Manoj Govindan, Venture Builder, Strategic Partnerships at PGIM - Creating Mutual Value: Manoj Govindan’s Path to Strategic Impact

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): I'm Tracy Lovejoy.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: And I'm Shannon, Lucas. We are the co-ceos of catalyst constellations which is dedicated to empowering catalyst to create bold, powerful change in the world.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): This is our podcast move, fast, break ship burnout, where we speak with executives about ways to successfully lead transformation in large organizations. Today, we are incredibly excited to have time with Manoj Govindan.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): who is a venture builder who employs the broad technology ecosystem of investors, universities, entrepreneurs, tech giants to discover experiment, validate and adopt emerging technologies to solve for specific business opportunities, driving growth of the business versus the running of the business. He's currently supporting Pgm, the global asset management business of prudential, prudential financial. Inc.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): It is such a joy to have you with us today. Manosh.

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Manoj Govindan: Such a delight joining you both. I know we've been chomping at the bit to try and get to this point. I know we've had all kinds of informal conversations. So this is quite exciting.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): Us, too, and I'd love to invite you to start with. I just read a couple of sentences. Can you share with us your catalytic journey, the the highlights across your life and your work that you're most proud of to help us see your catalytic nature.

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Manoj Govindan: Sure. I I you know 30 year career. I'll give you a little bit of history that led up to that 30 years which will also inform you

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Manoj Govindan: how it initially it was very haphazard. I think the elements or the attributes of what we now refer to as the catalyst

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Manoj Govindan: haphazardly kind of burst into my life right or burst out of me into our lives. If you will, however, you want to look at it.

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Manoj Govindan: And so I grew up in India, and my dad, and we'll get to this. But my dad you know he's my hero in, and he's also somebody who

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Manoj Govindan: really gave me the structure and all of the attributes I needed to build myself and be be my best self out there, right, so we'll get to him in a few. But

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Manoj Govindan: but but we were growing up in India right? So guess what

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Manoj Govindan: parents

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Manoj Govindan: the extended family all wanted me to either be a doctor or engineer. So the only 2 choices you have in a career, especially 30 years or 35 years ago. Right?

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Manoj Govindan: So

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Manoj Govindan: I personally wanted to actually get into bureaucracy, the the Pope, the politics, not not the politicians, but the

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Manoj Govindan: people who build and execute policy behind the government, right? So the experts in specific areas and policy and stuff like, that's what I wanted to pick up. So I actually

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Manoj Govindan: on my own. When I thought I could. I joined a school for Bachelor of Arts, Political Science, this, that, and the other.

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Manoj Govindan: and my parents wouldn't have it. And so my guess what I was asked to be an engineer. I was last. I was given a choice engineer. Doctor has to be an engineer, and I chose

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Manoj Govindan: engineering. Don't ask me why. And computer science. And what have you? They paid for everything.

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Manoj Govindan: that right there. Right? So I I kind of literally muttered my way through all of the 4 years of college. I was not a very good student. I'll I'll be

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Manoj Govindan: perfectly honest. I struggled

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Manoj Govindan: because I didn't fit it right?

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Manoj Govindan: that's it.

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Manoj Govindan: After I graduated

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Manoj Govindan: my 1st job was anything but

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Manoj Govindan: computer science. I was selling English

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Manoj Govindan: music cassettes

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Manoj Govindan: in India. So I used to go to distributors.

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Manoj Govindan: and that this is just me protesting right in some ways. So I'm just kind of telling you the elements of a catalyst kind of showing up in unexpected ways. So I I sold cassettes, English cassettes in India, you know, to distributor sales folks.

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Manoj Govindan: What that taught me was, you know

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Manoj Govindan: that here's my game. Here's what I'm starting to develop. My skill sets that that came naturally to me right? And you know so elements of why it matters that you need to have a network.

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Manoj Govindan: What does it mean for you to leverage the network, not just to, you know, execute a transaction, but to build relationships to to pay things forward. All the different things that go into the sales cycle that people don't talk about because sales cycles are so become so commoditized these days. Right? I mean, so we don't go in there. But I I learned all of this is my 1st job, if you will. Right. That was.

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Manoj Govindan: or my choice, not because my parents wanted me to be there. So

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Manoj Govindan: that was that. And then

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Manoj Govindan: again, this is what you know, serendipity and and all these things kind of purpose comes to play. I was headhunted.

