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High Variance is an interview podcast about a world that has become harder to read — more uncertain, more volatile, stranger. Host Danny Buerkli speaks with public intellectuals, entrepreneurs, and technologists to ask what is going on and how we should respond.
Welcome to High Variance, where we explore the strange times we're in. I'm Danny Buerkli, and on this podcast, I speak with people who are trying to make sense of it all.
Danny Buerkli:My guest is Vishal Jodhani. Vish is a facilitator, one of the best I've ever seen in action, and someone who thinks carefully about how people gather and work together. Vish grew up in Mumbai and has lived in Brussels, Rotterdam, and Adelaide, and a host of other places before settling in Berlin, where he has been living for the past decade with his wife and children. Vish, welcome.
Vishal Jodhani:Thank you, Danny. That's a generous introduction, and I'm glad to be here.
Danny Buerkli:Vish, what do you do when you facilitate a group?
Vishal Jodhani:For me, when I think of the word facilitator, having lived in France, I think of the root of the word which is facile, to make easy. And that's what I often think. I'm like, how can I make things easier for this group? And if that's bringing in a question, helping them focus on the bigger picture, creating space for everyone to be seen and heard, feel a sense of belonging, It essentially is that is how do I make it easier for them to move towards a shared goal even if they haven't named one yet.
Danny Buerkli:And what are people not seeing when you facilitate a meeting or a group?
Vishal Jodhani:They're not seeing all that goes into the design of that before they enter the room. People often ask me to come and run a session, let's say, for half a day, And the session itself is probably 20% of the work. There's 70% that happens before, probably 10% that happens after. And there is so much of the work in speaking to everyone individually, really uncovering the deeper needs and what is not being said, all the logistics, the right space, the right setting for this group, all the inner work to be able to host myself before hosting others, the invitation and how that is crafted. And a lot of the work is essentially crafting the right questions before you come into the group.
Vishal Jodhani:So yeah, I think it's the pre work, both outer and inner, that goes unseen.
Danny Buerkli:What makes for a good question?
Vishal Jodhani:For me it is, is this the right question for this group at this time? So is this question one that helps us dive deeper? So for example, what is not being said here right now? Or what needs to be surfaced that's not being surfaced? Is it a question that needs to open up possibility?
Vishal Jodhani:How might we find a new way to reimagine the future of? Insert your own blank there. Or is it a question that needs us to focus right now? We've had a lot of conversations. What is the one thing we have to make sure we get right?
Vishal Jodhani:It's just knowing a question is our best friend when facilitating and have we invited the right question in at the right time of the gathering. Even the opening question, right, when people arrive, we often call it an inclusion exercise or a check-in moment, and the right check-in question, say, the right question for the right occasion, to move the group along the journey because the day is nothing but a series of well crafted questions put together. I ran a workshop on influence today, and my opening question, we stood in a circle, was who is one person who's been really influential in your life? And that somehow set the tone for the rest of the workshop we had together. So it's choosing the question on the journey.
Vishal Jodhani:But maybe also in addition, it's a question that's clear, that's concise, and that really frames what it is we want to talk about.
Danny Buerkli:What's your theory or model of facilitation? What makes it work?
Vishal Jodhani:Dani, I love these questions. It's a chance for me to step beyond my day to day doing, and it's almost a behind the scenes view of what might be happening. For me, it's about taking a group on a journey. It's understanding where this group is trying to go together. That's how I always design it.
Vishal Jodhani:I often draw a mountain with a flag and say, Okay, this is the goal. This is where we are going. And by the end of this time together, it's also what I ask every client stakeholder at the start when they work with me is by the end of the session, if this was wildly successful, what is the group leaving with? What do we want them to think or know? What do we want them to feel?
Vishal Jodhani:What do we want them to do? And just spending time with that question on why are we gathering? What is our purpose, our intention, and where do we want to get to the end? That's step one for me. And then it's figuring out, okay, where are they starting?
Vishal Jodhani:What are we working with? What is what are the hopes, the fears? What are the elephants in the room that we want to work with? So I get a sense of where people are now and where they're going. And facilitation then is how do you design an intentional journey to take them from here to there?
