The speaker, KVS Munyan, reflects on his journey to prepare for a TEDx talk, contemplating on the ideas and themes which best capture his experiences and learning as a banker. He draws inspiration from a meeting with a young manager contemplating a career switch, prompting him to consider vital questions about learning experiences, comfort zones, and the applicability of past solutions to new circumstances.

Sharing anecdotes from his professional life, Munyan discusses the potential pitfalls of relying solely on past experiences—what he terms "Dejavu leadership." He highlights the danger of adhering strictly to outdated strategies in evolving contexts. By illustrating examples from the corporate world, Vietnam War, and cricket, Munyan emphasizes the need for leaders to stay adaptable, questioning, and open-minded.

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. contemplating [ˈkɒn.təm.pleɪtɪŋ] - (verb) - Thinking profoundly and at length; considering or pondering something. - Synonyms: (considering, pondering, reflecting)

...who had worked with me earlier messaged me wanting to meet me because he was in the midst of he was contemplating a job switch and he wanted my advice.

2. phenomenal [fəˈnɒmɪnəl] - (adjective) - Remarkable or exceptional, especially exceptionally good. - Synonyms: (extraordinary, remarkable, exceptional)

... and it's a phenomenal opportunity to make an impact within the first two three months of joining...

3. conventional [kənˈvɛnʃənl] - (adjective) - Based on or in accordance with what is generally done or believed; traditional. - Synonyms: (traditional, customary, orthodox)

I am far from being conventional either in my personal life or in my professional life.

4. paradox [ˈpærədɒks] - (noun) - A seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated may prove to be well founded or true. - Synonyms: (contradiction, inconsistency, irony)

Its valuable, but yet many times it can make you oblivious of whats going on around you. And the topic I want to speak to you about is the paradox of experience...

5. blueprint [ˈbluːprɪnt] - (noun) - A detailed outline or plan for a building or project. - Synonyms: (plan, design, outline)

Think of this opportunity as a blueprint that you have already developed.

6. guerrilla warfare [ɡəˈrɪlə ˈwɔːrfeər] - (noun) - A form of irregular warfare in which small groups of combatants use military tactics to fight a larger traditional military. - Synonyms: (irregular warfare, insurgency, partisan warfare)

...then they find that the guerrilla warfare in the Vietnam vortex, they are just lost, right?

7. ambiguity [ˌæmbɪˈɡjuːɪti] - (noun) - The quality of being open to more than one interpretation; inexactness. - Synonyms: (vagueness, uncertainty, indistinctness)

You have to embrace ambiguity. You have to embrace uncertainty.

8. oblivious [əˈblɪvɪəs] - (adjective) - Not aware of or not concerned about what is happening around one. - Synonyms: (unaware, unconscious, ignorant)

Its valuable, but yet many times it can make you oblivious of whats going on around you.

9. deja vu [ˌdeɪʒɑː ˈvuː] - (noun) - A feeling of having already experienced the present situation. - Synonyms: (recurrence, familiarity, precognition)

Am I leading from my past or am I leading into the future? Am I clinging to what I already know? Or am I embracing something new to learn? Am I using my experience as a crutch or am I using my experience as a springboard? You remember the questions I asked the young manager? They were on the same lines, isn't it? So every time I look at a deja vu situation, a kind of an alarm clock goes up in my mind and I get alerted to the dangers of Dejavu

10. adaptation [ˌædəpˈteɪʃən] - (noun) - The process of changing to fit some purpose or situation. - Synonyms: (adjustment, modification, alteration)

Experience is fine, but a constant adaptation and continuous learning is very important part of leadership.

Dangers of Dj Vu - Manian KVS - TEDxJBIMS

A few days back when I was approached to deliver this TEDx talk which I have never done before, the thoughts going on in my mind were what is the topic I should choose? Like any true banker or an engineer, the first instinct was to go and do some research and find some data. I researched and found that there are over 10,000 events and over 50,000 topics have been spoken about in the TEDx talks. Almost anything under the sun has been spoken about and I was still confused about what to talk about. I also tried to google the top ten TEDx videos and that didn't help either.

