It's an incredible honor for us to have Sanjay Menon, a managing director of Publicis Sapient. As a managing director of Publicis Sapient India, Sanjay is responsible for driving strategy, capability development, and growth of Publicis Sapient's India presence and maintaining the status as hub of the country's global distribution delivery network. Having been with the company for 21, over 21 years, Sanjay has been instrumental in growing Sapient's India operations since its inception. Sanjay has served in various business and delivery roles, including running key account P&Ls, managing global delivery for some of the business units, as well as growing digital marketing capabilities from India. You can follow Sanjay on Twitter at SanjMen, S-A-N-J-M-E-N. Welcome, Sanjay, to Disrupt TV.
It's a pleasure, Vala and Ray. Thank you for having me on the show. Looking forward to it. Thank you.
So how do organizations have to think about the work of the place of the future? What is changing? Are people coming to work? What's going on? How's that interaction? You're at the forefront of it. Tell us what's going on.
No, I think it's a great question, Ray. I think this is one of those, I think, situations where we're learning, and we're learning with every passing minute, right? Because I think anybody who feels that they've got this model right, I feel are being super optimistic because everything's changing on us. I think what's typically happened, I think, the last two years has... Even if you think of it, if you were to run an experiment, right? And I keep telling this to even people in our organization. If someone had told me two and a half years back, hey, what if you made everybody work remotely? Could we get this model working? I would have had many people tell me in very eloquent terms why it's a stupid idea to try and why it is never going to work. And guess what? The whole world has made it work for 26 months and counting, right? So the one thing is, I think there's a change that's happened, right? I mean, it happened to us. It happened with us. It doesn't matter what the reasons were. I think, I agree with you. I think it's definitely been a dark period the last two, two and a half years. But the main thing is, I think it has forced us to change. And I think the change that's happened, I think something's changed forever, right? I think the new normal that's been set up in this is about the flexibility in how I think about my workplace. So I think till now, people equated, or companies, and let's start with companies, right? We always equated workplace equals your physical office, which the companies control, right? I think, you know, if you go back 10, 15 years, you know, we talked about brands depending on consumers instead of consumers depending on brands. I think the same thing's happening to the workplace. I think the workplace has got democratized in the last two years. And the people have taken control over the workplace and they're making choices. So I think the future of the workplace is going to be about where work happens, but it's going to happen on the terms and conditions of people who feel, what, where can I really create the most impact from, right? Because at the end of the day, I think the question to ask is not about where is someone working from? It's about what impact are they creating? And what's proved in the last two years is I can be creating impact from anywhere. So as you think about the future of workplace, I think a few things that at least as we think about it as design principles is one, it's going to have to put the person at the center of the model, right? We've had for many years, people work for a model. I think we are now firmly getting into the era where the model will work for the people, right? And at Publisys APM, that's to us at the core of our working model is really how do you put the person and their preference at the center of it? People may have a preference of saying, I want to work from remotely all the time. I want to come into the office some point in time. I want to come into the office all the time. That's fine. How do you create a model that allows for that preference? That's number one. The second design principle is how is it truly inclusive? Because the reason it needs to be inclusive is I can't be disenfranchised because I made a choice. Hey, I made a choice of working remotely. I'm in a team of 10 and eight people are in the office. I'm one of two who's on the phone or on Zoom or wherever. And therefore, I feel I'm not part of the conversation. I feel I'm not in the context, right? So the model will also then have to think about how does it truly become inclusive, which to me also gets into some of the deeper things of as a company, what's your culture, right? Is your culture truly inclusive, right? So there are a lot of foundational levers as people think about the workplace. I mean, for us, like for example, I think we were in a way always flexible even before 2020. We gave people flexibility of their choice of where they wanted to work from, how they pick a configuration that rendered themselves most impactful. But I think that'll have to be some of the centerpiece. Now, the most important part, I think, as people think about the workplace for me is how do you create a sense of community? How do you create a sense of belongingness? Because at the end of the day, the reason that we all work wherever we work is because we are buying into a larger passion, a larger vision, right? And we are plugging into an energy source that's the organization. Now, how does that organization move from just a physical manifestation to really being ubiquitous, right? And so to me, as organizations think about the future, as we're thinking about the workplace of the future, we're really saying it's people at the center, an inclusive culture that allows everybody to be in on the conversation. So everybody feels connected irrespective of where they are. And yet they create a sense of belongingness and a sense of oneness with the organization. I think that to me is just absolutely fascinating. I think that's gonna be like the next kind of spike in how people and teams and the human systems get kind of connected global. So I'm just super excited. I think this is gonna be scratching the surface because the possibilities are... And I think the tipping point, as you said, will come when there's a killer app. That app that actually increases the sense of belonging and mattering, and like you said, harmonizes this physical presence, digital presence in a way that feels organic and real. Like you said, the touch, the feel, the smell, but that killer app doesn't exist. I don't, you know, I haven't experienced it yet. I'll be honest, I'm not ready for a smell in the metaverse yet, but yeah, that's okay. That's the one thing I want. Keep the smell out.
That's funny. Other than the scent there. But hey, we are here with Sanjay Menon, Managing Director, Pudel Sassapient India. And more importantly, he's up here late with me here in India. So you can follow him on Twitter at S-A-N-J-M-E-N. Thank you so much for being on the show and thanks for staying up late with us.
Pleasure, Ray. Pleasure, Bala. You were terrific. Thank you so much.
You were terrific. Bye-bye.