Vishal Jodhani:And along the way, might be creating spaces for people to just derive, spaces or questions for them to express, spaces to listen, spaces to ideate and diverge, and spaces to focus and converge. And holding a mentor of mine often says is, Prepare like Helen and let it go. And a lot of it is also improvising. Once you know this is where we go. And we might have something, but what the group comes up with might totally shift the direction.
Vishal Jodhani:So it is working with the energy in the room and trusting the collective wisdom of the group versus just having a set agenda for myself. So it is that. It is having some structure and holding it lightly and inviting people along the journey to I always do that. I always invite people to like shape this as we go. Yeah, and going with a clear intention, a few good questions, and to not do it alone.
Vishal Jodhani:That's another big one is to hold space together in some way. See, I don't think of it as a solo sport. It's a team sport. What
Danny Buerkli:are the non obvious limits to facilitation?
Vishal Jodhani:There are so many obvious limits that I'm thinking of. You know, I often think of these principles that we talk about in facilitation, which is whoever shows up are the right people, what happens is the only thing that could have happened, and it starts when it starts, and it's over when it's over. So sometimes I think of the obvious limits of just holding an intention and knowing that we might end up we might to trust the process is something that you often hear with facilitators, trust the process. And it's just trusting that we end up somewhere, and where we end up, there is some meaning and data in. What is a non obvious limit?
Vishal Jodhani:What comes up for you, Danny, when you think of it, a non obvious limit in your experience?
Danny Buerkli:I'm thinking of limitations that may be apparent to you as an experienced practitioner, but that may not be apparent to others who have less mileage in the field.
Vishal Jodhani:I would say when I was new and naive, it was having a plan and following through with it, making sure I just cover the agenda that I had in mind and for that to drive it. And I noticed that there's only a certain part that I can prepare, but I'm facilitation often is working with the unknown. Just knowing who shows up in the room, who doesn't show up, or who suddenly shows up, that will have a big impact. It's not being able to control how people show up. It's not knowing what their own context and baggage is, what the interpersonal dynamics are at play.
Vishal Jodhani:So there is a lot of unknowns that you just walk into, and it's being open to entrusting that there's a big percentage of reality in the room that you have no control over. And can you still hold structure and just acknowledge your own limitations? Like, I might not have all of these answers, and can I still have enough trust and stay centered within the chaos that emerges for the group? Because at the end, what we're trying to do is create a solid, safe enough container for the right conversations to happen. So maybe that's what's in my control is the container and the growth is how do we expand the strength and the capacity of this container to hold the chaos that might emerge.
Vishal Jodhani:So maybe that's the big learning is facilitation is a chaotic process. And there's the mix of chaos and order, and figuring out what that thin line is that we gotta walk in the process.
Danny Buerkli:And how do you know the difference between the productive creative chaos and unproductive confusion?
Vishal Jodhani:That is a massive role of the facilitator, right, is to keep things on track. So once we have a sense of what the journey is, how people bring along the journey, And it happens. I've had a participant who suddenly said something which feels like it's a total derailing moment for this conversation. And then again, it's a choice to be made as a facilitator. Do we go off road for a bit and explore maybe there is something here in this creative chaos or in this off comment?
Vishal Jodhani:And if we are clear on intention, and if we feel it really is off, then as a very tactical thing, I would just get a little parking lot and say, hey, it's a great point. It doesn't serve us right now. So why don't we in today's world, we call it a bike rack, not a parking lot to be more sustainable. But how do we do that? And when that happens, would sometimes ask like, hey, Danny, that's an interesting comment.
Vishal Jodhani:I'd just like to check-in with you on how do you feel it relates to the topic at hand. And maybe there is a connection there that I, in my limited context of the organizing of the content, haven't seen myself. But it's it's almost inviting them back into that question. Mhmm. And more than anything else for me, it's it's designing for divergence and designing for convergence.
Vishal Jodhani:So I would even say, like, hey. For the next hour, we're exploring all the possibilities, and I'm encouraging creative chaos. So right now, we don't have to shoot an idea down, and once we come back, we'll have a filter. So based on our ability to execute, how this would move us towards our goals, and truly dreaming bigger, which ones of these meet the criteria? And now let's converge.
Vishal Jodhani:But it's giving people because every group has the dreamers and the doers. But do we create the right structure for both of those to happen?
