PRAXIS 2023 - Roopa Unnikrishnan

Thank you, Kirubai. That was a lovely introduction. I'll tell you a secret about Kiru is that every year he takes on something that makes him uncomfortable. For me, it's about expanding the mind. I think it's physical as well with you. Thank you, Amit. You've invited me to a fabulous stage and an absolute sea of amazing professionals in front of me. Thank you to my parents who are here today. It's such a pleasure. As any good Indian child, I will say everything to you. Everything I've done is thanks to you. But there's a lot going on. Firstly, Tamil... no one? Okay, I won't try the whole speech in Tamil because you'll be paying me not to do that. Today I'll sort of kick off the session as a non-PR or comms professional. In many ways, I am your client and your customer. I'm the person in the C-suite who is trying to often make change happen, make transformation happen. Because at the end of the day, after a certain point in your career, any executive, that's all you do. You make change happen and you try to ensure that you communicate in a way that brings your organization or your industry or your customer along. I'll share with you a couple of thoughts about how and where I've seen communications done in an amazing fashion, when communicators and PR professionals have actually been serious and solid partners to an executive leadership team, and also share maybe times when things may not go quite the way they planned. I'll start with an example. It's a complex messaging world today. I assume many of you saw the Tim Cook Mother Nature video. Because guess what? There's 50 million tons of e-waste generated every year on this Earth. 12% of it is smartphones, 50% of it is smartphones, computers, gadgets. I don't wear a smartwatch. I do wear a smart ring which I've had for 15 years now, still works. People are basically saying, 'Big whoop, Tim Cook.' Right? Authenticity. Where's the authenticity in all of this? What's the strategy here? Kind of cozying up, telling you a kind of fun story. And is it truly a sustainable story? They're talking about 2030 when they get to a green product. So the next seven years of pretty much non-green products and they're going to pump it out there. So as somebody literally, like my CEO and I, we literally looked at each other as we watched this and he said, 'Yeah, this is the guy who puts out more than a million phones a month into the hands of people who are tweeting rage.' That's the more complex story out there, correct? And for somebody to have actually created that video and put it out there, I have to ask, did you think of the whole story? So I'm probably telling you a bit of an unpopular point of view, but it's real. It's certainly a real way that when you're sitting in a leadership seat, you really have to stop and say, 'Have I thought about all the key stakeholders out there?' It's not just this fun LinkedIn post group that I have to go out and all my fanboys, the fanboys will fan or fan girls will fan no matter what. It's the people who actually you're trying to bring along in a more authentic fashion. You really have to stop and ask that question. So let me give you a bit of a history. Kirubai, thank you again for a great introduction. Just so you know, it's international athlete, not national. I'm just kidding. God, I say it. But yes, as an athlete that represented India, you kind of get to see and hear voices that are actually different from what you would see elsewhere. Because I played a sport at a time when India was asking its children mostly to study. Certainly a South Indian girl wasn't expected to lift up a rifle. So you get to be used to listening to the edge, the sort of signals from the edge. And as communicators, that's what I would advocate you do. I also grew up in India and was thrown into a pretty new environment in Britain where I studied. Then I went to New York where I pretty much knew no one. And then I got to travel to many places including some stints working in places like China for a couple of months. So being a little bit of an outsider, again, you start amping up your ability to really engage with new stories slightly differently because you hear something and you don't toggle to what everyone believes. You kind of have to ask the question, 'What are they talking about?' I've also had an opportunity to work across companies where I've seen good communications done and terrible communications done. And now I'm at a company where our core is to say we are in the business of creating trusted solutions, improving lives. And I can tell you we take that motto really seriously as a leadership group. I'm in charge of strategy and acquisitions. And every time we make an acquisition, one of the first things I did was I took our criteria for making acquisitions and I said, 'Let's make sure that every time we do an acquisition, we've actually thought through the implications on our customers, on Earth, on our employees.' And we do try to make sure that we are testing for good. Now, that kind of attitude, what does consistent delivery look like when you're in that kind of a company? And what are you communicating? Your comms are really strong. Companies thinking about returns on capital over a long period of time, ensuring that whatever you do, doesn't matter what's happening in the world. COVID hits, you know, the world explodes, nobody wants to buy medical devices, there's a war in Russia, these things happen. Can you actually still build a sustainable business and messaging that actually weathers those storms? Are you able to do M&A in a way that actually feels authentic to the companies