The CEO Series with Chitra Nawbatt

Henry Vidiarta: Hi, my name is Henry Vidiarta. I'm the head of HR for Unilever Indonesia and I'm, um, also the head of HR for the beauty business unit here. Here we are, uh, facing quite a lot of dynamic situations in the business and it is the demands of hr, including the HR business partner or the HR specialist, to be able to respond timing with a lot more of agile mindset and be able to adapt to the business changes and the business challenges. And that is basically the uh, fact today that HR needs to understand business even better. And you know, there is no better options or better person that I thought that can help us to bring that kind of perspective, that kind of mindset by bringing in Frontier. So thank you so much, Ron for coming to Indonesia and meeting the team. It's a pleasure to host you here in Indonesia and we hope to see you again. Foreign.

Ron: Good morning. Good evening. Depending upon what part of the world you're and if it's Friday, it is the CEO series where we explore career journey journeys, the trajectory, the detours, right, left, turns and U turns along the way. Today we are joined by someone whose career defies traditional labels. She has advised Fortune 500 CEOs, she's worked on the White House advanced team, she's invested in innovation, she's taught at the university level. She's authored a book, the Code Breaker Mindset, which you'll talk about. Um, launched a podcast focused on helping leaders unlock opportunity through pattern recognition and decision making. And with that I want to welcome my dear friend, long, long, long time friend, Chitra Navak. How are you?

Chitra Navak: Thank you so much, Ron and good day to your audience all over the world. Thank you so much for having me and I enjoyed that video. I was smiling as it was playing, uh, because I could just imagine being in the room, uh, hearing you, I could feel the energy through that video. But delighted to be here and thank you so much for having me.

Ron: Thank you, thank you. That was a great time. Few few weeks ago. So you have, you've had an amazing career. I've been knowing you a long time and then you come out and you kick it off with the code Breaker mindset. Walk us through the journey to get us to the code breakup mindset. Because there had to be a lot of learnings that came from that which you encompass inside of your book.

Chitra Navak: Thank you, thank you. And you know, Code Breaker mindset is a USA Today bestseller. Uh, it just hit, uh, book stands April 28th and in week one a release it became a USA Today bestseller. Number one in business and economics, number one in self help. Uh, and that was all done organically, um, no artificial mechanisms, all organic. So very grateful for that. And how I came to the place of writing the code breaker mindset is because I wanted to help people through information. And that came from the trials, tribulations, the headwinds I faced in my own journey and, and that actually started in the Caribbean, uh, actually technically the northeast coast of South America. That's where I was born. My family is uh, mixed. Uh, background, grew up in Toronto, first generation to go to college, university. And I knew I liked business so I said you know what, let me study business at the University of Toronto, start at ey, get the chart. Accountant, cpa, Certified professional Accountant designation. Great foundation for being in business. So that's where I started my journey. Audit consulting and EY client service. Great professional foundation because of learning, being a fiduciary, independence, objectivity. My clients for financial services. That's how I ended up pivoting and going to work in investment banking. Wall Street, New York City, Deutsche bank where I spent a number of years where you and I first met. And so I worked on mergers and acquisitions MA and then in a fintech business I helped build a fintech business for Deutsche bank, global transaction banking. Built a fintech platform before fintech was a thing, a working capital efficiency calculator. So diagnosing working capital issues for large companies and then made a mid career very nonlinear pivot. So my third chapter, first chapter was ey, second chapter banking third chapter I, I became a broadcast journalist, a TV news anchor in New York City, the number one media market. And I worked for large brands like reputable brands like Reuters, BNN, Bloomberg, CCTV, live television like we're live right now, interviewing CEOs leaders, telling business stories. Got to do a little bit of sports but a lot of business stories. And my passion for doing that was to help inform people through information to make better decisions. My fourth chapter came off television and, and I got recruited to go to a digital transformation consulting firm, Genpact, advising the Fortune 500 doing strategic business development, serving large clients, whether it was financial services, consumer goods companies, tech companies. My fifth chapter, I got recruited to a large venture capital firm, General Catalyst, to be a partner investing in enterprise, consumer, fintech, health, tech. I had a portfolio of 75 plus companies that I also help to do something called value creation which means helping those companies build, grow and scale. And then my sixth chapter has been a combination of startups, more tech and growth advising and then I had the capacity, uh, on the weekends and nights to write this book, the Code Breaker Mindset. And that ties back to why I became a journalist so many years ago. Wanted to help share the knowledge I had learned across these six plus industries. The panel recognition, how to make career pivots, leadership pivots, how to grow businesses. So I wrote the book the Code Breaker Mindset to help people build their pattern recognition for effective decision making. Interviewed a series of leaders for those books across 15 industries. Proceeds go to cancer research because along the way my dad died of a very rare form of cancer called leomy's sarcoma. Only 4,000 people globally get that every year. There's no treatment, no cure. When I was a teenager, my adopted mother had died of cancer, so wanted to give back to people, make better decisions and proceeds going to cancer research.

Ron: That's amazing. You know, as you talk through that, I love the way you broke it up into chapters. Um, but that first one you mentioned was a non linear approach that caused you to pivot. What caused that? Was it, did you see something on the other side or was there hunger there? Were you bored or why did that happen?

Chitra Navak: Well, that first nonlinear pivot and you're talking about the journalism pivot or the pivot to go into banking from ey,

Ron: the pivot to going to bank from EY and then you've pivoted again to I'm going to capture all of this and put it on paper.

