Nathy (00:37)

today it's a special day because I'm not hosting this podcast alone for the special guest we have invited today. I will host this podcast with my friend and partner in crime, Apa. Hi Apa, how are you?

Apa (00:53)

Hello Nati, how are you doing? Long time no see.

Nathy (00:56)

Yeah, long time no see, too long time. But actually we see us virtually almost every day, no?

Apa (01:02)

That's true. There's no running away.

Nathy (01:05)

Yeah, so today we have a special guest for you and for me also because you told me a few weeks ago as you were here at my place, you absolutely have to invite this woman, So I would not take you.

the chance to introduce her for us. So please, who is our guest of the day?

Apa (01:28)

So our guest of the day is Gitanjali Ponnappa. She is a partner at EY for Business Transformation as well as leading the EY Innovation Hubs that are called WaveSpace. So I met her as a member of the wavespace team when I worked there. And the first time I met her, I think, you know, I was googly-eyed because I'd never really had, let's say, a role model who was

Firstly, I mean, I'm Indian, so is she, but also a person who packed so much of a punch when I met her for the first time and really, you know, made me feel like I belong. So that's kind of why I wanted you to talk to her. And also because when she speaks, as you will the rest of the episode, there is so much depth and yet so much fun there.

with whatever she's saying. So I think this was going to be a great episode and we are going to hear a lot of words of wisdom.

Nathy (02:26)

So I would say hello Gitanjali, how are you?

Gitanjali Ponnappa (02:32)

Hi, Nathalie. I am very well. Thank you to you and Appa for having me. I have been doing a little bit of prep for our episode together. So thank you for having me.

Nathy (02:43)

Yeah, welcome. And how, how does it feel to hear that you're such an inspiration for one of your employees

Gitanjali Ponnappa (02:51)

very recently in my life, I hit a milestone and my milestone is I've done 25 years of consulting work. So I've been in the workforce for 25 years. And when you start off, you don't think about it, but the past few years, I've been thinking about the people that maybe I've had an impact on. And it's very, it feels like a little bit like, Ooh, somebody was influenced by me. Like, isn't that cool? Because in my head, I'm still like about 37, you know, like I feel like, Oh, I can't be having impact on people.

Nathy (02:55)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (03:21)

And then after when you say something wonderful like that, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna have to tell my mother.

Apa (03:25)

Please do.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (03:26)

I'm going to go to bed.

Nathy (03:27)

I think inspiring people actually is the most rewarding thing that we could And I would be very curious that you tell us a little bit more about your journey. What have you done? So 25 years on consulting. How did you start?

Gitanjali Ponnappa (03:43)

So I started my career in India. So I always tell my clients who are American or European that I started on the other side of the fence. And now I feel like I should update that story because there is no fence anymore. There is no other side. But I did start in India and I was actually just telling somebody that I only spent actually two years in India. So off my years of work, only two have been in India and I hope in the future that I will do more to contribute.

Nathy (03:52)

Yeah.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (04:12)

to my home country. From India, I actually wrote this down. We did a dinner table conversation yesterday with the kids and everybody about what should I say is my journey. And we came up with three things that I should say. So one is the countries that I've lived in because they find it most interesting. So I've lived, I grew up in India, and with work I moved to the US. And at that point in time.

Nathy (04:26)

I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (04:37)

When I moved to the U.S., it was still new, the collaboration between India and U.S. So I got to do a ton of work working across borders. So it wasn't just U.S. companies. And then from the U.S., I moved to Singapore. I spent a little bit of time there. From Singapore, I got to manage projects in South Africa and Botswana and Mozambique. And then from there as well, I went to Australia and then I did a little pop.

Nathy (04:52)

Mm-hmm.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (05:07)

over into Silicon Valley, which was very fascinating, really inspiring. And then I said, okay, listen, now I've done everything in terms of locations and continents and Europe was missing. So I gave myself a year to bring myself to Europe. And so now I am in Zurich and I live and work in this region. So that was one part that the kids wanted me to tell you is countries, which countries have I been in? And then I've only actually ever had.