Danny Buerkli:Something that's really been bothering me is we broadly know how to facilitate good meetings. It's not secret, obscure, arcane knowledge. And yet, it does not seem to have caught on. What's the constraint here? When I work
Vishal Jodhani:with groups and I often I was running a facilitation training for a group, and I interviewed every single person one by one and asking them their hopes for the workshop and their fears. And a lot of them were joining because they had high stakes meetings, multi stakeholder engagement opportunities. When I asked them what's holding them back from truly stepping in, it was the fear of the unknown. And I see that in the work that I do is people want control and certainty, and the focus is on content. It's a bunch of slides that I can present and that engage people in Q and A.
Vishal Jodhani:But even the Q and A might bring up uncertainty. But to truly open a conversation to surface the collective wisdom of the group with power imbalance in the room, with differing perspectives, it is that fear of conflict, the fear of the unknown, a lack of self confidence or trust to be able to manage chaos or conflict when it happens. And that gets in our way is when I talk about chaos and order, it's the leaning towards too much order and leaving the space for new things to emerge. Or maybe it is going on the other side of just being too chaotic. Hey, everyone's here.
Vishal Jodhani:What do we need to talk about? And that's why for me is that art of having some structure but holding it lightly. And another big thing that we talk about is often learning how to host myself before hosting others. And that, for me, is the non obvious work or the work that goes unseen is how much self management it takes before going in. All our inner voices to work through of what if I fail.
Vishal Jodhani:Am I enough? Do I know enough about I have that. I I work with different industries, companies with totally different contexts, I don't know much about the context or the people attending know a lot more about it than I do. And it's for me to remind myself my role here is to hold process, not to hold content, and that my the group has the answers. How do I help them surface it?
Vishal Jodhani:So the analogy I use often is that the participant is bringing all the ingredients. I'm just the oil in the frying pan. That's helping bring it together.
Danny Buerkli:Who do you consider your teachers in this?
Vishal Jodhani:One of my biggest teachers has been Tilkin Miller, who is one of the cofounders of the Art of Hosting or one of the, yeah, sort of the senior practitioners. And I felt the first time I came across The Art of Hosting as an organization and so many other teachers, whether Monica and Mary Alice and all these elders, when I attended my first training, I was like, Ugh, this just speaks to me. I get it the way they explained it, the way they held space. A lot of it was just role modeling, good conversation. I remember living in Brussels being invited to a co creation session and I never had an invitation to a co creation session.
Vishal Jodhani:And I, in my early 20s, entered this room, which was not set up as a classroom, not set up as a boardroom. It was just a circle and everyone stood around and it was such quality conversation, such deep connection and a really fruitful engagement. Even if it was just two hours in the evening on coming up with a new collaborative space, how I left feeling was so different to what I had felt in other meetings. And that was my invitation to dive deeper into the work and how all these teachers have brought in some of the simplicity of the art of crafting questions, on hosting yourself. It was more a master class in the being and the doing versus a bunch of tools that were there.
Vishal Jodhani:And what inspires me about these teachers has just been the way they do it themselves and having experienced it and knowing this is what the impact is on the group. And I've worked alongside them as I grew in the field and even then just witnessing how lit up people's eyes are in the room and how they feel the sense of belonging, a sense of ownership at the end. Yeah, it's tough to it's those intangibles.
Danny Buerkli:Broadly, most or maybe all facilitation methods bake in some loaded assumptions about the world, like that less hierarchy in a room will lead you to better results rather than more hierarchy in the room. Right? And that can be intention with what the group, the organization, the company you're working with tries to achieve in the world. When do these contradictions start to matter?
Vishal Jodhani:The contradictions of hierarchy and group?
Danny Buerkli:One way to think of facilitation is that it's not just a neutral tool. It's not just a hammer, but it's, in fact, it's an opinionated hammer. And the the hammer has opinions about the world and about how the world maybe should look like or what the world should not look like. And you can say every method brings with it certain assumptions. It's not as if facilitation is particularly special.
Danny Buerkli:But it does strike me that a lot of facilitation methods do bring with them very strong assumptions about what a good world looks like,
Vishal Jodhani:let's say.
Danny Buerkli:And it's not always obvious that everyone who would like to sort of enjoy the fruits of this method actually agrees with the underlying ethos of it.
