Prisons@Work is a series of 6 episodes that step into Indian Society’s most hidden workplaces -the Indian Prison System. Through conversations with prison reformers and ex-convicts we explore life in prison, after prison, and unearth the complex web of justice, caste, gender, stigma and survival. We also look at possible reforms and restorative practices that could redefine the justice system.
This episode is the 2nd part of our conversation with Mohit Raj. Mohit is an Obama scholar and Ashoka Fellow and the co founder of Project Second Chance, a first of its kind, prison reform and criminal justice intervention program in India. Project Second Chance works directly with incarcerated youth between the ages of 18 and 40, an guides them to be change agents in the prison ecosystem.
Prisons@Work is a series of 6 episodes that step into Indian Society’s most hidden workplaces -the Indian Prison System. Through conversations with prison reformers and ex-convicts we explore life in prison, after prison, and unearth the complex web of justice, caste, gender, stigma and survival. We also look at possible reforms and restorative practices that could redefine the justice system.
This episode is first of two parts of our conversation with Mohit Raj. Mohit is an Obama scholar and Ashoka Fellow and the co founder of Project Second Chance, a first of its kind, prison reform and criminal justice intervention program in India. Project Second Chance works directly with incarcerated youth between the ages of 18 and 40, and guides them to be change agents in the prison ecosystem.
In this episode, Sujatha and Deepak are in conversation with Pratap Tambe and Christina Dhanuja about caste. Caste is a subject conspicuously absent from conversations concerning workplaces in India, although it is a historical reality and continues to pervade our social spaces - this must be acknowledged to make any meaningful change possible. Pratap and Christina shed light on their personal journeys, professional experiences and engage in a powerful discussion on discrimination, social justice, disruptive innovation, employment practices and much more.
In this episode, Sujatha, Deepak and Amoolya talk to Reena Dayal, about a topic that we tend to tiptoe around, menopause! Specifically, about what happens in the world of work when a woman, typically in her 40s and 50s, on her way to leadership positions, is beset by menopause.
Is it a death knell to the ambitious aspirations of those women, or an inflection point, which can give rise to positive transformation and determine the next phase of her life? We discuss how menopause is defined, the diverse experiences of women going through it, and about what workplaces are doing and can do about this.
Reena is a leadership development coach with more than 2 decades of experience in international corporate HR, who has been coaching mid-career women using insights from neuroscience.
In this episode, Sujatha, Deepak and Amoolya explore what it means to have an Open, Employee first work place. What approaches signal such a culture? What does it mean to walk the talk? And what challenges accompany such an approach. Talking to PG Aditiya and Goutam Reghunath about Talented, the ad agency they founded with a determination to be a markedly different advertising agency, they discuss Talented's open employee handbook, their lessons from this bold experiment and what lies in store in Talented's future.
Many times a problem-solving approach focuses only on what is wrong. Appreciative Inquiry instead takes a positive and enabling approach to individual and organisational growth, grounded in an abundance mindset. In this episode, Vish, Deepak and Sujatha share three stories about their experience with AI and explore the potential as well as challenges associated with an AI approach to human and organisational growth.
In this episode, Sujatha and Deepak speak to Geoff Revell, who co-founded WaterSHED, a Cambodian non-profit organization working on water, sanitation and hygiene. WaterSHED was unique because it was designed to last only for 10 years. They speak on how WaterSHED’s planned exit influenced its goals, values, strategy, day-to-day operations. They also discuss the responses from the various stakeholders
In this episode, Sujatha and Deepak talk with K.J. Joy, an activist-researcher who has been working on people’s rights to natural resources at grassroots and policy levels for over four decades.
Water is an essential resource with competing claims to its use. Conflicts while being inevitable can also lead to resolution of complex problems. Joy’s experiences as an activist, researcher, social scientist and social leader helps our understanding of conflict, its resolution, and management of multi-stakeholder interests.
In this episode, Sujatha and Deepak speak to Sonali Srivastava, founder and CEO of ANODE Governance Lab to uncover the intricacies of Gram panchayats as organisations - their role in Indian society and governance; their transformative potential and changes in Gram Panchayats over the years. They also discuss the different Organisation Development processes, Change Management processes that Sonali has worked with a few Gram Panchayats; their impact on the Gram Panchayats as an organisation and societal institution. Finally, the conversation also touches upon the leadership qualities that cut across corporate, social and civic spaces.