Chitra Navak: And so EY to banking. And thank you for picking up on that, Ron. I appreciate that the pivot from EY to banking was organic and in that, because I had clients in financial services and I had a colleague who had left EY uh and went into banking and through organic conversations he recruited and convinced me to leave EY and to go into investment banking, to go into banking at Deutsche Bank. Um, and actually technically after ey, I went to a Canadian bank, cibc, working in wealth management or risk management. And then after CIBC I went to Deutsche Bank. So technically that pivot from EYN to cibc, it was through a colleague who, you know, presented a certain career path and I made that transition. The one thing I'll flag though is this, and I think it's a, uh, it's an important point in that when he was recruiting me to go to cibc, I was going from being a revenue generator at ey. Now whilst I was an auditor and consultant at ey, I was client service, right? There was a portion of my requirements which was to go generate new Business. So you are a revenue generator. When I first went to cibc, I was part of a cost center. And for colleagues out there who may be at different companies there, depending on your industry and company culture, there is a dramatic difference. Being a revenue driver versus a cost driver, different performance metrics, different career upside, different compensation upside. And for folks that may be earlier in their journey or even later in their journey, one may not investigate and understand the differences in your career and compensation and other opportunity trajectory and upside by understanding are you part of the revenue equation in a company or a cost equation? And in some industries and companies, being a cost equation doesn't give you the same fruitful upside as being, uh, a revenue contributor. So that was an organic move because a colleague encouraged me to join.

Ron: Wow. And while he encouraged you to join, but you made the decision to join, lots of people get encouraged to do things. Uh, I'm cool. I'll stay here and be bored for the next 15, 20 years or whatever it is. So those kind of things come back. So here's what.

Chitra Navak: But I would say, though, but if I, I would say, though, if I'd been more informed, right? If I'd been more informed and not understanding the difference between a revenue center versus a cost center, in retrospect, I may not have taken that particular trade. It doesn't mean I wouldn't have gone into financial services, or perhaps I would have stayed at ey longer. But if I had to do it all over again at that point, you all, I believe it would have been better for me, um, and as a general comment, to have stayed in that revenue equation or revenue contributor, even if I made a career or industry pivot, to be a part of the revenue equation as opposed to the cost equation.

Ron: So looking back on six chapters as you broke it down, if you had to choose one of those as a defining moment, that that was the anchor to, to pivot and move in a different direction, which one of those chapters would it be?

Chitra Navak: It would definitely be the, the pivot into journalism. Um, and because that was, you know, life to date, life today, that was the hardest pivot I've ever made. Uh, because of three reasons. Number one, scarcity of opportunity in that when I made the pivot into journalism in New York City, the number one media market in the world, there are limited reputable platforms and there are limited chairs, uh, to be on television in front of the camera, right? So in New York City, there's only about 30, 35 jobs doing national and international business news for reputable platforms. I had 1 out of 35 jobs out of 8 billion people on the planet. Right. Extremely finite. It is. It was like almost impossible to get that opportunity, yet I did. And I'm so grateful to God, the universe and the strangers who helped me along the way and those who encouraged me. And by the way, you are one of those who encouraged me. I remember us having a, uh, lunch at a, you know, at, uh, Pretimanger in New York City in midtown. And you said to me, you know what, Chitra? Don't give up. Uh, you know, s. Blank, blank, blank. Just get out there, do it. Who cares who watches your stuff? Who cares what people say? Who cares whether you get the likes or not? Just get out there and do it. Right. And I remember that to this day when I'm doing things. So I thank you for that, Ron. Uh, but that was the most difficult decision. To penetrate and to have 1 out of 35 jobs.

Ron: Wow.

Chitra Navak: Out of 8 billion people. Uh, so the difficulty of penetrating and hitting that extremely, extremely filtered population, that was number one. Number two, going from being a computational business analytic person, etcetera, to still being a computational business analytic person, but developing communication, live television, learning that business from scratch. And I learned that craft ground up. Nobody did the same sexy part of that for me. I learned how to shoot content, lighting, audio, the technical requirements, storytelling. And I would say, number three, alignment to a lifelong passion to serve others. My family structure always cultivated me to volunteer and give to others, right? So when I was in high school, volunteered at the hospital, volunteered at the church. Always was about giving to others, but now in a professional sense, a strong calling to serve others through information. Why? Because I came from a have m not environment. First generation people didn't tell me the unwritten rules. I flagged not knowing revenue versus cost center didn't necessarily have bosses and mentors and sponsors who shepherd me through my entire career. Most people on planet earth, or maybe a lot of people, are not necessarily born with. With the magic of mentors and sponsors, the magic of a great mom and dad or aunts for a nurturing environment, Right? So how do you give people information so they can advocate for themselves? And I felt very passionate about helping people. So how can I help 8 billion people at scale, doing my best to give qualitative, authentic, truthful information to help people figure out how to get from point A to point B. So whilst that was the most difficult pivot, it was one of the most, including writing this book, the code breaker mindset, fulfilling pivots to serve others through Information.

