Lavanya Wadgaonkar PhD: Bringing the arts to industry with storytelling, continuous learning and an appreciation of cultural diversity.

In this episode we are celebrating the career to date of Lavanya Wadgaonkar PhD.

Lavanya is Chief Communications Officer & Corporate Vice President, Nissan Motor Corporation.

As Chief Communications Officer, Lavanya is responsible for strategic communications & campaigns, knowledge dissemination and outreach to the key audiences that Nissan seeks to influence with an aim to build reputation, earn trust and ensure consistent authentic experiences. She is also the global champion for DEI responsible for actively promoting a diverse, supportive, and inclusive workplace.

Lavanya joined Nissan in 2012 and since then held various leadership roles in India, Asia, Oceania and Japan. Earlier, she held a number of leadership roles in multinational organizations like Eaton, Reliance Industries and Lexmark.

Lavanya holds a PhD and MPhil from Osmania University, India, with specific focus on the language of cinema in India and its effectiveness in representing socio-economic issues.

In our conversation we talk about her childhood growing up in a highly creative environment that featured regular storytelling around the dinner table.

Lavanya explains that she was a quiet introverted girl who liked to learn. Her appetite for learning has seen her return to formal education whenever she wanted to close gaps in her knowledge.

She shares her experience of going from a very diverse upbringing in India to a homogenous society in Japan via South East Asia and recognising that each country has its own culture and way of doing things.

I loved getting to know Lavanya better through this conversation and look forward to hearing what resonates with you.

Connect with Lavanya

LinkedIn: Lavanya Wadgaonkar PhD
Instagram:write_ur_way

About Andy

I'm an experienced business leader and a passionate developer of people in the automotive finance industry, internationally.

During over twenty five years, I have played a key role in developing businesses including Alphabet UK, BMW Corporate Finance UK, BMW Financial Services Singapore, BMW Financial Services New Zealand and Tesla Financial Services UK.

At the same time, I have coached individuals and delivered leadership development programmes in 17 countries across Asia, Europe and North America.

I started Aquilae in 2016 to enable “Fulfilling Performance” in the mobility industry, internationally.

Learn more about Fulfilling Performance

Check out Release the handbrake! The Fulfilling Performance Hub.

Connect with Andy

LinkedIn: Andy Follows
Email: cvm@aquilae.co.uk

Join a guided peer mentoring team: Aquilae Academy

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Episode recorded on 20 August, 2024.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome, childhood and schooldays
• 15:34 University and teaching English at the age of 19
• 22:41 Getting married, moving to Mumbai and shifting into the corporate world
• 28:24 The challenges of fitting in
• 32:08 Joining Lexmark as a marketing manager
• 39:58 Reflection on the journey
• 43:56 From Lexmark to Reliance Industries to Eton
• 57:41 Resigning from Eton and joining Nissan
• 1:05:43 Moving from India to Bangkok with Nissan
• 1:13:32 Moving to Japan, COVID and the cultural differences
• 1:33:26 Wrapping up and takeaways

Transcript

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 0:00

And you know, if you take a very big decision once you're in your career, it's not that difficult to take a decision again in your career. That's what I feel. Because you do get the courage to say, okay, I can do this you know.

Aquilae: 0:16

Welcome to Career View Mirror, the automotive podcast that goes behind the scenes with key players in the industry looking back over their careers to share insights to help you with your own journey. Here's your host, Andy Follows.

Andy Follows: 0:47

Hello, listeners. Andy, here, thank you for tuning in. We appreciate that you do. We're also very grateful for our guests who generously join me to create these episodes so that we can celebrate their careers, listen to their stories and learn from their experiences. In this episode, we're celebrating the career to date of Dr Lavanya Wadgaonkar. Lavanya is Chief Communications Officer and Corporate Vice President for Nissan Motor Corporation. As Chief Communications Officer, Lavanya is responsible for Strategic Communications and campaigns, knowledge dissemination and outreach to the key audiences that Nissan seeks to influence with an aim to build reputation, earn trust and ensure consistent, authentic experiences. She's also the global champion for DEI, responsible for actively promoting a diverse, supportive and inclusive workplace. She's a core member of global sustainability steering committee, Global Environmental Council and brand steering committee, and chairs global Motor Show committee and communications Leadership Council. With over 28 years of international experience in strategic communications, Public Affairs, brand management and sustainability, she has led multinational teams to deliver impact driven, multi stakeholder, integrated communication strategies across various industries, spanning automotive manufacturing, life sciences, infrastructure and technology domains. Lavanya joined Nissan in 2012 and since then has held various leadership roles in India, Asia, Oceania and Japan. Earlier, she held a number of leadership roles in multinational organizations like Eton, Reliance Industries and Lexmark. Lavanya is a multifaceted individual who has won two national awards for her radio documentaries as producer and scriptwriter. She was a co publisher of a book of stories in translation on women empowerment, and has several academic papers to her credit on the language of visual art and cinematic narration. She has contributed reviews and articles to major publications as a freelancer. Lavanya holds a PhD and M Phil from Osmania University, India, with specific focus on the language of cinema in India and its effectiveness in representing socio economic issues. In our conversation, we talk about her childhood, growing up in a highly creative environment that featured regular storytelling around the dinner table. Lavanya explains that she was a quiet, introverted girl who liked to learn. Her appetite for learning has seen her return to formal education whenever she wanted to close gaps in her knowledge. She shares her experience of going from a very diverse upbringing in India to a homogenous society in Japan via Southeast Asia and recognizing that each country has its own culture and way of doing things. I loved getting to know Lavanya better through this conversation, and look forward to hearing what resonates with you. If you're listening for the first time, hello, I'm Andy Follows. I help business owners and executives to enable Fulfilling Performance for themselves and those they lead and care about. If you'd like to know more about Fulfilling Performance, you can sign up for our weekly newsletter. In it, you'll find easily digestible ideas on how to increase levels of performance and fulfillment for yourself and those you lead and care about. Go to Andyfollows.substack.com or use the link in the show notes to this episode. If you listen to podcasts like Career View Mirror, I'm guessing that you recognize you can learn from other people. When I'm not recording these conversations with inspiring individuals, you'll often find me facilitating guided peer mentoring teams in our Aquilae Academy, we bring together small groups of business owners and senior leaders from non competing organizations and create a virtual environment in which they can get to know and trust each other and share and support each other with their current challenges. If that sounds interesting, email academy@aquilae.co.uk and we'll send you more details. You'll find that address in the show notes to this episode. Hello, Lavanya and welcome. And where are you coming to us from today.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 5:02

Hey, Andy, I'm joining you from Yokohama, Japan.

Andy Follows: 5:07

How exciting. Thank you very much for joining me and taking up your evening to do this. Where did your journey start?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 5:16

I was born in a quainty little town in India. I don't even have a recollection much of the town, because I only call it as my birthplace. It's called Ongol, and I think now it's a bit of a bigger city as well. But most of my life has been spent in Hyderabad, which is also in the southern part of India, but more famous than the quainty little town that I was born in.

Andy Follows: 5:44

Yes. And how old were you when you moved to Hyderabad?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 5:48

I think I must be like a year old or something,

Andy Follows: 5:51

so very early. Yeah. And can you please share with us a little bit about your family growing up, the circumstances that you found yourself in when you were a small child.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 6:04

It's a very curious family background I've got. So my father comes from a different state and speaks a different language, while mother speaks a different language. So I was born in a family which was already a diverse family, coming from two different states, but I picked up most of my mother's language because we were brought up in the state where her language was predominant. My father was in treasuries. He used to be a sub Treasury officer. However, he had a side job. He was a film producer as well. Wow, because my family has a very strong connection to cinema, my grandfather worked in the silent movies. So he was an actor. I had a long line of relatives who are associated but film industry. So my father, though he had a government job, he used to also, I would say, on the sidelines, did production, and he was into theater. So lot of my background is actually associated with performing arts.

