BALL (Best Advice & Life Lessons) is a podcast show where I focus on talking about the best advice and lessons from world-class performers & leaders (from various walks of life, mostly business, tech), deconstructing and teasing out their routines, habits, tactics, techniques, and the best advice or life lesson they’ve ever received -- that YOU the listeners can use and apply to your own life and work. We’re more interested in learning about things my guests have NEVER said or shared before.
Episodes
Saturday Sep 09, 2023
Saturday Sep 09, 2023
This episode of BALL (Best Advice & Life Lessons) podcast hosted by Srini Raghavan, features Vetri Vellore.
Vetri is a serial entrepreneur with a proven track record and over 25 years of experience building successful products and businesses. He has helped thousands of leaders and teams leverage the OKR framework. Vetri was the CEO and founder of the successful OKR software startup, Ally.io. After Microsoft acquired Ally.io in 2021, he become the Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Viva Goals, continuing the mission to bring purpose, happiness and productivity to work.
A few nuggets from and lessons from the episode:
- Building great products: Differentiate products from competitors by listening to customer insights, creating frictionless and integrated user experience, attention to smallest detail.
- Being a better leader: Balance optimism and paranoia with tenacity and conviction.
- Have core values: to guide everything you do. His own values are transparency, trust, excellence and customer obsession. The notion of customers first, business, team and then self.
- Hiring decisions: First alignment of values, potential to be 10x better and unstoppable attitude.
- Prioritize family: Create habits to balance work and personal life, like waking up at 4:30am so he can spend the evenings with his family.
- Writing gratitude journal and affirmations: Really helps lead a better life.
- Early career advice: Dream big, pay attention to details, focus on learning (vs. earning) early on.
BALL podcast extracts best advice and lessons from world-class performers & leaders from various fields, by deconstructing and teasing out their routines, success habits, tactics, techniques, hacks, tricks, secrets and the best advice or life lesson they've ever received.
If you enjoyed the podcast, please hit subscribe. @SriniRaghavan
Friday Oct 07, 2022
Friday Oct 07, 2022
This podcast episode of BALL (Best Advice & Life Lessons) hosted by Srini Raghavan, features Ravi Venkatesan.
Ravi is the board chair of Global Energy Alliance for People & Planet, a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, founder of Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship, a coalition which aims to create 10M entrepreneurs in India by 2030. He was previously the chairman of Microsoft India, chairman of the board of Bank of Baroda, and co-chairman of the board of Infosys. He is also the UNICEF Special Representative for Young People and Innovation.
His best advice and key lessons from the episode:
- On mindset - Growth mindset, agency, responsibility, abundance - What leadership in the 21st century means, how to be a leader
- Navigating your career - crucible experiences, passion economy, catching a wave
- How to avoid career treadmills, regrets and envy
- How much is enough, how to retire or not
- Measure of life, success, wealth and happiness
- On mentors, role models
- Developing courage
and more.
BALL podcast is a show where I focus on extracting best advice and lessons from world-class performers & leaders from various fields, by deconstructing and teasing out their routines, success habits, tactics, techniques, hacks, tricks, secrets and the best advice or life lesson they've ever received.
If you enjoyed the podcast, please hit subscribe. @SriniRaghavan
Tuesday Sep 21, 2021
Tuesday Sep 21, 2021
This podcast episode of On the BALL (Best Advice & Life Lessons) hosted by Srini Raghavan, features Bob Davis. Bob is the Corporate Vice President Growth & Experience at Microsoft. He is a founding member of what became Office 365 and has occupied leadership positions since its inception to becoming a fast-growing multi-billion-dollar business, perhaps the biggest enterprise SaaS business - with millions of customers and hundreds of millions of users.. You don't want to miss this.
His best advice and key lessons from the episode:
- Building and running multibillion dollar enterprise SaaS (Office 365) from scratch
- Taking a step back, putting things in perspective during crisis
- Making new mistakes, not make the same mistake twice
- First things first, getting the priorities right
- It's all about listening to customers. Really listening.
- Not letting things fester when it comes to people decisions
- As an introvert, detailed planning & preparation is key
- Leaving things better than you found it
- "Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
- We have two lives and the second begins and we realize we have only one
- Show the world with presence, actions and the way you lead your life, who you are
and more.
On the BALL is a podcast show where I focus on extracting best advice and lessons from world-class performers & leaders from various fields, by deconstructing and teasing out their routines, success habits, tactics, techniques, hacks, tricks, secrets and the best advice or life lesson they've ever received.