Ron: That story that you just told breaks, uh, right into the book. The code breaker mindset. Because lots of people are struggling today and they're trying to figure out what's next. You pick up the News and there's 25,000 people are laid off working all these kinds of things. But I find that lots of times people are doing things because they're doing things, and they never really think beyond that. Could I do something else? Uh, or maybe they are, I'm going to say, afraid. Walk me through the code breaker mindset. If I'm blocked, mentally, I'm blocked. I'm doing this. I'm afraid of getting that email. I'm doing what I don't want to do. Walk me through the code breaker equation.

Chitra Navak: So the code breaker mindset is pattern recognition. And you know, the headline is, is. It's about three components in any situation. Industry, company, dealing with a person, right? There's always going to be the written rules, but more importantly, the unwritten rules. That which nobody tells you that which might be more ambiguous or opaque. Hidden. You and I might be speaking, but I might have alternative meanings to what I'm saying, to my requirements, my expectations. A company culture may have hidden meanings to requirements, expectations, etc. So it's always. It. There's always unwritten rules. So the first aspect of building pattern recognition is. Is do you understand all the requirements, interpretations, expectations, the hidden, which means the written and the unwritten rules. That's one aspect. The second aspect is there's always going to be pivots, voluntary pivots, and more importantly, the involuntary pivots. So what's a voluntary pivot? Hey, you know what? I chose to go from banking to journalism. I choose that. I want to learn to play an instrument. The flute. I. I want to learn a language. I want to travel. I want to move to another country. I want to be a consultant. Those are voluntary pivots. The involuntary is what most of us face and we don't see it coming. And as a child, I don't know about you, Ron, and all of those watching as a child. We are not cultivated. At least I wasn't that there's going to be more involuntary pivots in your life than voluntary. What's an involuntary pivot? Unexpected health issue. Loved one dying unexpectedly. Job loss, industry changing, company changing. You work for a boss. You're his chief of staff. Unexpectedly, he decides to leave or he gets terminated. You're left out, uh, there, swimming in the Atlantic Ocean with no life jacket. Right? The. The involuntary pivot. And oftentimes we are not monitoring or interpreting the data, the signals in our environment to be able to spot the involuntary pivot coming and know how to equip and prepare ourselves in order to navigate better. So the second block is studying other people as well as ourselves, voluntary versus involuntary pivots and the signals that lead to that. The third block is there's always going to be serendipity in each one of our journeys. And I define serendipity as the intersection of five things. And serendipity is not lucky. Serendipity is one of the most original forms of science and AI, if you will, in the universe. Serendipity is the alignment of five things. Number one, preparation. You've always got to be prepared. Number two, such thing as the right place at the right time. Number three, there is an opportunity, meaning there's an opening. Number four, energy is the energy aligned. And number five, informed intuition, which is your raw pattern into a raw intuition you're born with, plus your life to date. Pattern recognition. It's the alignment of those five things. A quick example. You and I met on a weekend. Someone, uh, we both know through business had a luncheon or a dinner event at their home. You and I were in the buffet line. I did not know you. I looked at you. You looked at me. What do we choose to do? Say hello to the neighbor oftentimes. So you're co located in that moment in the buffet line?

Ron: Yes.

Chitra Navak: How often are you at a conference, at a social event, at a gathering, there's somebody, your neighbor is next to you, and you don't say hello. Right. I'm prepared in that moment to say hello. Timing. The universe put us at that moment, side by side in the buffet line. There was an opportunity, meaning we're there, Right? There's an opening. Do you say hello or not? Now, you could have had negative energy, or we could have had positive energy. There was positive energy. So we, you know. And then your intuition says, you know what? Say hi to this person. I'm just trying to break it down in a very micro level because serendipity is every moment, every day, especially in many of, many of us on this call, in this, uh, conversation. We go to conferences, right? And sometimes you talk to the person, you know, you talk to the person who's your target, and there's a person next to you, and you don't even say hello. And explore what possibility is available. Is that a new friendship, business relationship, philanthropic relationship, career opportunity. So all this to say to Recap. There's written and unwritten rules. There's going to be voluntary and involuntary pivots, and there's going to be serendipity, the alignment of those five things. Preparation, timing, energy, opportunity, informed intuition. That is a framework for pattern recognition, and that is a framework to help inform, Inform your decision making. Let me just sort of pause there before we go further.

Ron: That was, uh, that was a master class that you just walked through. I love the involuntary piece because I've always said I. My term is failures. Maybe I should change that. Involuntary. But here's the key. I found that I've learned more from involuntary than voluntary. You sit back and you look to see what happened. Why did it happen? Could it have gone a different way? If I had to do it all over again, would I approach it the same way? So I always use that. But my, my, my, uh, euphemism for that is the three W is what worked, what didn't work, and what can I do differently next time? And that's how I kind of build upon that. But I love the way you broke it down into those two categories because lots of times people don't really think on that level. We're so busy being about life and running from this to the other. Putting the fire here. Putting a fire here as opposed to sitting back. My mother would always say, sometimes you just got to stop and breathe and you analyze. Go ahead.