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Manoj Govindan: this is before I went and sold the Cassettes. I Ford Motor Company had come to our campus in college Computer Science College.

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Manoj Govindan: and they had pre interviewed. And then and subsequently I learned that I was pre selected to be a database computer science engineer in the Us.

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Manoj Govindan: For for my 1st job official 1st job, if you will right

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Manoj Govindan: and guess what. So I ended up the Us.

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Manoj Govindan: Now, why did that matter? That it came full circle

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Manoj Govindan: turns out

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Manoj Govindan: I was also gay.

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Manoj Govindan: but I was not out

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Manoj Govindan: in India. I couldn't be out in India. It was illegal. It was a crime.

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Manoj Govindan: I might. Even my parents didn't know none. Nothing happened right.

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Manoj Govindan: But because I came to the Us.

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Manoj Govindan: And I came to the Us because of my computer Science degree, not because I wanted to. I had no plans to do so.

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Manoj Govindan: I was able to come and be my full self

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Manoj Govindan: day. One, my job

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Manoj Govindan: at Ford Motor Company right?

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Manoj Govindan: Just to give you a more sense of how

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Manoj Govindan: the world shapes around you and makes things happen

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Manoj Govindan: in spite or regardless of how bitter you were about the choices that were made for you. Right? So it's very interesting elements that kind of got contributed so fast forward. The 1st 3 years of my career I spent as an engineer studiously trying to find my place right without building an imposter syndrome.

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Manoj Govindan: And truly I just didn't enjoy it at all. And so what I very quickly learned was.

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Manoj Govindan: I'm I'm much better off understanding and listening and learning the business, and being much closer to the business. So I became a business analyst.

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Manoj Govindan: So I was using some of my computer science skills to for analysis and and all that stuff. But for the most part I was a business analyst. Then I became a consultant. So for

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Manoj Govindan: the next 10 years of my career I was a

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Manoj Govindan: resulted

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Manoj Govindan: that consultancy again, attributes of the catalyst really kind of seeped in to allow me to

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Manoj Govindan: really hone in on a specific kind of consulting

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Manoj Govindan: which were mergers and acquisitions.

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Manoj Govindan: And again, you know, without saying it. Now I mean, looking back, I can see elements of the catalyst kind of start kind of forming here, because mergers and acquisitions are exactly that right. 2 entities who have never been together are certainly

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Manoj Govindan: together, and you have to find a way to make that work, and there are many, many reasons for M. And A's to happen. And and so you have to kind of dive into the culture behind that. Understand how to break that down, how to translate that back into the outcomes you want, you know. And so there's a there's a lot of catalytic elements that kind of get seeped in there.

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Manoj Govindan: And then, after 10 years, I dropped my consulting gig and joined Bank of America

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Manoj Govindan: as an employee, and this was at the behest of my mentor.

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Manoj Govindan: Serendipitously kind of I think kind of thought through what was going to happen the next few years, which was

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Manoj Govindan: the financial services world

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Manoj Govindan: was going upside down. This was 2,000

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Manoj Govindan: 7, 2,008 right? So think about, I mean the literally everything. Lehman Brothers, the whole thing. Everything was coming crashing fine.

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Manoj Govindan: So he said, join Bank of America as an employee.

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Manoj Govindan: and we'll find

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Manoj Govindan: what you need to be your purpose of what you need to be doing this company right.

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Manoj Govindan: Dan Choi is his name

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Manoj Govindan: and he

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Manoj Govindan: he was a catalyst almost certainly was catalyst looking back again. I I don't think he called himself that, but he's definitely a catalyst

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Manoj Govindan: So

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Manoj Govindan: when I joined there, I spent about 8 years there. Eventually, and

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Manoj Govindan: I ended up building my job or creating my job from scratch. And this is the job I do today. I it just happens to be in different companies, in different environments, different challenges. What have you

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Manoj Govindan: and

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Manoj Govindan: I would say I honed my catalyst

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Manoj Govindan: skills.

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Manoj Govindan: attributes and really leveraged and exploited it at Bank of America first, st and many of the examples, historic or empirical examples, I reference every day when I talk about being catalyst.