Nathy (05:17)

Mm-hmm.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (05:35)

two, maybe three major jobs. So it's been also my 10 year anniversary with EY. And I spent 10 years with Accenture. And I spent five years with a company that is now called Mahindra Tech. So I tend to do things in big chunks. I'm not much of a hopper. But I think later in my career, as I'm progressing, I might become a hopper because there are certain things I want to do. And the topics that I do, which is why I might want to become a hopper, is

Nathy (05:42)

Wow.

Thank you.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (06:04)

The topics I do, I started with something that is called corporate communications, which in the old days was open a newspaper and there would be ads about the company. That was the old days. I did that, the advertising and corporate communications that evolved into kind of creating training material, and I then became an instructional designer. Then I wanted to add on an understanding of how people actually use that content. So I did organizational change management.

Nathy (06:33)

Mm-hmm.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (06:33)

And then I did a lot of organizational change management in the context of technology with Accenture. And that has evolved to having an innovation role with EY in Wavespace. So that's the sort of the arena of business transformation that I work with.

Nathy (06:49)

Wow.

Apa (06:50)

As I said, it will be very inspiring, this conversation.

Nathy (06:53)

so now you are still at EY, you are working in helping organizations in their digital

So I would like to hear from you what is the biggest role and impact of people in a digital

Gitanjali Ponnappa (07:13)

So maybe now 10 years ago, I worked with a person who ran a massive program for the rail system in the UK. And we were discussing this question. So what is the role of people? And we kind of stumbled upon the fact that it's not organizations that transform, it's people that transform. It's not processes that transform. It's the people who use the processes.

Nathy (07:27)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Apa (07:36)

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (07:40)

So I think it's very insufficient when we talk about what is the impact of people on transformation. It should be the other way It's not about the transformation, it's about the people. If you choose as an organization, as a collective to transform, then you will. If you choose to fight the transformation, you won't. So for me, the very key component is it's not organizations transforming, it's people transforming.

Nathy (07:59)

Yeah.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (08:06)

And when I think about people, I try not to aggregate it into people or the Germans say Leute. I like to actually have individuals that I'm thinking about. So why would Nathie want to transform? What's in it for her if at the end of it, she's probably going to not have the same scope of work that she used to. So it's no longer fun for her. So why should she? Right. So having that thought about that individual why, which I think in, in terms of change management, we now call them personas.

Nathy (08:13)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (08:37)

And so thinking through those personas and personalizing those personas. So for a chief transformation officer, they're not just titles and little icons on an org chart. These are real people. This is Shilpa who lives in India, whose job is going to change, and this is Marco. And when you start thinking of them as individuals. So I think we as massive organizations, we tend to aggregate, and I think there's power in disaggregating it.

Apa (08:37)

Mm-hmm.

Nathy (09:06)

Mm-hmm.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (09:06)

Does that answer your question? A little bit at least.

Nathy (09:09)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And is it easy to make it clear to organization?

Gitanjali Ponnappa (09:16)

So it never is because all of this costs money. We're talking about dollars and we're talking about budget. So when the goal of an organization, especially a capitalist organization, is efficiency and then efficacy. And so if you can talk in the language of the organization. So a CFO, even though he has a heart or she has a brain, or he has the context of Marco and Shilpa,

Nathy (09:19)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (09:43)

It still needs to be converted into a language that he understands. So I think it's very powerful in Wavespace. We have this thing, understand the person's emotion. Why would they want to make this change? Even the person who's releasing the budget, understand their political context and give them a rational reason. So it's emotional, political and rational. So is it easy? No. But if you have a frame to tell the story to the person who needs to sign off budget, surely yes.

Apa (10:05)

Mm-hmm.

