[0.0] The set the soda is supported by AJ Bell money matters.
[4.2] On the Wubney Middle, we talk a lot about changing direction,
[7.3] motivation, identity, but often underneath the door
[12.2] are complicated feelings about money.
[15.0] We worry about it, feel unsure about our decisions.
[19.2] AJ Bell's research shows that there
[21.0] is a 1.65 trillion-gender investment gap, which
[25.0] means women on average are ending up
[26.7] with less and their pension savings and investments.
[30.1] This is why they think women need to talk more openly
[32.8] about money.
[34.4] The AJ Bell Money Matters podcast is created for women,
[37.9] by women, featuring news, information, inspiring interviews,
[42.7] all to help us build our knowledge and confidence
[45.0] around finances.
[47.0] You can listen wherever you found this podcast,
[49.2] or find an on social media.
[51.1] And sign up for their three monthly newsletter
[53.3] for practical tips straight to your inbox.
[56.7] AJ Balmani matters.
[58.7] Helping women feel good investing.
[63.2] We are all familiar with the story
[64.8] of the six-blind men of in Houston,
[67.2] which is they had an elephant.
[69.3] And each person was blindfolded.
[71.1] It's something we're hearing about now,
[72.9] but it's been around for ages.
[74.5] If you want to go fast, go alone.
[76.9] If you want to go far, go with other people.
[80.3] I'm Tatsu Day, host of The Wobbly Middle,
[82.8] podcast for women rethinking their careers in midlife.
[86.0] Good morning, Chef Ali.
[87.2] That's very good to be here with you, Priti.
[89.4] Curiosity and patients are the golden threads that run through the cloth of our guest,
[93.4] Chef Ali, your generous life.
[96.0] Today, this curiosity will take us to be hives in rural Kenya and
[99.9] onion warehouses in India.
[102.0] And we'll see how patients, its less glamorous companion,
[105.8] can help us to clearly define problems that we can solve them correctly.
[109.6] This power combo served Chafali well. She studied engineering and an MBA from one of India's
[116.7] most prestigious business schools and Cambridge and MIT also featured on her school report.
[123.1] Chafali has spent the last decade on the boards of some of the UK's most significant
[127.6] listed investment trusts and today sees the publication of her book and charted spaces.
[133.0] While it's ostensibly about boardrooms, Shefali's book also spoke to me as someone in
[139.5] the middle of a career change. It's fair to say Shefali's no sludge. But even so, her path has
[146.2] not been linear nor has it been without obstacle. Like us, she's had to navigate uncertainty.
[153.2] Listen up for how she thinks about thinking and how we should tackle the questions we need
[157.6] to ask as we move forward. Now, to today's conversation, we begin with many of us
[163.4] found ourselves wanting to start something new but facing the gatekeepers.
[169.8] When I moved to England, I already had a fairly fairy, fairy accomplishment type CV.
[175.7] I spoke the language. I knew cricket inside out which was the language most people spoke
[182.1] at the time in terms of social chit chat. I knew the literature of many many English writers
[188.7] quite well and I found myself completely at a loss because the people that I was dealing with
[195.9] mainly the gatekeepers and crutas did not see it the same way. They saw me and they saw foreigner,
[203.1] they saw foreigner with an accent. They saw foreigner who had too too many degrees, I had only
[208.7] two degrees at the time. So I decided, you know, since I was a very big reader, even then,
[215.6] I knew that Charles Henry had coined the term portfolio career, almost like a decade prior.
[221.4] Yeah, but back in 1989, it's something we're hearing about now, but it's,
[226.1] it's been around for ages. Yes, it went around for ages. So I knew that there was a possibility.
[232.0] I knew that it already had a word, a term that was something I could build. And even so,
[239.2] I had to make my own path. And as you said, I built a portfolio career, which gave me
[245.4] the chance to work with a cross section of people, regulators, lawmakers, small businesses, large
[252.4] businesses, investors and businesses, and so on. And it just gave me a very well-rounded view of
[259.4] what stakeholder base looks like. It's not a concept in my head. It's a real thing. These are
[264.5] real people. You spoke earlier about that golden thread of curiosity that runs through your life
[271.8] and in the support to the curiosity being patients because it takes time to do these things.