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Manoj Govindan: or think about being a catalyst, or I, you know, reflect upon being a catalyst goes back to my kind of bank is right. And even today, even in my day job at at Pg, often I you know, when I'm talking to a vendor, or I'm talking to a a student, or I'm talking to an early talent, or to my colleague, or to a business partner. I'm constantly referencing those examples that basically says, here's why

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Manoj Govindan: we we want to think about it this way. And here's an example of what happened that might might help you kind of break out of your

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Manoj Govindan: and your your challenge in a different way, and so on and so forth. Right? So I spent 8 years there, and

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Manoj Govindan: one of the things I borrowed from my consulting gig really informed me on this job, and this again goes back to these attributes of being a consultant

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Manoj Govindan: and that is

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Manoj Govindan: these large companies that were merging

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Manoj Govindan: one of the things I noticed about them is

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Manoj Govindan: they were spending inordinate amounts of money

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Manoj Govindan: buying technology.

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Manoj Govindan: But and so this is the connecting the dots component of the core component of the catalyst.

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Manoj Govindan: They were spending billions of dollars back of America's technology. Budget was the billions of dollars is all I have to say per year. Right checks to vendors. But if you go to the C-suite and you ask them.

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Manoj Govindan: what are you getting for this money that you're spending?

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Manoj Govindan: If you need to make a pivot for your business.

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Manoj Govindan: You are still spending on top of this another 20 million dollars, another 18 months

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Manoj Govindan: for that change to happen.

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Manoj Govindan: Why, right. Why is that? Why do you not have a sustaining.

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Manoj Govindan: sustainable well of resources, money.

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Manoj Govindan: talent, you know. Ideas, all of that right to be able to drive the pivot and change

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Manoj Govindan: on a dime, because you're spending all this money. And you, what you're not doing is you're not building that ecosystem the right way. Right? So how can I help you build that ecosystem the right way so that you can leverage the spend you have

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Manoj Govindan: in the right way to adopt new technologies.

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Manoj Govindan: And you you bring that fast forward to pigeon. And that is literally what I repeated across all of these entities. So I worked at Bank American Brigade, Wells, Fargo for 4 Delta for a year and a half. Siena Turner for a year. Wellstar health, novant health, and then

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Manoj Govindan: prudential pigeon. Right? So I've been here 4 years.

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Manoj Govindan: and that is what I'm doing now, of course, experience. And you know, time and evolution of both technology and corporate environments have kind of shaped in a shape shifted the the mission a little differently.

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Manoj Govindan: But the job is still the same.

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Manoj Govindan: How do I use the ecosystem

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Manoj Govindan: to help

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Manoj Govindan: Egypt

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Manoj Govindan: discover.

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Manoj Govindan: explore, and adopt new technologies to solve specific business problems within the region.

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Manoj Govindan: That's kind of the mission of goal of the innovation team here. Right? So which is what we are trying to drive here.

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Manoj Govindan: So I'll stop there. I know. I know. I kind of scan through a full spectrum of the catalystic catalytic journey. But here we go.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): And I love it. I so appreciate it because it's it's why we ask people to do this because you can look at someone's Linkedin, or resume, and you'll have questions right as catalysts. We often jump. At least it looks like it to others. Eyes. You've done such a beautiful job of helping us see the the intense learning that happened at every place.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): And it's not just skills that you built, but it was an awareness of who you are, and what your natural talents were that you were honing, and then bringing into this next place

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): that allowed you to bring more and more value. So thank you. I really appreciate the time and attention. It was incredibly beautiful.

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Manoj Govindan: Yeah, I don't think I've put it all in one place like that until now. Right? So.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): Here, first.st

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Manoj Govindan: I appreciate you asking.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): Yeah, it's it's a joy to get to discover with you

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): laced across your story. I hear your catalytic awakening happen, and so I would love to hear. How do you relate to the concept of catalyst? How do you define that today?

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Manoj Govindan: Yeah. So again, it has been an evolution and a and an awakening, if you will.

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Manoj Govindan: and I might have called it different things at different times.

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Manoj Govindan: But I'll give you an example, and then I'll kind of come back to your answer right? So there was not not long ago I used to constantly tell, especially people I mentor or I'm talking to early talent, which I do often here now at region right?

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Manoj Govindan: I often use the refrain.

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Manoj Govindan: don't network

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Manoj Govindan: connect.

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Manoj Govindan: and it's a it's something that keeps coming back to me. And I and I. And the reason I say that is especially in schools. In the Us. In particular

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Manoj Govindan: career counselors

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Manoj Govindan: appear to beat them.

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Manoj Govindan: these students about this word networking.