Chitra Navak: Yeah. And I, and I think on that point. Right. Uh, and I know your colleague, uh, Ade is behind the scenes. And so if there's an opportunity to pop up the equation that I just mentioned, please do. Otherwise, uh, you know, to everyone out there, if you check out the code breaker mindset, or if you've got a copy while you're watching this, it's on page 37 or roughly around there, you can find the equation. And it's actually on my website, www.chitra.com. just my name, C H I T R A N A W B A T T dot com. You can see it on the book tab. The equation is there. As you're following along this conversation, and you're absolutely right, Ron, in that, at least for myself, the stretch learning is from those involuntary moments. However, a couple of points. Oftentimes, at least for myself in my journey, the involuntary moment when it hits you. For example, there's times when, you know, I was going for a promotion or a compensation upgrade or a new opportunity, and colleagues, uh, thwarted me. Now there's like, thwarting, uh, and there's very Aggressive thwarting. And in many work environments, industries, cultures, any geography around the world, this is not a negative about a company. It's about the people you're dealing with. You can be thwarted in a very strong way. And sometimes that can be very paralyzing. It could be debilitating. There's been situations in my professional journey where I work with some very aggressive, negative folks that definitely were trying to wipe me out. I had to recover from that. That, uh, curse created a certain ptsd, if you will. And I would argue that everybody working in a company, even entrepreneurs, founders, investors, we've all experienced some level of ptsd, whether we like to admit it or not, right? These very traumatic experiences from people. And my point to all of us, an encouragement to all of us, is if I was teaching a child, I'd be building that pattern recognition. And a quick example, if you've got a 2, 3, 4, year old child, you'd be teaching them, you know what? Some days it's going to be sunny. Some days it's going to be rain. Some days it's going to be a snowstorm. You know what? Nothing to be afraid of. Be prepared for the rain. Be prepared for the snowstorm. You know how to go find your umbrella, your rain boots, your raincoat, your snow jacket. In the same way in the workforce as adults, right? You know what? Some days it's going to be sunny. You got a great boss, a great team, you're paid well, you have great upside down. Some days there's going to be folks that are there to thwart you, or your industry is going to be under siege and attack. Whether it's this AI or fictitious AI that's taking all the jobs. And you and I both know there's a lot of false narratives around AI taking all the jobs, right? Whatever it is, your boss doesn't like you. You're working with insecure people that are not there about merit. So much of our journeys, it's not about merit. It is about navigating the politics. And so my encouragement to people is, is, you know what? Somebody will pull the rug out from under you. On a personal note, I have an ex husband.

Henry Vidiarta: Ah.

Chitra Navak: And I'm a survivor of domestic violence. That was not anything I signed up for that found me in my journey. And I had to figure out how to recover, navigate, pivot from that. My father, when he was alive, was very instrumental in helping me get out of that situation. So all this to say personally and professionally, right? The rug will be. I don't hope that for Anybody. But it's inevitable that somebody or some situation will thwart you. But will you be paralyzed? And oftentimes we are paralyzed. We're afraid. It gives us ptsd, it makes us not able to reinvent ourselves or we're not trained. So my encouragement to people is to build that pattern recognition, to spot the thwarting or the disruption before it comes. Build your pivot muscle to know that you can recover, you can problem solve through that difficulty and find your way on the other side. And by the way, how do you do that? Because you're constantly building knowledge bases, building relationship networks, building your own fortitude, building your own analytics to equip yourself on how to deal if it rains, snowstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes in your life.

Ron: You, you, you gave me flashbacks as you walking through those various scenarios. I'm getting flashbacks from each side and doing that. It was, it was, it was amazing. One of the, I, I always comes back, I always come back to, uh, a phrase that I read from the philosopher Mike Tyson. He says, everybody has a plan until they get hit in the face. And that's so true in life because you get up, you got all these plans, business, you're setting up a business, thing's gonna work out, you lose this, it's just, it's like a constant roller coaster.

Chitra Navak: You actually said it, right. The frequency, the severity, the order of magnitude of change. One of the things I talk about in the code breaker mindset is agents of chaos. And one of the agents of chaos is the speed of technology and AI. I actually interviewed in that chapter, I interviewed Dr. Astro Teller who is the co founder, captain, the head of the Moonshot factory. The Moonshot factory is the multi billion dollar innovation engine for Alphabet, also known as Google. Right. And Dr. Astro Teller, he's a founder, he studied artificial intelligence back before artificial intelligence was a thing. His forefathers were Nobel prize winners, uh, brilliant investor, entrepreneur, scientist, innovator. The Moonshot factory is all about non linear, all about 10x20x unlimitedx of innovation. And one of the things he talked about in that chapter is that the rate and pace of change from tech and AI is only become going to become more fast, more non linear, more dynamic and the majority of the earth to the majority of the earth, that could be very scary. And so how do you ride that tsunami? And in his words in that chapter he talked about it being a tsunami. So are you afraid of that tsunami or do you learn to surf that tsunami?

Ron: Right, yeah.

Chitra Navak: And, and, and I flag that because no matter who you are, on planet Earth, I don't care who you are. Even the astronauts that go Artemis, Orion, who go beyond the moon and come back, no one is immune from this. And how do you prepare yourself so therefore, the frequency of change, the order of magnitude, the severity, the intensity, every attribute to describe the level of change is constant every day. So what does that do to us? The second evasion of chaos. We have shrinking bandwidth, right? Because it's too much. Even if you're the most Herculean person, the Zeus on planet Earth, right, It is absorbing your bandwidth. Or we've got scarcity, uh, of, uh, relationships thinning and scarce relationships and ecosystems. Yes, there's a lot of quote unquote relationships, but it's transactional as opposed to deep. Right? Mental health issues, health issues. All of this is taking up our bandwidth. So what does that do? Every day you show up to a situation, are you as fully fueled and fortified as you can be to operate at your best in that moment with your child, parent, colleague, boss, client? Is your bandwidth stretched and thin, and you're dealing with constant change? Whether the change is legitimate, hard change, soft change, artificial change, or the change is your colleague acting up, your neighbor acting up, right? It's too much. But you know what? It's not going away. So how do you build pattern recognition? How do you build pattern recognition to not only navigate better, but pattern recognition to spot? That's going to be drama. Do I want to participate in that or not? I may opt out, and that's okay. I'm going to put my helmet on. This is how I have to deal in that situation. And therefore pattern recognition helps you understand how to preserve your time and energy, fortify your time and energy on how you want to participate or opt out.