Andy Follows: 7:18

So when you were growing up, how did that? I'm trying to conjure up an image of your household and how that level of performing arts and cinema and acting would have shown up in the house or in family life.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 7:35

It's a huge influence when I think back now, because for us, the dinner conversations, were plots of movies, actors, it's all about mythological stories. It was such a natural thing for us that we didn't have to spend time to read books to learn anything. It was like we were naturally growing up listening to everything to do with history, cinema, mythology. So storytelling was like a day to day affair for us. And then I come from a family, and we were, we are Brahmins, if anybody knows the caste system in India, we are on the knowledge side of it. So normally in our household, it's very natural for kids to learn classical dance and classical music. So I was trained in classical dance, and that's another association with performing arts. So I think all my life, arts and culture has been part of how I grew up to in

Andy Follows: 8:38

How wonderful. So there was the food on the table, fact, it's like food for us. and then there was the arts and literature, and it was that was also another type of food that was being passed around.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 8:54

Absolutely. and it was very curious for us, because it's a tradition in our family that at least the dinner has to be together. So everybody waits for everyone to get home to have dinner together. And the dinner conversation is normally a topic that comes from mythology or history or cinema, so it was a very natural way of growing up in storytelling.

Andy Follows: 9:20

Yes, I was going to say you mentioned storytelling, and we know you're in communications now, so it's great to make that link already to that being part of your childhood who would have been sitting around that table, Lavanya.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 9:34

So it's my father, my mother and I have two sisters, one elder and one younger sister. So we have five of us, and naturally, all five of us are always present at the dinner table.

Andy Follows: 9:46

You said you'd wait until everyone got home. What sort of time would you be sitting down

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 9:50

in India? Dinners are a bit late. We usually have dinner around eight, 830 in the night. I

Andy Follows: 9:58

It sounds like it would have been a stimulating quite an intellectual household. What were you like at school? Tell me a little bit about your school days.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 10:09

I was a very quiet child. It's ironic for me to get into communications. Basically, I was the one who would speak the least at the dinner table, at any social gatherings, people would even doubt if I lost my voice and I don't speak at all. So I was a very quiet child, but I think being quiet helped me to listen more. There was also a joke in my school and college days where people would say, to make me speak. It really needs to move a mountain, that kind of quiet child. It also was interesting because my father was the one who speaks the most at the dinner table, because he's the one telling the stories. And to make it interesting for the kids, he would actually name us from a different mythological figure or a historical character for the day. So every day, we have a different name. It could be the name of a king, it could be the name of a demon, it could be the name of a goddess. So you are actually changing characters on a daily basis. And I think being quiet, I used to imagine the character thoroughly after I finished dinner and I go to bed, I would just replay everything in my mind, but actually become the character. So that's how my acting career started, as well, I would say

Andy Follows: 11:34

that would encourage you to learn about that character and to dive into their story,

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 11:41

it is. And one of the things that used to happen for us is after school. There were no childcare centers those days, so we would end up going to studio after school and just running around the studios. Then there's filming happening. My father is working. So basically what that ended up being is, if there is a dubbing for a child to cry, laugh or to be a background actor, we would be just called in to do that, and we would get a chocolate or one rupee coin, which I would use to buy candies, or I had seen this nice doll, which was a decorative piece in the film. I had to wait for the whole filming to be over to request the director to give me that

Andy Follows: 12:28

So if there were props that you took a fancy to doll.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 12:33

but that was like, that was very enticing for us to go and do the dubbing. So it was so natural that we never felt nervous about all these things. It was like walking in cry, go out and and just get your candy

Andy Follows: 12:48

and so you were quiet at school. Were you a good student? Did you enjoy your studies?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 12:53

Always, yeah, being on the top mostly have been a student with distinction all the ways, except for one failure in my life, I would say, I don't know whether I could call it like I was very intelligent or not, but I did skip grades and quite a bit of grades. So I skipped my fifth grade and I skipped my eighth to 10th grade. So basically I finished my 12th when I was just 12 year old.

Andy Follows: 13:25

Do you have any thoughts on that now? Has that affected you?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 13:28

No, I wish it was the case. It wasn't the case, because one we were my father was getting transferred frequently, and we never stayed in one school for more than two years. So that really did not leave my many friends on that when I skipped grades, I really don't have any school friends, so to say, I don't even recollect even one single friend. But when I skipped from seventh to 10th directly, I had a hard time, because I was very good in some subjects, like literature. I was very good with physics, very good with biology, but somehow chemistry ended up being the most difficult subject for me. And I never had any background. So I would say that was my first and the last failure of my life was I did fail in chemistry, in my 10th standard, because I skipped grades, but because I had distinction in all other subjects, they passed me in the overall grade, because I still ended up having 70% marks, but I still have that fail written on my certificate with a red mark.

Andy Follows: 14:45

Sounds like you're not letting go of that too easily

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 14:48

No I cannot because I never had a certificate with a fail mark in my life.

Andy Follows: 14:55

It's interesting, clearly, the the emphasis was on purely the academic side, and the system overlooks the importance of staying with your year group and having consistency and building up friendships, but then also that would have been challenged if you were moving quite often as well.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 15:14

You know, it is what it is. I think the plus side of it is I had a postgraduate certificate by the age of 19. Wow, yeah, I started teaching when 19, and my students were older than I was, so I had to make myself look older so that I could teach graduate students.

Andy Follows: 15:34

And when did you start to decide what you wanted to study at university?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 15:38

It's very again, an influence of my father has always been very strong on me. I never wanted but he wanted me to do public service commission in India from my childhood, and somehow he thought I would become a police officer. It was Indian police service commission, and by then, I didn't know that I would be this short. That was a different thing, because I was still growing up. But one of the things is my I was always more bent towards the literature, because I was a writer. I used to write poems, I used to write stories, and storytelling was always part of me. So though I had distinction in sciences, and ended up getting a 98% in my physics and everything and everybody thought I would go into either engineering or being a doctor, which is very cliched Indian as you know. However, I ended up actually taking English literature in my undergrad, which was very, very strange for a lot of people who were like, who in the hell, who has 98% in science goes into humanities to do a Bachelor of Arts, and that was me. But my father was okay, because he still thought, with any degree, I still can do public service commission.

Andy Follows: 17:01

So he was supportive.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 17:02

He was because he always had this bent of mind towards arts. So I don't think he would have ever rejected so ended up actually taking English literature, history and political science as my undergrad programs.

Andy Follows: 17:17

And then what was your post grad?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 17:19

continued in English literature. So I got my MA in English,

Andy Follows: 17:24

and then your first job was

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 17:25

as a as an English teacher.

Andy Follows: 17:27

And how did you find that? It must have been difficult teaching students who were older,

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 17:32

yeah, but I picked up teaching because that was a big life event. I actually had my postgraduate last exam, and the very next day, I lost my father. Oh, yeah, so that was a bit of a shocker for me. It's like I couldn't take it by now, you know how much influence my father had on me, so I had to take something up immediately. So I was 19, and I just thought, I'll just start teaching and start earning. The natural thing, if you have a postgraduate degree is start teaching. So I went into teaching undergraduate students. That was my first job. But also very interestingly, because I already appeared for my Master of Philosophy exam, and I actually got a scholarship and was on university first, so I continued my studies. Didn't stop it, but the thing that got stopped was my aspiration to be in the public service commission, so I lost all motivation to pursue that, and I ended up picking up English as my key subject. But then life has its own way. I think when I was looking for my thesis, I was introduced to my guide and mentor, Dr Titan Mukherjee, who was specializing in theater. So when I met her, she asked me, What's my interest? And then, like, I'm talking to you, I was talking to her about my background, because I was also into theater by then, and I was talking to her how interested I am in films and the cinema. And she said, But why don't you just specialize in cinema, then pick up film as a narrative language? And there is this very interesting subject that I'm working on, which is from fiction to film, The novels that were being produced as films.