Vishal Jodhani:It's true. For example, facilitation, we often I love using a circle because a circle shows equality. There's no hierarchy. Everyone can see everyone, but a lot of the organizations that I work with have an inbuilt sense of hierarchy in that. What I notice is if I'm running, let's say, a top team off-site, and I'm facilitating very senior leaders in an organization for two days, even then what I'm working towards is being brought in as an external, having the privilege to say, I am doing that by allowing others to be present in a more equal way.
Vishal Jodhani:And I'm neutralizing the group in some way while acknowledging there is hierarchy in the room. So I would sometimes get a CO to open and welcome in frame, saying this is why we are Galleria. And then to say, and I would love to participate myself, I'm stepping back as a participant and letting someone else hold us for the next few days. And I always have a talk with the senior most person in the room on what their role is, how they frame, how they show up, what their posture is for those two days, and what they experience is a setting where everyone was seen and heard and all opinions mattered. And then you're right.
Vishal Jodhani:They go back into the rest of the world in their senior roles and maybe into a default mode of hierarchical operating. But what I feel shifts, no matter what the world is, just that feeling of how might I make others feel included? How might I make others feel seen? How might I allow the collective intelligence of my teams to surface? And in that sense, it is not an eitheror of I need to give leadership and direction versus I need to invite participation.
Vishal Jodhani:But how might it shift from an either or to an end? So maybe just expanding their range and our range of both of that is sometimes direction and power is helpful. And there is time and space for that. And there are moments to invite people's voices in because in the long run, we do want to explore that power of the collective at some level. I haven't come across someone resisting it, but it's been more traditional organizations where it is I tell them and they do it.
Vishal Jodhani:Then I ask them, but why is that change not working? And then they realize that they forgot to take people along the way. But often it is helping role model an experience that they want to then bring to their teams.
Danny Buerkli:What's something you believe about facilitation that most other people don't?
Vishal Jodhani:That's a beautiful question. For me, my biggest belief has always been about hosting myself before hosting others. And I know there are some fellow practitioners and teachers who believe in that. But I so strongly believe in this is, am I clear on my intention, my authenticity, my vulnerabilities, my challenges? And what do I need to do to truly hold space for myself before I can hold up for a group?
Vishal Jodhani:And I have seen people who've just spent all the time designing and working and then showing up. And maybe that's what the difference is. A lot of people feel you can park that part of you aside and who you are can be left at the door to serve the group and what it needs. And I strongly believe how you show up impacts the rest of the group. It's that analogy we often use about the security announcement on an aircraft, when the oxygen mask makes you sort of put it on yourself before putting it on others.
Vishal Jodhani:Maybe it's that.
Danny Buerkli:When should you be a chill host?
Vishal Jodhani:Priya Parker often talks about this, and she's got a chapter in the book called The Art of Gathering on don't be a chill host. I notice sometimes I am a chill host, and it's if I have spent a lot of I spend so much of my time crafting conversations, designing gatherings in a work setting, that when I sometimes host in a more private setting, I allow myself to be a chill host. I invite people in with an intention, and I struggle because I struggle to put that hat off. Like I've invited a bunch of people to this gathering at home and there is intention behind the gathering. And do I step in and do more or do I step back and do less?
Vishal Jodhani:And over time, I have learned to create the right setting and then step back a bit because I felt I got so into hosting that I would end a gathering and everyone would have such a good time and I feel I didn't get to enjoy it myself because I was just so busy hosting. And that's what I that's what my practice right now is is to trust and surrender. I've called the right people. I've put in that 70% work before the gathering, and I want to enjoy this gathering myself. So it is bringing a certain amount of chill, but it's it's a practice.
Danny Buerkli:Who does better coffee and why? Berlin or Adelaide?
Vishal Jodhani:When I moved to Berlin eleven years ago, I really missed coffee from Adelaide. The Australian coffee scene was amazing. And there was just one place I'd go to to get proper coffee, and it was Aussies who were serving it as baristas. And I feel now over time, Berlin has an incredible coffee scene that I'm so grateful for. And maybe Berlin does better coffee because we've got the world here, and everyone's having their unique flavor to it somewhere.
Vishal Jodhani:That's working for me.
Danny Buerkli:If we stay on Berlin, what is underappreciated about the Berlin club scene?