I mean, maybe I can ask a question here related to what you're saying, because I think a lot of what Wavespace does, the facilitation, is driving these outcomes and making it clearer to those decision makers what some of these elements are when you're driving this change, right? So in your view, because you've seen both the consulting part, so you've done the work, try to, let's say, make people understand that being human-centered is important.

And on the other hand, driven these larger scale workshops, which align a lot of people at the same time and drive these decisions. Do you think that there is a place for facilitation and design-driven organizations, the trend towards moving towards this kind of human in a larger scale in organizations? Is that, does that question make sense?

Gitanjali Ponnappa (11:01)

So let's maybe for me to help myself understand it better, I'm gonna split it into two parts. What's the role of the facilitator and how do we scale it? Because they're to me connected and maybe stackable answers. So when I think about what is the role of a facilitator, I think of that as a role that has certain objectives. So it's a role.

Apa (11:07)

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (11:26)

that brings by definition a little bit of abrasion. This is not a role that just agrees and pushes things along. This is the role that does a little bit of a fight, a little bit of a debate, a little bit of intellectual tension. So I think the role of the facilitator is to do that. The other role of a facilitator in this sort of a context is not to get consensus, but is to bring the dirty laundry out.

Nathy (11:39)

Mm-hmm.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (11:55)

It is to bring it out onto the table and say, well, if we're going to just fold it up and put it away, it's not going to work anyway. So I think the role of a facilitator is not consensus, but it is getting dirty laundry out and then teaching people once it's there, how to collaborate. Right. And then the other part that I think is maybe a more philosophical view about it is a facilitator.

Nathy (11:55)

Thank you.

Apa (12:13)

Mm-hmm.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (12:23)

If outside of an organization and by outside, I mean, just outside of that team, right. So not within that team has the ability to be a guide has the ability to be like Yoda, like, let me show you the path. We don't know what the path is, but let's discover it together. Has the ability to be, I really liked that word guide maybe to, because the guide does not actually necessarily know where we're going.

Apa (12:40)

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (12:51)

but can say, hey, look, there's a hole over there, don't fall into that. Or look, that's a dark space, don't go over there. Or here, take a flashlight. So guide has the ability to do that. So when I think what is the role of the facilitator, that's what I would. Not the, can you keep time? Can you make a joke? Is it an icebreaker? That's all hygiene factors, that's basics. That's what any good facilitator knows how to do. But a genius facilitator does these things.

Nathy (12:56)

Yeah.

Apa (12:56)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (13:19)

So now when I think about how that scales, this is highly individual dependent. So if I am an organization that has, I'm making up a number, 50,000 people, and I need, there are at least to run 50,000 people, let's say five leadership teams. So I need five NAFIs or I need five months to do that. So is facilitation a scalable skill? It's not.

It's one of those skills in my view. Can AI do it? Sure, a little bit sort of, kind of, to help you speed up. But there's no way to duplicate, replicate a Nathi or an Appa. So from a scale perspective, this is like, I'm never gonna get my hair cut by a robot. I'm gonna get my hair cut by a lady or a man who has cut hair, Indian hair preferably, you know, slightly thinning hair maybe. They have expertise in that.

In the same way, facilitation can be made faster in terms of the design, but the delivery is not scalable. A great question, I had never thought of it this way by the way.

Nathy (14:24)

Yeah.

Apa (14:24)

Mm-hmm.

No, I like the way you say it because it's about bringing that, I love the dirty laundry aspect, you know, that part, that the way you said it, because not everybody can get that dirty laundry out and not everybody can then, you know, use that setting to reach some kind of consensus or some kind of, you know, understanding of the topic. So I really like the way you put it, the dirty laundry. I'm going to remember that metaphor and maybe steal it as I have stolen some other things from you.

Nathy (14:32)

Yeah.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (14:55)

It's called Borrow With Pride.

Apa (14:58)

Right, still like an artist.

what I wanted to ask is really about how facilitation and how this human centeredness, as you said, in a large scale can drive economic growth for companies. And have you seen that

leader of the

Wavespace?