Ron: I want to say this to you, and this is personal. We've been knowing each other a long time, but I cannot tell you how proud I am of, um, the way that you, you have looked at situations, learned from different situations, and out of that comes the code breaker mindset. I am so proud.

Chitra Navak: Thank you. Thank you so much. Because I say this, and, you know, it's funny, um, my pastor in New York City, he said this to me once, right when my father died of a rare form of cancer. That was very dramatic and traumatic for me. I was there to look after him, helped him transition, go to the Lord. So grateful to God in the universe to be able to serve my father, who was so pivotal in my life. But coming out of the grief of that, the grief was too much because my Father was like my primary parent. The grief was too much. And at the time as well, there was ah, a little girl in my life, zero to two and a half years old. I had her, Annika. And uh, thought there might have been, it was a second mother to her and I thought I would have been a second mother to her my entire life. But that didn't happen. Uh, and she was no longer able, uh, to be in my life. The grief was too much. The grief was too much. So, and I say that it wasn't just the individual grief of those moments. You talked about Mike Tyson, right? When you're 18 years old and you get knocked down, you get back up 22 years old. But as life goes on, more headwinds, right? And sometimes it can feel like you've got more headwinds than tailwinds. In my journey, even sitting with you right now, I feel like I've had more headwinds than tailwinds in my journey. Yes, I'm grateful to God in the universe for the health, the strength, the ideas, the brain power, etc. But more headwinds than tailwinds. So it's the aggregate, it's the life to date of, of all those headwinds. So at that moment, the life to date of, um, first generation to go to college, university, ey, to investment banking, Investment banking was the loss of my professional innocence, a lot of thwarting in investment banking, the pivoting into tv, consulting, venture capital, et cetera, the loss of my father, the loss of Annika, survivor of domestic violence. The life to date of all those headwinds. And you feel like you can't go on. The grief is too much. You can't go on. You can't go on. So I say this because I said to my pastor in New York City, I can't go on. So it's not about your headwinds are greater or lesser than mine. It's not a competition, not a comparison. It's about your life context. What is difficult for you is what is difficult for you. And it is not for anyone to say, your life is easier than mine, your life is harder than mine. It's not about that. That's your relationship with yourself, God in the universe, or whatever you believe in, that whatever is hard for you is hard for you. So I say this because it was extremely hard for me and I didn't think I could carry on. I did not think I was going to make it in a very real way. And I said, grief is love with nowhere to go. I read that grief is love with nowhere to go. So I go back to first principles for me, which is to serve others. It I'm living, it's because I have a purpose.

Henry Vidiarta: Mhm.

Chitra Navak: It's a very real thing I'm saying to you. I know my dad would not like it if I harm myself. So I have breath, which means I have a purpose. When I have no more breath, it means my purpose is done. What is my purpose? It was always to help others. So I said I'm going to channel that grief, channel that pain, channel all of that. How can I help people through information. Because I am not afraid to be a truth teller. By the way, there's a lot of headwinds when you want to be a truth teller because these environments, these places and spaces don't want you to a. Discover the truth, be a truth teller, find your truth. We all want to live in the politics and the niceties of these environments. Okay. To be a multi trillionaire billionaire, whatever it is you're trying to do, it is hard. That is why that great philosopher, they wrote those books about the art of war. Art of war is every day. And uh, by the way, the art of war is you with yourself, battling your own mental health battle, your own negative self talk versus positive self talk. Because you and I are on the in this situation. I wrote the code breaker mindset. Doesn't mean I don't have my own negative self talk. We all do. But that's the opportunity. So all this just to say mhm. It has not been easy. But I chose to channel the scars on my back from the headwinds, the scars on my back from the thwarting from others. The grief. Love with nowhere to go to helping others make progress, to helping others believe that they can because you can. And to help others take that step. And by the way, the big step might just be that little step. After the grief of my father and Annika, there were some days I did, I felt I couldn't do anything. Brushing my teeth was my big accomplishment for the day. Taking my a shower was a big accomplishment for the day. So I say this just to make it very real for people. Life can be very hard. And some days if uh, brushing your teeth is your big accomplishment, you know what, Celebrate your victory. You're able to put on your clothes. Celebrate your victory. You're able to perform better in your job or conversation with your boss. Celebrate the victory.

Ron: M. You know what you were just walking through because my next question coming up was going to be how do you deal with the days that you're just not feeling it? And you kind of walked us through that. Um, because, I mean, we can get out. You know, I gave a speech. I was in Macedonia, uh, a few weeks back, and I got up and gave this rousing speech. And it was, oh, everybody was coming over. And then I had to go back to the room, had to do a call to call and go, well, and it was like, from here to down to here. How do I do this? Because I got an event to go to tonight at 6 o'. Clock. All the key people were going to be there. And it's kind of like a roller coaster. So my question, question to you is, how do you deal with those days that you're just not feeling. Feeling it? And it's just like, uh, what do I do?

