Lessons in Managing Business in the New Normal : Louie Voice Control

Lessons in Managing Business in the New Normal

In a previous post, we shared the story of Louie Voice Control and its creator, Pramit Bhargava. Before we dive into lessons in managing business in the new normal, we encourage you to read our post about how he took control of his life. Pramit is an IIT – IIM–B alum who had a dream career with leadership roles in top organizations, until he begun to lose his vision. After going through the “Lost Phase”, he created Louie Voice Control, a virtual friend for the visually impaired. Pramit’s views on managing his team and business provides us insights on how to manage the future workforce and operating model. So, without further ado, here are the lessons in managing business in the New Normal drawn from Pramit Bhargava’s conversation with Rajiv Maheshwari.

In case you missed reading the first part that introduced Louie Voice Control, here is a quick video to help you with some context.

Updated in October 2021

Building a Team – Talent Acquisition

Pramit runs Louie Control with a team of 13 people and has built the team from scratch. I was curious to understand how his approach to talent acquisition compares to that during his earlier corporate avatar. He emphasizes that the approach could not be more different, having worked with large companies such as Unilever, Motorola, etc. Both in the capacity of a recruiter and as a potential leadership candidate, he found that large companies typically try and fit the candidate’s past experience to the Job Description. This fitment primarily drives the selection process.

Pramit has worked across different sectors and from his experience realizes that selling soaps is different from healthcare, which in turn can’t be compared with selling mobile phones! He could not recruit people who had no relevant experience in his earlier organizations. However, he has taken a customized approach for building the team in Louie Control. Let us look at some examples.

Recruiting for Quality Assurance

For instance, one of the key roles is Quality Assurance. For such a role, Pramit looks at three aspects. Firstly, the candidate should be interested in and excited about using the product, since he/she will be spending a lot of time doing that. They should not be viewing this as a job, but should be looking forward to the tasks at hand. The second factor is sharpness of the mind, and this can be exhibited in any aspect of life, not just in their jobs.

The third factor is interesting. Earlier, when he was sighted, Pramit used to read people’s facial expressions and read their body language. However, Pramit says that ‘Now I just feel energies’! He admits that it is a struggle to explain this scientifically, but he does get strong vibes.

Recruiting for Marketing Roles

Let’s switch to Pramit’s core domain, Marketing. Even though he has managed a super brand such as Lux, he takes an unconventional approach at Louie Voice Control. Pramit maintains that beyond a point, all CVs look similar and that cannot be a judging criteria, as long as the candidate has enough marketing skills to make their CV look good! However, he judges people for a marketing role by asking only one question. ‘How will you market Louie Voice Control globally at zero cost?’

Needless to mention, if the candidate questions the premise itself, the lack of fitment is amply clear. One of the candidates had lesser ‘relevant experience’, but came in very well prepared. She started off with her presentation a few seconds into the interview. It did not matter whether her experience was in B2B marketing and we needed someone for B2C (business to business vs business to consumer). In fact, when the team pointed out these gaps in fitment, Pramit indicated that he did not look at the candidate’s CV. Since she had a clear vision and great ideas of what she could do in her proposed role, Pramit promptly hired her and it has turned out to be a good decision!

Recruiting Lessons for Us

Having spoken to Pramit about how he has recruited team members for Louie Voice Control, I wonder what lessons can we draw for ourselves? Should we follow the age old method of filtering and selecting people based on the fitment of their past experience with the role at hand. Or, can we do something creative and simulate how the person would perform in the given role? Many leaders adopt these styles individually; but how can we scale these practices? Can we make this the norm, rather than an exception? This is even more relevant in a VUCA (volatile uncertain complex ambiguous) world, where past patterns may not repeat in future. Then, why this obsession with the right ‘fit’, when we can’t even predict the future environment?

Related Read: Leadership lessons from Tennis

Managing the Team

The unconventional approach continues beyond recruitment to operations. Even though he has worked across multiple industries himself, he has largely worked in the marketing function, before moving to leadership roles. However, Pramit is a strong proponent of job rotation when it comes to Louie Voice Control. They move people across Marketing, Quality Assurance, User Experience and User Analytics. In a classic organization, these roles will be filled by people who are so called experts.

In fact, within the industry the primary job that visually impaired people obtain is that of an ‘accessibility tester’. However, Pramit moves even the visually impaired team members across marketing, user experience and testing. He fundamentally believes that sharpness of mind (along with interest and inclination) is adequate to excel in these roles. Of course, he humbly caveats his model by saying that this may not work for everyone, but it has worked out for his team.

Age is just a number

One of the other things worth noting about his approach to building the team is the disregard for age. One of the team members joined the team two years ago as an intern. However, she has shown promise and heads the Quality Assurance. Another team member who has more experience and double her age reports in to the young Quality Assurance Head.

An Open Mind

The approach for technical team members, such as Android Developers is also different. This also stems from the fact that they are doing development that is different from what has been done in the industry. Pramit is not likely to find anyone in the industry who has built an app similar to Louie Voice Control. Consequently, he does not rely on the industry standard coding tests. Rather, he looks for an open mind and the right attitude.

Team Management Lessons for Us

There are several thoughts that keep cropping in my head as I think about Pramit’s unconventional approach. I am sure it has prompted your conscious or sub-conscious brain to ask a few questions. Will such approaches work for us too? We have been trained and conditioned to run operations and teams according to a template. But, what happens if the rules of the game change? Isn’t this exactly what happened during the pandemic? What lessons have we learnt from our own experiences and how has this changed our operating style? Needless to mention, our answers will vary significantly. But, I believe that even though Pramit’s organization may appear to be very different from yours, the lessons can be remarkably relevant, especially in these VUCA times and in the New Normal.

