637: 65.06 Ashish Dhawan - Unanticipated challenges in driving Social Impact

NUGGET CONTEXT

Ashish speaks about the challenges involved in leading in the Social Impact sector. He speaks about why the production function in this space is much more complicated and that coupled with not having adequate control over key levers of change makes it much harder to drive outcomes. He also speaks about the nuances involved in attracting and motivating talent in this space as they respond to different cues. He then goes on to discuss what he had to learn and unlearn as he transitioned from the Corporate Management world to the Development Management world.

GUEST

Ashish Dhawan is the Founder and Chairman of Central Square Foundation (CSF) and Ashoka University. He worked for twenty years in the investment management business and ran one of India’s leading private equity funds, ChrysCapital. In June 2012, he left his full time role at ChrysCapital to focus on philanthropic work in education. Ashish is an MBA with distinction from Harvard University and a dual bachelor’s (BS/BA) holder with Magna Cum Laude honors from Yale University. Central Square Foundation works on system reform in school education in India. The foundation has 60 team members who work on grant making, research, policy reform and policy implementation. Ashoka University is a new liberal arts institution that aspire to transform higher education in India.

In our conversation, we spoke about how Ashish set markers for himself at 30 (to become an entrepreneur) and 45 (to move towards social impact) and has made choices in line with those markers. We also speak about the various pathways he considered when he chose to move on from ChrysCapital to the Social Impact world. He also shares about the challenges involved in the Social Sector and how individuals transitioning to this sector should listen and understand the nuances before trying to jump into action.

Published in Nov 2020.

HOST

Deepak is a Leadership Advisor and an Executive Coach. He works with leaders to improve their effectiveness and in helping them make better decisions specifically around organizational and career transitions. He currently runs Transition Insight (www.transitioninsight.com) and works with leaders to handle phases of transition thoughtfully. He has worked as an Operations Consultant with KPMG in UK, Strategy Consultant with McKinsey in the US and as a Leadership Consultant with EgonZehnder (a Swiss Leadership Advisory firm) where he helped companies recruit CEOs, CXOs and Board Members and worked on Leadership Development. Deepak is a certified CEO Coach and is an alumnus of IIT Madras, IIM Ahmedabad and London Business School. His detailed profile can be found at https://in.linkedin.com/in/djayaraman

OTHER GUESTS

1.Vijay Amritraj 2.Amish Tripathi 3.Raghu Raman 4.Papa CJ 5.Kartik Hosanagar 6.Ravi Venkatesan 7.Abhijit Bhaduri 8.Viren Rasquinha 9.Prakash Iyer 10.Avnish Bajaj 11.Nandan Nilekani 12.Atul Kasbekar 13.Karthik Reddy 14.Pramath Sinha 15.Vedika Bhandarkar 16.Vinita Bali 17.Zia Mody 18.Rama Bijapurkar 19.Dheeraj Pandey 20.Anu Madgavkar 21.Vishy Anand 22. Meher Pudumjee 23.KV Shridhar (Pops) 24.Suresh Naraynan 25.Devdutt Pattanaik 26.Jay Panda 27.Amit Chandra 28.Chandramouli Venkatesan 29.Roopa Kudva 30.Vinay Sitapati 31.Neera Nundy. 32.Deepa Malik 33.Bombay Jayashri. 34.Arun Maira 35.Ambi Parameswaran 36.OP Bhaat 37.Indranil Chakraborty 38.Tarun Khanna 39. Ramachandra Guha 40. Stewart Friedman 41. Rich Fernandez 42. Falguni Nayar 43. Rajat Gupta 44. Kartik Hosanagar 45. Michael Watkins 46. Matt Dixon 47. Herminia Ibarra 48. Paddy Upton 49. Tasha Eurich 50. Alan Eagle 51. Sudhir Sitapati 52. James Clear 53. Lynda Gratton 54. Jennifer Petriglieri. 55. Matthew Walker 56. Raj Raghunathan 57. Jennifer Garvey Berger 58. BJ Fogg 59. R Gopolakrishnan 60. Sir Andrew Likierman. 61. Atul Khatri 62. Whitney Jonson 63. Venkat Krishnan 64. Marshall Goldsmith

DISCLAIMER

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