Vishal Jodhani:I am so grateful to the Berlin club scene. What is underappreciated is the fact that you can spend twelve hours at a party and almost you'd never get asked the question, So what do you do? I have a friend who I know from a club in Berlin, and we met and we connected, and I've been with them to different music festivals. And we caught up for dinner last month. And at the end of the day, he's like, hey, Bishop, I've known you for three years.
Vishal Jodhani:I still have no idea what you do. And I was so grateful for that. I'm like, we have a friendship over three years that is beyond our roles and titles, which is just based on an appreciation of life and shared values and interests, and that is underappreciated. That question would be asked in London or New York and it would be such an easy icebreaker. Berlin doesn't care about that.
Vishal Jodhani:It is such an equalizer. So it is that it's not being boxed in. It is allowing you to show up in your authenticity, in your rawness, and and all of you is just welcome. And how that gives perm how we give permission to each other to then show up fully.
Danny Buerkli:How does that practically operate?
Vishal Jodhani:How does what practically operate?
Danny Buerkli:This norm that you've just described. Everyone's automatically clued into that. How?
Vishal Jodhani:There's a lot of depth in the Berlin club scene, in my humble opinion. I'm no expert. But Berlin for me celebrates authenticity and breaking barriers. And there is so much attention just on the being and the presence. There's a lot of respect for our private personal space, a lot of respect for our personal space and being interested in the humans that are there, you know, through conversation or no conversation.
Vishal Jodhani:But yet, there isn't small talk. I don't know if it's a German thing or a Berlin thing, but because these are places of depth and you are there to really to, I don't know, like, shake off the your concerns from your day to day, if it is to do some inner work on the dance floor, if it is really to explore and discover who you are and give each other space to do the same, somehow that would be a buzzkill. Right? I'm not not not here to talk about my taxes or the weather or what I do for work. There is more to me and by it also takes so much effort to get into some of these clubs that once you're there, you wanna be in the temporary alternate universe that has been co created with so much effort and intention for you that you don't want someone to bring you back to your default world for those hours.
Vishal Jodhani:And I have by a tourist been asked that question, they're like, oh, and you can immediately notice it. Like, there was there was just something off about this moment. And I'm not the only one who would say this, but clubbing in Berlin and experiencing community and self expression does ruin partying anywhere else in the world for a while.
Danny Buerkli:How does the fact that you grew up in Mumbai shape your work today?
Vishal Jodhani:I'm so grateful to have grown up in Mumbai. For me, Mumbai was a few things. One, it was about survival of the fittest, and we always had to work harder. And if I didn't get good grades at school and if you were my classmate, Danny, my parents would say, Hey, you and Danny play all the time. Why is he the topper in the class and it's not you?
Vishal Jodhani:But there was always that push to work harder because there were many people and fewer opportunities. So this idea of hustling and showing up for yourselves and going that extra mile was we were well conditioned for that, even if I think of just dodging Mumbai traffic. If I can drive in Mumbai, I can drive anywhere else in the world because it was about, hey, we're going to put you through chaos. And Mumbai traffic, by the way, is a great example of chaotic world that we spoke about earlier. It's minimal structure, maximal chaos, and yet we all find our way even if we take extra time compared to Switzerland to get somewhere.
Vishal Jodhani:And it's about finding your way. But more than anything, if I think of these things, it is the art of possibility. When I live in Germany, something that I struggle is when people say, nine. Can I just have these three changes made to my dinner order? I'd be like, No.
Vishal Jodhani:Or there are lots of things with bureaucracy that you'd get to know. Whereas in India, it was always possible. There was always a way no matter how crooked the way might be sometimes. There was a way of, yeah, absolutely, we'll find a way to work it out. So for me, was not about this can't be done, it's how might we get it done.
Vishal Jodhani:Let's find a way. Let's explore possibility. And that has helped me if I try to figure out my own path career wise, if I bike my way through the streets of Berlin, there is that grit and resilience that is that I'm grateful for.
Danny Buerkli:What did you learn from playing cricket that you couldn't have learned anywhere else?
