Exclusive Trusted Magazine Q&A with Ravi Shankar
How could you describe your career path in few words?
My personal and professional philosophy which I try to live always is very simple, and consists
of some very basic tenets
Find a problem and solve it, that’s the opportunity you were looking for.
Whatever is worth doing is worth doing to the best of your capability.
Take the blame for failures and give credit to your team members for the success.
Trust your ecosystem, your colleagues, peers etc. No one woke up this morning deciding to cheat you or lie to you. Help them succeed, there lies your path to success.
I am a serial entrepreneur and as a small company we always had more than our fair share of
challenges, since we were more vulnerable to smallest changes in macro and micro situations.
Being true to oneself gives you the confidence and the resilience to manage such situations.
What was your most challenging experience and how it has changed your mindset?
There isn’t one such instance but a series of them over the period which helped shape my life and thought processes. Losing both my parents at an early age and to lingering illness made me realize my own mortality. This got compounded by losing my nephew and niece in a freak
accident more recently. All these instances created a sense of urgency in whatever I wished to do in life, and increased my commitment levels to the value systems and the difference I wish to make.
I am always in a hurry but I also stop to smell the roses always, this is not a contradiction. I am
living a very full-filing life both professionally and personally.
When you get surprised by unusual or uncertain context, what do you think?
I don’t get surprised but look for clarification. Non routine situations and contexts are always
welcome in my life and that adds to my experiences, my learning and my understanding of
people and the universe.
What’s the most important key success factor for you based on your experience?
This actually boils down to what each person defines as success, early in my life / career I had
realized that for me living completely in the moment and enjoying what I do, was more important that material accumulation or status seeking in corporate ladder. I enjoy what I do and live my life, my work-life situation is well balanced and I have no regrets in life, either personal or professional. In the scope of how I have defined success in life and career for me, I consider my life well lived and am constantly looking forward to the future.
What would be the major pitfall that may undermine the success of a leader?
There could be many that my own experience tells me, the most probable one is not adapting to change fast enough and not seeing or pretending not to see the changes happening in the
ecosystem and how it affects your business. We have been caught off guard many times and each time the delay in adapting cost us very dearly.