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Manoj Govindan: and they and they come out into the world with this

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Manoj Govindan: absolute pent up

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Manoj Govindan: thing for networking.

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Manoj Govindan: And it's

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Manoj Govindan: in my view, you know, counterproductive in many, many instances, because it's not really getting them what they need. And it's in turn putting off probably a lot of people around them, right? Because it comes across as selfish

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Manoj Govindan: self-serving.

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Manoj Govindan: which is the last thing you want in your in your 1st moment, out in the world after school.

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Manoj Govindan: So I I'd say, Pre, you need to connect. And what is the difference difference is you need to pursue creating mutual value.

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Manoj Govindan: So this is this is where my head was as the

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Manoj Govindan: as a you know.

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Manoj Govindan: I didn't know I was a catalyst at the time, but that's where. But that was a definition of a catalyst that, I said, is.

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Manoj Govindan: catalysts

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Manoj Govindan: finds ways to create value

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Manoj Govindan: in the world of network

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Manoj Govindan: in the world, networking or using networks. Right? That was a definition.

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Manoj Govindan: I think, that has evolved, you know, especially with with the clt right with Samudra, and with the conversations we have had, and

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Manoj Govindan: even just the genesis of how you all came to create this this trust set set of trusts that you have not just the Clt, but the others as well. Right

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Manoj Govindan: all have informed me is that that there's more to this than just creating value.

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Manoj Govindan: You know one of the things that strikes me every time I connect with the catalyst trust is a Leadership trust is

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Manoj Govindan: how you are

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Manoj Govindan: having a broad reach into different people, and where they are in their lives and trying to help them take that to the next level.

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Manoj Govindan: right, their their life individualized. Next chapter you're doing it at a broad level. But at the same time you are

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Manoj Govindan: passionately personal

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Manoj Govindan: in how you are helping each of those individuals

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Manoj Govindan: get to

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Manoj Govindan: that next level. And it looks a little different for each of us, and

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Manoj Govindan: that that ability to scale. Personalization, I think, is an important lesson for me in terms of evolving

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Manoj Govindan: my concept of a catalyst right whatever whatever I was calling it a few years ago. So so that's that that would inform my definition of a catalyst Tracy. Is

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Manoj Govindan: that ability to

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Manoj Govindan: scale?

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Manoj Govindan: Personal development?

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Manoj Govindan: Maybe that's that's a good way to put it.

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Manoj Govindan: Better.

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Manoj Govindan: Yeah. Yeah, at at that level. Right? I mean, we're not talking about personal development for hundreds of people. We're talking about personal development for a special group of people who have special kinds of talent, and how they can maximize, what they do and what outcomes come out of what they do for themselves and for the community around them. Right? So that that would be that

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: For me. It's so fascinating like what I understand. And this is how I think about humanoge is like the the leveraging the connections that you were talking about, and how that's part of not all. Catalysts show up that way. But certainly the dot connecting is is foundational to us. But you take that dot connecting into the personal. And when you're saying, connect, don't network or bust the silos or create the ecosystem like that sounds like one of your superpowers.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: and we've gotten to witness and and love meeting all of your people, too. I'd love to go back, though.I'm wondering when you think about one or 2 of your biggest challenges as a catalyst executive.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: What are they? And I guess a fast follow on is, you know, how might something like the catalyst leadership trust help you with those challenges.

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Manoj Govindan: Kind of 3 things come to mind right? 1, st one is

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Manoj Govindan: hubris

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Manoj Govindan: or risk, or both.

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Manoj Govindan: for risk, averseness specifically right, right hubris, because the company is doing really well. And again, I'm I'm not saying that pigeon has hubris. I'm just saying my

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Manoj Govindan: 30 year career. I've kind of watched these companies, that and and the moment in how they were growing, or how they were changing, and hubris was often a big challenge. And this is the confidence that the leadership of a business or a company has, that

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Manoj Govindan: they are the right company in the right place at the right time, and nothing can. They can do no wrong.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Has that changed since the pandemic do you find? Do you find companies being a little bit less.

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Manoj Govindan: Yeah, a lot actually, right? A lot very circumspect.

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Manoj Govindan: Also, I have noticed. And this probably also happened in in the meltdown in 2,008 same thing right? There was a little, maybe not that. And then, you know, of course. Then we went back to our ways a little bit in some cases. But yes, but there has been a very discernible

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Manoj Govindan: circumspect

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Manoj Govindan: view of things because of the pandemic. In many cases.