But as Providence would have it, a young manager who had worked with me earlier messaged me wanting to meet me because he was in the midst of contemplating a job switch and he wanted my advice. So I said let's meet up and then he comes in truly excited and says that I have this opportunity. This fits like a tee they want, this company wants exactly what I have done in the last few years and it's a phenomenal opportunity to make an impact within the first two three months of joining and I will just hit the road running and I am truly excited. So instead of jumping in to congratulate him, I said, why don't you ask yourself a few questions before you make a decision?

I asked him, is the new opportunity a better learning opportunity for you or not? Is the new opportunity just an extension of your comfort zone in your current role or nothing? Think of this opportunity as a blueprint that you have already developed. Just take it and implement it into a new place. And it seemed to me that the new place was not exactly the same way. It didn't look to me the same as the old place. So are you sure it will work there? Just ask these questions to yourselves and if you find if you can answer them well, go ahead and change your job. He called me two days back and said he decided not to make the change. You know, you might think that I poured cold water over his plan, but he did come to me for advice, right? And I can only give advice based on my worldview of things and what I have learnt in my school of life.

I am far from being conventional either in my personal life or in my professional life. I have tend one thing I have learned is that being conventional is not necessarily always the right thing to do. Whether it is to do with my quitting smoking at 50 and running marathons, or finding love again at 60 after some personal loss, or making a job switch at 63, or for that matter, every role I took through my career, I probably knew nothing about those things before I took that role. So if you were looking for some conventional wisdom, wrong number. But here I am. I am KVS Munyan. I am a banker, and I am your first speaker today evening. Having spent 30 years in banking and 40 years in corporate experience, to me, sometimes seems like an old alarm clock. Its reliable sha, but sometimes it wakes you up to a world that has changed while you were sleeping.

Thats the paradox of experience. Its valuable, but yet many times it can make you oblivious of whats going on around you. And the topic I want to speak to you about is the paradox of experience, and particularly the dangers of Dejavu leadership. You know, managers love Dejavu situations. It's the easy place to be in, so they love it. But every time we rely on our past experience, we also risk leaving behind something very crucial, that is the ability to look at the situation with fresh pair of new eyes. Fresh pair of eyes. New eyes.

The way I look at it is, of course, it is often said, windshield is the way to look at the future, and the rear view glass is the way to look at your past. And everybody knows that if you keep looking at the rear view mirror, you run the risk of missing the next turn, missing the next signal, bumping into something close, all of that. But even when you are looking through the windshield, experience is that ability which allows you to interpret what is going on when you look at things through the windshield.

You know, imagine a situation where you are driving through known streets, you know every signal, you know every turn, you know every landmark there, and you feel comfortable, confident driving. And suddenly things start changing, and new turns come up, new speed breakers come up, new landscape changes happen, and you continue to use your past instinct and keep driving on. This is exactly what I call the Dejavu leadership. Keep relying on your past instinct and go on.

But I argue that Dejavu leadership can be extremely costly. We will talk about that. And in some ways, I feel Dejavu leadership is taking your college notes to the board meetings 20 years later. Right. So how do we use our experience in a manner that we don't become its own prisoner?

To my mind, the answer lies in quantum leadership. I don't want to make this a talk on quantum leadership, on quantum physics. And I assure you, there are not going to be any equations, and also there are not going to be dead and alive cats in the box at the same time. But there is a true learning of quantum physics, which says that a particle can exist in two forms simultaneously or two places simultaneously. In fact, that is the essence that managers need to absorb from quantum physics. Managers need the ability to be both experienced experts and wide eyed novices at the same time.

They need the ability to hold the book of knowledge in one hand and an empty cup on the other. It's very difficult. Is it easy? It's not. It's very, very difficult to do that because this assumes that you can show vulnerability. Lot of your assumptions. You have to question. You have to embrace ambiguity. You have to embrace uncertainty.

So am I debunking all the hard earned experience? Is it worthless? It is not. Experience is like a soil where you sow seeds of humility. So I also think managers need to stand up in front of a mirror and keep asking some basic questions all the time. Am I leading from my past or am I leading into the future? Am I clinging to what I already know? Or am I embracing something new to learn? Am I using my experience as a crutch or am I using my experience as a springboard? You remember the questions I asked the young manager? They were on the same lines, isn't it?