you're buying as well as the people inside of your company? Because you need to actually be building a culture that is actually quite inclusive and cohesive. You need to make sure that your story, the story you tell, the strategic story and the mission works across leadership changes because leadership changes are inevitable. And it doesn't matter what the market's doing. And more than anything else, you need to manage reputation. Reputation today. So what is competitive advantage? I'll talk to you about a few things about how strategy has evolved. In early days, you said, okay, competitive advantage comes from being better than the competition. It could be because of cost, it could be because of better product sets, ensuring that you have some kind of structural advantage or capabilities, different culture, different kinds of people, the kinds of resources you use, are you being internationally available, etc. And then what do you bring to the table that allows you to have overweighted growth? So what are we investing in? So in essence, what you're trying to do is you're trying to make sure we can have profitable growth. So returns, and Wall Street or Bombay Street actually rewards you for this growth and you do it in a way that you're creating year-on-year value. So that was the simplest way to think about strategy. Strategy 1.0. Strategy 2.0 is, you know, and that allows you to say, okay, I've done my job, I'm creating revenue, this revenue creates free cash flow, I'm able to invest it. Strategy 2.0, you have to start thinking about, hey, am I listening to my customer? This is where, you know, is Tim Cook actually telling the right story? Am I listening to the customer? What is my competitor up to? And let's do a little bit of game theory. Because at the end, sometimes, depends on what you do, but sometimes your company, your client is working with only a certain finite amount of mental space. There's only so much attention you have rights to. So can you actually get an overweighted advantage? So some game theory. And finally, you have to figure out if you're in it for the long haul. My job, pretty much every single time I've joined a company, the first thing I do is a 7 to 10-year view. What is coming around the corner? You won't be able to see everything, but let's de-risk as many things as possible. So you have to try and think through. So right now, a few years ago, I was laying out 2020. What is 2020? Now I write what is 2030. Soon enough, I'll be writing multiple documents that talk about what is 2040. But the point is, you have to be a bit of a futurist. So this is strategy 2.0. We're back to being, though, now in a 3.0. The Apple Mother Nature video really makes me think that the communicator didn't stop to say, 'Where does Apple make its money and is this the right way to be communicating?' They made this big splash about sustainability rather than actually thinking through if my job is to be communicating the way we make new Apple products and get the best value out of Apple products, how do we actually do that? Because there's better ways to talk about sustainability than having Mother Nature swing by and talking about 2030 emission goals. So yes, you do have to know where your money comes from. You do need to know ESG, where's sustainability and telling the right sustainability story. I'd much rather have had Tim Cook say, 'Guess what, your iPhone, I'm going to redesign it so it lasts you five more years and here's how we're going to make sure it's compelling enough because I'm going to give you more services, it's going to be more evergreen. You're going to actually, yes, I'm going to ask you to pay a little more in a SaaS model, but it's going to really have added value year on year.' No, what does he do? He forces you to buy a new product because he's built in obsolescence. Companies like IDEX, we try to build in longevity because our key is, you know, we might ask you to pay a little extra upfront because we're going to give you something that lasts for 25 years. That's a very different sustainability outcome right there. So I think there's a way of talking about understanding your world and being true and authentic to that. Diversity and inclusion. Apple put an African-American woman up there as Mother Nature. Anyone want to take a guess about how many African-American women are in the leadership table at Apple? All right. So authenticity. Technology, AI is the hot word. I mean, I couldn't possibly come up and put a presentation up without AI in it. Not kidding though. What's happening with AI? You're starting to see ways that you're doing business that actually are going to have to transform across the value chain. And yet you also need to respect that you have a pretty strong business no matter what it is. You don't have to let AI eat your breakfast and your lunch. Because AI is, no matter what you tell me now, I'm on team human. We actually still can outthink and outdo AI like that because we are actually better. What AI does is a certain type of pattern recognition. It's kind of stupid pattern recognition. So you really need to actually be able to tell your story that doesn't fall to these technology crisis pieces. And here's a piece that we don't hear as much in the US and I don't know if it's taken off much in India. It's big in Europe. And so if you're communicating in Europe, you have to kind of really think through what this means. There's a concept called non-growth. It isn't stagnation. It's actually the idea that you don't want to put more physical stuff into your system or out of your system. Basically kind of a zero-waste idea. And