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Credits: Hosted by Deepak Menon & Sujatha Rao
Mixed & Edited by Prashanth Venkateshan
Production Support from Sowmya Karun and Bhuvana Shiva
Cover Art by Sanjali Ranjan
Intro & Outro Music by Derek Clegg
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In this episode, Deepak and Sujatha speak to Lt. General A. Arun on what makes the Indian army autonomous, adaptable and agile on the ground, even though the army can be bureaucratic with very clear common and controls. We discover a systematic way of building camaraderie, bonding and team spirit amongst the soldiers, the efficacy of different leadership styles and the difference between leadership and management.
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The predominant narrative in the social sector ecosystem is what the Not-Profit Ecosystem can learn from the For-Profit Sector - in a sense about becoming more professional. Rarely if ever, the counter narrative is heard - of what the for-profit or the commercial sector can learn from non-profits, charities and social enterprises. In this open conversation, Sujatha and Deepak speak to Ravi Sreedharan, Founder and Director of Indian School of Development Management (ISDM) and unpack lessons from the social world that the business world can learn from.
Ravi Sreedharan is the Founder and Director of Indian School of Development Management (ISDM). He worked in the corporate world for 24 years, most of it with the MNC Bank – HSBC in Dubai, Hong Kong, Jakarta and Cairo. At HSBC, Ravi held numerous senior positions including CEO & President Director of Bank Ekonomi (member of HSBC Group), in Indonesia. He quit a successful corporate career in 2011, at the age of 49 to return to India and pursue a career in Social Work. Before founding ISDM, Ravi was part of the leadership team at Azim Premji Foundation 2011 to 2015. Ravi is an Engineer from IIT-BHU (1985) and an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad (1988).
Credits: Hosted by Deepak Menon & Sujatha Rao
Mixed & Edited by Prashanth Venkateshan
Production Support from Sowmya Karun and Bhuvana Shiva
Cover Art by Sanjali Ranjan
Intro & Outro Music by Derek Clegg
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In this episode, Deepak and Sujatha speak to Steven Deobald and Deepa Venkatraman from Nilenso - a 100%, employee owned software cooperative based out of Bangalore. They discuss the practicalities, unique workplace practices and decision-making processes that enable Nilenso to practice democracy for over a decade.
Credits:
Hosted by Deepak Menon & Sujatha Rao
Mixed & Edited by Prashanth Venkateshan
Production Support from Sowmya Karun and Bhuvana Shiva
Cover Art by Sanjali Ranjan
Intro & Outro Music by Derek Clegg
If you're still reading this, THANK YOU and hurry up and go subscribe!
Picture a Scientist, released in April 2020 on Netflix, is a movie that explores sexual harassment and gender bias in the scientific community through the narratives of three women scientists - biologist Nancy Hopkins, chemist Raychelle Burks, and geologist Jane Willenbring. In this episode, Sujatha and Deepak speak to Sharon Shattuck - one of the directors of the movie about the film, the making of the film and the explicit and subtle harassment faced by women at the workplace.
Credits:
Hosted by Deepak Menon & Sujatha Rao
Mixed & Edited by Prashanth Venkateshan
Production Support from Sowmya Karun and Bhuvana Shiva
Cover Art by Sanjali Ranjan
Intro & Outro Music by Derek Clegg
If you're still reading this, THANK YOU and hurry up and go subscribe!
More than ever today, women are making their presence felt in family owned businesses in India. In this episode, our guest Mala Paliwal, decodes why and what is happening with the second and third generations of women in family-owned businesses and how they are challenging patriarchy to establish themselves as leaders of their enterprises.
About our guest: Mala is a negotiation coach, consultant, mediator and trainer who works with leaders in family-run businesses, higher education institutions and non profits. Mala has over 17 years of global work experience and also belongs to the 4th generation of a business family of pioneering glass manufacturers established in 1918. Mala graduated from Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) with a Master’s in Public Administration and a Certificate in Management, Leadership, and Decision/Behavioral Sciences. At HKS, she was first a student and later a member of the teaching team for Negotiations and Adaptive Leadership (two highly sought-after courses at Harvard Kennedy School) where she taught people and teams from all over the world to lead and negotiate confidently with self and others.
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Entrepreneurs often struggle with managing time and freeing themselves from firefighting and micromanagement. They also experience the ‘fear’ of ‘letting go’ leading them to be trapped in the management of their everyday operations rather than strategic thinking and leadership. In today’s episode, our guest Balaji Pasumarthy talks about how entrepreneurs can create trusting work cultures that allows them to refocus their energies on growth and scale instead of daily operations.
