Hi, my name is Amy Rule
and I'm a member of BCG's Global External Relations team,
managing BCG's partnership with TED.
And this morning I'm joined by Julia.
Hello everyone, I'm Julia Dhar.
I'm a partner at BCG in Dubai.
I'm actually celebrating my tenth year
at BCG just this month.
Wonderful and of note Julia Dhar is a past TED
at BCG speaker which is the subject of our chat today.
So a little bit of background BCG has partnered
with TED since 2013.
We have hosted seven events,
TED at BCG events around the world
bringing together the best of TED
with the knowledge and insights of BCG.
And this year we are hosting our eighth event in Mumbai.
Alright I'll be asking Julia a few questions
about her experience as past TED at BCG speaker.
Let's get started.
So to start off,
when did you speak at TED at BCG
and what was the topic of your talk?
So it feels so recent.
I was part of TED at BCG 2018,
which took place right at the end of 2018 in Toronto.
My TED talk is called "How to Disagree Productively
and to Find Common Ground,"
and it felt relevant then,
it feels extremely relevant today.
It's about how do we have those conversations
that are really difficult in order
to actually solve problems,
in order to make progress on things
that feel really controversial,
things where you and I have a very different point of view,
a very different opinion
and you feel like there might not be a chance
for us to come closer together on those.
So I fully agree that was incredibly relevant then
and relevant now.
What kind of inspired that talk?
Was there anything in particular,
or what lead you to that subject?
So it actually has a long history,
so I was a high school debater,
a high school debater and a college debater,
and I was serious about this
for anyone who's ever been in a debate.
I was actually lucky enough to work really hard at it,
have some amazing coaches and went on
to win the World School's Debate Championships three times
and all that my worth by saying I have been in a lot
of debates.
I have been in a lot of arguments in my life,
but it struck me that those tools of structured debate
where you have the opportunity to express your point
of view, you're forced to do that, clearly, objectively,
impersonally.
Then there's an obligation for me to respond
and for you to respond to that response.
For us to really have to engage with both sides
of an issue, those are things we don't have
to do very often in our life.
But there are tools from formal debate
that we could apply to our everyday life
and it felt to me like we didn't really have a way
to have those conversations.
So are there some things you can take from this?
You're very formal, very serious, very competitive,
way of exchanging ideas and bring those into your
boardrooms, in your city council meetings,
and your Christmas, Thanksgiving eat dinner tables.
Yeah.
Yup, no that's great.
What prepared you in your journey
at BCG to give a TED Talk?
Was there anything in particular?
You know I'm sure we'll talk about this a little bit later
but I really think that there is no better
through partner than TED and BCG if you think about
how really good ideas come to life, how you make space
for new and provocative, and challenging ideas.
But as I said so I'd had some practice in my pre-BCG life
getting ready for this specific topic of this talk,
but one thing that I think BCG
as an institution does really, really, well,
we actually practice what I preach in this case
is what's really a core value for us.
I don't know if you feel this way
that great ideas come from anywhere.
They come from anywhere in the hierarchy,
they come from everywhere in the client organization.
There's not a premium on a good idea
because you're more senior or you've been there longer
or maybe you have more technical expertise in a topic,
which I think is so important,
so that for us I feel like is really at the heart
of BCG's DNA, and second this idea
that good ideas become great ideas through
that process of exchange,
through that process of disagreement.
And I think about the projects and the case teams
where we say I think we might have something here.
You know people will show up and say
I think this is kind of an idea,
like I think this is sort of an idea
and someone else will say I like that,
but what about this or one of the reasons
why it will be hard to make that work in this case
is because of X, Y, and Zed,
or the political challenges
of getting that done in this particular environment
you haven't quite anticipated.
Right?
And that constant process of refining
and polishing and re-articulating ideas
I feel like no matter what you do at BCG,
no matter who you are, no matter how long you've been here
that's a core obligation of our work.
Absolutely and it's something
we recognized really early on in the partnership too
and partnership with TED
and pretty early on we decided to open up the process
for people to speak at TED at BCG to all staff
beyond just our most senior leaders
because we recognize that.
You know we had some great ideas
for a TED Talk itself coming from you know
all cohorts of BCG and really, really all around the world.
So moving to the day itself,
the big day, TED at BCG, what was that day like for you?
Can you walk us through a little bit,
what you were feeling, what you experienced?
Yeah and I think it's so wonderful to be a TED viewer,
I mean I'm a TED fan as well as a Ted talker,
but what you see at the end of this interview,
eight, 12, 15, you know 18 minute talks
is a very polished version often.
You see people who have kind of very clear logical flow
often a very beautifully ordered and sequenced idea.
Maybe for some people they start out that way.
For me that was not necessarily the case
that the day of TED was actually the culmination
of many, many months of working both
with and amazing TED speaker coach Briar Goldberg,
with the whole TED team to get input and feedback
to go through that process of refinement
that we just talked about
and to understand what's the core idea
and you know one thing that the TED folks says,
everyone has a TED talk in them.
