From Smart to Wise – Prasad Kaipa, CEO Coach and Advisor

 

About Prasad Kaipa

Prasad has been an advisor and coach focusing on innovation and leadership since 1990 for about 120 C-level executives in Global Fortune 500 companies. Prasad’s unique competence is in helping his clients find their next significant step and take it. He found that unless he helps clients to examine their signature strengths that have turned into “core incompetence” and kept them stuck, it is difficult to ignite and channel their creativity to come up with innovative decisions, products, and services. He assists clients in becoming effective in managing people as well as oneself (personal mastery), getting reenergized and building new capacities, and exploring more risk taking, innovative, and strategic decisions.

 

Episode Transcript of: From Smart to Wise – Prasad Kaipa, CEO Coach and Advisor

Alan
Welcome back. I’m here today with Prasad Kaipa. Prasad is the author of From Smart to Wise, and has been an advisor management consultant to some of the top leaders in the world. Welcome to today’s show.

Prasad
Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be back again.

Alan
So Prasad, when we talk about the book from smart wise, what inspired you to write this book?

Prasad
In working with the various executives, both in the United States, India, Singapore, Europe, many other countries, I found, there are some characteristics that differentiate successful, happy and energized individuals who seem to make a difference. I first started, it may be their smartness that make them extremely effective in doing their job. But then I found out beyond the smartness, there are some characteristics that make them uniquely qualified to be leaders who develop other people around them to lead and to make their work and their companies to be successful, while they themselves are growing. So in study, which ranged about 20 to 25 years, I found out that smartness can be turned into wisdom. And that wisdom is what is most needed in these times of complexity. And that’s what led me to write this book.

Alan
Now, I want to step back a little bit and for the listeners, you have a PhD. Yes. And where did you get your PhD from?

Prasad
I got my PhD from Indian Institute of Technology in Madras,

Alan
One of the best schools in the world. And, and then, and what year did you did you come out of the school?

Prasad
I graduated from there in 1983. Okay, and I came to United States came to University of Utah, Salt Lake City, which became my second home.

Alan
Were you teaching there?

Prasad
Yes, I was. I was first in physics department as a postdoctoral fellow. And then I came to the school of medicine. And then I had a good fortune to get an opportunity to teach for next six years, and I was an assistant professor in School of Medicine,

Alan
what brought you to Silicon Valley,

Prasad
I started working with Apple Computer, first as a consultant, and then as an employee. And that brought me to Silicon Valley.

Alan
Now understand is, hopefully get these numbers, right. But as you’ve consulted or advised 120 of the top CEOs in the world or Yeah,

Prasad
I have worked with about 120 CEOs. And that includes various people from Fortune 500 companies, global 500 companies, and also several entrepreneurs, from successful entrepreneurial startups.

Alan
When you’re finding, working with the CEOs of very large organizations and, and applying the principle of going from Smart to Wise, it involves a spiritual aspect, which, to me, it’s very unique to have a consultant or advisor come in and say, You got to spiritually connect with your people. How does it how is that received?

Prasad
What I found is based on how we frame spirituality, it can be very, very relevant to business. These days, people talk about employee engagement and creativity, according to a report in 2010 from IBM is the most important leadership characteristics. The creativity cannot come by learning skills, you have to tap into the creative spirit within us. Similarly, teamwork is not the same as group work, one needs to experience the team spirit. So in some respects, many organizations are finding out that how to help employees requires us to look at not only the psychological elements of how we can work together how we can think or we can create, there are elements of spirituality. That means at some level, what is my mindset? What is my belief system? What are my ethical and moral values really guide at a subconscious and unconscious way to bring us happiness, to bring us passion to clarify our purpose in our workplace when people are clear about their purpose When they are passionate about the work that they do, they emanate certain kinds of energy, whether it is they are in customer service, whether they are thinking about new products and services, whether they are working with each other. There is a sense of, you know optimism. There is a sense of energy there is a sense of compassion and camaraderie that comes in, I believe, these are all dimensions of spirituality. We just don’t name spirituality because we don’t want religion and politics to color workplace. But spirituality is a lot more than just the religion.

Alan
All right, Prasad, we need to take a quick break. Our building here with Prasad Kuyper, he’s the author of the book from Smart to Wise. We’ll be right back after this message. And then we’ll get into why it’s important for leaders to be wise in their decisions.

Alan
Welcome back and visiting here today with Prasad Kaipa. Prasad, is the author of the book from wise of Smart to Wise, and why is it important for leaders to be wise in their decisions.

Prasad
Plus, I’m co author of the book from smart device, NaVi Raju is my quarter. And I believe one of the wise decisions I made was to bring him in as my co author. I have worked on the wise leadership, I have spent a large amount of time I have done coaching. But I found out that alone doesn’t allow me to write a book to be successful. I found that smartness has to be framed in a way. And that allowed me to recognize by bringing in another person who might not have as much experience in leadership. But together, we created a partnership that took me to a lot bigger place. And I believe the reason why it is the international bestseller now is because of the contributions now we made in addition to whatever I could make. See, that was a wise decision for me.

Alan
I always think in business, it does take more than one yes, good balanced perspective. And there’s something magic about when the higher level of trust you have within your partner, the more apt or the you know that businesses to flourish and get to the next level.

Prasad
Exactly. Because smartness several times is about all myself. So it is about am I looking better than you? Can I compete with you? Can I use my intelligence for getting ahead of everybody else. So it is me, me me is the primary focus for smartness. If I can look at how to take that smartness, and figure out what is the higher purpose, what is the noble purpose that I can operate with that means my family, my team, my organization, to also be successful while I am moving ahead. If I have that higher purpose, then I can take the same smartness. And add to it, the larger purpose, certain amount of humility, and gratitude for what you are bringing what other people are bringing, that allows me to operate with a lot more wisdom. And I think that is the kind of wise leadership that organizations need today.