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Manoj Govindan: Course, you know not that

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Manoj Govindan: there are public examples of people who've gone the other way right and done

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Manoj Govindan: everything possibly wrong. that they could do exploiting price gouging, I mean, I can go on and on about these things. But

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Manoj Govindan: so

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Manoj Govindan: but yes, in general I would say companies, but but so that so hubris is often a challenge, but risk averseness is

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Manoj Govindan: also just as big a challenge sometimes to kind of, and that is

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Manoj Govindan: probably more so because hubris is

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Manoj Govindan: easy to recognize right, and perhaps easy to call out, if you have the political capital to do so right and be able to kind of deal with that. And and it's a in some cases some people would say, it's a good problem to have

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Manoj Govindan: risk. Averseness is a little bit more.

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Manoj Govindan: in my view, insidious challenge

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Manoj Govindan: because

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Manoj Govindan: it can get mixed up with political agendas.

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Manoj Govindan: Right? And one of the books I keep referring to

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Manoj Govindan: Shannon. I know you heard this many, many times

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Manoj Govindan: orbiting the giant hairball right? This

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Manoj Govindan: companies, when they become big, we become giant hairballs.

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Manoj Govindan: and so

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Manoj Govindan: risk averse averseness on its own is not a bad thing

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Manoj Govindan: companies. When they become big, they have lots of responsibilities. And so we have to be mindful and methodical as Pgm. Would be right of how how we move forward.

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Manoj Govindan: but

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Manoj Govindan: when it get in the innovation space in the space of change it can get mixed up

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Manoj Govindan: with

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Manoj Govindan: political jets.

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Manoj Govindan: And this is where silos come into play right so suddenly, small groups of people who have their own agendas

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Manoj Govindan: take on the risk, averseness, mantle, to become the antibodies of change.

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Manoj Govindan: and that becomes insidious and harder to discern, harder to push back on.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Well, it is because I mean, it's sort of like people are like, well, no one ever got fired for hiring Ibm or Mckinsey. Very few people get fired for like holding a risk line right and being like. But it is different when you're the one that's sticking your net out neck out, advocating for the change.

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Manoj Govindan: Correct. And this is where the catalyst can come into play right? Because the biggest

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Manoj Govindan: ability for the catalyst is to have that peer knowledge. So one of the things you know, Robin, are

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Manoj Govindan: in a chief innovation officer, she talks about this a lot. Right? Let's constantly see what our peers

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Manoj Govindan: are thinking that they are. They have usually have the same struggles or the same challenges, or the same opportunities that they are pursuing, or similar opportunities that they're pursuing.

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Manoj Govindan: So we should be brave and courageous enough to be able to step in with our peers

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Manoj Govindan: and share and collaborate where possible. Right? And she's a she's a big proponent of that. In fact, she has a whole program focused on our peers that that we do throughout the year. That's.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: And so these are internal peers. Manoj.

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Manoj Govindan: No, no, these are external.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I don't know. Okay. Great.

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Manoj Govindan: Both both in the industry. But she also goes outside our our industry. So

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Manoj Govindan: absolutely. Yeah. So you know, we we have.

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Manoj Govindan: This is not public information, but this is, you know, we conduct our internal events.

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Manoj Govindan: innovation events, and we constantly are bringing in these peer concepts.

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Manoj Govindan: Another way we do. That is, also we externalize. So we go out, you know,to speak at certain events or at our peers, in some cases right? And so those are all opportunities for us to mind share. It's not about us just telling them what we're doing. It's also us

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Manoj Govindan: kind of

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Manoj Govindan: commiserating with them, if you will, of the challenges right anyway. So I know we I stuck, but stuck on hubris and risk. But that's the 1st one.

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Manoj Govindan: the mix of talent. This is unique to catalysts.

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Manoj Govindan: or in and and perhaps innovation, right? Which is mix of talent, right? So talent is obviously a big

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Manoj Govindan: challenge for anybody. Anybody given point of time. So big, huge focus for companies just

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Manoj Govindan: identifying talent, retaining talent, all that stuff.

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Manoj Govindan: But within innovation.

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Manoj Govindan: and for catalysts, for for it to really work, we needed a

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Manoj Govindan: the right mix of people.