Andy Follows: 19:28

Oh, that sounds interesting.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 19:30

That was interesting. So I it was so natural for me to go into that route, and I actually picked up as my MPhil subject. And then, naturally, my PhD focused on the same subject as well, but it became a bit more broader, because I worked on the partition of India in fiction and film and in history books as an interdisciplinary study for my PhD,

Andy Follows: 19:56

it sounds like she maybe took over in a very helpful way where your father had left off. Is that a leap too far, or was it very good fortune to meet her?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 20:06

It was at least she brought me back to where I would find myself. I would say, because, though I was a very good teacher, sorry to say that, but I'm bragging. I have letters from my students who would say, because I was young, I think because I was young, they could relate to me better when I was teaching, and I knew the problems that they would have, rather than a very old teacher who would go in their own way of doing it. So I was very popular as a teacher. However, I knew from the beginning that was not my calling, so I did take college service examination and became a university Associate Professor within four years after I began teaching. But there was a part of me which wasn't satisfied with teaching, so I used to do lot more other things, like I was already from my graduation days was all entering at All India Radio, and I used to do my own shows and started production in radio stations. And then when I took up my film as a research topic, I started writing film critiquing in the newspaper as well as in All India Radio. So I used to go to film festivals and and then I started assisting in audiovisual Research Center in the university, naturally because of my mentor, and started working on that. So on the sidelines, though I was teaching, on the sidelines, I started doing what I love the most. I also started writing scripts, and then ended up doing a translation and published a book as well. So all the years in five to six years, time frame from my post graduation to actually moving out of teaching, I was doing like 10 or 20 different things.

Andy Follows: 21:59

And did you have a longer term sense of where you were headed with that, or were you very much focusing on doing the activities that you love doing?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 22:08

I think I was just doing everything that was coming in my way. I never thought long term, but I always thought I would be in the creative field because of my interest in culture and creativity, even the columns I was running in the newspaper, and you can Google, some of the articles will come up. They were actually on dance, on cities, on culture, on drama, so most of my writing was on the cultural element of it. So I never thought I would cross over to corporate.

Andy Follows: 22:40

And when did that happen? You said, sort of six years of teaching. What happened after that?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 22:45

I got married.

Andy Follows: 22:46

Oh, is that a good story?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 22:50

It's a good story because I fell in love with my husband when we were preparing together for the service commission exams. Finally, I did not give the exam. He tried to pursue but he also stopped us. I think we both gathered together just to end up being married. After that, we gave up that course in our life, but I got married and I immediately had a kid. In fact, the joke from my mentor was I was nine months pregnant when I was submitting my PhD thesis, and she was like, both your brain child and the physical child are coming at the same time.

Andy Follows: 23:32

Excellent, excellent. So you got married and that did that mean then just stopping work for a little

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 23:38

Ah no because I was in the university. while? So you have plenty of holidays, as you can imagine, including a three month maternity leave. You do end up almost getting nine months of days off. And because I was working till a week before the delivery, I was very busy. I never felt that I had to stop. Then opportunity came, where my husband was moving from Hyderabad to Mumbai, and the option for me was, do I continue to work where I am and keep shuttling between the two cities, or do I take a step towards moving to Mumbai? Now, as I said, I've never thought that teaching was my calling. So I was like, okay, Mumbai is the city of Bollywood, and maybe there is something that I could do if I move and I took that decision to take a long leave from my university to move to Mumbai. I didn't give up the job, by the way, I still took a leave to move to Mumbai. And when I moved to Mumbai, I was a bit lost, because it was completely a new city. My roots weren't in Mumbai. All my connections were limited to Hyderabad. I wasn't that well networked in that place. And the option. For me was, how do I build the network and what do I do? And here is what happened, which is interesting and which moved to corporate. There was a company called Patni computers. It was one of the top five software companies in India. Then. Now Patni closed down, but at that time, it was one of the top along with Infosys and all and the marketing head of Putney was looking for someone who could actually help them write their there's something called Request for Proposal RFPs, for software companies, they get this request for proposal from US companies for them to submit their projects, their credentials and their profile. He was looking for someone who could do it differently, because every software company had technical writers, and it was the same old, very straightforward profiling, and it's kind of cut, paste kind of a thing. So they said they were looking for someone who could do a different job. And somehow, and it was through a job site, actually this game, because I uploaded my profile, looking for script writing and screenplay, and then I get this call, and it was very, very funny for me, and I'm suddenly, oh, corporate, okay, I used to teach soft skills when I was teaching in the university. So I went and bought a formal suit, because I wouldn't need it if I was in the creative field. And then I went to this interview, and they said, You know what? We need someone who can really make it into a story, and maybe someone who can even expand our website to make things better. And I'm like, Okay, that sounds interesting. I can give a try. Because, anyway, I was sitting at home and the pay was very good. I didn't know corporate pays so well then, because I used to get pittance for my articles. So I ended up in corporate

Andy Follows: 27:01

I'm amusing myself thinking of you writing these RFPs, and they've got a fight scene happening, they've got a love story, and then bringing you in saying, okay, Lavanya, this bit,

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 27:16

Yes but Andy, if you look at it from today's point of view, every corporate today talks about storytelling as the key to communications, and I'm talking early 2000 here, and the company then realized the need to be different, then realized the need to be more emotional, even if it was just a project proposal, to be able to catch The attention of their clients,

Andy Follows: 27:41

because the clients are human beings.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 27:44

Exactly

Andy Follows: 27:44

the person reading this is a human being who is motivated by the same emotions, yeah,

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 27:50

exactly. That's what it is like everybody who wants to be different looks back into storytelling, right?

Andy Follows: 27:58

So that was quite a change for you. You'd moved to Mumbai. You must have been well connected and well experienced in the industry, in Hyderabad, the movie industry and and then to find yourself very much now isolated, really, and having to start from scratch. And so this opportunity was a good first opportunity, but it wasn't what you planned to do. No,

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 28:23

No, and I don't think I did very well as well, because if I look back, I don't think it is one of my shining days. I would say so I did struggle, because it was very technical. It was completely a different field for me, even though I was trying to write things in the way that I like. At the end of the day, corporate is corporate, and they want things in a certain way. And one of the things I realized is, as a creative person, you take the path where your creative thinking leads you. You have a wide expanse of territory to explore, and nobody kind of restricts you. But when you get into corporate, you need to channel your creativity towards a very clear objective. So at the beginning, it was very restraining, like it would choke you. Most of my copies were rejected, and was like, but what's wrong with that? It was like, no, no. The clients will not like it, and you're not giving this, and at the end of the day, they still wanted technical writing to be done in a bit better way. So maybe I struggled. I struggled for a lot of time, and then I decided after three months that wasn't really what I liked. But then I ended up getting another company approaching for a similar thing, and they actually expanded the scope to say, Okay, we want you to also help with employee communications. We want to explain to and this was a BPO business process outsourcing company. Then it got added with an aerospace company who wanted to do their website. So slowly I started expanding my ability to do things into the appropriate corporate communications. Job writing for websites, employees doing newsletters. Took me a couple of years to settle down, I think, struggling to really understand the corporates. And then I ended up and on the sidelines me being me, I wouldn't be satisfied without a degree. So I started doing my MBA, because I said it's not enough to have a PhD, you know. So that brought in a bit of management concept centered, which helped ease things for me, frankly speaking,

Andy Follows: 30:46

it's a really good example that that first move you made, it was the first step into the corporate path that you're now on. But let there be no mistake, it didn't go right. First time, it wasn't perfect. First time, it was a case of, okay, well, I'm in here. This is not quite right, but it's interesting. And then it led to a broader role where you were allowed to be original. You weren't being constrained as much. Yeah, it was. And then you thought, I need to get an MBA as well to help me

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 31:20

as a child, I always rejected being a quiet child and an introvert. People don't realize, but you have a very strong, rigid personality, and you shield it with a mask of quietness. But I'm stubborn. I'm very resilient. I'm very rigid, and I can't take the factor that I cannot do something, I think somewhere in me that really pushes me towards Why can't I do it? I need to get this done somehow. So if it has to be a degree that will teach me, I will take the degree and I'll work towards it and get it done. So I ended up actually taking up a job in Lexmark, the printer company, as a marketing manager. Quite a journey. There it was.