Chitra Navak: Thank you for bringing that up, Ron, because I think that is just so real and so true. And like you said, in a day, in the span of a few hours, right, you went from a high to a low. Uh, right. And that happens all the time. Because, you know, the birds of the universe are there popping our balloons all the time. Right. You know, all the time. It was just like when I got the USA Today bestseller. There's folks out there who are not familiar with how extremely difficult that is to accomplish. And folks are like, okay, anybody could write a book. Anybody could write a USA Today bestseller. Anyone could be an Olympic athlete. You know what? Good for you. I'm not here to prove that to you. Knock yourself out. Um, you write the book, you become the Olympic athlete, you break the world record, you go ahead, you do, you let me focus on me. Because, you know, the haters, the thwarters, the whatever it is. So that can pop the balloon. Or just you, yourself, you yourself, you wake up, you're having a bad day, or in a moment, right? Um, or your perfect coffee that you like every day wasn't. Whatever it is, are the triggers. Whether the trigger is an external trigger or an internal trigger, this is real. And there's no easy answer for that because I don't have it. But I will say this, and this gets to building the muscle, and it is building a muscle over time. Which is why I'm very big about. And I would love to. You know, I'm thinking about writing the code breaker mindset for children. I'm, uh, very big about building this fortitude in the child from young. Because when you get that child 1 years old, 2 years old, 3 years old, and if you're building in this in. In him or her from that age, right? From that age, that I'm a champion. I love myself. I fell down, jump back up. What do you say to yourself, I'm a champion. I love myself. So what do I do in my low moments, even if I had a high moment and the balloon gets pop, or if I wake up not feeling so great or didn't sleep well or whatever's triggered me, right? Um, it's. I'm a champion. I love myself. That's what I go back to now. I might say, I'm a champion. I love myself. And, uh, or thank you, God. Now, for those who may not believe in God, just saying thank you, right? Thank you, thank you. Thank yourself, thank you, thank yourself. I'm a champion. I love myself. It's very simple phrase, and the most simplest of phrase is thank you, and I'm a champion. The hard part is to say it even when you don't feel like it. The hard part. Now, thank you. I'm, uh, breaking it down for people. Thank you. Now, I believe in God, so I will say, thank you, God. And as my pastor in New York City says, when you don't want to pray, when you don't feel anything, just say, thank you, God. I can push myself to say, thank you, God. That I could do. Now I go back to if you're three years old and you're teaching your child from three, when that child becomes 33, 53, 103, 203, right? As part of your muscle memory, just like brushing your teeth, it's part of your muscle memory, right? You don't forget how to brush your teeth. You don't get how to forget how to tie your shoelaces on a bad day. So it's building your positive reinforcement phrase that picks yourself up, right? That because you've got to be your own number one hype man.

Ron: Yeah.

Chitra Navak: You've got to be your own number one hype man. Your own number one love man. You know, when I was. When my father was alive, he said this to me once when he was in New York City. Chitra and I. When he said this to me at the time, I said, you know, dad, the world doesn't work like that. But here's what he said. He said, chitra, you have to be your own mother, father, brother, sister, sister, wife, husband, child, grandmother, best friend, everything to yourself. And you know what I said to him, dad, I said, dad, uh, nobody wants to be Tom Hanks in the movie Castaway on, um, the island of life by yourself. I don't know if folks saw that movie, Tom Hanks, you know, you should send me some of your royalty check because I just gave you a free plug. Uh, here. But in that movie, Cast Away, right, you're by yourself, but that's life. Even if you're living a co. Living, you know, cohabitating with somebody, whatever is the equation, whatever is the arrangement, Right? Right. But it's being your own positive nurturer to yourself. Even in your lowest of moments, you know, you're in that prison cell of life, whatever that looks like for you. But being able to eat out, it's like the toothpaste, right? You think there's nothing left in the toothpaste and you squeeze the, the low bottom, the very bottom, and a little something comes out enough for you to like brush one tooth. Right. It's like that. Being able to squeeze for you to say something positive to yourself, to pop yourself up.

Ron: Mhm.

Chitra Navak: That was longer than you may have intended my answer, but I wanted to answer very truthfully.

Ron: You were in the pulpit, people say amen, Amen, Amen. As you go through, as you were going through, as you were going through all of that. Because what you talked about is basic. Just learning in life and observing and looking and, and believing in yourself. A lot of that's tied in, into everything that you were talking about. But I think lots of times we're looking for, we're looking for guidance from over here. We're looking for guidance from over here. We can have that, mentorships and all. But sometimes it's got to come from you. I've always said, here's one of my things. I said, uh, if the ceilings could talk when you get into bed at night and you've got a thousand and one things running through your mind. If the ceilings could talk as to what you're going through. And then you get it. The next morning you put on the little outfit you go out of. People say, oh my God, so and so. Uh, they don't realize that last night you could not sleep. They don't realize that you've been struggling for two or three days and now you put on a different uniform or you're a new actor. This is a role you're going to play today.