Gitanjali Ponnappa (15:13)

So your question is, have I seen good facilitation or teaming drive economic growth? Is that the question?

Apa (15:22)

Yeah, also, how do you speak that language to those CFOs and to the people who are speaking numbers to show the value of the work that we do, right? Because it is a lot, sometimes it is softer to explain and how do you drive and how, you know, my husband is a CFO, so we always get into these conversations where he's like, no, but what is the numerical value that you're bringing to this session? You know, how are you going to justify a use of a facilitator, justify use of this?

Gitanjali Ponnappa (15:31)

Uh huh.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Apa (15:51)

human-centered thinking.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (15:53)

I think it depends on what type of facilitation you're doing. So let me take, so I was recently speaking to the chief innovation officer of an elevator company. So when you get into the elevator, have a look at the name of the elevator company, but a famous elevator company. And she was telling me about how she uses facilitators to help.

Her engineers and designers unlock where they are stuck. And we're talking about physical engineering, drawings, design, that kind of a thing. And so she uses the techniques of design thinking to unlock their brain. So her KPI is not a facilitation KPI, her KPI is what do the engineers produce and develop. So is there a direct correlation?

Absolutely not. She can't say, oh, because I hired APA or because I hired Nathie, now we've got 300 ideas. No, she cannot say that. But I think the world is getting more comfortable, including CFOs, including your husband, probably APA, that not everything is a direct correlation. There's a lot of indirect. So an example could be if you need to prove something. And when I say need, that is really feeding somebody's ego.

Nathy (17:08)

Yeah.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (17:15)

Right? Otherwise, anybody with half a brain can see the value. The only reason that they ask you for all of these numbers is because they have somebody else that they need to prove it to. And so if you address the political part of it, not the rational, the rational part is where's my KPI and this is what I produce. But the political part of why are they actually asking this question, I think we'll get a better answer. So I would not go down the path of trying to prove the value of facilitation.

Apa (17:19)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (17:42)

I would try and have people experience the value of facilitation. If you have experienced great facilitation, again, this is not scalable behavior because you don't have to experience everything to understand the value of it, but this would be something that people need to experience to open up the wallet. If they've seen it, they've experienced it, they can. That being said, there are very clear things that you can measure, right? So if we take my organization as an example.

Nathy (18:01)

Yep.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (18:09)

We can measure it. We have a dollar value of things that flow through. I know, for example, there are a few banks that have a similar facilitation pool of people, and they look as well for the quality of decisions that this team makes. So once you've had a facilitated session, are we going to invest in this startup, as an example? And then they follow that through to see if the startup actually added value to that bank. So they're connecting it again longer term.

So if I were to summarize it in my brain, I would say forcing a correlation, waste of time, total waste of time to force a correlation. Second thing that I would say is that if you understand the political rationale for why people are asking that, we change the way we answer. We wouldn't answer with numbers, we would probably answer with, you know what, so and so told me that facilitation is great. That's great political currency.

And the third thing that I would say is duration. The power of facilitation does not come at the end of the session. It comes maybe two, three months, two, three years, 10 ideas later. So changing the duration that you're talking about I think might help.

Apa (19:04)

Mm-hmm.

Nathy (19:18)

I try to tell the freelance facilitators that I'm monitoring that when they are talking about workshops and facilitation they will not get to the brain to the clients but they have to talk about

the problems they can solve or they can help to solve because is a pain point and there is a gain that the client would like to have at the end and they are here to help them on the bridge between the pains and the gains.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (19:45)

I might now have to steal that or borrow with pride. I like that, the gap between pain and gain and helping you bridge that gap. The language that I've been using to describe that is, are you asking the right exam question? So I will help you first come up with the right exam question, and then I will help you derive the answer for your exam question, which is sort of the same thing as you're describing, Athea.