Andy Follows: 32:21

What were you looking for? What was the reason for doing?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 32:24

No idea. I think it. I just ended up, I was coming out of the office, and I get a call and they say that there is an interesting job opportunity would you like to and I would say the MD, at that time, he could be somebody I can

Andy Follows: 32:36

the MD at Lexmark? call as my first mentor in corporate world

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 32:45

Yeah, MD at Lexmark. So we had this very short interview, and then he immediately said, No, you should work for me. I have no clue what made him think that somebody with this background can do marketing, but he picked me up, and it was a very good three to four year relationship, where I think he taught me so I was as a student, also doing a lot of event management, and I used to be backstage in theater and all so events were like fish and water when it comes to that, because the detailing of events is something I can think like this. But the events I organized were like big concerts and major dramas and programs and all those. And when you work in All India Radio, you're trained to organize yourself. So when I was doing and by the way, I didn't tell you, I won two national awards for my radio documentaries from the Prime Minister of India. And those things somewhere behind your mind you're trained and more, most of the things that you see in the corporate but you don't see them as skill sets. You think that it's a different thing altogether, but planning for a radio like we are talking right now, you know you have to plan every second. You need to write your scripts, you need to remember your music, you need to do your own mixing, and then you need to market yourself, right? So everything is the same principle. The basic principle remains for the concerts as well organizing a concert, how to plan the stage, how to sell your tickets. Everything is marketing at the end of the day. So unless you take a marketing degree and say, Oh, I got a marketing degree, people don't see that these skill sets are life skills that you have learned.

Andy Follows: 34:43

No, so you realized you had so many transferable skills.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 34:49

It's a good word. Yes,

Andy Follows: 34:50

I think this is a real, really interesting topic. And we see the packaging of a job, we see the title, we have a vague idea. Maybe we've seen something on TV or film, someone playing that role, and it's in a corporate setting, and that corporate setting might be very different from what we're used to. If we've been in a radio station or we've been in a theater, we don't always realize how much of the skills we already have are necessary for that new environment

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 35:21

Absolutely, if you actually go into detail, even when you're teaching, you do lesson plans, you organize yourself. When you do research, you know how to do research, and it's basically the same when you prepare for a meeting, when you prepare for a proposal, but the knowledge could be different, but the knowledge is something which is my playing field, I can acquire it as quickly as I want. It's natural. When you start studying, right? You can pick up your knowledge very, very quickly, yeah, and I remember one thing I need to say that. I said that he's my first mentor, and he used to say he learned management. He has an mbwa. He says, My degree is mbwa. That is management by walking around,

Andy Follows: 36:10

I've heard that expression. And you said at the end of the interview, he said, You should come and work for me. And you were a little surprised, because you weren't necessarily saw yourself as a marketing person, absolutely. But with the experience that you have now, can you see why he hired you?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 36:29

I think at that point of time, he was really looking for somebody who has the creative background to do some special marketing activities for him, somebody who's different, and I don't know what else he's seen me. I've never asked. Maybe I should ask him like next time I have dinner with him, but I actually never looked back after that, by the way, it wasn't a very easy walk as well. After he hired me, we did have instances where we clashed quite a bit of times. He was very harsh sometimes to me, but I used to go home and work all night to get what he wants. And I think in one or two years, I ended up being somebody he was looking for everything, including if he needs to order a bouquet for his wife, because he thought someone who can be very creative in that bouquet is me to the extent that in that job, I also started picking up other jobs, like I started doing sales. I handled PNL in a four year job, I did everything from communication to marketing to sales and logistics.

Andy Follows: 37:39

It's a great example of someone growing their circle of influence. So you started off with your own role, a small part of the overall, and then by delivering good work in that area, you quite rapidly became the person without whom he wouldn't make a decision.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 37:59

Yeah, on certain topics, definitely, he was looking at me, and in fact, that's been my career growth. In every role I took, I always started off with one job, and I started expanding within the company to take over more roles and more areas. This was the same case after Lexmark, when I joined Eton, I joined as Head of Communications, and then I took over public affairs, and then I took over marketing as well.

Andy Follows: 38:29

What do you think was driving your spread into other areas? Was it curiosity? Was it a thirst for knowledge, which you've already demonstrated? You very hungry to get more knowledge. Was there ambition behind that to rise up the organization? What do you think

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 38:48

ambition wasn't really the case? I would I can clearly say that, but curiosity and hunger for knowledge was definitely but more than that was the trust that I felt from my superiors when they asked me to take over a role, you could see that they had that trust in me and asking me, I'm interested in doing it, and I have a philosophy just say yes and go and figure it out later how to do it. So I think I had the confidence that I can learn very quickly, so I never said no to opportunity when it knocked me. So I think it's, it's a combination of several things that led me to just keep expanding in the same role.

Andy Follows: 39:36

Did you also like the responsibility?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 39:38

I always loved responsibilities, because I think a teacher in me stayed all the time, even if I want to let go, I would never let go. So I believed in coaching people as much as I can. So the more responsibilities I took, the more the people are, and the more I could do for people to learn as well.

Andy Follows: 39:58

And what about reflection has that featured on your journey

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 40:03

All the time. Because, as I said, it's not been a very smooth ride, right? So it can be very easy for me to summarize, to say this is what I did and this is what I ended up with, but there's been a lot of learnings and heartburns as well. Because one of the things I'm sorry to say, but creative people don't usually control emotions that well, we are emotional beings, right? Because emotions ride on us, and that's why we can tell stories, because the first thing is that, but when we are emotional in the management field, in corporates, they expect you to behave in a certain way. If you are working in corporate from the beginning, then you are influenced by the superiors who have been in management. So it shapes you how to work in a corporate the thing that happened with me is I didn't have anyone who will tell me how to work in a corporate I can learn and I can do the job the best of my ability. But when it comes to processing my emotions, I would go with my personality, which was a little different, because, as I said, I'm an introvert. But the job I started doing when I moved to corporate was an extrovert's job, communications is all about communicating. You need to talk, and I'm very good at talking when I know the subject very well. I think that is one reason why I learn very fast, because if I don't, I don't fit in. Because this is, again, another experience I didn't tell you, but after I finished my 12th and went into undergraduate, and I was a 16 year old kid in an undergraduate class where everybody was four or five years older than I was and I couldn't fit in. One, I was a quiet child, two. I was so immersed in academics that I never picked up what you call the life skills. So in those days, I didn't read Mills and Boons. I did not read Hardy Boys. I didn't have any Nancy Drew with me. All I knew was mythology, history, which is more Indian oriented literature, I didn't have any topics that I can really relate to the older people who just started undergraduate programs, right? So I remember that the first year of my undergraduation, I became even more quiet than I was because I couldn't speak. The reason I couldn't speak is I didn't know what to talk I couldn't really relate. So I remember that the summer vacation of my first year graduation, I used to go to British Library at 10am when the library opened up, and stayed till 6pm when the library closed to read as many novels as I can, not works of, you know, knowledge, just novels. And three months, I read almost 500 books

Andy Follows: 43:13

Wow, that's extraordinary,

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 43:15

because and then second year, when I go back to the college, I knew everything that I could talk about everything that I could do, but that's that's what I always felt, that I needed every role I took, I needed to struggle to fit in.