[277.6] I think that patients is almost better today because if you don't unpack the problem correctly,
[284.1] you don't define the problem correctly and you start solving it, you may be solving wrong in
[289.5] performance. So in order to solve the problem you have to define it and defining a problem takes
[295.6] patience because from the point of view of multiple stakeholders the problem may look very different
[301.5] from their vantage point. We are all familiar with the story of the six-blind male of in western,
[306.6] which is they had an elephant and each person was blindfolded and somebody described the tail
[312.6] but saying this is a rope and somebody said no no there is no rope I'm touching a pillar which was the elephant's leg.
[319.6] The bottom line is six people had six different perspectives but the elephant was bigger than the some of all those perspectives.
[326.6] And building that perspective requires a lot of patience and a lot of curiosity.
[332.6] And I know that in most people's minds these two things don't sit together but if they sit together they create something of a very different order of
[341.6] order of magnitude, I'd say.
[345.0] I think also this idea of patience allows us to process, I don't want to say failure, but
[353.6] process our steps and iterative routes that we need to take better because you're not
[359.8] seeing something as an idea that failed.
[363.2] You're seeing a path, something that you go around, understanding that we need to be
[367.7] gives us space and courage to continue on our path.
[372.7] You changed direction again in 2015
[376.7] when you applied for a board apprentice program.
[379.7] So why did you think that an apprentice program
[382.7] would work for you?
[384.7] So 2015 was quite a lot of events that happened.
[387.7] One was that I had been building a starter
[390.7] in the luxury tech space with two other co-founders.
[394.7] We were a little too much in love with tech,
[398.1] that they luxury, I would say, at least I was.
[401.6] And there were certain assumptions we made
[404.2] about the nature of the business,
[406.1] which did not stand up to scrutiny in practice.
[409.8] It was quite a capital intensive business,
[412.2] and we were front-ending all the financing of the business.
[416.4] And after giving it a fairly good shot for three years,
[419.7] struggling through all kinds of things,
[421.6] we agreed to shut the business down.
[424.5] We just meant that there was a clean slate once again.
[428.6] And there were many options possible.
[430.8] And one of the factors was that my dad had a female fracture
[435.7] and the age he was at, I was very conscious of the fact
[439.7] that this means me to be very flexible.
[442.9] And this is essentially the boundary condition,
[447.0] if you will.
[448.4] Whatever I do next,
[450.3] it will have to accommodate my need to travel
[454.4] And the need did not come from the circumstance
[456.7] it came from within me.
[458.3] I wanted to travel.
[460.1] So flexibility was one of the things I was looking for.
[462.8] I also had conversations with many different people
[465.4] and they said, you have a very unusual profile
[468.6] in that you have so much experience working very closely
[472.4] with a lot of stakeholders.
[474.0] Have you considered that stewardship
[476.6] and working both drones as a board director,
[479.9] providing oversight and insight and foresight
[483.3] to companies might be a thing for you to consider.
[486.6] Now that pathway is not easy.
[489.1] It would once again bring me back talking to recruit friends
[492.4] and I had some flashbacks to the early conversations
[496.0] I had had in being okay.
[498.2] So I came across the Border Parental Program
[501.3] in a Sunday newspaper and I wrote to them
[504.0] and I said, is this about for me?
[506.5] And it was really a very supportive process
[509.0] because it helped me first of all write a board CV.
[512.1] There was a headhunter, Carol Rosati, who used to give her time to preparing people for
[517.2] border parental interviews.
[518.6] So she gave a lot of support and that's how I decided to give it a shot as a way to
[524.5] enter more rooms.
[526.2] And that is essentially how I got started in 2016.
[529.3] For listeners who aren't familiar with the boardroom environment, can you give us a quick
[534.8] summary of the difference between the executive suite and the non-exact boardroom to
[541.6] which you have supported exists to support the interests of all stakeholders and particularly
[548.5] shareholders for making businesses. They are responsible for setting the direction
[554.2] for enabling the executive in executing on that and redirection with the right people, the right
[559.9] resources and the executive then go away and execute on the strategy. So one is a very hands-on job.
