IAM2060 – CEO and Founder Helps Managers Unlock the Full Potential of their Teams

In this episode, we have Projjal Ghatak, founder of OnLoop in 2020. JJ’s fundamental belief is that businesses are about people, and the way you make businesses great is to bring the best out of your people.

Projjal discusses the importance of driving talent outcomes through a five-layer hierarchical model called Collaborative Team Development or CTD. He emphasizes the use of technology to support the human aspect of managing talent.

The conversation highlights the importance of self-awareness, struggle, and execution in leadership and entrepreneurship.

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Projjal Ghatak Teaser 00:00

The needs of where each person needs help likely moves week on week and moves person to person. And most managers are not necessarily calibrating that on a regular basis.

And so with our platform, we make sure that managers have a visibility and an understanding of what's happening across those five layers. And through our next actions engine, we then prompt managers to take action along those five layers based on where the most impact will take.

Intro 00:33

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 01:00

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today, Aprojjal JJ Gathak. Projjal, excited to have you on the show.

Projjal Ghatak 01:10

Thank you for having me, Gresh. It's good to be here.

Gresham Harkless 01:13

Excited to have you on and talk about all the awesome things that you're doing. And of course, before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about JJ Projjal so you can hear about those awesome things. And prior to founding OnLoop, Projjal spent three and a half years at Uber in a variety of roles, including Leading Strategy and Operations for Business Development globally, Leading Strategy and Planning for the APAC rides business, and the GM of the Philippines ride business.

Besides Uber, he has also spent time raising debt and equity from New York hedge funds for an Industrial Conglomerate and Strategy Consulting in Southeast Asia from Accenture and in early stage companies in Latin America, BlueKite, and Elm Market prior to that. Somewhere along the way, he spent two years at Stanford getting an MBA.

And one of the things that I absolutely love about what Projjal or JJ is doing is that so many times we think that we have to choose either or and everything that he's building, you don't have to choose either or. You can have both and be able to convert and have technology and also marry that with the human aspect and bring those two things together as a really phenomenal space.

But one of the things I really loved about Projjal when I was reading a little bit more about this and he prepared for this interview, he said his lifelong mission is to unlock of out of each worker's full potential, and he feels privileged to work on that every single day. So, Projjal, excited to have you on the show.

Are you ready to speak to the I  AM CEO  Community?

Projjal Ghatak 02:31

Yes, absolutely.

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Gresham Harkless 02:35

Perfect. Let's get it started then. So to kick everything off, what I wanted to do was rewind the clock a little bit, hear a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

Projjal Ghatak 02:43

Sure. So I started OnLoop, which is the first company I've ever founded in 2020, a few months after I had left Uber. And I think one of the most constant threads of my entire career is a fundamental belief that businesses are about people, and the way you make businesses great are to bring the best out of your people.

However, in my entire career I also was woefully frustrated with the tools and approaches and processes that managers had to go through in order to bring out the best in those people. And in many ways, it felt like compliance processes, so things like performance management or sort of check boxes around learning and development that didn't really look at things from the lens of a manager. It looked at things from a lens of a functional user and that might be HR or a different function.

While on the other hand, we had seen task management really accelerate in its sophistication to tools like Jira or Notion or Trello or Asana, and then more recently, products like Zoom and Slack that made getting work done a whole lot better. And that's because about 10 or 15 ago years ago, there was a decoupling of IT and engineering.

So engineering, design, product, all of these functions were no longer seen as IT. They were seen as DP Strategic Functions that innovated versus IT was what kept the machines running. And that decoupling led to people building products for the end user, and we just haven't quite seen that decoupling happened the same way when it comes to talent.

And we club HR or Operations or Strategic org work and Behavioral Psychology, all in the same thing, and means that we don't get the requisite attention around it. And so for me, I really wanted to build a company and am building a company that's incredibly focused on driving talent outcomes, but from the lens of a manager or a leader that runs that organization and very much focused on how do people give you ROI and how do you make sure you get the most out of what is your biggest asset and for many businesses, your biggest cost line item, and that's your people.

Gresham Harkless 05:18

Nice. I absolutely love that. And so I wanted to drill down a little bit more, hear a little more on what that looks like, how you're serving clients, how it works. Can you take us through what that experience is?

Projjal Ghatak 05:27

Yeah. So a lot of our work ends up being grounded in a five layer hierarchical model we developed, and we call that Collaborative Team Development or CTD in short. And, essentially, it has five hierarchical layers to it, and I think the crux of it is really in the hierarchy. So the five layers are Energy, Goals, Celebrate Feedback, Improvement Feedback, and Ongoing skills and Development.

And really distilling it down for managers to realize that if you have four, six, eight direct reports, each of those direct reports have a very different set of present needs based on how they're performing along that hierarchy. So, for example, if someone's going through a mental health challenge or something at home or they're new to an organization and feel incredibly overwhelmed, then managing things at the energy layer and unpacking what's going on there is the most important piece.

For someone who's not even crawling yet, giving them improvement feedback on what they can do better is actually gonna further demotivate them than actually help them out, and you need to operate at a much more basal or foundational level to get them to a better place.

The next layer above that is goals. And, actually, goals constitute a very, very large chunk of performance. And we activate about 40% of how we think about the whole framework to goals. And what we see in most organizations is that while they are good at setting out company goals, so they're able to articulate what the organization needs to get from the beginning of the year to the end of the year and even break that down, maybe in some cases, to teams or departments, it very rarely trickles down to the individual.

And so most individuals don't have a a sense of clarity on what are the five or eight things in terms of targets, projects, or skills that they're actively working on and how to prioritize between them. And one of the core things we do with the customer is to ensure that every individual has a clear articulation of what are those three to five target of project goals they're working towards or a skill goal that they need to get better at.