Nathy (19:58)

Mm-hmm.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (20:10)

there's a pain, which is the exam question, and then there's again, which is the answer to the exam question. And it's all the squiggly path to get there. That's what a facilitator does.

Nathy (20:12)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, and the facilitator is actually when we are thinking about your client, talking about our engineers, facilitators here to unlock the potential of the teams actually is not producing the outcome, he helps the people to come to an outcome or to have different perspective or different choices of way they want to go through. This is how I see a facilitator.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (20:44)

Mm-hmm

I think what I really like, the ones that I have personally experienced as well, so not just delivered but also experienced, is where a facilitator has a really large bag of tools. Because when you see certain, let's go back to laundry example, if you see a ketchup stain, you need to put a different kind of thing on it, and if you see a wine stain, you need to put a different kind of thing in it. But if your bag doesn't have that toolkit.

Nathy (20:58)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Apa (21:08)

Mm-hmm.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (21:10)

So you need all of the tools needed to clean up your dirty laundry and make, and you know, I need to make it look good now. So if I were to poorly extend that analogy, I would say we need more tools. So facilitators that have robust set of tools and are not managed to just a singular set of tools or a singular methodology, I think would thrive in organizations that require that agility.

Nathy (21:16)

Yeah.

Apa (21:16)

Mm-hmm.

Nathy (21:37)

Abba? Yeah.

Apa (21:37)

I have a follow-up question, actually, about this, because this reminds me of that generalist versus specialist debate. Even from a facilitation standpoint, often I face this that I'm branded a generalist. So I'm a person who can go into any kind of problem-solving arena and have something to give. But if you ask

Can you give me specific guidance on this one topic? Maybe I don't have that, right?

for me, this reminds me, what you're talking about reminds me of this generalist versus specialist debate and kind of trying to understand where facilitators

Nathy (22:08)

Oh no.

Apa (22:11)

in this kind of, let's say, continuum, right? Because you have facilitators who can go in and solve any problem. And I know that we've had, I mean, I've had...

so much experience with life sciences, with other industries, and all these different types of problems. But building a specialty seems to be a kind of trend which is emerging. I mean Nati, we've seen this as well in the work that we do with freelance facilitators that being known for a particular topic is very important to be able to sell your services. And similarly, I know within industry as well.

that having that sector focus as a facilitator is important because you also bring that business knowledge. But I'm just trying to understand, what do you think about this, Gitanjali? Because there is a lot of debate around whether you need to be a true generalist to be a facilitator or having that, let's say, topic expertise is also something that can help and help you guide the conversation better. But you're not that, you're not.

away from the topic anymore. You do have a kind of stake in it. So.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (23:13)

trying to extend the dirty laundry one and tell you this smells, this really smells, this debate is, it kind of actually makes me a little angry, this debate. The reason it makes me just a little bit angry, not too much, just a little bit, there are other things in life to be more angry about, but the reason it makes me angry is who is having this debate? Who is questioning this? The reason I say that is I always find it's people who don't understand what you do.

Nathy (23:16)

Thank you.

Apa (23:24)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (23:40)

that say, oh, you're a generalist. Whereas, allow me, Appa, to rewrite that story. Just like, let's say I'm taking you as an example. Appa is actually a master at her craft. You give her any topic, she knows how to navigate a team through that to first solidify the exam question, the pain that they're feeling, and then navigate them through the squiggly path of arriving at the answer, which is the game. Appa.

can confidently do that for you and your team because she has a specific set of sectors that she focuses on that allows her to bring that insight into it. And having lived and worked in four or five different countries, she can actually handle a diverse team really well. I just told your story. That does not sound like a generalist, fake, light version person to me at all.

Apa (24:31)

Mm-hmm.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (24:33)

So the next time somebody says, oh, generalist versus specialist, slap them in the face. I'm sorry, but like, that's a, it's a stupid debate to have. It's how you choose to tell your story. If I choose to tell my story of, you know, I couldn't make up my mind, so I did a little bit of training, and then I did a little bit of this, and then I did a little bit of that, and I somehow ended up in innovation, that's a completely different story. So you have to own it. You own that this is your craft and your.