Chitra Navak: Well, and on that note, for me it's the tears. Uh, it's the uh, it's the floor of my apartment knows my tears. Right. Uh, because especially, and for those who may be going through grief or loss, or by the way, grief can come from losing a job, losing A great boss, uh, not getting the economic opportunity. Grief comes from a variety of different scenarios, right? A friendship that no. Is no longer, you know, grief comes from a number of different places. And so for me, it is the floor, uh, of my apartment knows my tears, right? And when my father died, when, you know, I was working, consulting at the time, I would show up to client dinners, the conferences, I would get on stage, do my podcast, whatever the case may be. And I'm smiling, right? But no one knows on the inside what you're going through. And it's the micro moments. But, you know, there's something, you know, you're out there speaking at, uh, Unilever. I've been speaking at companies, corporations. I've got one coming up next week in Life Sciences, you know, large global company. And here's the thing. You know, one of the things I was asked to speak at, at that company is around, you know, know this notion of prioritization of innovation, right? The use of AI and all these kind of fancy things that everybody talks about. But think about, think about this for a moment. Whether Your company is one person, 100 people, 20,000 people, 100,000 people, or, you know, a million people, it's not about this epiphany in the big. Oh, we're now, We've now unlocked the big epiphany of how we're going to innovate. That's not it. Right? It's not about the macro. Yeah, sure. It's really about the micro. It's the micro moment of unlocking the positivity, the possibility. In every human in your shop, if every human in your shop felt loved, if every human in your shop felt that they were being evaluated on merit, if every human in your shop felt that they were supported, if every human in their shop, in your shop felt. Felt that they were being nurtured to be, good is the new average. And I'll talk about in the moment. Good is the new average. You know, I remember you have the bell curve right, left tail, below average, average. And then you've got the right tail, above average. Well, in the age of AI, the interpretation of that bell curve has shifted. Good is the new average. Good is actually your left tail. Your minimum performance you require from everybody now needs to be good. Which company on planet Earth can say that the minimum level of their lowest performer in their shop is good? There is not a company that can say that, not a company that can say that. But I flag this because if you are an organization where your lowest performer is good, your Lowest performer feels like it's a positive environment. Your lowest performer feels encouraged. The linearity and uh, more importantly the non linearity of ideas. Creativity, productivity, that will be unlocked. You cannot even compute what that looks like. That is natural quantum computing.

Ron: Yeah.

Chitra Navak: Okay. It's not this AI stuff. Yeah, sure, of course, AI, but the ne. But that is a rich. If you can love if and, and, and what I'm talking about might seem like virtually impossible, but why? If I was a CEO of a company, if I was running a, a unit, if I was responsible for a team of five people, whatever it is, how do I make every single one of my people, myself included, feel positively reinforced? That is the original quantum computing nonlinear outcome. It is available in every human in your shop. But we don't tap into that.

Ron: So I'm going to throw this out to you. We're coming up on time. But I want to throw one question out to you before we, before we close out. If you had a speaking opportunity and it was a room full of so called big shots, CEOs, C level boards or whatever it is, what, what are a couple of things that you would want them to walk away with and they're trying to engage a workforce. Workforce is delusion because of outside forces, inside forces. How would you corral that level of thinking to uh. I'm not saying everyone is going to go to the high performance level, but how would you, what, what message would you give them?

Chitra Navak: I think three things. And uh, and I was going to say I realized I was getting very passionate just now, but my passion is my passion for the people. My passion is my passion. Because every human is born with positive possibility. Every human is born with positive possibility. Your opportunity for yourself is to, is to discover, explore and nurture that. And glory be the day if you have a nurturing environment in your personal life or your professional life that taps into that. So that is the, the uh, setup for what I'm about to say, which is three things. Number one, force of nature. Every human is a force in nature. And you as a company, a board, etc. Are you tapping into the force of nature in every individual in your shop? Because every human is a force of nature. Right? Right. What does that mean? In a very specific way, because people might say, okay, force of nature. That sounds kind of like puff pastry. It's not puff pastry as Ron knows nothing about me m as puff pastry, but substantive, which is the baby is original force in nature. From the time the baby is in the mother's womb to the time the baby is born. A very quick, uh, analogy here. The child is born 6 months, 12 months old, boy or girl. The child is a little tiny creature. The child is surrounded by five foot, six foot, seven foot creatures. The child, you tell the child, eat this way. Don't do that, don't do that. What does that six month, 12 month old little child do? Six and 12 months, not even 20 pounds. The child says no. They throw down the bottle. They say no. How many of us have had little babies come up and hit you? No, Right. Why are they not afraid that we were going to pummel them? They're not even with the stranger. They're not afraid. The baby is original force in nature. So force of nature. How do you tap into the force of nature in every human in your shop, Tap into their unlimited positive possibility? Because it unlocks that original quantum computing that I was sharing in that prior example. Number two, study the outliers. Because today's outliers, tomorrow's status quo, everything that status quo right now was an outlier. Education was an outlier. At one point, uh, wearing clothes as an outlier, being on this YouTube Zoom live stream was an outlier. And people negate, downplay, dismiss the outliers. But you know what the outlier is the nonlinear innovation, if you pick, quote, unquote, the right or appropriate outlier for your industry company team. So study the outliers. Cultivate in your people to build the pattern recognition where every man or woman in your operation, part of their performance metric is to find an outlier, research it, and decide what you want to invest and pursue. Because the outlier is your way to nonlinear innovation and therefore nonlinear value creation, nonlinear upside, which everybody needs in this age of AI. And the third underpins everything we're talking about, which is, and by the way, these are all chapters in my book, the Code Breaker Mindset, a chapter on force of nature, chapter on study the outliers. And number three, and you said it earlier, Ron, status quo is not your friend. Yeah, okay. Status quo, thinking status quo, operating status quo. Could be not loving yourself, right? Status quo is not your friend in any context from kindergarten to the moment you come off the planet. Because whether you like it or not, the forces of change are happening. And so there's an opportunity for you to cultivate more knowledge, different knowledge, hobbies, relationships, environments, careers, whatever it is that you find enriching and positive, fulfilling or fueling to your life. But status quo is not your friend. And part of that means don't listen to anybody around you that says no, right? Because oftentimes people will say, nope, we can't do that. No, we've tried that. No, they. No, no, no. Well, is it data driven or is it them coming with their perception or manipulation? So don't listen to other people's. No, because that has nothing to do with you. So what if they tried it 55 times in 1955? Well, you know what today is 20, 26. Maybe the idea might have legs. Maybe it's a different set of ingredients, different chronology, uh, of orchestration, different methodology. But oftentimes there's so many headwinds and naysayers. Right? Encouraging the status quo or, or dismissing or negating or neutralizing the individuals that come with the outlier thinking or the outlier attributes or come with the force in nature self. The world is designed to actually beat people to stay in a box. So the opportunity is force in nature. Study the outliers, study status quo is not your friend.