Andy Follows: 43:30

Yeah, and you reached for books, literature, education to fill the gap,

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 43:36

and films,

Andy Follows: 43:37

and film,

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 43:38

I used to watch a lot of films to be able to articulate, because I needed to talk

Andy Follows: 43:45

fascinating. Thanks for sharing that. So you spent four years at Lexmark with this MD, who was a good mentor, and then went to Eton.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 43:56

No, in between from Lexmark for nine months, I moved to Reliance Industries. Everybody must have heard about it, as one of the largest companies in India. I took a manager corporate communications role for reliance, and I started doing their newsletters. And I didn't stay for long, but it was a very good experience, because Reliance was a diversified company, so when they did their newsletters, it was a weekly employee newsletter that was my primary job, and I changed the way the stories were written. And by then, I gained my confidence in crossing between the creative and the corporate world, and my stories were some things that even the CEO of the company would actually write on the newsletter. Great job, great story.

Andy Follows: 44:49

What caused you to leave Lexmark then and join reliance?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 44:54

It was recession time, and they started cutting jobs. So I was asked to let go of people. And it was the first time in my life that I needed to tell people that they won't have jobs. I wasn't prepared for that. It was my first true corporate job, I would say. And then I just couldn't do it, and I decided I'll leave. My husband used to work for reliance life sciences, and we had a chat with the head of comms there, and he was interested in taking me, so I just left Lexmark and joined reliance. So that was the reason,

Andy Follows: 45:36

and why, only nine months what was the attraction of Eton after reliance? What happened there?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 45:41

I think because the role was very It sounds like you were very intentional. You're intentional limited for me, and I was in the growth phase in the corporate where I was able to do more, so going back to just doing communications wasn't something that was very satisfying. And the role was in a big team, because Reliance was a very big organization. So I think working in Lexmark and being somebody my career growth, I didn't think I've worked really in large teams under someone for long time. So this was the first time, and I realized that there's lot of restrictions it was going against some of my basic personality, like, I'm very organized, and I like deadlines and timelines. I think because working in radio and newspapers, you know, you're really tuned to deliver on time, but the atmosphere was a bit relaxed, and it can be any time, and you can do anything, you take your own time. So it wasn't really going very well. So I didn't see enough challenge. I thought that that was formative years of my corporate career. So it was important for me to challenge myself more. And so it was easier when I got interviewed with Eton, and it was in a different city altogether, and it was also that I needed to move. So I still took that decision. Took my 4 year old daughter to move to a different city altogether, to take up this challenge. Very strange, but that was the decision i i took. about what you needed from that phase and whether you were getting it. And you were self aware about your strengths and how you like to work, the kind of work you like doing, what would stretch you? And you know, if you take a very big decision once you're in your career, it's not that difficult to take a decision again in your career. That's what I feel. Because you do get the courage to say, okay, I can do this, you know, and I still can do what I want to do. So I think there is some sort of behind my mind, that courage that existed, which made me take that decision to say, okay, I can move

Andy Follows: 48:06

Yes, because there's a saying that the grass isn't always greener on the other side. And I would add Yes, but you have learnt that you are able to cross from one pasture to another. So

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 48:18

absolutely.

Andy Follows: 48:19

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Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 50:26

Yes, so Lexmark and Eton both were US companies

Andy Follows: 50:30

So you had experience already of different corporate cultures. Do you want to say anything about that? Or should we save that for later.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 50:37

We can talk about culture later. Maybe I'll go through it. But basically, there are also different industries, which was interesting for me, because I could learn more and get adapted to more and more industries

Andy Follows: 50:53

You just had a voracious appetite for learning. Wow. Okay, so very intentional, again, recognizing I can learn more. There's another piece of advice I've given me, which is, get the job that is most different from the one you've done before, but that you can still get recruited into.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 51:13

Yeah, because people always have fear that if you don't specialize in an industry, you don't grow very fast. But maybe because I didn't start in corporate for me, that was never a thought. It was more about, what else can I do? What else can I do?

Andy Follows: 51:29

Yeah, and you demonstrated that through your actions, you'd already made a huge leap from the creative world, from the arts, from theater to the corporate world. So moving industries within corporate must not have seemed such a big deal.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 51:44

Yeah, that's true.

Andy Follows: 51:46

Yeah. And so any good experiences from Eton, or good learnings that you took from that phase

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 51:53

A lot of good learnings in Eton, I think because, again, I started as Head of Communications for Eton, and there was a change in leadership within six months after I joined and I had another wonderful boss who I am in touch even now. I think one of the reasons why my career has been successful is all the wonderful bosses I had

Andy Follows: 52:15

that's wonderful to hear and please feel free to name them if you want to. I like to celebrate good leaders when they come up on our conversation?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 52:25

Lexmark was actually PG Kamath. He's no longer working in corporate, but he keeps in touch with all of us, the big group of Lexmark still is on WhatsApp, basically all of us working in different companies, but we are still in touch in different parts of the world. And the next one I'm talking about is Shyam Gambianda, who is now the CFO for ebecs in the US. Shyam moved to India and an expat assignment to lead Eton then, and somehow we hit it off at the beginning itself, and he started seeing a lot of potential in me, and we started working quite closely on various things. And I ended up expanding my role, as I said, from corporate communications, to include corporate marketing. And I remember corporate marketing was included because of the way I organized some of the marketing events. I was also asked to help out at Asia Pacific level. And events that I was organized was becoming a benchmark for global so I started reporting, not only to SVP corporate communications, but also SVP marketing. And it's just that role started expanding and expanding with Eton

Andy Follows: 53:44

Classic, as I know, that's your classic modus operandi,

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 53:52

and you start expanding, it just happens naturally, like I never knew, because I told you my father was in government services, so I was very used to working in a diplomatic environment, and was very natural when it came to meeting ministers or top diplomats. But when I was in Eton and they wanted to organize meetings with the Prime Minister and the finance minister of India for the CEO, he asked me, Can you do it? And then I'm like, Okay, let me try to do it. I've never done government affairs before, but then I realized it's not that difficult for me, because the guys that I was meeting were the guys I saw with my father, and I used to talk to them. So it was I was never hesitant. So I did a very good job with public affairs. And then I it just got added to my role, saying, Okay, you can do public affairs. I realized at the end of the day, everything ends with relations. So wherever there is a word, relations, I feel like I'm very comfortable.

Andy Follows: 54:59

Yeah, so whether it's government relations or corporate relations or investor relations

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 55:05

Yep, I'm absolutely comfortable with that.

Andy Follows: 55:09

Is there anything else about Eton Lavanya, or shall we move on to what happened after that?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 55:14

One thing I would like to mention about Eton is because they used to have what they call internally Eton business system. So they used to train people in marketing to do be as internal examiners for internal business system. And I got trained and qualified as an internal examiner, which means I was trained to be a trainer and creating value, selling value, and going to the plants to audit the plans for business system. Business System is nothing but operational efficiencies. In Eton, I learned about PNL and managing logistics and sales and dealing with dealers and retail network in Eton, it was more on

Andy Follows: 56:02

So clearly a good experience and a good our management side of it, which trained me into business systems and operational efficiencies and got me more integrated into the business world. I would say so the acumen for business sharply increased in Eton. organization and lots of learning and growth for you. So why the move?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 56:32

As I told you, I moved from Mumbai to Pune, and when sham took over, after two years, I was in Pune. My husband used to work for he moved to the US. He was at Stanford, so that period of time, it was okay for me to move with my daughter and stay in Pune.