Vishal Jodhani:I was really bad at cricket because I was one of the younger kids amongst the neighbor community that we lived in, and I was often the last one picked on the team, which wasn't great for my self confidence growing up. So while a lot of people learned amazing things about cricket and from cricket, my big lesson was to not to really choose your sport because it wasn't wasn't mine. And I could have been the last big player on a team in a sport for a long time. That have been my worldview. Or I could have chosen to go a different direction and pick a sport that works for me.
Vishal Jodhani:And for me, that was a big thing of India was about grades, was about being good at cricket, it was about having certain career aspirations. And it was very tough to go off roading from what was considered good. So for me, not to play cricket as much, for me choosing to drop out of a career in medicine, to choose to go take a gap year, were things that weren't done or celebrated, but it was me trying to figure out how do I do what's right for me, not what society expects of me. And cricket is a good example there.
Danny Buerkli:You're charismatic. What's your theory or explanation of how charisma works?
Vishal Jodhani:I appreciate your generous compliment, Danny. I think you're very charismatic yourself. So I should probably pass the question right back to you. For me, people that I find charismatic, what I appreciate the most is authenticity, is their ability to truly be and own who they are. I think of the metaphor of those Japanese broken balls with a golden thread around them and this kintsugi as an art form.
Vishal Jodhani:I mean, that's what I think of charisma is not perfection, but people who can be themselves, shine their light, own their shadow, embrace their flaws, even highlight them maybe, but, like, this is me. For me, so much of my life journey has been trying to be someone or be someone else or aspire, do more, more, more. And when I see someone at ease with who they are and show up with that effortlessness, It's that less is more that feels charismatic. It's that ability to pull not push, trust and flow with ease. And maybe those are the people who I feel are not working hard to be liked by everyone and diluting themselves along the way.
Vishal Jodhani:But hey, this is me. And there's a lot of work to be done to get there. We all seek validation in some way and to stop yearning for that and giving it to myself is the world that I would love to work on. If,
Danny Buerkli:let's say, your great grandchildren study the Jodhany method of facilitation, what would they find?
Vishal Jodhani:My goodness. They would find that it is truly a family recipe that is coming from that has its own flavor and comes from opening your cabinet and just finding what is there. They would find it truly the signature feel is a sense of good connection and community and about creating belonging for more people, sparking joy, so joy would be one of the ingredients, and seeking for that overall well-being of the community.
Danny Buerkli:Turning to a very different community, you've worked also in the social impact space in the past. And without being too critical of that scene, it's hard and I've also been part of this. It's hard not to feel that the scene hasn't quite fulfilled its promise. Why?
Vishal Jodhani:For me, it goes back to this either or versus and. I noticed there was always this tension or the focus on doing good and the focus on impact and focusing on the work that was happening. In some way, there was a lot of possibility left on the table in terms of making it financially sustainable, which is sustainable in some way. And I'd always reframe it as another question, which is how might we do good and do well at the same time? And finding that balance between those, it's yes, how do we measure our impact?
Vishal Jodhani:It is okay for us to do good along the way and to do well for our teams. Our teams don't have to be underpaid. We can attract top talent and create good conditions for them to thrive and to recognize their effort. But it doesn't have to be stepped down for anyone. So for me, what's that is there was an abundance mindset and a sense of possibility when it came to impact, but not when it came to operations.
Vishal Jodhani:Yeah, so that's my personal take on it is how might we do both? How might we bring that sense of possibility and abundance to creating conditions for everyone to thrive along the way? There were so many amazing people who I met on the journey, people like yourself. And it was people would say, yep, I can contribute on an advisory capacity. I could contribute as a mentor, is also what I do right now.
Vishal Jodhani:And how might we create possibilities for people to invest more in it, not not out of charity or generosity, but because it makes sense for them. I feel I feel this is why we lose out on people somewhere. The people who do the work, they burn out for different reasons. So so when I say sustainable, how might it truly be sustainable for people? Mhmm.
Vishal Jodhani:Or is it just a stop in their career somewhere?
Danny Buerkli:You do a lot of innovation work. What's your theory of innovation? How does that come about apart from well, I guess it's new, probably.
Vishal Jodhani:You know, in my undergrad, I studied communication, and I majored in advertising. And for me, working with ideas and people was exciting then. Innovation was about how do we sell this in an interesting way. And I did that for a while, and then I realized we were so good at selling and being innovative in how we sold things. That was my limited view of innovation, that we might sell things to people who don't need them as long as things sell.
