nitin's interview on the organisation
Nitin's book, The Nitopadesa
His article on the Four Levels of Public Discourse

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storyrules.substack.com

“If the process and the methodology for collecting the data isn’t clearly explained, it becomes that much easier to bat that data away. I find that the best estimates we have on consumption expenditure which show that in 2017-18, if you spent more than 8,500 Rupees a month as an individual it puts you in the top 5% of urban India. That’s something that people often push back against, find unbelievable, or want to say that “There are so many people I know who are spending this, that; you can’t tell me I’m in the top 1% of the country”, (I think that it) comes from us not being able to properly explain how these numbers were calculated and what goes behind it. Explaining to people “Is your objection that this is being missed? Let me show you how it is actually captured in the data,” “There’s all this black money – let me tell you how consumption doesn’t mean that black money isn’t captured.” I completely believe that there’s a failure of communication rather than a refusal to accept reality on people’s parts.”

That is Rukmini S, eminent data journalist and author of ‘Whole Numbers and Half Truths’ a seminal book that looks at India through the lens of data.

Quick – answer whether these questions are True or False:
1. Delhi has the highest rate of crimes against women in India
2. Most of India’s migration is rural to urban
3. UP is safer for women than many big states as per an NCRB report
4. India has a large middle class
5. You are a part of that middle class

If you answered ‘True’ for any of the questions above, you need to read Rukmini’s book.

I teach how to craft narratives with data and one of the things I used to take for granted was the ‘data’ part. Earlier on the podcast, when I'd interviewed Brent Dykes (author of ‘Effective Data Storytelling’), we discussed the importance of ensuring that the data part of the equation is tied up and not taken for granted.

And if you aren’t rigorous about getting the right data, you end up with narratives that may be divorced from the truth. Just like those True/False statements above.

But if those statements are not true, then what is the truth?

As per Rukmini’s book, the answer is, um, complicated. In a series of ten illuminating chapters, she covers a wide range of topics about India – from crime to education to income, to eating habits to how we vote and how we fall ill – and deftly unveils a truer picture of India.

In this conversation, Rukmini shares her approach to researching and writing the chapters. She shares her productivity approach of getting writing done during the pandemic despite being a parent to two young kids! She gives her nuanced take on India’s unique data architecture and why it’s in all our interests to safeguard and nurture it. Finally, she also shares the need for better communication and storytelling of data findings, especially if they seem to contradict the audience’s perception based on lived reality.

Let’s dive in.

Show Notes:
Rukmini S on  Twitter, Instagram, Medium
Her book - 'Whole Numbers and Half Truths'
Her articles in The Hindu

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storyrules.substack.com

“Oftentimes people try to demonstrate how hard they have worked, so they try and show activity. You are expected to do that activity! If you didn’t do the hard work, don’t keep telling me “I met so many people” and so on. That’s at a very Senior level. Which is why, when you’re talking to people at a very senior level in Consulting like CEOs and others, their time is very precious. They don't want to know all the activity you have done or if your numbers are right, because they have to be right; because you can’t make stupid mistakes. You will be fired if you make those errors. All of that is assumed. Tell me what YOU really think. Which is why even when it comes to investing, the great founders have great stories.”


Today we speak with Toshan Tamhane, currently Chief Strategy Officer at UPL and ex-Senior Partner at Mckinsey and Co.

In storytelling, clarity of communication is a key goal. And one firm which has exemplified that in business communication is Mckinsey. After all, this is the firm that gave birth to the Pyramid Principle (through Barbara Minto), which is something I teach regularly as a part of my courses. 

Now, I was always keen to speak to a senior leader from Mckinsey about how they view the art and craft of storytelling – and was I lucky to have the opportunity to interview Toshan Tamhane.

Toshan spent 18+ years at Mckinsey across 55+ countries advising leading companies and individuals. Currently, apart from his role as CSO at UPL Ltd, he is also an active angel investor and avid adventure enthusiast.

Across these years, Toshan has had a ringside view of several high-stakes communication events with senior stakeholders. Earlier it would have been as a presenter and now, increasingly as a reviewer. I thought it would be great to tap into his vast experience and get his insights on the best practices for storytelling at work.

In the conversation, we go through a wide range of topics - Toshan’s reflections from his IIM-Ahmedabad years, the lessons from Mckinsey, how he would solve business review meetings, his use of relatable analogies and his insane curiosity for deep conversations.

I should reveal here that Toshan happens to be a batchmate from my graduation college – the Podar College of Commerce and Economics in Mumbai.

He was always a prodigious talent since early days – the rest of us at college would be in awe of his drive and clarity. It was great reconnecting with him after almost 2 decades…  and I learnt a lot from this conversation. I’m sure you will too.

Lets dive in.

Links:
Connect with Toshan Tamhane on LinkedIn and Twitter



This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storyrules.substack.com