Ron: Well, I think the world is, uh, better off with people growing like yourself, uh, because you've taken all of those chapters and the final product is the code breaker mindset, which is a roadmap to how do you. For life, not only for business, but for life, because it's all a part of the same thing. And I think, uh, you've captured that and put it into a coherent, ah, flow that works through all the situations that we deal with as human beings. Because one of the keys to building the CEO series, when we see someone here, we're thinking, and you mentioned this earlier, we're thinking linear. You go to college, you get on the elevator, you suppress first floor, you get your first job, you press second floor, you get a promotion, you test third floor, it was all straight, it was all linear. No longer first, first floor could be there. And all of a sudden you laid off, starting all over again. Or you find that this is not what you want to do. And then you start back again, back on the elevator, first floor again. And you keep going through these changes. And I think what you've talked about was a way that you can kind of coalesce this, and it's kind of a Bible, so to speak, for being successful in life.

Chitra Navak: Thank you for that. And that's why I say, you know, it's two things, right? It's studying your own journey, but studying the journey of everybody around you, whether the people around you, you view them to be, quote, unquote, successful or not successful, whether it's prime ministers, presidents, prime ministers, people, the astronauts that go to the Moon. Whoever the person is, study their journeys, understand what, what were the written and unwritten rules they had to figure out? What were the pivots, voluntary and involuntary, they had to make. And every human on the planet. I don't care who you are, and I will debate this until I, till my last breath. I don't care who you are. Whether you're born into billionaire parents or not. Everyone has benefited or experienced serendipity. And by the way, serendipity can be both headwind and tailwind. But everyone has experienced serendipity. Those are the elements in everybody's journey. And, and if you study that about other people, study it in yourself, it informs you on, uh, the ingredients for you to put together, the methodology, the chronology that you want to follow to get from point A to point B. Because I wrote this book to help people. I desperately want to help people. That's one of my life purposes, right? And because it is possible I have endured and worn the helmet, um, to endure the headwinds of life and therefore how do I help others do the same and get from point A to point B? And that's why it's in the Code Breaker mindset, um, which is available everywhere, all over the world. Whether it's in uh, Barnes and Noble, Amazon independent bookstores, um, audiobooks, proceeds go to cancer research. And you can find more information on my website chitranabat.com and check out the Code Breaker Mindset podcast, uh, which is on my website. Social Media, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, all the places. But you know, and welcome for everyone to connect with me on LinkedIn and social media. It's just my name, Chitra Nabat. Love to continue the conversation and help people because whoever you are, wherever you are, you can get from point A to point B, even if it seems impossible. I know because I was there. But it's about pattern recognition to inform your decision making on what is the best path for you and what is a good use of your time. And by the way, it's how you define, not about how I define how you define what is the best use of your time, the best path for you and what is enrichment for you.

Ron: You know what, this is a, this is a movie. You know, you, this, this, this, this is a movie. I mean, I mean the stories that you've talked through, this, this can take it to a different level beyond the book because there's life, life's lessons in that. So something to think about. But I'll see you on next Wednesday is Wednesday night. Wednesday night is the event is the next Wednesday.

Chitra Navak: Yeah. And in a couple of weeks. Yeah, in a couple of weeks.

Ron: A couple of weeks. Yeah. I'll see you then. But thank you so much for, for being a guest. And, uh, you told the story of the essence of what the CEO series is about. And, um, I want you to hang on as we close out because there's some something I want to discuss with you. And

Chitra Navak: I was gonna say one last thing to everybody. Do not let anyone put a ceiling on your life. Right. Do not let anyone put a ceiling on your life. It's your life.

Ron: Thank you so much. Hang on.

Chitra Navak: Thank you so much.

Ron: Thank you. Thank you.

Chitra Navak: Take the CEO series with you anywhere, anytime. All episodes are now available on Apple podcasts, Spotify and major streaming platforms.

Ron: It's not just an interview, it's a masterclass in leadership.