that means not just products and raw materials, it's people, it's technology. You want to actually improve your technology without creating unnecessary churn on the front end or waste on the back end. So in other words, it's not about saying year on year I'll sell 50,000 more or 100 million more iPhones. It's about saying actually we'll probably sell the same number of iPhones, but they'll last longer, they'll evolve, they'll have software that changes. And maybe that's not even more. I might even get to a point where I'm selling zero new iPhones. They're just going to be better and I'm going to get revenue that actually helps us evolve and innovate without actually having to add waste to the system. And that's a concept that I think that you all should know might actually catch on. It certainly started in the 1970s. It's certainly catching on in Europe. Like every good idea, it takes a while to just state. And then authenticity. This is a word I'll sort of say multiple times. Go back to your roots. I think we talked about really understanding the mission and vision of companies and organizations. Truly understand what you believe in. So now strategy is a much more complex story to tell than just 'here's how I make money' or 'look at me, aren't I cool', which are currently usually the ways people try to talk about their business. It has to be a little more authentic, a little more nuanced. I tell you this story. I say this because at the end of the day, as communicators, it's not just your customers you want to keep. The PR firm, the communicator, has to play a critical role in engaging with your people. That's the team that I met about 25 years ago. I was part of a founding team of a consulting firm. We still meet. This is photos from, sorry, it's quite blurry, photos from after the firm was bought and the firm doesn't really exist anymore. We were bought by Booz and it doesn't really exist. We still meet 20 years after that and we still engage with each other. It's because we truly believe that we were making a shift in the way strategy gets done. Simple enough idea, but every one of us, and by the time I left, the firm was bought, it was about 300 people across the globe. People actually still believed in the mission and values. And that's because every leader, after a certain point, 80% of their time was spent communicating and engaging with the people in the firm. So that's a key part of it. So we are in a world where tried and true ideas need to be evolved. You need to still talk about where the dollars come from, but you're really talking about much more existential change. Is the world going to exist as we know it? Are we going to be swept away by multiple earthquakes and tsunamis? These are the things in the minds of Gen Zers and beyond. So you really are going to have to take a much more nuanced view. So you're building compelling narratives. Every organization, you need to have a very compelling way to tell your story in a way that gives you an inspiring vision and also resonates with your stakeholders. But stop and think about all the stakeholders around you. You also need to create a bit of a plan because it's a much more nuanced plan now. It's not just about pushing it out there, getting into the big broadcast spaces. Some of the more effective communication plans are actually very focused. There are people who've actually gotten to great success by working with just the mommy bloggers because those are the ones they knew they would get to the right purchases, the right influencers. That's all they needed to succeed. Warby Parker, it didn't really need a big advertising campaign. All they did was they created a bunch of influencers and celebrity endorsers who started walking around wearing glasses and suddenly Warby Parker was a real brand. It wasn't just some guy and gal in a Manhattan red brick house. They were a guy and gal in a Manhattan red brick house, but they made it happen by being really smart about what is that campaign going to look like. It's going to be social. And then ensure that you're measuring and analyzing impact the right way. So once you've decided on this plan, it's not always about share of voice. It's a much more nuanced game that we can play and that you should play. But this is the strategic communicator. I would argue that you actually have to think more strategically and you have the opportunity to be the more strategic influencer. Think about what truly is your company or your client's competitive advantage. Don't worry about telling 80% of that story that everyone tells. Tell that 20% that makes them different, unique, valuable. I'd much rather Tim Cook had talked a little bit more about how they're designing innovative products. Because guess what, that is authentic. That's what they're doing. Do it. And that's a pretty compelling story. Stick to it. Don't tell a sustainability story that can't hold water. Figure out your competitive advantage, tell that story, or figure out where the world is going and change your strategy. One of the two. But don't put one foot in each camp because the camps are going separately. You're going to fall. So you have to think about what is that competitive advantage, compelling narratives, plan and measure, and help manage change. You are active partners to somebody like me sitting in a C-suite trying to help, in my case, I have to help the employees of my company, my peers on my leadership team, and the leaders and people in the companies that I am hoping to acquire. I need all of them to know why we are the place to be, we are the company to be trusted. I can't do it by myself. I need strong