00:00:00
So, I was a uh the CEO of an educational
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organization at that time. We were
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working in about 300 schools at that
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point in India.
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And the government of Delhi came to us
00:00:08
and said, "We really want um
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want to work with you, want to
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collaborate, partner with you, but we
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want you to get to 20,000 schools almost
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overnight."
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And um well, I tried for four four or
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five times to actually just shut it down
00:00:21
and sort of not get into it. It felt too
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crazy, too um
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almost mystical trying to achieve.
00:00:28
But, they were just being so persistent.
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At one point, they said, "Look, you
00:00:30
know, either go big or go home. We'll
00:00:32
we'll stop, you know, the partnership
00:00:34
altogether if you don't scale in the way
00:00:35
we need. We need you to really be
00:00:37
um
00:00:38
working with every child in our system."
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And to be fair, you know, going back to
00:00:42
boards, our board was really great about
00:00:43
that. They said, "Look, this is the
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story where this is the reality we're
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in. We're not sure we can
00:00:47
how to get there exactly, but we trust
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that you'll be able to find your way
00:00:50
through."
00:00:51
Our job as a board is let's meet every
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quarter as we do now, but let's focus on
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less about current metrics because they
00:00:57
were close to irrelevant now.
00:00:59
As you go on this new journey,
00:01:01
let's look at the the direction you're
00:01:02
going in. What do we need to to to know
00:01:05
as you go along that you're on track
00:01:06
towards that new direction? So, our
00:01:08
staff able to lead um in a much more
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leveraged way cuz they work with people
00:01:12
already in the system and get them to
00:01:14
more of the day-to-day work of our
00:01:16
approach. We really getting senior-level
00:01:18
buy-in from the very top of government
00:01:19
so we could
00:01:21
get the right culture changes into the
00:01:22
system, for example. So, it was a kind
00:01:24
of yes, we're very much we're there to
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support you, but we want to show see
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that you're really on track you're not
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deluding yourselves this can be done.
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>> [music]