[567.3] The executive job is very hands-on. They are in the business every day working long days,
[572.1] working with the people, the culture, shaping the actual day-to-day decisions.
[576.6] And the non-executive board director is not that directly involved, but they are involved in
[582.6] a role of drawing a accountability and providing support to the executive team. So typically,
[588.7] there'll be five or six board meetings a year. They'll be committee meetings because
[593.6] different boards, do their actual work quite differently. This little nugget is how media ends
[600.3] up writing about board directors job as a journey. It is far from a journey. It is much harder
[607.9] to get a sense of what goes on in the business if you only need colleagues of yours six times a year.
[614.5] Of course, board directors don't just meet six times a year. There's a lot of work done between
[618.9] board meetings. So to make the job sound like it's a six day a year kind of engagement is actually
[625.1] doing it at the service but that is the dominant media depiction. Another perception is that it
[631.0] is a retirement gig. I was encouraged in reading and charted spaces to see that there are a lot of
[637.9] mid-career professionals looking to enter the board rooms and to see it more as a career than a
[644.6] club once you've finished doing everything else. You could do it alongside your executive
[650.4] career too. The mid-career professionals bring a more current hands-on understanding of certain
[655.7] areas which is their digital as an exact. When I was working in an AI company as the Chief
[661.8] Operating Officer, the chairman essentially said to me, keep your boards. We see patterns in women's
[668.6] careers similar to when your father was poorly and you wanted to see him more and
[676.2] that's why more flexibility on your part. And in women's career the fear
[681.0] a lot of the time in the 30s or 40 they step away but they still had that curiosity,
[686.8] that interest in the world. It doesn't just disappear and they may want to
[692.5] step back in after break. I see that the term transferable skills, which is something we talk a lot
[699.9] is not something that you connect with. You say that, you know, if we're thinking about changing
[706.1] direction, we could better benefit from meta cognitive reflection. What do you mean by the term
[713.0] meta-converence reflection? I have sometimes wondered, allow why somebody is attracted to the
[720.2] job of being an auditor. Now, there's nothing against auditors. I have a great deal of respect
[725.2] for the detailed work they do. But if you were to ask them what they do, I don't think it is
[732.9] the same as the perception they might have of what they do. So there is a deep-dried job, which is
[738.8] done within the detail. But the reason for their value ad is to connect a deep-dried job to
[745.6] how an organization's risk propensity and actual risk match. And then they say this award you
[753.2] should look into and this award we have found, which then gives the organization a chance to improve.
[759.1] Now bringing that higher level awareness of what the job we really do is, is far more helpful
[766.5] than saying, I know how to run a digital marketing campaign on Instagram, because the medical
[773.2] of skill there is that I understand what Instagram or whichever social
[777.5] platform of your choice has by way of audience.
[781.1] This is the kind of audience behavior to see.
[784.1] These are the formats that work.
[786.2] These are the formats that don't work.
[788.3] These are the times of bay you can post.
[790.8] But all of that requires a deep understanding of the user base of that
[794.5] social platform.
[795.7] To me, that is actually a much bigger learning.
[798.8] So when I say medical bit of reflection, I essentially am asking people
[802.7] to step away from their day-to-day work and say,
[806.9] these are the higher level capabilities I have.
[809.8] And these can be lifted and shifted to other contexts
[812.6] because what I have is a way of asking questions.
[815.8] What I have is a set of sense of values and directionality.
[819.6] What I have is a sense of boundaries
[821.8] that I will and will not cross in my work.
[825.1] And essentially, that makes people skills
[827.4] far more widely applicable than being stuck
[831.2] not only in a particular job title or a particular industry sector, even.
[837.5] There is that reflection that needs to take place, but we also need to make a psychological shift
[844.2] when we're changing direction. So how do we do that?
[849.5] One of the things that I have observed in people of either gender making changes in what they thought
[858.0] was their predetermined trajectory is that people can feel quite lonely and they may think they are
[865.5] the only people who are doing this. That is not necessarily the case. Really everything that we do
[874.2] has been done by somebody else before. There may be books about it, there are now podcasts,
[879.5] about it, people talk about what they have done to change their career trajectories,
[883.4] or we can just ask people.