Andy Follows: 56:51

So you had a long distance marriage.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 56:55

Yeah. And then he came back to Mumbai. So Shyam said I could actually stay in Mumbai work, flexible work hours, which was not a concept in those time, but he trusted me so much. He said, Okay, you can come two days in a week to Pune, Mumbai. Pune is an a three hour drive, so you can come and work here and you go. But that commute was becoming very, very difficult. And my daughter was growing up, and she was feeling bit left out because I wasn't there three days in a week. And I said, okay, it was the time to maybe take another job and make that change. So I actually did not take up anything. Then I actually resigned from Eton and came back to think about, what do I want to do? And then I was looking for opportunity, and Nissan happened,

Andy Follows: 57:53

right? And what was the opportunity with Nissan? And how did it come about? Did you find it, or did they find you? What was the story?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 58:00

It was LinkedIn post, and because I was going through, what do I apply for? So I remember I applied for a major real estate company, and then I applied for Nissan, and Nissan happened to be a customer of Eton, so automotive industry background was already there. So Nissan was looking for Head of Communications, and they wanted somebody who was a bit different from their earlier communications people. So there was a almost a month and half long interview process with so many people interviewing me. It's a typical large multinational organization, interview process, I would say so, from Japanese to Europeans to, you know, Americans. I think I've, I've met everybody that I needed to meet in Nissan. Therefore I took the role,

Andy Follows: 58:55

and that was for the Indian market.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 58:57

Yes. I was the first time to work in a Japanese company, and in a car company. So to say, and I would say the first day was a bit of a culture shock for me, because I was in Mumbai, and my boss was a Japanese MD who was in Chennai, and his English was very, very limited, and I had to talk to him over a telephone, and by the end of the call, I was like, oh my god, I couldn't understand the word of what he said. And it was like, oh my god, this is going to be a tough job, because by then, I was used to all these fantastic bosses, because after sham there was Raja Kocher, who was also an excellent boss. So I was used to all these bosses who were like more like mentors, who would guide you whenever is needed. And suddenly I face a person who I could not. Communicate with and I don't know what to do. And I remembered that when I went to Chennai for my induction, and then I met Ishida San. His name is Ishida San. I don't know where he is right now. Very nice gentleman, absolutely sweet personality, but his English was limited. And then we had a launch of a product planned in two months after I joined, there was a big debate with the local dealer, who was pushing back, saying he cannot speak English, so he can't be on stage, and me saying to my functional boss, who was in Europe saying that, I said, but only because of a language you can't take away this opportunity from him. And my functional boss said, so can you make it work? Then I said, Okay, I will make it work. And I think I would give all credit to Ishida San, because before the launch of the product, I remember both of us sat overnight to practice his speech. So the role kind of got reversed, from looking up to your boss who's helping you with things, to actually helping your boss to position him strongly, because he needed me there,

Andy Follows: 1:01:26

so he really relied on you to be able to deliver that speech.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 1:01:32

It was not a question of just delivering the speech, but it was a question of his role as an MD being questioned by a distributor. So we had to protect him and ensure that he gets to do the job is meant to.

Andy Follows: 1:01:47

And how did he get on, how did he do on the day?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 1:01:51

I mean it was not a perfect job, but then that was the first time I was working with Japanese. But right now I changed so many Japanese bosses. That's where I think the first thing that realization came to me was language should not be held as an important indication of someone's ability to do things.

Andy Follows: 1:02:15

We've discussed this before, haven't we, and the idea that you grew up with an unconscious bias that language was a critical determinant of someone's ability

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 1:02:27

And someone who plays with words a day to day job, you know you give so much importance to language, right? But I realized that people audience, connect with emotions, not with language.

Andy Follows: 1:02:41

Say a little bit about how you grew up with that bias and how you discovered that you had it, if you like, how you uncovered it.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 1:02:50

It's interesting, because in India, to a large extent, and in fact, this is 80s and 90s when we grew up, right? You must be a good English speaker to be able to make it in life. So you will see that every corner of every city will have an English speaking class. People are trained to speak in English. They go take special classes. To do that, you have to be an English medium school. Then you are in a convent school. So these are something that are ingrained, I think, sorry to say, but the the result of the colonial rule that we had where it's always seen that English is a must, and even now the business language is English, right? So for us, it's very natural that if you are able to communicate well in English, then it's easier for you. But these days, it's much easier for the generations, because it's very natural for them to pick up English as a language. But when I was growing up in early 80s, we still did not have the same level of English speaking skills in the towns and the villages, so it was difficult for people to become very fluent in the language. So with this bias, generally, when you come out, you had with a strong impression in your mind that it's very important for anybody who is in a senior role or in a big position to be able to speak English.

Andy Follows: 1:04:32

So how did your relationship with your MD develop? Was that a crucial moment that you helping? This was two months in, you had that launch event and you helped him. Did you find that you were able to work with him and understand him well enough to do a good job?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 1:04:50

It was but unfortunately, he stayed only for six months, so we couldn't really go a long way, but I knew that he really trusted me. Me, and he really wanted to work along with me. And then I had another MD, who was also a Japanese who was much more international, because he was in China and us and also, but had a very great relationship with him, too. And then I had a French boss, Guillaume sigard, who is now with Renault, and he was till recently, the MD for UK Renault, by the way, and he's just moved to France and Guillaume and I worked very closely again. So I had seen three bosses in Nissan in four years that I worked excellent relations with each of them, too.

Andy Follows: 1:05:43

So how did it come about that you got up your first position? Isn't it, outside of India? What was that and how did it come up?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 1:05:52

So in my career, I think there were two, three options for me to move out of India, but I somehow rejected it, because one of the main reason was because I never had, I would say, stable schooling. One of the things I always wanted to give my daughter was a stable school life, and I never wanted to move her out. And that's one reason I didn't move with my husband to the US and to Ireland when we over. So my husband has been working outside of India all along, and we would travel, but I never shifted my base out of India, where I wanted her to have a stable school life. And finally, a moment came where Nissan was moving their headquarters from Mumbai to Gurgaon, near Delhi, and I didn't want to go to Delhi, but I also was feeling that I was getting a bit stagnant in the role. I needed something more. I needed something, I think, more challenges as I was already four years into the role. That was the time when Jonathan Natasha was the CCO for Nissan, and he called me and he said, Are you willing to move to Bangkok? Because I need somebody who needs to do the Asian Oceania job. That was like, okay, not a bad idea. Maybe I should take it. So I spoke to the current boss, and he said, Fine, you can go. There's no problem. I think you need to move on with your career as well, but stay till I find the right person and transition before you go, which is what was the deal with them? I remember, and that so happened that there was a crisis in Korea even before I moved to Bangkok role, because the role included the whole of Asia. And so Jonathan asked me to go to Korea even before I took the role, because I needed to manage the crisis in Korea. And I remember I went, I had to deal with the two offices to say who's going to pay for me.

Andy Follows: 1:08:00

Yeah, that sounds familiar.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 1:08:03

Is it India? Is it Oceania?

Andy Follows: 1:08:05

Yeah,

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 1:08:10

yeah, but that was the that was the decision. And then I remembered my daughter was very reluctant to move.

Andy Follows: 1:08:19

How old was she then?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 1:08:20

She was, like, 13, I know 1212, year old, and she was googling to say, how do I convince my parents not to move out of the country? I saw in her Google History that she was doing, but that was, I think, the first time that we actually rejected her proposal, because we always have a rational discussion, but that was one time I felt that I needed to prevail as a mother. And we discussed and we said, okay, she has four years of her schooling left, and she needs to experience outside of India, because it was always sure that she would move out of the country to do her college. So it was much easier to move her at the schooling stage. So we moved, we took that decision. We moved to Bangkok, and I think it was a wonderful ride. Again. I moved as VP for communications. Then in a year, I took over as a parallel VP for government affairs and ano two. So I had two concurrent VP roles when I moved to Bangkok,

Andy Follows: 1:09:33

I wouldn't have expected anything less. And how did your daughter like it, did you find her a nice school in Bangkok?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 1:09:43

She thought that was the best decision afterwards, because she was shining. I think she was a bit insecure in her mind, thinking, when I move out of India, maybe my her intelligence will not show that bright. But when she moved to Bangkok. She realized she was still on the top she, in fact, she was the IB Student of the Year. She's the covid Grad, 2020, kid. But she shined. I mean, she I always look at my daughter and admire her and say, Okay, there's some part of me in her, but she grew up to be much better than me. I would say she used to run 13 service groups, and she had done everything that could be possible as a student.