So every time I look at a deja vu situation, a kind of an alarm clock goes up in my mind and I get alerted to the dangers of Dejavu. And I have seen innumerable instances in my corporate life where people use past case studies, past examples, past successes in their life and take on projects and go down that path and later realize that they are down the wrong path. There are examples I want to give you to bring home the point.

The first one is a corporate example, so I will mask the names. But you are smart enough to figure out the names. So let us take this department store called KC. Denny, they have a problem. Their sales are dropping, margins are squeezed, financial underperformance and they need to solve this. What is their solution? Their solution is to go and hire rex of the I gadget store fame. So he comes in with his I gadget store playbook in hand, tears down all the discount structures, coupons, all of that in the retail store. Even goes and uses small case, changes the branding to KCD in small case because it is hip. Two v. Small case. It does all that.

But customers are not impressed. They do not come in. They still like those loud screaming discounts. They want the bargain hunt and nothing changes. So the remix has gone bad. And obviously he has made the missed the woods for the trees. Or in this case, should I say the department store for the eye gadget store. And 17 months later the result is he shown the door.

There are examples in history as well. In the Vietnam war, us assumed that their huge firepower and large scale operations are the way to win the Vietnam War. They go in with all that and then they find that the guerrilla warfare in the Vietnam vortex, they are just lost, right? It was like they showed up with a medieval sword in hand for a laser tag match, right? So you know the results that us achieved in Vietnam. A disaster nearer home. How many of you are cricket fans? Obviously, this is Mumbai, right?

And all of you remember the greek chapel episode in indian cricket. Legendary cricketer was brought into coach India. But what he did was actually serve us our favorite pizza with a pineapple topping on it, right? Because what he did was he tried to drag and drop the australian style, australian aggressiveness, australian tactics onto an indian dressing room, which was culturally just not the same. And we all know what happened. Huge conflicts, controversies and an early exit for India in the next World cup, right?

So what is common between all these three? What is common is that in all these three situations, they fell into the trap of relying on a past success formula, right? They did not recognize that the world changes, context changes. What worked elsewhere will not work here. What worked at some other time does not work at this time. So therefore, the question is, what is leadership in these situations?

Most successful leaders actually avoid this trap. And they may be masters of the past, but they remain the student of the present. What they do is to ask the right questions. They may not know all the answers, but they know how to discover the answers. They know the right questions to ask to get to the answer, right?

And in my years of banking, I have seen phenomenal changes, right? Those ledgers and registers we used to write have become blockchains. The TTMTs, DDs have become online transfers, you know, fintechs, role of branches, digital banking, what have you. Everything has changed, right?

And I have seen leaders in our industry succeed. And I am sure it is true of any other industry. The leaders are leaders who retain their ability to ask questions, to get the right answers. They were not great technology guys. They didn't understand technology. There was a guy in their team who knew technology better than them, but they knew what questions to ask.

They asked the questions about, how can I deliver better service to my customer using this? How can I deliver better products for my customers? How can I improve my productivity, how can I improve my financial performance, things of that kind. So it is that ability that has value in leaders.

It is about not knowing the right answers. As I said, they recognize that a river that is flowing never stays the same. In fact, a greek philosopher had once said that no man ever steps into the same river twice. Why? Because neither the river remains same, nor the man remains the same. So I argue that leadership demands constant adaptation. Experience is fine, but a constant adaptation and continuous learning is very important part of leadership.

In conclusion, I would like to introduce a word I know it doesn't exist in the dictionary, called deja vulnerable. So yes, you need to have deja vu in the sense of experience, but you need to retain your vulnerability. And we must have the vulnerability to assume that we don't have all the answers. And vulnerability, in my mind, is not a weakness in leadership, its actually a superpower.

And please, whenever any of you get that deja vu feeling, please, please don't hit the autopilot button or the re run button. Pause. Think what is different this time? What are the new questions we need to ask this time? It may not be the same as last, and I think good leaders, the best leaders, are people who have the humility to accept and be brave enough to use these three simple words. I don't know, maybe yet. And I am committed to finding out. Thank you.

Leadership, Business, Innovation, Dejavu Leadership, Quantum Leadership, Adaptation, Tedx Talks