[886.0] It is amazing how a people will try and help you
[889.3] if you ask them a question.
[891.4] I think that psychological shift
[893.3] first to get over ourselves
[894.8] and our identity which can be very married
[897.4] to a particular job in a particular company,
[900.3] moving away from that identity
[901.9] to actually evaluate one's own value.
[904.6] And then finding out what are the various pathways available
[908.7] on which we can explore and take the journey
[911.3] in the new direction.
[912.5] And more importantly, I think why people with lonely
[916.4] is that they don't necessarily have a network
[921.2] or a set of relationships that they can call upon.
[925.4] And I don't mean this in the sense that it's transactional,
[929.4] but people who will just let them be when they want to be
[932.4] and people who will be there when you want to talk.
[936.1] And unfortunately, I find way too many people
[940.1] don't invest in building relationships without an expectation of some kind of return.
[946.8] And I always tell people don't keep a ledger. Just do what you can. Don't keep a ledger.
[951.5] Just don't because that way lies ruin, right? Don't expect anything. But build relationships authentically
[957.2] and genuinely before you need them. If you try and cultivate when you need them, that's basically
[963.3] what networking is made on. But friendships and other support relationships are cultivated when you
[969.2] you don't name them.
[970.5] And you find real connection and real panic connections.
[974.0] And I think absence of those makes people really struggle
[978.9] through transitions.
[980.5] And it challenges their resilience.
[983.5] And it challenges their ability to persist
[986.1] when they're navigating uncertainty.
[988.5] So I feel all of this psychological shift is something
[991.6] that we don't probably talk about, but I see it in fragments
[996.4] in observing people.
[998.2] And all of this essentially is required
[1001.0] as input, being able to talk to people,
[1002.9] being able to explore and ask questions about the part
[1005.5] we are required to take and call upon people
[1009.2] and recharge and validate yourself
[1013.2] and not attach your identity
[1015.1] or rather detach your identity from a job title
[1018.0] and a company's name.
[1019.9] All of those things are required
[1021.7] and that's the psychological shift
[1023.6] quite as substantial overnight take.
[1025.9] So there were two things I came through.
[1028.7] There was one about community and also about finding the stories that you can see us off.
[1035.5] And I think that's very much at the heart of what the wobbly middle is about.
[1039.9] We want to speak to women who've changed directions so that other women can see what is
[1046.3] possible.
[1047.8] And so much in your book is about storytelling.
[1051.5] I loved in particular the example you gave about the Smart Hive.
[1058.2] So that was Margaret when Jika and she grew up in rural Kenya and she was concerned about collapsing
[1065.3] of beehives.
[1067.6] Could you tell us a little bit about the Smart Hive?
[1070.8] So the Smart Earth story is quite interesting because she was a young girl as you said
[1074.7] to rural Kenya.
[1076.2] And she was aware of the Hives being vital
[1080.7] to the bigger biosphere that existed around her,
[1084.5] which is farming.
[1085.5] And then the high collapses,
[1087.0] at least to the collapse of the ecosystem
[1089.0] that it's supporting,
[1089.9] because there's no pollination and so on and so forth.
[1092.8] What she did was she combined her knowledge
[1095.5] of internet of things, IoT devices,
[1099.4] used the constraints that were there
[1102.0] in terms of provisioning of energy
[1104.1] these devices need and connect that to solar panels, connected that to how farmers in rural Africa
[1111.4] or rural Kenya particularly are using their mobile phones, which is where they get the updates
[1117.7] from blue when something is changing in the house. She connected things that were vital to solving
[1124.4] the problem that she grew up watching and I find it inspiring that somebody so young and so
[1130.6] observant and curious, right, was able to pull together all the disparate things that she knew about.
[1137.9] Some she may have studied as an engineer and some she may have learned through her lived experience
[1143.2] watching the behavior of people with demo-by-phones and the role the mobile phones play in their day-to-day
[1147.9] life and she pulled together a solution. And to me, it's kind of ironic to cite, well, I might as
[1155.2] outside Steve Jobs, he said in relation, is seeing the same things and connecting them in
[1159.9] different ways. And she was a true enoiter. She truly innovated to solve a problem where
[1164.9] she was using what she knew, what she had observed, and what she knew the potential of the
[1169.7] technical pieces was.