And, typically, managing energy and managing goals are if you just do those two things, you can get decent performance out of every person in the organization. And people often are like, oh, this person does this thing not that well, etcetera, but that is lip service over does this person actually understand where they move the needle, and have we actually articulate and distill that down and broken that up the right way.

And if you have those two layers, then the next three layers drive and sustaining performance. So the layer on top of that is, is this person receiving enough recognition in terms of what they're doing well to be able to clearly articulate what their superpowers or strengths are. And, actually, I was talking to a woman who runs IBM's talent transformation practice today, and there's a guy called Keith Ferrazzi.

I think he was the first pioneers of strength-based development that, actually, it's a lot more powerful to know what you're good at versus what you can get better at. And the more time you spend using your strengths, the more productivity an organization gets out of you. And, actually, that re-energizes you because you're actually doing things that you're accelerating.

And then the last two layers, which is constructive feedback to identify blind spots and then learning new skills, and those can be behavioral skills or can be technical skills, then ensures that people feel like they're learning and growing and getting better. And all of those five components are key to drive high performance.

But the needs of where each person needs help likely moves week on week and moves person to person. And most managers are not necessarily calibrating that on a regular basis. And so with our platform, we make sure that managers have a visibility and an understanding of what's happening across those five layers. And through our next actions engine, we then prompt managers to take action along those five layers based on where the most impact will take.

Gresham Harkless 10:18

Nice. I appreciate you so much in in breaking that down.

Projjal Ghatak 10:20

And that's what we've been able to take so much inspiration from other aspects of life or other spheres. And, unfortunately, because corporate tools get sold for functionality versus experience, they've been massively under-served by tech.

And so consumer tech ends up being much more experientially-focused because in order to make money, you have to use the goddamn thing. But in business, you just sell it. Whether people use it or not becomes secondary. And so people's energies get focused on selling it versus building it for usage.

And as a software company, we think about ourselves much more as a consumer company in terms of driving behavior. And so nothing that we're doing is naturally radically new as a concept. We've just stitched a few things together and applied it to the workplace, and then magic happens.

Gresham Harkless 11:23

Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely magical. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I wanna ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or even a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Projjal Ghatak 11:36

Yeah. One of the I think in many ways, if you ask me what what makes a good CEO, like, so much about it is mindset and being able to reset where your head is no matter what situation it is. And what I found is listening to high quality content while being on the move just resets my mind.

Something that's intellectually engaging, and it immediately gets me out of the funk I'm in, allows you to reset around it. And in many ways, like, the brain's a muscle, and so if it feels like it has a kink in it, you just have to get it back into a different dynamic. And so for me, intellectually stimulating content while walking resets where my head's at.

Gresham Harkless 12:35

Yeah. So you might have already touched on this, but I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget.

A little bit more word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell your favorite client, or if you hop into a time machine, you might tell your younger business up.

Projjal Ghatak 12:49

Yeah. I think people forget that a lot of leadership or management or entrepreneurship goes back to a deep self awareness and a deep understanding of who you are and what makes you tick. And I think that most journeys that are meaningful are full of struggle.

And ultimately, a struggle that you believe is worthwhile is a good struggle. And when you are in a good struggle, you persevere and gives you grit, gives you resilience. So much of what people talk about in entrepreneurship, but it's almost the output.

But the input really is sort of really doing something that comes from a place of high conviction and comes from a deeper place. I think things done for the pursuit of money wear out and makes it harder to endure. But when you do it from a place that is deeper, it's easier to sustain.

Gresham Harkless 13:52

Yeah. I would definitely agree with that. And so now I wanna ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And our goal is to have different, quote, unquote, CEOs on the show. So, Projjal, JJ, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Projjal Ghatak 14:04

If you think about CEO and break it down, it's Chief Executive Officer, right? And I think the core word there is execute and execution, which is deliver on a plan. And that plan being set out by a CEO and its shareholders, usually represented by a board.

And I think that a CEO ultimately needs to achieve results and achieve outcomes and know how to organize and allocate resources to achieve that outcome. And a lot of people talk about vision, and I think, again, vision is one of these things that are overrated, and execution is one of these things that are underrated.

And I think Einstein said this as someone attributed to him that that vision without execution is hallucination, and I think it's incredibly true. And I don't think having a lofty vision is that hard. I think a lot of people can have lofty visions. Saying that you wanna get to Mars is not hard, but then figuring out what is the right sequence of steps to get there, hell a lot harder.

And I think very, very good CEOs and Lee Gon Yu, who founded Singapore and made Singapore where it is, was probably one of the best CEOs ever, but not in a company context because he had a very clear vision of where he wanted to get Singapore to from where it was, but then was able to really execute and really focus on all of the pieces that needed to be put together.

And I think today, we lack that combination in people and people who are able to have clarity of vision, but then quality of execution to follow-up on their vision.

Gresham Harkless 15:47

Yeah. I love that perspective. So, JJ, truly appreciate that definition. Of course, I appreciate your time even more.

So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know, and of course, how best people can get a hold of you, find about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

Projjal Ghatak 16:05

Yeah. I think LinkedIn's the best way. JJ Ghatak or Projjal Ghatak will find you, will find me on LinkedIn, and please feel free to add me or follow me or send me a message.

Gresham Harkless 16:15

Awesome. Awesome. And of course, to make that even easier, we'll have that links and information in the show notes as well. So thank you so much again, JJ. Appreciate your time, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest day.

Projjal Ghatak 16:23

No. Thank you for having me.

Outro 16:25

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CBNation and Blue16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Want to level up your business even more? Read blogs, listen to podcasts, and watch videos at CBNation.co. Also, check out our I AM CEO Facebook group. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless, Jr. Thank you for listening.

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