Apa (24:41)

Hehehehe

Mm-hmm.

Nathy (24:58)

Yeah.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (25:03)

really good. I'm trying not to cuss. You're really, really good at your craft. That does not make you a generalist. That makes you an expert, a specialist. So I would just change the debate. I would walk away from that question because that person doesn't even understand it. Sorry, but I feel I am heated about this.

Apa (25:07)

Mm-hmm.

Nathy (25:11)

Yeah.

Yeah, I think the point that there are a lot of freelance facilitators who are just starting out discovering facilitation and wanting to make it a career. So, of course, they maybe not have the experience to do that. And

And there is two things in it. There is first, to be confident to start as a freelance facilitator, you have to have one thing that you can do, because you will still learn on your way

to become a gitangeli. So, and this is one point.

The other point is to find a specialty to get your feet into the door, don't mean that you will not do something else,

I mean I've been studying export and import I never used it but at the beginning when I was searching for a job I had

in import and export and I got my first feet. After that I learned on the way and then I become who I am today. So this is, I understand what you say, but this is my point of view why I am following this strategy to help them.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (26:25)

So maybe Nathie, what I might want to offer. So I am very often in my career, the new person. I also have to figure out what is my story. So every time I've moved country, I've always been the new person. And being the new person, you really have to know how to open a door, right? So if I may offer to the group that is starting out is like you with your import export story.

Nathy (26:35)

Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (26:51)

Think about maybe, I like to use same design thinking principles and say, come up with three pilot ideas. Don't get mad at one idea. Maybe one idea is import export, right? So a functional expertise. Maybe another idea is maybe color, maybe gender, maybe culture, right? And maybe another idea is, you know, I really understand formula one racing. And so I really understand the car industry and how gaming works and what advert.

Nathy (26:57)

Mm-hmm.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (27:19)

I'm making that up, right? So come up with three ideas. Test all three, because you never know which one is going to open more doors. Don't just have one idea, have three, and go see statistically which one is opening more doors for you.

Nathy (27:24)

Yeah.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (27:33)

And then I'm going to, I'm going to give you one more idea. And it's something that I'm playing with right now. So there are lots of checklists available if you Google it around your brand. Right. So you can, you know, what, what do you stand for? What is your brand? What is your purpose? You know, those kinds of things. There's lots available and I've done a whole bunch of it in the past six months, just to see what was out there. And what I.

Nathy (27:42)

Mm-hmm.

Apa (27:49)

Mm-hmm.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (27:59)

really liked what I've taken away from that is when you take the three pilot ideas is don't try and solve for everything. Your goal and your milestones need to be tiny. So send out 10 emails with the first one, 10 emails with the next one and 10 emails with the next one. See which one has a response rate. Don't plan out the whole thing. Don't write out a session. Don't write out what your bio is. Nothing. Just test the idea first.

Once you cross that milestone out of the three ideas, only two get email responses, then throw the other idea out. Then out of the two, again, a tiny milestone is, put some pricing next to it and see, okay, now I'm gonna send five and five. Let's see which one has better uptake. So what I really liked of everything that I've synthesized now from reading is don't make big plans. Stuff like this, quickly, test it, turn it around, throw it out, add a new one in, but keep moving.

Apa (28:24)

Mm-hmm.

Nathy (28:45)

Yeah.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (28:51)

versus being married to, here's the one thing that I'm going to do.

Nathy (28:55)

Yeah, absolutely. I think you could be a very nice guest for our freelance facilitators.

Apa (28:56)

Mm-hmm.