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Manoj Govindan: So we talk about diversity. And in the, you know, Pjm is huge on diversity, especially diversity of thought. Right? And so this is something that in the past, you know, companies, you know. Now we have. We have come, I think, full circle in terms of diversity of thought, right and diversity of action in terms. And so someone like Pjm appreciates that. And our CEO talks about this publicly, even right, which is

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Manoj Govindan: we are. People are are competitive advantage right our talent is.

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Manoj Govindan: And so the mix of town is what I mean. Right? So with the, it's, it's not enough that we have some just

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Manoj Govindan: Rock Star idea people. It's not enough that we have Rock Star engineers. It's not enough that we have people who are very operational and can drive things to execution. And it's not enough that Vp have people who are who are risk focused and understand the risks and be, we need a mix of them and the right mix and have all of them have the same energy and access and visibility in the project, or initiative.

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Manoj Govindan: or change or innovation that that makes most most effective. So that's a big challenge that that kind of weighs on on a catalyst mind. Typically right?

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Manoj Govindan: And then the 3rd one. And this goes back to that

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Manoj Govindan: connection thing. We talked about

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Manoj Govindan: mutual value creation. So this is something. You know, our team spends a lot of time on the partnership space, right? Specifically around partnerships when we're reaching out to a Vc. Or a university or or an individual talent coming in or contract, I mean

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Manoj Govindan: constantly trying to figure out how to create mutual value, because the incentive structure for creating mutual value is wholly ethical. Right? There is no.

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Manoj Govindan: there is no hidden agenda when

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Manoj Govindan: it is clear the value that will be created on both sides. And so that's a challenge. But it's an opportunity to kind of really work through that. And so that's something that we spend a lot of time on here. Asian as well.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I love the list so much. We don't have time to go through all of them. So I would love to talk about how you navigate the either and or the hubris and the risk challenge, because that's so universal, and especially the risk piece, I think.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: as we're as the speed of change is accelerating.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: There's still the antibodies in the organizations that you were talking about.

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Manoj Govindan: Absolutely. And

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Manoj Govindan: so yeah, so you know, it is back. By the way, you know the solution to that. How I've now learned how to navigate that, and we are collectively trying to do that here now is

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Manoj Govindan: finding orbit

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Manoj Govindan: around the hair ball right? So this has some tenant tentacles to creating value. But so all about finding order.

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Manoj Govindan: So I'll give you an example of how this goes. And then there's a very generic example, so that you know, I'm not, you know, taking names, or, you know, giving out any specific project out.

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Manoj Govindan: we have a

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Manoj Govindan: an exciting technology that we really want to

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Manoj Govindan: test and bring into the company

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Manoj Govindan: and and learn from it, and maybe adopt it to solve one of our problems

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Manoj Govindan: problem is, it is a

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Manoj Govindan: very young company that doesn't have history.

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Manoj Govindan: Right?

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Manoj Govindan: So

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Manoj Govindan: guess what our risk.

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Manoj Govindan: Flags

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Manoj Govindan: are all the way up. Right? So we are. We are

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Manoj Govindan: fully cognizant that this is. This is a major risk. We have sensitive documents. We are in the regular regulated environment. So there's not a lot of room there for us to kind of play with this and

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Manoj Govindan: so how do we? How do we navigate this? Right?

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Manoj Govindan: So over the years we've learned, I've learned that you know. These companies, Zoom included.

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Manoj Govindan: have built

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Manoj Govindan: strategic partnerships with certain companies

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Manoj Govindan: that have built in risk mitigation frameworks

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Manoj Govindan: find a way

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Manoj Govindan: to open the loop

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Manoj Govindan: between those partners and the partner you want.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Fascinating.

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Manoj Govindan: How do you create

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Manoj Govindan: incentives for

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Manoj Govindan: a large vendor or partner technology company like Microsoft or Ibm, or whatever.

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Manoj Govindan: And one of these young startups, basically saying.

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Manoj Govindan: we want to try this technology. But

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Manoj Govindan: it's too risky for us to do it on our own.

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Manoj Govindan: What role can you play? And in process? What? What value can you create for yourself? Right?

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I love, how it always comes back when I was just like the mutual value creation, the connections, the ecosystem, the network. It's like, if you're thinking at a systems level like you are, you're like, here's the dials that I have to turn to overcome some of the biggest challenges to create change. And you're bringing you're creating this movement, bringing people along.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: It was.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): On that you'd mentioned that the catalyst Leadership trust which we love having you as a member, you add so much value. Speaking of value.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): You mentioned that it has helped you with some of the challenges. And so I'd love to circle back to that like, what role does an a community like the catalyst Leadership Trust play for you as an executive.