Andy Follows: 1:10:27

That's wonderful to hear, and it's fascinating how you wanted for her what you didn't have that stability. And I'm so thrilled that she also got to experience the international part of the journey as well, with all that extra dimension that brings and that it was a success because it is a risk. It's not for everyone. It helps if childs are intelligent and adaptable and and so on. So that sounds like a story with a very happy ending. And just to sort of wrap that up, where is she now? Is she studying overseas?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 1:11:03

She's close to you. She is actually in Dublin. She is in her fifth year med school, Royal College of Surgeons.

Andy Follows: 1:11:12

So she's really doing well. That's excellent, lovely. Okay, back to you, Lavanya, that's a little side tour into your daughter's journey. So how did you find being in Bangkok? Then, obviously you thrived. You've got two VP roles. Did you enjoy working in Thailand and in the region?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 1:11:30

I loved it from a cultural perspective. I think lots of learnings for me to work in Bangkok. And I think this is the word I always use. Language is not a sign of intelligence. Has been proven to be true when I worked in Southeast Asia, every culture, every country that I interacted with, was so different, but wonderful individuals who were craving to make it big in the world, but has always been sidelined because they may not be proficient English speakers, or they're from Southeast Asia, so they don't get really the opportunities that the others get, though they're working double time as hard as anybody else would work and as intelligence as anybody would be, but exposure is limited because they don't get an opportunity to really get exposed to what's happening in the world. And I think I learned a lot, not only from a cultural perspective, but also from the way many countries work and the way the media works and that world. And the curious thing about that particular region was I had frontier markets and mature markets. So you are actually dealing with markets like Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore, at the same time you're dealing with markets like Myanmar, Indonesia, you know, it's, it's a wide range, and it's like, in four years, the whole experience of working anywhere in the world is packaged into a one piece and given to you.

Andy Follows: 1:13:15

So how long did you spend living in Thailand?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 1:13:18

Nearly three and a half years, I would say.

Andy Follows: 1:13:21

And then was this the natural sort of assignment time to the clock's ticking?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 1:13:27

No, it wasn't the case. Actually, it was, again, another interesting thing. Everybody knows what happened in Nissan in 2018 right? So the former chairman issues and everything, and there was a change in management, and the new management, under the current CEO, was going to be taking over from december 2019, I was actually offered to come a month before the new management took over. One is to be able to work with them to position them properly, and two is to continue to handle the crisis situation that Nissan was going through. There was a great opportunities. Mid of the year, my daughter was still in school, and covid Wasn't prevalent. By then, it started off. We were just discussing about things then. So I took the role from first of November with the promise that I will do both roles, the global role and the regional role, till they find a replacement in the region and then move my family before my daughter goes to the university to Japan. But I started my role, and I was on boarded, and February, the emergency happened, and I couldn't go back to Bangkok. I was stuck completely in Japan.

Andy Follows: 1:14:54

Oh, wow. And your daughter's in Bangkok.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 1:14:56

My daughter and husband were in Bangkok, and they couldn't come back. Back to Japan. Everything was shut down because Japan did not allow for anyone to come in. But luckily, my daughter still could manage to go to join her college in Ireland. So she went all by herself, a 17 year old, all the way to do all her paperwork to get settled in the university, get her permit and everything, all by herself. And my husband then already moved to Singapore, so I was in Japan. So that was an interesting time for our family, three people in three different countries, but that was my beginning of my global role in Japan.

Andy Follows: 1:15:43

So we'll talk about the global role in a moment, but just a moment on the living in different countries. You've been doing that for years by now.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 1:15:54

I think that it was different, because when you were doing it earlier, you knew that you can fly at any time,

Andy Follows: 1:16:01

yeah, this was more enforced.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 1:16:03

This was like, there is absolutely no way you can manage to fly. There is a requirement and you can't meet and for two years, none of us met each other. We were all locked up in our own country. So two years, we have never seen each other, except for calls

Andy Follows: 1:16:22

that sounds very tough. Thank you for just sharing a little about that. So now, then you were in the role that you have now.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 1:16:30

No I wasn't. I think I had three promotions since I joined.

Andy Follows: 1:16:36

Silly me. What was I thinking? Tell me

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 1:16:45

i started as a division general from a scope point of view, not much change because it's been the same scope. I was the division general manager when I started off. It was the same role, but I had only Asia, China, from a region, and the whole global under me. I was reporting to the CCO then, who's a veteran gentleman, a Japanese gentleman, who I reported for a long time, and he left the international communications on me. He would only focus on the Japan communications part. After two years, I was promoted to being the global vice president, the same scope at the entire all regions under me. And then from April this year, I've taken over as the CCO from the gentleman. So it's been four years and three promotions. Yes,

Andy Follows: 1:17:41

congratulations, incredible progress and pace of progress. Let's talk about being in Japan and the cultural differences between Japan and India and even Southeast Asia. How did you find it when you first got there? And how have you found it since?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 1:17:59