communicators, strong partners to make it happen. And that's where I think folks like you can make an immense, immense impact. So what are the foundational skills? Make sure that you actually get a seat at the strategic table. What does that require? Get really hyper-focused on that competitive objective, that competitive advantage. Talk it every day. Make sure that you have clarity and alignment from your leadership team and make it two-way communication. Don't always be the receiver. Challenge, engage. The best communicator I've worked with actually was somebody I didn't stay there long because it wasn't clear that the message was believed in by everyone. But the person I worked with, she actually had a seat at the table because she would say, 'Why? Why not? Who are you trying to tell this to?' And she pushed me, pushed the leadership team to really engage around the question. And the result was a much more evolved way of telling the story. But also, I think she helped improve our strategy. That should be part of the role you take on. It takes courage because you're talking to often, like I know in India, you have a lot of companies and clients that are led by iconic leaders, leaders who are used to actually just putting out a dictat. If you were to actually stop and say, 'Can you explain that to me? Here's how I see it,' do it with authenticity. Most leaders are actually open to stopping and engaging. So I would really encourage you to do it because as a communicator, you have power and you have also a skill around storytelling that's essential for leadership. Compelling and authentic storytelling. Integrate deeply strategic messaging with a stakeholder map that is really nuanced. Tell the story from the perspective of the stakeholder. Tim Cook, yes, I'm going to use the example again, standing there talking to Mother Nature, not compelling. What would be interesting if they actually had a recycling plant out there where they went and talked to somebody who actually helped break out the nickel and cadmium that they're putting out in the world and they said, 'Here's how Apple is going to help this young Chinese girl with her life.' Might have been interesting. Make sure it's legal though. Be in touch with your people. You have to thoughtfully expand the way people engage and think about the storylines. Try servant leadership. Ensure that you're actually able to be the change you want to see, as Gandhi said. So I'll wrap it up quickly. In essence, I'm trying to tell you, you have great roles in the storytelling. Make sure you have an authentic core. Engage the employees as much as any other stakeholder and think broadly about all the people your company, your client are impacting and tell really authentic stories. All right, thank you.

Yeah, I think it's back to really figuring out exactly who and why you want to communicate to. So as an M&A professional, part of what I try to do is to actually curate very carefully and thoughtfully the bankers I talk to and the spaces in which I will actually put messages out. Similarly, if you're a marketer, really understanding if you're selling purely to a certain demographic, you're marshalling that group. But don't actually then attack all 800 magazines and social media platforms that talk to young men, but hone in on the three that have the right kind of impact there. So I think there's an element, as a purveyor of information, you kind of want to start being much more focused. But you also want to be focused in a way that's really diverse. So when I listen to the news, I read the Wall Street Journal, I listen to podcasts from NPR, but I also have a very diverse team. So I make sure that I've built around me a listening device where I don't have to do all the listening. And you kind of want to do that too. You want to figure out what are the multiple ways that you can get the information out. But you want to be economical. You only have so much of a budget. So figuring out is there a way to get to the Gen X's, the Gen Y's, the AI world out there in a way that actually is impactful and thoughtful. So it takes more work than just putting out an ad in The Hindu, which was once an easy way to get eyes and ears. It is more complicated, but be precise.

Yeah, so you want to be able to... I'll tell the story. It's publicly available. IDEX, we are a company which is $3 billion. It's big, but it's not super big. But at $3 billion, we are traded at 18x of our value. So our enterprise value on NASDAQ, etc., it's 18 times. So it's a premium because there are companies like Honeywell, which are a little less, for example, huge companies. So why do we get... So we had a quarter like every other company in the US. We had a quarter where it was a tough quarter and we kind of said, 'Yes, it's a tough quarter. We're actually taking our numbers down.' And our stock price went up. And even I, who had actually framed some of the storyline, I said, 'That's kind of amazing.' And the reason is that we have consistently told a very clear story that we know how to deliver operational results, we have good leadership, we have solid products. That's the story we've told consistently and we've always delivered on the story. And we said, 'This year, tough year like everyone else, we have a plan.' And they believe our plan. And that's the thing. It's like, how can you actually find what is core and true about your organization and tell it consistently in every way possible so that everyone knows? Because they say, 'IDEX, you guys got it. We don't know how you do it, but you've got it.' And that's kind of where you want to get to, where people believe your story.