Managing Remote Workforce and The Future of Work

Continuing the thread of drawing parallels, I checked with Pramit about managing teams remotely. One of the biggest impediments to managing remote teams for many of us has been the lack of visual cues and the inability to ‘see’ our team members. So, I quizzed Pramit on how he manages teams remotely and even otherwise, without the vital visual cues.

As you can expect based on what you have read so far, Pramit comes up with some surprising insights. His team has been far more productive during the pandemic, while working remotely. Similar to many of our experiences, the team has benefited immensely from the flexibility and avoiding wasteful travel. This is even more true of Pramit himself, for whom the entire cycle of going to office can take more than an hour, even though his office is a stone’s throw away.

One of the hacks that has worked for him is to avoid video calls. He encourages voice calls, unless someone needs to share screens. Ensuring that people keep their computers away allows for greater focus. This is because the tendency to multi-task is very high when you are staring at a digital screen. As a result, the calls have been far more intense. Moreover, he can sense whether people are focused and paying attention or not. He has developed this ability, even without the benefit of being able to see them. He has developed an ability to sense whether the team members are distracted. His team jokingly questions whether Pramit can actually see, because of his uncanny abilities!

The Future Operating Model

Pramit’s insights leads me to question the wisdom of the barrage of Zoom calls that organizations have got used to. I had written a light hearted post about my experiences with Zoom during the pandemic. However, after speaking to Pramit, I am inclined to take some of the fun tips rather seriously!

Building the Right Culture

For Louise Voice Control, building empathy for the target segment is critical and has to be ingrained in the culture. This is in stark contrast to large organizations with KPIs, KRAs, MBOs, etc. (Key Performance Indicators, Key Result Areas, Management by Objectives, etc.). In such cultures, things typically boil down to numbers. The focus in these places is typically to control behaviors and time spent, assuming that this will lead to productivity.

However, Pramit believes that it is critical to understand people’s strengths and play to their strengths. Hence he has a custom approach for each team member, depending on their hot buttons. For instance, a developer who likes to solve challenging problems will get bored with routine mundane tasks and his ‘heart‘ will not be in it. Similarly, a good developer will develop something complex in less time and with fewer lines of code. Conventional metrics of time spent should not apply in these cases.

Pramit is the first one to admit the challenges in scaling up this model as the team grows beyond a few hundred people. However, there are lessons that can be distilled from his experience for all organizations and people managing teams. Since we are heading into a future that is drastically different from the past, it is a great time to introspect.

Flexibility is the key in the New Normal

In a remote working environment, these lessons are vital and we need to ask ourselves some hard questions. Rather than trying to control the behavior of people remotely, can we do something different? Can we structure the work and assign it so that people are intrinsically motivated? And, wouldn’t it be beautiful if this aligns to the purpose of the organization?

Such harmony is rare, but not difficult. One only needs to put their thinking hats on, because what worked yesterday is not what will work in the New Normal. We need to institute a new culture and operating model for the Future of Work.

Marketing Paradigm and Growth

The marketing paradigm and the approach towards growth is also understandably different. Pramit has worked in a culture where he mastered the art of managing perception at all levels – physical, benefits and emotive. His objective was to maximize profits and shareholder value, without breaking any laws.

However, the approach at Louie Voice Control is completely different, since the focus is on the user and truly delivering. As a result, the questions that one needs to ask are fundamentally different. The focus is on ensuring that Louie Voice Control becomes an integral part of their lives. The objective is to truly transform the lives of the users.

This journey has just started and Pramit believes that he has covered only 2-4% of this journey so far.

Purpose driven organizations

We have had a surge in people talking about Purpose driven organizations. In particular, I have been following Simon Sinek, who speaks about the “Why” of an organization. However, as with any other popular jargon, there is a risk of over-use and in some cases, abuse.

Help Louie Voice Control continue this journey…

I loved having this conversation with Pramit Bhargava, firstly, about his journey that was covered in Taking Control of Life. And, secondly, about lessons in managing business in the new normal. These lessons help us deal with the pandemic and inspire us to better manage the vagaries of the future workforce. However, the lessons about building a purpose driven organization with alignment of team and culture are truly meaningful.

I hope you enjoyed reading about the inside story about Louie Voice Control and it’s creator, Pramit Bhargava, as much as I enjoyed speaking with him. More importantly, I hope you obtained useful insights about how to manage the future workforce and operating model. And, finally, please do share the good word. You can enable this app to transform the lives of the visually impaired. Or, even touch lives of those who may have difficulty in reading on mobile screens.

Do you want to join Louie Voice Control? (Update – November 2022)

Startup Related Reads

About Pramit Bhargava

Pramit Bhargava completed B Tech (Computer Science) from IIT (BHU), Varanasi and MBA from IIM Bangalore. He worked in leadership roles in various organizations such as Hindustan Unilever, Motorola, The Mobile Store and Quest Diagnostics.

Faced with impaired vision and lack of viable alternatives, Pramit took matters in his own hands and created Louie Voice Control that lets you fully control the phone and specified apps with just voice commands.

About The Author

Rajiv Maheshwari is a business and start-up advisor, and the co-founder of From The Experts Mouth. He is a management professional with over 25 years of experience, and worked as CEO for a decade, and in leadership roles with NYSE listed companies such as Accenture and WNS.

He is a Chartered Accountant and MBA (Director’s Merit List from IIM Bangalore) and an autodidact, who is on the path of self-directed life long learning and sharing. He is a thought leader, author and keynote speaker and has developed several frameworks to bridge the gap between academia and industry.