No, I told you about my background, and then be I was born in a family where diversity already existed, with two parents speaking two different languages from two different states, and I didn't tell you my husband comes from a different state and speaks a different language. By the way, I don't speak his language. He doesn't speak my language. And then I grew up in Hyderabad, which is a predominantly Muslim Hindu community combined together. So most of your friends are from different religious backgrounds. It's very natural for us to be together, celebrating different things. So I always thought that culture and diversity was part of what I am and who I am, and I'm very, very curious cultural curiosities at the top of my mind. However, when I moved out of India, it was a completely different experience too. I moved to corporate in India, the pace was very fast. So I had to learn so many things so quickly and grow so quickly. But everything in India was also happening at a fast pace, because 90s, India opened up to the world. And since 90s, you had a lot of exodus of people going to the US going to all parts of the world because software became the.com boom, the BPO boom, the KPO boom. So many things happening. So everything in India was very, very competitive and very fast. So we are used to a life which is like quick, very fast. You have to move. You have to always be like the difference between a 99.8 and 99.9 is to lose a seat in your university. Like point 1% will make a difference. We're not even talking 60s and 70s. Those people are never even bothered to be looked at. So that kind of competitive environment, and you suddenly come to Southeast Asia, where each country was in a different level. So you see, still see that hunger of making it big in a Vietnam kind of a place where people are getting to pick up that. But Bangkok was completely different. It was predominantly hospitality industry, so the pace was very slow. There's more laid back attitude that you would see in people, because they're not in a hurry. They're not competing at the level that India was competing. It was completely different. In Myanmar, it feels like everything is in slow motion from a cinematic point. So it's not moving at the pace you want. You are at the airport, and the immigration is so slow, and you're getting so anxious, you're like, beating your fingers, and it was like, Okay, move it. Move it, move it. So it's a bit of a adjustment. You have to change. You can't ask people around you to change, right? So you need to adapt, and you have to find a way where you're not giving up the pace that you want to keep, but at the same time, let others follow you. Be with the people. If not, you will leave people behind, and you're moving at a pace that nobody can understand you. So it was a very, very good experience, I would say it slowed me down. It was like a Zen state, yeah, and then I realized that I was going at such a fast pace that I didn't stop by to really take a breather to understand the emotions the way I used to understand them when I was on the creative side, because I was caught up in the Corporate routine of getting things done, delivered, deliver, deliver. What I realized is my storytelling ability came back to me. I would say, when I was in Bangkok, because I was able to start seeing stories around me again, start seeing emotions again around me. And that was the time when we started coming up with a very interesting campaigns, even in our corporate and I found the team and Bangkok, I could build my team from the scratch. So I picked up diverse team. I had one from France, one from Amsterdam, one from two from France, one from Philippines. It was like a very, very diverse team, and that really stimulated a lot of creativity in us. We were able to find that rhythm that would match everyone but come up with creative ideas. So I think in Bangkok, while I was still trying to manage a lot of crisis and corporate stuff. There's a huge amount of creative work that we were able to produce at that time. And then from Bangkok, I moved to Japan. I always feel Nissan wanted me to go to Bangkok because I loved mangoes and bananas and elephants, which I think I still love. But then when I came to Japan, I was like, Okay, it's a stopover from me before going to Japan, because the life slows down even further in Japan, in a way you have to reset yourself completely. It is a cultural shock at the beginning, because a lot of people who come to Japan come with preconceptions. Because there's a lot of you know, YouTube talk everywhere about Japan and how things are. You know, everything is organized, everything is well done. But people don't like change, and they work long hours, and all this misconceptions that come out and preconceptions that make you come with a set mentality to Japan, and the first few months for me Was I need to unwind, completely unwind my impressions and listen. So I was like, I need to go back to the stage where I wouldn't talk too much, but listen, I need to do that now again. So I took like, 30 days just for listening, rather than trying to make suggestions or make any kinds of improvements, because I needed to actually learn. But every day in Japan is a learning experience, because one of the things I realized is like we talk about the pace, right, but we are getting our own concept of pace to a different country when you move from country to country, so you bring your own judgments about whether it's pace, whether it's a way of work, or whether it's the lifestyle we think people need to adjust to us. For example, the concept of diversity, right? You're born in India, you have a different concept of diversity because you were brought up in that environment. But when you move to another country, you actually expect the other people to believe in the way you see diversity. But for me, that didn't work because you come to a country like Japan, which is homogeneous completely. They didn't have multiple religions, they don't speak multiple languages, they don't have the kind of diversity that I experienced, then how do they react to diversity can be similar to how I react to diversity. It is so different. It's the same with work culture, and I may be wrong, but sometimes I try to form my own theory and concept. Now, a country like Japan, which is prone to natural disasters, earthquakes and tsunamis and all, they have built a system which is very, very diligently designed because they cannot allow for even 0.1% of variable behavior in a country where everything has to go because if an earthquake happens, every one needs to behave in a certain way so that you can save lives. Everything is set. Processes are set right. That's why, when the Japan Airlines incident happened at the beginning of the year, you saw that all the passengers were offloaded with no incident. If it was any other country. I wonder if you can really do that, because they are from childhood, trained to follow the processes so that they minimize any eventualities in a country like that, when you come with the concept of change, the first thing you need to do is talk about why the change. But as an outsider, can you tell them how to change? That's not possible because you don't understand their environment, their emotions, their culture. So how are we coming and imposing our idea of how to change to them? So I realized the thing that you need to do is to be able to align with them and why to change. What is the need to change? And they will figure out the best way we can make those changes. So this is just an example. Maybe I'm right wrong, I don't know. But like I said, I try to theorize whatever I experience, and for me, that is very important.

Andy Follows: 1:27:53

How did that work out? Let's go a level of detail lower if we can, just to understand how you got the team to feel the same way about why they needed to change so that they could then work out the best way to do it in their culture.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 1:28:05

Nissan has been going through a lot of transformation since the incident with the former chairman, right? So transformation was part of the business plan as well. But when you create a transformation plan, you also need to have a transformation in teams, in the way we do things, in the way we work. And at the same time, covid happened, and covid means a lot of change for all, lot of us. It's not a choice anymore for us. And while all this were happening, all of you know about how automotive industry is evolving with all the mega trends that we see in auto industry, the technological trends change is normal, right right now. I don't want to use the cliche term, but it is what it is. You have to change. If not, you will be obsolete. And we are seeing that we have Chinese competition happening. We have we need to evolve, but Japanese corporates have very loyal employee base. They worked for companies for a long time, so they stayed in the same company for a long time. One of the things in communication industry Andy is Japan doesn't have any degree in communication. No University offers any theoretical background for communications. Unlike other countries where you can get, like, I have a PhD in films, but you know, it's completely different, right? So you don't have any course which teaches you corporate communications, or any course which teaches you communications. A lot of people come from humanities background into communications. So many times, the exposure to the trends that are happening in communication industry is limited. When it comes to Japan, one of the reasons is also language, because it's predominantly Japanese speaking countries. And English speaking courses are not so prevalent when you want to pick up. People need Japanese courses to be able to learn the trends, but they're not many authorities offering Japanese courses in new communication trends. So you need to build on your own. You need to develop on your own. Now I don't need to convince my team about it, because even they realize that there needs to be a change. But what to change is something that we need to agree on, because suddenly you can't just pick up and say, let's change. It's like, okay, let's bring AI. It's fine, but who's going to bring AI? Who knows about it? You know, we need to build the whole system also. We needed to reorganize ourselves as a team too, so that, you know, there's a clear distinction of who is delivering what. Because digital became so important and we said, Okay, we have to be digital first. It means we need to develop the skills that are needed for us to do the job. So how do we bring in all these things? So there was a lot of debates and discussions around talent and how to mix and match what you have with the experience versus expertise. So you need to get this balance right, because still, it's a very large Japanese organization, very diverse, but still a large Japanese organization. The institutional knowledge cannot be discounted, because it's important people that institutional knowledge, the experience is very important at the same time. How do you balance with expertise? Because experience is there, exposure is limited, so you need to bring the exposure to match this experience. So it takes a lot of time to balance these things on that you have culture, because the systems are set. The way the work is done is set for ages. It's a dinosaur. It's an organization that existed for 90 years, right? So, it has a concept of just in time, and peasant, and, you know, all the concepts that are very, very important for a manufacturing organization, which worked very well in the industry, pre covid, but post covid, and now, when the product planning has to be shrunk to one year, you need more quicker products. That means you need to speak much more, and you can't follow the same trend and rhythm that you used to follow earlier, and communications as a department needs to match the organization. This is also needed so you don't have to convince anyone. Everybody knows all are these are happening. I think it's all about trying to figure out, in this environment, how do we make the change? And I don't think I, as an outsider, can make the change. I can give my concepts and knowledge and theory, but if I make a change, what will I change?

Andy Follows: 1:33:13

So you have to create that environment where the team is comfortable. They recognize that the change needs to take place, and they can tell you how this will best work for their business, for their market. It sounds like we're at the present day. Is there anything I haven't asked you that you'd like to add to what we've talked about?

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 1:33:34

Yes, we covered everything.

Andy Follows: 1:33:35

It's been wonderful. I've loved the conversation. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us.

Lavanya Wadgaonkar: 1:33:42

It's wonderful to talk to you. Thank you, Andy.

Andy Follows: 1:33:49

You've been listening to Career View Mirror with me. Andy Follows, depending on your unique life experience where you find yourself right now, and your personal goals, you'll have your own takeaways from Lavanya story. Some elements that stood out for me were that she grew up in a highly creative environment with storytelling around the dinner table, recognizing the transferable skills that worked in a corporate environment. Her wanting to give her daughter stability in her early years, as she had not had that, but then deciding that moving out of India to Thailand would be a great opportunity, and that all working out very well, going from a very diverse upbringing in India to a homogenous society in Japan via Southeast Asia, and recognizing that each country has its own culture and way of doing things. If you'd like to connect with Lavanya, you'll find her contact details in the show notes to this episode. If you enjoy listening to my guest stories, please, could you do me a favor and share an episode with someone you lead, parent or mentor, or perhaps a friend of yours who you think would also enjoy listening. Thank you to Lavanya for joining me for our conversation. Thank you. To our sponsors for this episode, ASKE Consulting and Aquilae team, without whom we wouldn't be able to share our guests life and career stories, and above all, thank you to you for listening.