Yeah, you really, again, back to figuring out what it is you can do and what it is you should do. So in our case, because we're a manufacturing company, we need to make sure it's a safe environment, which falls under the E part of it. It's an environment that does as little waste, great use of energy, etc. So we've pegged our metrics to things that actually make a difference and that we have a control over. And then on governance and on the employee part of this as well, we actually have committed to diversity and inclusion goals and really consistently driven to it. We're not saying absolutely astronomical numbers. We actually set very doable things and we always exceed them. So I'd say that's the important thing here. If your heart of your business is in sustainability, choose that and deliver against it. Because there's a world of... it's big, it's complicated, but choose one. If you're going to say, 'Listen, we are going to have solar-powered factories out there,' that's good. Make that your goal and go after it. But I think companies that then set out to say, 'We are totally green,' and then people start digging into it and finding these guys don't know what they're doing, that's more dangerous. I'd much rather... and we have found success in taking on clear, specific goals and then just keep hitting them and keep expanding. But there's a world of difference out there. In our case, we have a business that is focused on agriculture, a couple of businesses in water, because we say if we can solve specific things, like we want to make sure that there's less chemicals used in agriculture, so we created products that actually use very specific nozzles and have the intelligence to say, 'That's a weed,' and 'This is a rice.' Deliver what you can and I think you get actual accolades.

Yeah, I think it's not retrofitting, but you do need to find a way to ensure that you know who you are. So back to IDEX, we said 'trusted products, improving life.' So really looking at each product to say, 'Is this actually better for our customers, the world, etc.' That's something we've actually done. We made it, as I said, we created 16 criteria. So anytime I look at a new company, I make sure we look at all 16 criteria. If you're okay on four of them, that's fine. If you're kind of not delivering on 10 of them, I probably won't buy that company. So you really do want to stop and say, 'Do we believe in this? Can I stand by this?' Because it's one thing, I think there are those of us in our generation who are pragmatic. It's okay. But I think younger generations, rightly so, have higher standards and they're holding their companies, their employers, to higher standards. And our strategy needs to reflect it. So as a strategist, part of my job is to say, 'I will not be doing anything in the world of tobacco.' Let's just put it that way. Which we did, like the company I talked about in consulting, we actually did get asked to come in and work with the Morris... I forget the name... company. And we said, 'No, we won't be actually doing the strategy for them.' So you have to make a call and say what will you not do. But then within the context of that, also saying, 'Hey, I'm going to be competitive, I'm going to work hard, I'm going to be better than the other guy.' That's fine. But you start to use it almost as a first-layer lens to get your strategy set up.

Where do I see it going? I think it's here to stay. I think the danger is that we now have bots and AI taking over. So what I'm hoping for is a much more educated user community. Because I think kids, young people, I see a lot of them out there, are learning to be able to look at it and say, 'Is this coming out of a troll farm or is it coming out of an actual human being?' And if you're not, I think we're in trouble. But social media is here to stay. X, Twitter, I think that whole snafu has resulted in a whole series of new ways out there. You've got Mastodon coming back, for example, Bluesky, etc. So there are a lot of threads, there are a lot of groups out there. So what I do see is you're going to have these mega platforms, Facebook, Twitter, and then these very curated platforms, Threads, etc., where you can actually start, if you're trying to actually have impactful communications, choose your poison. Choose the social media space, Instagram, where you want to have an impact and go after it. As a business leader, I actually spend most of my social media time actually on LinkedIn. Because what am I trying to do? I'm trying to engage with senior leaders in places where I want to make sure they're part of our community. So I'm very focused there. So it's here to stay. You got to be careful and the trolls are going to get you if you're not careful.

I think all of it taken together. Firstly, I believe in PR professionals, human PR professionals. I think you'll bring a greater thoughtfulness to bear. So I'm with team human, team PR. What I do think is you can use it for research. I think you can use it for research and even designing your initial campaigns. Because there's an ability to really craft with greater data. And I think data has been sort of taken a backseat sometimes when messaging came to the fore. And it'll be nice to see more data used. Hopefully the right data. But I'm actually intrigued. What is your perspective? How do you see it playing out as a senior professional?

Have any of you tried to ask AI to write your biography for you or your bio? How much did it... what percentage? Right. It wrote a fabulous bio for me, by the way. 80% of it was right. There were 20% where I was like, 'Wow, I'm the founder of like, you know, so-and-so sports organization.' I didn't know. It was just making, as they say, making up. So there's what they call AI hallucinations. Because it does not, like any child, it doesn't like to be ignored. It wants to please. So it'll just make stuff up. So be careful. And with PR, that can be troublesome. If it says that Arijit climbed K2, you know, people are going to ask you to climb with them one day. Did you climb K2? I haven't. Neither have I. I'd rather drive out to K2. There you go.