E185| World Through A Different Lens - P1| Kavi Arasu

Inspire Someone Today

In this episode, host Shrikant interviews Kavi Arasu, founder of Flyntrok, about the complexities of organizational change and leadership. T

Key takeaways

• Kavi Arasu argues that organizational change must be a subset of the larger, perpetually changing societal context to remain relevant.
• Senior leaders are often the primary roadblocks to change because they frequently believe they are exempt from the transformations they mandate.
• Arasu suggests 'sitting with success' is just as vital as examining failure to identify hidden vulnerabilities and 'chinks' in a plan.
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Main topics

• Organizational Change Management
• Leadership Accountability
• The Art of Deep Listening

Notable quotes

Success is a bad teacher.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a powerful reminder that intentionality, observa

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) The movement part is something that you articulate so well. And that is about we mistake busyness and action for purpose and effectiveness. We don't spend much of time on deliberation. Success is a bad teacher. And you have to, I would always, always recommend that leaders sit with their successes. By sitting with failures is an obvious choice, but sitting with success is very rare. Speaker 2 (0:37) Not everything that matters needs to be loud. Some conversations help you pause, some help you see differently, and some stay with you long after the end. Welcome to Inspire Someone today, my dear listeners. A space for honest conversations about life, work, and the choices that shape who we become. No quick fixes, no borrowed certainty, just real stories, thoughtful reflection, and the quiet courage to live with intention. This is Inspire Someone Today, where conversations are human, reflective, and meant to stay with you. Speaker 2 (1:24) In a world overflowing with information and increasingly shaped by AI, perhaps our advantage isn't knowing more. Perhaps it is learning to notice better, make sense of what we notice and act on it. Welcome to Inspire Someone today, my dear listeners. And my guest today is Kavi Arasu. Kavi, welcome to the show. Speaker 1 (1:45) Thank you, Shrikant. Great to be here. You're working a lot. Speaker 2 (1:50) in terms of change, change in organization, change in humans. So I will start right up with that. Change as a first part of the conversation. We talk about organizational change as if it were a project. Define the future state, build the roadmap, communicate, execute, etc. What are we fundamentally getting wrong about change, Kavi? Speaker 1 (2:14) Well, thank you for that question, Shrikant. You know, I think the way we've been thinking about change in itself is very limiting. What I mean by that is it takes all of our energies to understand that we and any organization, any kind of system operates in a larger context and that context, be it society, be it the whole of civilization. that context is perpetually changing. And whatever change that we put in place has to be a subset of or deliberately moving towards the change that is happening outside of the immediate context of the organization that we are in. What does that mean? That means Our rate of change within, be it as an individual, be it as an organization, our rates of change has to be on par with, if not more than, the rate of change outside us. In case we keep falling behind, we will get relegated at some point or the other. Now, that's the fundamental premise that I have. And the way in which you had put up the question as well points to an internal orientation which is there, which is define the project, go towards the objectives of the project, which is well efficient for organizational setups. But look at it this way, that what if the framing of the project in itself was constrained by the requirements of the organization and not best fit for purpose. And therefore, I ask a more foundational question is, are we solving the right problem? Has the problem moved by the time the project finishes? What are the downstream effects of the project? The project may be successful, but does it have more consequences than what we had originally intended to solve? These are other questions, Shrikant, that we don't pause to ask. And those often lead to other greater challenges. Pause to ask more questions. Speaker 2 (4:44) And one of the leading pieces to that, Kavi, is You also mentioned about changes should be intentional and built to last. Organizations are built to last, so should change be. Why do organizations so often confuse movement Speaker 1 (4:59) to change then? Well, organizations are not built to last. They wish to last. Three quarters of the organizations that were, many organizations rather, that were featured in Jim Collins' famous book of built to last and good to great, they're not around. And that's because they haven't kept in tandem with the changes that are happening around them. And that's the challenge that we all face. And the movement part is something that you articulate so well. And that is about we mistake busyness and action for purpose and effectiveness. We don't spend much of time on deliberation and careful analysis of downstream effect. We don't spend time on framing the problem right. And those are some foundational challenges that present across organizations now. And this often meaningless pursuit of action confuses us and confounds us with wrong solutions. Sometimes celebration of the wrong solution. And that's part of the problem, Shrikant. We need to spend more time defining the question. We need to spend more time defining downstream effects. And we need to spend time in framing the problem in itself. Otherwise, like what you said, we will mistake action for outcome. Action for Speaker 2 (6:34) outcome. And you have mentioned a couple of times on daily positions. What's the most uncomfortable truth about change that Speaker 1 (6:42) senior leaders need to hear? Senior leaders, when I work with them, often think that change is something that others have to do. And it is something that they think that they are exempt from it. But change often begins with them. And we begin working, when we work with them, we start with them and ask them, tell us a little bit more about what you're hoping I'll conclude. And those kinds of questions are, what would make you call this off? Those kinds of questions really... make them sit up and think about where their positions are in itself. Many a time, what we find, Shrikant, is senior leaders have to consider themselves as part of the problem. It's not something that they do to the rest of the organization. They have to see themselves as not exempt. And sometimes they are the biggest roadblocks for change. That, if you ask me to name one thing, that would be the one thing that I would name. Speaker 2 (7:52) They are the instruments of change. Speaker 1 (7:55) Instruments of change as well as the biggest roadblocks of change as well. And that's where the whole thing lies. I think while we're talking about Speaker 2 (8:04) change, Kaviv, one of the stuff that happens when change fails generally, who gets blamed and who should actually be examined? Speaker 1 (8:14) Yeah, okay. So there are two parts to that question. One is when things fail. And that obviously means that we should exempt when things go right as well. I think outcomes, whatever the outcomes are, be it when they fail or when they work, it's going to be important for examination to happen. Speaker 2 (8:34) And Speaker 1 (8:35) when you make it Speaker 2 (8:36) not Speaker 1 (8:36) a judgment call of who to blame or who to celebrate, but to examine action. People are usually open to examining and seeing what happened without asking the question, who did it? In most cases, the challenge begins when the third question or even the second question is, who did it? And why did it happen? Obviously, learning and what we call as defensive