Vishal Jodhani:And when I went on to do my masters in innovation because I knew I like working with ideas and possibilities, this idea of human centered design or designing just with the human and the core of it was the period of innovation that had a lot of impact on me because it felt like innovation was going upstream. We can work directly with users and their unmet needs, understand their stories, their context. We'd sit with them in their living rooms, have coffee for an hour, get a sense of their lives. And then when we could come back with all those pain points and needs and then design from that place, that felt truly innovative. It wasn't innovation as in a bunch of creatives sitting in a room with bean bags and Post its and smoking cigarettes and coming up with ideas.
Vishal Jodhani:There was people out there in the field observing people in their day to day, having those conversations, getting inspired by possibilities in other fields, and then working as a multidisciplinary team to then create solutions with well crafted design questions, rather typical, how might we design a service that enables this? So for me, that has been the biggest shift and that has been my period of innovation is, one, how do we define the right design challenge and frame that as a good question, anchor in context and needs? Two, how do we then observe and empathize with the users? Three, how do we look at inspiration and diverge into a sense of possibilities? How do we ideate both from a divergence and a convergence point of view?
Vishal Jodhani:How might we then prototype something? So this idea of getting it right versus getting it good enough and then having as many iterations along the way until we find that fit and then scale it. But that journey often considered design thinking. But for me, it has been not just having a good process but facilitating that process well with the right people in the room and the right tools and giving ourselves permission to fail and iterate multiple times until it eventually makes sense for the end users we're designing for. And from a facilitation perspective, it's taking people along the journey, designing with users, with our teams, testing it together with people.
Vishal Jodhani:So I managed with my innovation work to bring in different parts of my life together, The advertising and the storytelling, the interest in humans and deep connection, the fascination for design thinking and all the work that has been done by companies like IDEO, and then just hosting good spaces to bring all of that creativity to the table. It's been really fulfilling as work.
Danny Buerkli:Michael Pollan, the journalist, his advice on he memorably said, you know, what we should eat, and the answer was eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
Vishal Jodhani:I love that. Yeah. You could read the book just you could get the essence of the book with the with the title.
Danny Buerkli:Right. Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. What would be your equivalent for what you do?
Vishal Jodhani:Show yourself, see the other, explore together.
Danny Buerkli:What do you wish I asked for having so far?
Vishal Jodhani:What keeps me energized about the work that I do?
Danny Buerkli:Tell me.
Vishal Jodhani:I've had a lot of iterations in my own work, including right now. And energy is a topic that I pay a lot of attention to right now. And I do a piece of work, then I pay attention, do an energy audit during the work itself and after the work, and I ask myself, did it give me energy, or did it take away energy? So it's still work in progress. And the learning that I have is finding my own inner compass in the work that I do.
Vishal Jodhani:And that compass for me right now has been just an articulation of my purpose, which is to bring joy, well-being, and love to the world. And it's not something I would say out loud in a business setting necessarily, but just intuitively knowing that for myself and naming it, When an invitation comes my way, even if it sounds big and scary, I tune into it and I ask myself, would it allow me to serve that purpose in some way? Or how aligned is it to my set of values? Like this is an important piece of work. Connection is a core value of mine.
Vishal Jodhani:So if I think of work that I do with facilitation or storytelling or coaching, like, oh, I really care about human connection, and this is why this word excites me. Or I say no to interviews or opportunities just because I feel it's not aligned. They sound great on paper, but they don't feel energy giving or as aligned. But it's like purpose and values. And it's also an invitation to others as we tune in because sometimes it happens implicitly.
Vishal Jodhani:Just explicitly naming it like, wow, what excites me about this work? I end up doing pro bono work. I end up taking on opportunities that are way out of my comfort zone sometimes, but it's more I just feel because we spoke about burnout earlier briefly. It is how do we find for ourselves, how might we find for ourselves that the deep inner source of energy to allow us to fully step into the work that we want to do.
Danny Buerkli:With that, Vish, thank you very much.
Vishal Jodhani:Thank you so much, Danny. I appreciate your thoughtful questions and presence and charisma just inviting me to this conversation.
Danny Buerkli:Thanks for listening to High Variance. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you like this podcast, please give us a rating and leave a review. This makes a big difference, particularly for newer podcasts like this one.