081: The Power of Conscious Leadership with Ravi Venkatesan, CEO of Cantaloupe

Ravi is the previous COO and current CEO of software company Cantaloupe and joins Andrea to talk about how to be a powerful CEO and lead an organisation.

Ravi and Andrea discuss the flexibility needed around business models for companies to pivot, the biggest challenges international businesses face and why you must remain the eternal student to stay ahead in your career. Ravi also talks about how your leadership style directly impacts the effectiveness of your team and influences company culture and performance and how he personally inspires his team and unlocks potential.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Ravi started in consulting for Accenture, which gave him access and experience with large corporate companies where he learnt about strategies and business models that work.
• It’s important to have a vision that inspires your team.
• Working internationally isn’t just about translating things, it’s about understanding and recognising cultural differences and adapting to them, tailoring the company and product to the country.
• Legalities and regulations in every country are vastly different, this is one of Cantaloupe's major challenges, particularly in regards to payments. They have to tailor their software and approaches in each country.
• Cantaloupe have pivoted to their consumer needs and preferences, they transformed their business model to be subscription based as this is how clients wanted to use their product, leading to higher client satisfaction as well as higher margin for them.
• Often smaller to medium-sized companies are quicker to adapt and pivot, while larger companies have to contend with the bureaucracy associated with change and also often attitudes that are resistant to it too.
• How we manage our inner state directly impacts those we lead and the relationships we build. To be an effective leader you need to consciously manage yourself to build your company culture and foster your team into making the right decisions.
• One of the key things Ravi focuses on is looking for opportunities for new talent and unlocking potential in existing team members.
• Too frequently leaders ignore people’s potential but if we can engage team members and inspire them, we can get so much more, for them and for the company.
• All companies have a collective consciousness made up of their employees, partners and clients. If leaders can tap into this consciousness and influence it, then it will also have an impact on performance as a whole.

BEST BITS

 “Sometimes you can have the best team in place but if it’s a failing business model it starts going downhill”

 “It’s important to have a vision that inspires, people who work for a paycheck, you’re only getting compliance from them. If you want amazing results, then they need to be inspired”

“It’s not just about translating language it’s about blending in with the culture, the business, the way of interacting, each country is so different”

 “All that risk is covered on our side and that model has led to much more satisfaction with our customers”

 “The larger an organisation the harder it is for them to accept a major change”

 “How we manage our own inner state with reflect in that outer behaviour and our outer behaviour directly leads to the kind of trust somebody builds as a leader”

 “Heart-based leadership isn’t very common”

“Constantly upgrading talent and unlocking potential is something I spend a lot of time on”

“You are showing the organisation that you are there for them rather than being like other CEOs”

“Organisations have a consciousness, which is their collective consciousness of everybody who works there…if the impact I can have as a leader is to raise the level of consciousness of my organisation”

VALUABLE RESOURCES

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ABOUT THE HOST

My name is Andrea Petrone. I'm a Human Performance and Leadership Advisor, Executive Coach and International Speaker. I help leaders and their teams to change their mindsets and master their leadership capabilities so they can achieve extraordinary performance. I've been in the corporate world for more than 20 years working globally - in 6 countries and 3 continents - for medium-large companies.