If you enjoyed the podcast, please hit subscribe. @SriniRaghavan
Sunday Apr 25, 2021
Sunday Apr 25, 2021
Imagine you're 8 years old slowly losing your eyesight, while and many of your fellow 8-year friends could be seen riding bicycles, shooting baskets, or frolicking on nearby playgrounds.
This podcast episode of On the BALL (Best Advice & Life Lessons) hosted by Srini Raghavan, features Lex Gillette. Lex is the best totally blind long and triple jumper in the history of the U.S. Paralympic movement. He is the current world record holder in long jump, a four-time Paralympic medalist, a three-time long jump world champion, and an 18-time national champion. He is an athlete, motivational speaker, and singer song writer.
In this episode, he shares his his advice and lessons on courage in the face of extreme adversity, motivation, optimism, being black while blind and inspiring life lessons.
On the BALL is a podcast show where I focus on extracting best advice and lessons from world-class performers & leaders from various fields, by deconstructing and teasing out their routines, success habits, tactics, techniques, hacks, tricks, secrets and the best advice or life lesson they've ever received.
If you enjoyed the podcast, please share with others & hit subscribe. @SriniRaghavan
Friday Feb 05, 2021
Friday Feb 05, 2021
This podcast episode of On the BALL (Best Advice & Life Lessons) hosted by Srini Raghavan, features Lan Ye, Lan is the Corporate Vice President of the Microsoft Teams Calling, Meetings and Devices group, She leads a team of product managers and engineers who are obsessed with making workplace communications simpler and more inclusive.
Lan shares her best advice & lessons on career, leadership, decision-making, art and tech, routines vs. creativity, how she runs effective meetings and more. You don't want to miss this.
On the BALL is a podcast show where I focus on extracting best advice and lessons from world-class performers & leaders from various fields, by deconstructing and teasing out their routines, success habits, tactics, techniques, hacks, tricks, secrets and the best advice or life lesson they've ever received.
If you enjoyed the podcast, please hit subscribe. @SriniRaghavan
Tuesday Nov 24, 2020
Tuesday Nov 24, 2020
This podcast episode of On the BALL (Best Advice & Life Lessons) hosted by Srini Raghavan, features Jeff Teper, Corporate Vice President who leads product & engineering teams for Microsoft 365, including Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint, that empower more than one billion people around the world to collaborate at work, home, and school. In this podcast Jeff shares his best advice & lessons from his journey at Microsoft, building great products, leadership lessons, advice for aspiring software engineers, insights from multibillion dollar product categories like SharePoint and much more.
On the BALL podcast focuses on extracting best advice and lessons from world-class performers & leaders from various fields, by deconstructing and teasing out their routines, success habits, tactics, techniques, hacks, tricks, secrets and the best advice or life lesson they've ever received.
Friday Oct 30, 2020
Friday Oct 30, 2020
This podcast episode of On the BALL (Best Advice & Life Lessons) hosted by Srini Raghavan, features Scott Van Vliet, Corporate Vice President who leads a product & engineering org at Microsoft that powers Microsoft Teams and Skype. In this insightful podcast Scott shares his best advice & lessons on leadership, his career trajectory, hiring & retaining world-class talent, future of remote work, and insights from industry leaders and much more.
On the BALL podcast focuses on extracting best advice and lessons from world-class performers & leaders from various fields, by deconstructing and teasing out their routines, success habits, tactics, techniques, hacks, tricks, secrets and the best advice or life lesson they've ever received.
Thursday Oct 01, 2020
Thursday Oct 01, 2020
This podcast episode of BALL (Best Advice & Life Lessons) hosted by Srini Raghavan, features Walt Mossberg often known as the kingmaker of tech products, who pioneered the modern, consumer-focused, technology review and commentary. He shares his best advice & lessons on entrepreneurism, the power of personal brand, insights from some of the industry leaders like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Hawkins & others.
The show focuses on best advice and lessons from world-class performers & leaders, deconstructing and teasing out their routines, habits, tactics, techniques, and the best advice or life lesson they've ever received.
Monday Sep 21, 2020
Monday Sep 21, 2020
This podcast episode of BALL (Best Advice & Life Lessons) hosted by Srini Raghavan, features Brian MacDonald, who created several multi-billion dollar products, product categories and businesses at Microsoft -- from Microsoft Project, Outlook and then went on to build what's now the fastest growing app in the history of company-- Microsoft Teams. The show focuses on best advice and lessons from world-class performers & leaders (from various walks of life, mostly business, tech), deconstructing and teasing out their routines, habits, tactics, techniques, and the best advice or life lesson they've ever received.