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Manoj Govindan: Yeah. So so the peer knowledge or peer insight is the most obvious one. Right?

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Manoj Govindan: definitely, that

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Manoj Govindan: the other thing also is just kind of validating some of the tools we use, right? So we all have different tools, and we use them differently. And sometimes they work in the environments they're in sometimes they don't work. And so the second thing that I that someone like me gets from the Clt is, what are the other? What are, what are the other tools? Right? One example that really popped up to me was

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Manoj Govindan: this whole

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Manoj Govindan: behavioral science, or of how Disney and does its you know, solves its innovation, challenges

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Manoj Govindan: just the behavioral approach to it. Right? I'm going to the core. It's not trying to address the symptoms right? It's like a real authentic doctor. They're going after

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Manoj Govindan: the core of what the problem is.

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Manoj Govindan: how do? What is it? Is behavior? Right? How do humans respond to the challenge, how do different humans respond differently to the challenge? And how do we? So that was a big learning moment. Just to give you a sense, because it's a great tool, right? Using behavioral science to solve problems. It was fantastic, you know.

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Manoj Govindan: I almost immediately apply. We've we've applied it here. Right? So

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Manoj Govindan: agent is. You know, we are big into the behavioral science. One of the partnerships I'm designing

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Manoj Govindan: Is with a university focused on behavioral science and understanding how behavioral science can influence product development, right? Our products. This is financial services products. Yeah.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: So fun, and I love the landing on. That was my elbow. I love the landing on the action piece, because that's so important for catalysts like not just sitting around and waxing philosophical, although we love to do that too. But like, how do we bring this back into our orgs and change things alright final. I get the final fun question, who's your favorite famous catalyst, past or present? And why.

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Manoj Govindan: So

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Manoj Govindan: he's still alive, so I don't know if he's past or present. That's my father. and you know, I'll give a quick story as to why, right and and then, you know, leave you with the 3 points that that still stick with me.

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Manoj Govindan: all these years later. Right?

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Manoj Govindan: so my my dad is only educated to 10th grade

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Manoj Govindan: because his family couldn't afford it. So he had to go out, leave his education and find a job to sustain him and family.

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Manoj Govindan: And so you got.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: So proud of you, Manoj.

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Manoj Govindan: I appreciate that. Yes. Yeah, you know he considered

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Manoj Govindan: me and my brother, you know.

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Manoj Govindan: paying for our education all of that stuff. I grew up as

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Manoj Govindan: true investment to society, right? Which basically says, I am giving these 2 individuals to societies in in deliberate ways. All that stuff. Right? So he essentially, that's how he thinks about it. And he's he's actually

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Manoj Govindan: wonderful human being.

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Manoj Govindan: So yeah, so he

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Manoj Govindan: got his 1st job

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Manoj Govindan: because he's a natural catalyst, absolutely got his 1st job because of his network.

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Manoj Govindan: He has no education, but he started his job, and he worked for exactly one company, his whole career.

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Manoj Govindan: He started as a the lowest level, a junior divisional clerk

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Manoj Govindan: of this multinational company.

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Manoj Govindan: and he retired

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Manoj Govindan: 47 years later, as the head of the

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Manoj Govindan: one of the divisions of the company, agrochemical.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Thing.

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Manoj Govindan: Right

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Manoj Govindan: along the way he was, he became a marketing genius.

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Manoj Govindan: He got the 1st

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Manoj Govindan: Lee Iacocca award for marketing excellence in India. It was in student India, and then he was the 1st person who got that. So these are all the reasons. Right? I mean, these are there are tangible and intangible reasons that

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Manoj Govindan: he was. He was my catalyst in is my catalyst in in the inspiration, if you will.

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Manoj Govindan: 3 things that he kind of has left with me that are foundational in how I

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Manoj Govindan: want to use my catalyst journey, going forward right with Pg, and with the community here.

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Manoj Govindan: Because, you know, I think I told you this, I came to the Us. Because you know of my dad's actions, and I came out here at Brg. So in addition to my role at P. Gym, in the innovation world, I also happen to be the

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Manoj Govindan: Co-lead for the pride, business resource group or employee resource group and very specific things that I'm trying to push there. Based on these 3 foundations. Right? Those 3 are

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Manoj Govindan: fundamentally

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Manoj Govindan: drilling the ethics of change

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Manoj Govindan: into every project you put in there. In a sense.