Alan
What does it mean to operate in the blue and the red zones?

Prasad
Like if you look at many executives, or entrepreneurs, for that matter, many of them can be excellent in their own domain. Now, that’s what we call domain experts. Many domain experts go deep into their area of expertise, and many times are hesitant to break out of that. That means if I try to talk to a brain surgeon, like, you know, I had an opportunity when my son had some sickness with had something to do with bronchitis. But I was in India at that time. And it was middle of the night that he had major problem. We went downstairs and knocked on our friend’s door. He happened to be an eye surgeon. When we asked him, hey, my son is having this bronchial attack, can you help? He said, Well, I’m an eye surgeon, I don’t know anything about fever, or I don’t know anything about throat. That is because even though they did their basic MD, before they specialized in eye surgery, they forget that when they go so deep into their speciality to bring back the basic knowledge. Similarly, when I interviewed Nobel laureates, they were remarkable in some of their areas of expertise, but not necessarily connecting the dots at a higher level of conceptual level. That’s what I call Blue Zone. That means smartness focused in a narrow zone with the deep knowledge. On the other hand, the red zone means people who are entrepreneurial, whom, you know, might not have anything to do with the big data, or they may not know anything with the biometric. But they see the business opportunity. And they see that that big data is something going to be really big opportunity. So they go find somebody else who are in the blue zone, and find somebody else who can fund them and create an entrepreneurial opportunity. That means they use their smartness to connect the dots, even though they don’t have expertise. So they have the breadth, not the depth, whereas BlueZone people have the depth might not have the breadth. These are two ways of using intelligence. So I call them people in the blue zone, people who operate in the red.

Alan
I am visiting here with Prasad Kaipa. He is the author from smart device. Prasad, we need to take a quick break and when we get back we want to talk about how do you get companies to grow.

Alan
Welcome back. And I’m visiting here today, Prasad Kaipa. Prasad is the author, a co author of the book from Smart to Wise, and an advisor to some of the world’s top leaders of the the corporations that they run. Prasad, I want to go back to this question of why do companies grow?

Prasad
The companies grow because they are adding value to their ecosystem. And the ecosystem means at some level customers, which they call as their primary mission or purpose, and how they add value to customers is through what their employees do, which is through products and services and other kinds of value addition, and sometimes based on the size of the company, they also operate and work with suppliers. So in some respects, shareholders are the ones that many companies pay primary attention to, but they have stakeholders which are customers, suppliers, employees, and the society and this you know, the, the city in which they are located in I think they grow because they allow other people to grow as well, not just because they are making profit. So

Alan
How does reframing relate to growth?

Prasad
When we talk about growth, several times narrowly we look at how much have we grown in terms of our profits, or our share prices or our market share? The key is when we are looking at the growth in terms of wise perspective, that growth has to become sustainable, especially in these times of complexity and globalized world. Like imagine six years ago, smartphones became really prominent after Apple released the iPhone, but within six years or seven years, they’re already talking about the saturation in the iPhone and the The smartphone market, that means the growth will not be sustainable, unless we begin to find a way in a wise and meaningful way, how we can grow people, their aspirations, that people may be customers, employees, suppliers and society. When we make that sustainable growth to be relevant, then organizations can grow wisely, for a longer period of time.

Alan
Now, why do some entrepreneurs succeed while others don’t?

Prasad
Entrepreneurs several times in the beginning, think about what is my stake in the company, there is a familiar paradigm that people operate from more stock, I have more percentage of the company I have of the startup that I am part of better it is for me. But the fact of the matter is, is a small size company, even if you have 50%, it doesn’t mean very much. But if you can wisely, share whatever is the worth of the company, among various people, including employees and investors, together, if you can grow that grape sized company into an orange sized company, and hopefully, you make it into your watermelon sized company, when you make a company bigger, your share obviously will reduce from 50% to 30%. And sometimes 10%. But 10% of watermelon is going to be many, many, many times bigger than 90% of a grape, or 50% of an orange. But most of the times, entrepreneurs who have figured it out that by sharing by having a noble purpose, they can grow the company and have an enlightened self interest to grow themselves. They are the people who become successful, and other people who only look at my success at the cost of everybody else, they compete within the company for share both mindshare as well as the profits, they are the people who lose out,

Alan
It reminds me of this, this experiment with a with a monkey, where they had the hole that the monkey could put his hand through. And they had to pick up a piece of fruit. And the monkey tried to take the hand back to eat the fruit. It he couldn’t get it back through because his hand was too big. And the same analogy seems to be true in business when the entrepreneur learn learn to let go, as you said, and it lifts everybody else. Yeah, the organization will flourish.

Prasad
Exactly. So the reframing that ultimately comes down to is can I go from my success at the cost of everything else to our success together. So from Ai, to we is one of the first major shifts that we need to bring and that’s probably one of the most important noble purpose that we need to operate.

Alan
Surface side is CEO that wants to call you up. So what do you how do they find you?

Prasad
They find me mostly through Prasadkaipa.com. Obviously, this book information is there at from smart to wise.com as well. And they can also call me by using a phone number 408-393-6984. Thank you very much, Alan,

Alan
Thank you for being on today’s show a bit busy with Prasad Kaipa, the author, co author, the book from smart device. We’ll be right back after these messages. Thank you

 

We hope you enjoyed this interview; “From Smart to Wise – Prasad Kaipa, CEO Coach and Advisor”.

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This transcript was generated by software and may not accurately reflect exactly what was said.

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