Right?
It's about thinking about what's that big idea,
what's a thing you have to say
that really will make a difference in the way someone else
acts out in the world.
So it was a culmination of lots of preparation,
practice, lots of walking around talking to myself,
talking to anyone else who would listen about the talk.
But that opportunity when you go out on stage
and in this case the TED talk was recorded in front
of several 100 BCGer's in Toronto.
Several of our like most treasured clients,
members of our alumni community,
so you can not imagine a more supportive
and welcoming audience.
But you know as some of the TED folks say
at that point you know you had this idea
and you've worked on it, and it's all in your head
and you wanna get it out there,
but it's just an opportunity to share an idea
with the world.
It's something that you believe in
that your experience and training has enabled you
to articulate this idea in a particular way
and now you are able to offer it
to people in the hope that's of service to them as well.
Yeah, and that's kind of your first step
in offering this gift out into the world,
but then TED puts it online.
(laughing)
That's right it's being recorded, of course.
Many millions more people can you explain
a little bit about what that was like for you,
what happened after your talk,
you know kind of hit the masses?
And the timing of the talk,
the talk being going live was a few weeks after
we had actually mad the recording itself,
but was I think perfectly
timed around the US Thanksgiving holiday
and of course and the lead up to Christmas
and New Year, so people are often spending a lot
of time with family.
You're often reconnecting
with people you haven't seen for a long time,
and you also maybe have some time
to think and reflect, and I got the most amazing
and remarkable outreach as a result of the talk.
So some of the things that were really special is
people wrote to me and said you know what
like I had been estranged from this member
of my family for years.
And I don't really know why
but we just kinda stopped like our conversations
were going no where
and you know we disagreed fundamentally about politics,
or how you raise your children, or whatever it is.
And I watched my talk, I watched your talk
and then I sent it to my sibling, mother-in-law,
cousin, and then I called them and then we talked,
you know.
In some cases that was a way to bring them back together
and in some cases it was just a first step on a
path towards hopefully many conversations.
And I think that's really, really special.
One of the United Nations agencies emailed me after the fact
and said, "you know we're in the process
of trying to broker a new agreement
for a treaty that's been deadlocked
for a couple of decades, and at the beginning
of our negotiations, at the beginning
of the formal negotiations we showed your talk
to the ambassadors
and the negotiators from all the countries in the hope
of reminding people that what we're here
to do is to build common ground.
Right?
We're not here to sit in our chairs
and keep restating our positions.
We're here to try
and bring those positions a little bit closer together."
Wonderful, that's amazing.
So last year's them of the event was reboot.
What did that mean to you?
Such a well chosen theme.
I think it feels like we are in a time
where almost everything
is going through a really hard reset.
Right?
People are thinking about
how their business models are being challenged.
How their staff models are being challenged.
What it is like to be part of a team today,
what does it mean to be part of a community,
even part of a country and all of these challenges
were actually themes that I felt like came out
at the TED talk.
Right?
We had conversations about globalization,
about the kind of hard reset.
These new geopolitical relationships
and then we had people who talked about
well, how do you disrupt the financial markets completely?
How do you actually retrain good habits in junior managers
so that when they become senior managers,
you're not just stuck in this pattern
that you've had forever?
And all of those different interpretations
totally different talks from people
of you know very different professional trainings,
areas of specialization from within BCG,
but all that take on that really relevant theme.
Right and so that leads us to this year
where our event theme is unlock
and it's this view that,
or at least in my view it's this view
that you know we have the skills,
we have the people,
we have a lot of the technologies already,
but they're not coming together in a way
to truly unlock the change that we need in the face
of all of the challenges that we face in this world.
What does unlock mean to you?
Yeah and some of our viewers might now
that the purpose of BCG is unlocking the potential
of those who advance the world,
and I couldn't have said it better.
It's almost like all of the pieces are lined up.
They're all kind of lined up outside the door ready
to go and figuring out what that missing link is
that brings them together,
that allows people to collaborate in new ways
to make progress on these issues
is really critical.
And we don't wanna spoil it,
but there are a few of the talks coming from our friends
in BCG and our friends outside BCG
that will really absolutely get to the heart
of this issue and will be, I think,
really inspiring on that topic.
Yup.
Last years theme I think was great,
I'm really excited for this one.
Well me too.
So on that note our next TED at BCG event is coming up
later this month in Mumbai.
Please follow the hashtag TED@ATBCG
to hear some snippets from those talks
and then follow TED.com to see the talks coming out
in the following months.
I also want to tell our listeners,
viewers about your talk.
It's called "How To Disagree Productively?"
"How to Disagree Productively" by Julia Dhar,
it's excellent and I highly recommend it.
So thank you for joining us.
Thank you.