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Manoj Govindan: it's not about

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Manoj Govindan: checking the box.

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Manoj Govindan: Is this compliant

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Manoj Govindan: ethics, ethics or otherwise? Right?

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Manoj Govindan: That's what you typically do is if you, if you have to be compliant, you have, you have 9 boxes to check and you check

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Manoj Govindan: box. It's broken down. Right?

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Manoj Govindan: Go further than that, right? Basically saying.

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Manoj Govindan: it's not about

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Manoj Govindan: just checking the boxes around these and change when you're trying to transform something.

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Manoj Govindan: The ethics of it has to be

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Manoj Govindan: absolutely unimmutable

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Manoj Govindan: or immune. What is it?

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Manoj Govindan: Anyway? You know you know what I mean, right? So it cannot be challenged right? The ethics should be kind of. That's number one. Right? So as a catalyst.

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Manoj Govindan: you are constantly pushing the world around you to change.

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Manoj Govindan: So the ethics behind it has to be

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Manoj Govindan: absolutely

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Manoj Govindan: rock, solid.

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Manoj Govindan: right? Not checkpoints. So that's 1.

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Manoj Govindan: Sustainable methods

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Manoj Govindan: cannot be. Yes, there are situational things that you have to do.

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Manoj Govindan: But

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Manoj Govindan: things have to sustain.

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Manoj Govindan: Yeah, then, you have people that be able to go back to that method and be able to rely on that method over and over and over again.

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Manoj Govindan: and so it's very sustainable methods. Right? So.

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Manoj Govindan: And then

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Manoj Govindan: having a

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Manoj Govindan: rather.

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Manoj Govindan: you know, people talk about balancing work and life. And you know, around me. People have talked about it since I grew up.

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Manoj Govindan: but my dad had a very different outlook, too, so he constantly says.

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Manoj Govindan: the personal life and professional life have to be able to talk to each other.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Hmm.

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Manoj Govindan: So if they don't speak the same language.

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Manoj Govindan: you're going to be lost in one or the other.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah.

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Manoj Govindan: Figure out how you want to do that right? So it's an interesting pipeline.

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Manoj Govindan: But I'll leave you with that. There's there's more there, right, I mean, if we can, we can have a whole another hour conversation, or what that means right for your personal life and your professional conversation with each other, but he did that right. So I I remember people from the outside, my my cousins and all these things. You know your your dad's always traveling such a workaholic. And so all these terms have kind of come to be. But I reflect on 40, 50 years, 30, 40, 50 years from that. And I'm gonna tell you.

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Manoj Govindan: See, that's what he he mastered. He mastered the ability for his work life and his personal life. Talk to each other because he. He's immensely happy.

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Manoj Govindan: He's healthy.

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Manoj Govindan: He's got 2 sons he has invested out into the world, and there we are doing our our thing right.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: And it sounds like he was wildly successful in his own path. So like, if that's the if that's the advice that he's living, it's like, yes, let's use that as a model. And I also just really like the actual literalness of having the language in both places. Because if you're not at a place that can talk about mental health and wellbeing and the prioritization and empowerment, and all of those things like, you're right. You almost become like having to almost be a different person in both things.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Thank you so much. You're right. We need to do more conversations. I already told people this is a cliffhanger, because he's done this amazing thing internally that we want to share, because he's just so brilliant, and we want to share more info with the catalyst community. But this was a lovely start to our conversations, and I'm just so grateful for this time with you, and to have you in our world in our catalyst network. Thank you.

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Manoj Govindan: Oh, thank you for the opportunity

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: And I love hearing your story. Thank you for sharing so vulnerably and authentically.

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Manoj Govindan: Thank you. Thanks for allowing me nice to see you again. Tracy hopefully run into each other soon.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): Oh, definitely.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: And to our listeners. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to learn more about how to create bold, powerful change in the world like Manoja's. Please be sure to check out our book at move fast, break, shit, burn out, or go to our website at catalyst constellations, com.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): If you enjoyed this episode the way Shannon and I clearly have, please take a few seconds to rate it on itunes, spotify stitcher, or wherever you listen to your podcasts and to all those other catalysts in your life, because we know you have them, please hit the share button, and send a link their way. Thanks again.