BALL! (Best Advice & Life Lessons) Podcast Srini Raghavan

This episode of BALL (Best Advice & Life Lessons) podcast features Vetri Vellore - a serial entrepreneur who has built successful products and businesses. Vetri was the CEO and founder of the successful OKR software startup, Ally.io. After Microsoft acquired Ally.io in 2021, which launched as Microsoft Viva Goals. He has helped thousands of leaders and teams leverage the OKR framework, continuing the mission to bring purpose, happiness and productivity to work. 

A few nuggets from and lessons from the episode:
-Building great products: Differentiate products from competitors by listening to customer insights, creating frictionless and integrated user experience, attention to smallest detail.
-Being a better leader: Balance optimism and paranoia as and face rejections with tenacity and conviction.
-Have core values: to guide everything you do. His own values are transparency, trust, excellence and customer obsession. The notion of customers first, business, team and then self.
-Hiring decisions: First alignment of values, potential to be 10x better and unstoppable attitude.
-Prioritize family: Create habits to balance work and personal life, like waking up at 4:30am so he can spend the evenings with his family.
-Writing gratitude journal and affirmations: Really helps lead a better life.
-Early career advice: Dream big, pay attention to details, focus on learning (vs. earning) early on.

If you enjoyed the podcast, please hit subscribe. @SriniRaghavan

This podcast episode of BALL (Best Advice & Life Lessons) hosted by Srini Raghavan, features Ravi Venkatesan.
Ravi is the board chair of Global Energy Alliance for People & Planet, a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, founder of Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship, a coalition which aims to create 10M entrepreneurs in India by 2030. He was previously the chairman of Microsoft India, chairman of the board of Bank of Baroda, and co-chairman of the board of Infosys. He is also the UNICEF Special Representative for Young People and Innovation.
His best advice and key lessons from the episode:
On mindset - Growth mindset, agency, responsibility, abundance - What leadership in the 21st century means, how to be a leader
Navigating your career - crucible experiences, passion economy, catching a wave
How to avoid career treadmills, regrets and envy
How much is enough, how to retire or not
Measure of life, success, wealth and happiness
On mentors, role models
Developing courage and more.
BALL podcast is a show where I focus on extracting best advice and lessons from world-class performers & leaders from various fields, by deconstructing and teasing out their routines, success habits, tactics, techniques, hacks, tricks, secrets and the best advice or life lesson they've ever received.
If you enjoyed the podcast, please hit subscribe. @SriniRaghavan

This podcast episode of On the BALL (Best Advice & Life Lessons) hosted by Srini Raghavan, features Bob Davis. Bob is the Corporate Vice President Growth & Experience at Microsoft. He is a founding member of what became Office 365 and has occupied leadership positions since its inception to becoming a fast-growing multi-billion-dollar business, perhaps the biggest enterprise SaaS business - with millions of customers and hundreds of millions of users.. You don't want to miss this.
His best advice and key lessons from the episode:
Building and running multibillion dollar enterprise SaaS (Office 365) from scratch
Taking a step back, putting things in perspective during crisis
Making new mistakes, not make the same mistake twice
First things first, getting the priorities right
It's all about listening to customers. Really listening.
Not letting things fester when it comes to people decisions
As an introvert, detailed planning & preparation is key
Leaving things better than you found it
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
We have two lives and the second begins and we realize we have only one
Show the world with presence, actions and the way you lead your life, who you are
and more.
On the BALL is a podcast show where I focus on extracting best advice and lessons from world-class performers & leaders from various fields, by deconstructing and teasing out their routines, success habits, tactics, techniques, hacks, tricks, secrets and the best advice or life lesson they've ever received.
If you enjoyed the podcast, please hit subscribe. @SriniRaghavan

Lex Gillette is the best totally blind long and triple jumper in the history of the U.S. Paralympic movement. He is the current world record holder in long jump, a four-time Paralympic medalist, a three-time long jump world champion, and an 18-time national champion. He is an athlete, motivational speaker, and singer song writer.
In this episode, he shares his his advice and lessons on courage in the face of extreme adversity, motivation, optimism, being black while blind and inspiring life lessons.

Lan Ye is the Corporate Vice President of the Microsoft Teams Calling, Meeting and Devices group, She leads a team of product managers and engineers who are obsessed with making workplace communications simpler and more inclusive. Lan shares her best advice & lessons on career, leadership, decision-making, art and tech, routines vs. creativity, how she runs effective meetings and more. You don‘t want to miss this.

Jeff Teper, Corporate Vice President who leads product & engineering teams for Microsoft 365, including Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint, that empower more than one billion people around the world to collaborate at work, home, and school.
In this podcast Jeff shares his best advice & lessons on his journey at Microsoft, building great products, leadership lessons, advice for aspiring software engineers, insights from multibillion dollar product categories like SharePoint and much more.