[1171.3] Yes, so the smart hive, it was a small device that measured the humidity, measured the climate,
[1178.4] the temperature within the hive, and that allowed, then we go to the farmer's phone, and
[1183.6] he would be able to tell from that if he needed intervention.
[1187.9] Yeah. Yeah.
[1188.9] Yeah.
[1189.5] And there's another story in that section of another young woman,
[1192.9] several years prior to Margaret's story,
[1195.0] Goliani Shinde, who saw this similar problem with onions.
[1200.0] She grew up in a city which is the largest onion trading
[1204.2] herpenasia.
[1205.8] And she was aware of the very high rate of spoilage of onions
[1209.6] while they sat in the warehouses.
[1212.2] because between the time they are picked to the time they go to the market,
[1215.8] there is a period of time that lapses.
[1218.4] And the way fathers would find out that the onions are rotting out through smell
[1222.8] and we all know the smell of her rotting onion.
[1225.5] But by the time you can smell it in the warehouse,
[1228.8] that brought us probably spread.
[1231.4] Moreover, how do you figure out in the warehouse where to start looking for that
[1235.8] rotten onion?
[1237.5] So she thought that problem using IoT many years prior to
[1241.6] Margaret's story in India and essentially she did a two-way thing. One is to actually enable the
[1248.2] particular warehouses and two to go to larger businesses who built these warehouses to pitch to
[1254.1] them the idea that they could build this IoT sensing in the buildings while they built the warehouses
[1261.2] so that they didn't have to be retrofitting. Now that's stories of two young women thinking like
[1267.3] engineers which I'm partial to obviously and actually breaking the problem down and
[1274.1] building the solution piece by piece. And I love those two stories in the book, one because
[1279.4] they're centering young women and two because they're centering engineering and three but they
[1283.8] solve real problems that affect people's livelihoods. And another thing about the power of their
[1291.3] story is belief because I was listening to Sam Smith of Superscalers speak and she was saying
[1299.6] that the biggest thing holding women back from scaling is belief. So I think that these
[1306.0] stories of identifying problems, overcoming them, building things, seeing other women do
[1314.2] it's known we can. I think it's really important in building that belief and I suppose the next
[1323.0] thing is if listeners are interested in seeking out a board career where can someone who wants to
[1328.5] go and find the stories and find the community go? So one thing I would refer because your audience
[1336.0] is global so I would refer them to this in the references section in my book. There is a list of
[1341.5] communities getting rise by the country. So wherever people are, there are communities of both
[1346.2] directors that are there. And in the UK they should look at the British programme. They could
[1352.2] look at the border apprentice programme, but that is in order to get started. But you get started
[1356.7] and keep going. There is a community WB directors formerly Gold Women on both UK, which has now become
[1363.5] part of mural. And mural is the largest board's headhunter and they are now joined together.
[1368.7] Okay, we're going to take a quick break.
[1376.2] When we left off, we were talking about how people break into this area we spoke about.
[1383.7] The networks spoke about the board program.
[1387.1] But I'd love you to tell us about how it was the cab ride to an interview that got you
[1395.4] the job.
[1396.4] Yes, that was the moment I was interviewing for my board apprenticeship.
[1400.1] I normally would have worked, but I absolutely did not know for started exactly where
[1406.9] I was going.
[1407.9] I kind of knew it was rare for us.
[1410.4] So I took a black cab from Charing Cross and I went there and my Ben Cherman, as I was
[1417.5] beginning to unbutton my coat and kind of start to talk, asked me by way of small talk,
[1424.2] did you come far?
[1427.2] And while I was unbuttoning my coat, I said to her, no, I took a black cab back to
[1431.7] the, so she said, oh, you didn't take an Uber.
[1435.5] And as I kind of got ready to sit down, I gave her several reasons why, and we have to bear
[1442.5] in mind this is December 2015, why Uber was a problematic business to support as a consumer.
[1451.1] I understood the venture capital model of financing the other leader of a new, almost
[1456.1] cross subsidizing the earlier venue.
[1458.0] And this is a habit-forming thing,
[1459.8] because now people have an app on their phone
[1461.9] that they can call a car with.