About our guest: Balaji’s passion is to liberate business leaders from constraints, so they can be in their flow. His expertise is in creating self driven and self organising teams. He shares his expertise in the Liberated Enterprise Creators Group Advisory Program. Through BNI and Golden Square Offices, he smoothens the process of getting clients and having a productive workspace. He did his B-Tech from IIT-Madras, and MBA from IIM-Bangalore. An entrepreneur for most of his career, he believes work needs to be joy, and entrepreneurship is about expressing your core.
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In this episode, we talk to our guest Raj Mariwala about why and how entrepreneurs struggle with mental health, and the holistic support systems that they can develop to ensure their wellbeing and resilience.
About our Guest: Raj Mariwala is Director of Mariwala Health Initiative, (MHI), a funding agency that provides a range of resources and support to organisations working in mental health interventions and advocacy. Raj serves as board advisor for the Global Mental Health Action Network, and for the Lancet Commission on Stigma and Discrimination, as well as being a board member of the NGO, Parcham, that works with adolescent girls.
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The onslaught of constant connectivity coupled with a pandemic that seems to go on forever has led to the great paradox of our lives: 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, our guest Saugata Chatterjee talks about how organisations can leverage the power of communities for greater participation, knowledge exchange, exponential connections and transformative relationships.
About our Guest: Saugata Chatterjee is a multi-function, multi-domain business leader, who believes in the congruence of social good and business profit. In his current and most deeply personal project so far, he has banded with a small but exceptionally talented and passionate set of co-entrepreneurs. Together, they are building foreva, which we believe may be the world's first platform of its kind, designed to help community-focused businesses bring their dispersed and disconnected stakeholders together around shared priorities and commonalities. Before he started on this current endeavour, Saugata journeyed across a Sales role in Madura Coats, a Business role in Walt Disney, went through an intense first start-up experience, and finally evolved across several leadership roles in ITC, specifically in their Infotech subsidiary.
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Can we change the office meeting from being tiring, unnecessary and unproductive to being effective and empowering? In today's episode, our guest Sahana Chattopadhyay talks about how organizations and employees can transform their office meetings into "generative" conversations which drive the desired outcomes and also foster well-being at the workplace.
About our Guest: Sahana Chattopadhyay is a writer, speaker, coach, and facilitator. She spent 18 + years in diverse and globally distributed organizations working at the intersection of Technology, Human Potential, Organizational Learning, Complexity, and Emergence. She partners with organizations to build capacities for emergent and ongoing learning, sense-making, collaboration, deep listening and generative dialogues to help thrive in uncertain, ambiguous, and complex times.
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Is it possible for a group of people to self-manage and lead their organisations through distributed authority and decision making? In this episode, our guest, Mohammed Ali Vakil helps us understand the remarkable power of Holacracy and how this is changing the way organisations are led and managed.
About our Guest: Mohammed Ali Vakil is the co-founder of Calm Achiever. They're the official partners for Getting Things Done (GTD) and Holacracy in India. They've trained 2000+ individuals in GTD from some of the top companies in India including Google, Deloitte, Barclays, Embassy Group & FutureGenerali. As a Holacracy Coach, Ali's passionate about helping organizations structure themselves to increase team engagement, agility and purposeful work.
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New research indicates that employees are experiencing mental stress, burnout and anxiety at work at levels that are unprecedented. What's more, the COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated these issues with employees being more disengaged and stressed out than ever at work. In this episode, our guest Shashi Nair explains how employees can enhance their wellbeing and engagement at work, through small everyday practices, and how organisations can enable individuals and teams to be open, engaged, trusting and authentic at work.
About our Guest: Mr. Shashi Nair is interested in wellness for himself and others. He is a seeker, practitioner, and teacher in inward journeys of personal mastery, and outward journeys of systemic change in complex systems. An alumnus of IIT Madras and IIM Bangalore, Shashi has 27 years of experience across the corporate and social sector. He spent 14 years as a CEO, scaling an IT Training and Consultancy from its infancy. He has over 15 years of experience in the social sector, particularly school education systems, having worked in Azim Premji Foundation and Azim Premji University. Currently, Shashi is a Founding Director of Viridus Social Impact Solutions, a Trustee of Kiirti Trust and a co-initiator of the Well-Being Movement. Shashi can be reached at shashi.viridus@gmail.com.
Resources (links):
SMARP: 8 Employee Engagement Statistics you need to know | Infographic
Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work | TED Talk
The Atlas of Emotions: An interactive tool for identifying, labelling and responding to emotions
Gallup: State of the Global Workplace | Report
Fredric Laloux: Reinventing Organizations | Book
Credits:
Hosted by Deepak Menon & Sujatha Rao Produced & Edited by Sowmya Karun Cover Art by Sanjali Ranjan Intro & Outro Music by Derek Clegg
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