Katanjali is being, she's being approached for more and more. Like, do you want to help us build our business? Katanjali.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (29:10)

So I'm also considering, I have a call later this week actually, because something that I care very much about, yes there's business transformation and there's technology innovation, but I really care about women. I care very much about women of color. I care about, I stumbled upon a new term, it's called Women Plus, so anybody who identifies not man. Right?

Nathy (29:27)

Yeah.

Uh huh.

Apa (29:38)

Mm-hmm.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (29:39)

And I thought, I really care about these groups. And I started thinking about in my 25 years, it really has been one of those like, you hit a milestone, you start thinking about it. What can I do to help these groups further their career while furthering mine too? So this is not just because, oh, I'm so, you know, I wanna do something nice. It's also because I will learn from it. And I've been thinking about doing, the number one thing that I think this group doesn't have going for it is how to negotiate.

Nathy (30:09)

Yeah.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (30:10)

So how do you negotiate life? How do you negotiate a contract? How do you negotiate maternity leave? How do you negotiate coming back to work? How do you negotiate leaving work? How do you negotiate the pricing? All of these are little micro negotiations and we go about them very differently and I find my experience so far is most of the training and coaching and facilitation that's available is not addressing this wider set of questions. Let's put it that way.

Apa (30:19)

Mm-hmm.

Nathy (30:38)

Yeah.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (30:38)

or this wider group of people.

Apa (30:38)

Mm-hmm.

Nathy (30:39)

This is true. And most of the time you don't learn this. I mean, I've been a former project manager and I've been working with big the tricky part was all the negotiations about change orders or something like that. And this is not something that you're learning. This is something that you are learning by doing this. So this is true when you start to...

Apa (30:40)

Absolutely.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (30:53)

Mm-hmm.

Nathy (31:03)

negotiate something, anything, then you need to have the tricks and the story line to do that.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (31:10)

And especially if you are a, like you said, freelance, you don't have an engine behind you. You don't have a team behind you that's doing all the reviews and checking things. I think it's very tricky when you are really good at your craft, but you also have to be really good at your business. Both things, yeah. And they have different skills, and some people are really good at running their business, but maybe not so much at their craft, and then they need to be at their craft, but they don't really like doing the invoicing.

Apa (31:10)

Mm-hmm.

Nathy (31:15)

Yeah.

Yeah, this is two different things. Yeah.

Apa (31:27)

Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Completely different.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (31:37)

But there's all of that, there are two sets of skills.

Nathy (31:41)

So can we put your name for a special guest at the bootcamp for example?

Apa (31:41)

Mm-hmm.

Hehe

Gitanjali Ponnappa (31:47)

Well, why don't we pick a topic and then we can work on that together.

Nathy (31:50)

Yeah, that would be

thank you very much both of you for being here today. It was, I mean, you told me she's inspiring, she is. Yeah? I hope...

Apa (31:51)

Oh, thank you.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (31:59)

That was fun though. That was really fun. I enjoyed that. I made a note actually to think about the scale question because for an organization of the scale of 500,000 people, 100,000 people, how do you scale a NACI? And I think you don't, which is why great facilitators should be paid really well, but it's not a scalable skill.

Apa (32:01)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nathy (32:23)

Yeah, they are exceptional and unique and each of them have their own uniqueity. I mean, I'm not an APA and she is not an ATEE and I think this is the point. There are audiences which would more be attracted by an ATEE and audiences would be more attracted by APA. Just because of the...

Apa (32:24)

Thank you.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (32:29)

Mm-hmm.

Apa (32:30)

Yeah. Exactly.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (32:33)

Mm-hmm.

Apa (32:34)

Exactly.

Nathy (32:47)

personality of a way of saying the things. So yeah. So thank you very, very much both of you. And have a great

Gitanjali Ponnappa (32:50)

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Apa (32:51)

Yep, absolutely.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (32:55)

Thank you.

Apa (32:56)

Thank you Nati.

Nathy (32:59)

bye.

Apa (33:00)

Bye.

Gitanjali Ponnappa (33:01)

Bye.