[1464.6] I talked about the extra traffic on London's roads
[1468.3] and how it's extra pollution was therefore being served up
[1471.8] as an externality that everybody was paying for.
[1475.4] And talked about the consumers becoming reliant
[1479.0] on particular fares, which may or may not
[1481.7] be sustainable in the future.
[1483.4] Outside the UK, there are sometimes not enough public transport options, particularly
[1489.4] through the US.
[1490.4] So I was used to using Uber and California and therefore you get to talk to a lot of drivers.
[1496.2] So I had collected information from those drivers about the economics of how much money
[1501.7] they made from a ride and what were the various things that were thin sliced off in children's
[1507.1] this and this app access and so on and so forth.
[1510.1] I knew that the economics on the driver's side had been cut to the bone already.
[1515.3] And I said, and therefore, I feel that by the time Uber is taken public,
[1520.5] the upper will be almost broadcast. And the business will then have to look to start its search for
[1527.3] profitability for any sustainable business being profitable is key. And at that time, of course,
[1533.8] I sat down and had a normal interview, Martin Young, what I do now. But afterwards, I learned
[1540.1] that even before I sat down, my small talk had been,
[1545.5] quite big talk because I basically unpacked my thinking
[1549.7] about my own purchase decisions.
[1552.0] And that is, you know, it's not that I spend two hours
[1555.1] thinking about it.
[1556.0] I just very quickly instinctively look at a business
[1558.7] and work out how they make money
[1560.3] and whether they are sustainable or not.
[1562.7] And that is basically how I choose to support
[1565.1] or not support early stage companies,
[1567.1] even as a consumer.
[1569.0] So that is a kind of mindset or perspective that I was able to showcase without meaning to
[1576.9] showcase it. I think that takes us right back to the beginning of the conversation where we
[1583.4] spoke about curiosity. On that note, there's a question I ask all I guess, which is what would you
[1592.7] tell your 30-year-old self? What advice would you give to your 30-year-old self about where you are today?
[1599.0] So where I am today, I don't think this was something that I had planned at 30.
[1607.6] But at the same time, when all of these conversations, sometimes we get attracted to putting
[1614.4] frameworks around things.
[1615.9] And I think the best frameworks are to be found in poultry.
[1619.7] And I was thinking about Robert Frost, the roadblock taken.
[1624.6] of your audience would be familiar with the poem, but it ends with two roads,
[1629.0] divers, diamondwood, and I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the
[1633.6] difference. Now where Robert Frost, all short fun, is that they are not just two roads.
[1641.3] There are many many roads. Some of those roads have been walked by other people before
[1647.6] who have talked about it, written about it, or we can find them and talk to them about it.
[1652.5] But more importantly, in the current environment
[1656.6] with so much change, coming at a rapid clip
[1659.8] and acting altogether all at once,
[1662.9] there are many, any more uncharted spaces.
[1666.4] And bringing it back to the threat of curiosity,
[1669.8] if we remain curious, open-minded,
[1672.8] and seek to connect with people who have different perspectives,
[1677.1] we can actually find opportunities
[1679.0] those uncharted spaces even if they look daunting and too big to overcome here alone. But then
[1685.8] you know you're from South Africa and in the northern hemisphere people say it's an African
[1690.4] probe up. If you want to go fast go alone. If you want to go far go with other people. So I'll
[1697.5] leave it at that. That's very beautiful. Thank you so much for coming on today. Thank you. Thank you
[1703.9] having a country.
[1704.9] Thank you for listening.
[1707.9] If this episode resonated, please leave a review.
[1711.3] It makes a real difference to how new listeners find us.
[1714.5] And if you know someone who might be in their own wobbly middle, send us one to them.
[1719.1] As Shafali says, it's all about the community.
[1722.7] One last thing.
[1724.5] Before the next episode, let's channel some of Shafali's curiosity.
[1729.2] Make a list of questions about whatever you're chewing over, challenge your direction
[1733.0] a problem you can't quite see clearly. Just the questions and then drill down. What further
[1738.8] questions do you need to ask to find the answers to those? Then next episode we'll have
[1745.0] a think about what to do with them.