Leadership Over Deals: From Banking to Building India’s Renewable Future | Nawal Saini скачать в хорошем качестве

Leadership Over Deals: From Banking to Building India’s Renewable Future | Nawal Saini

What does it really take to build a renewable energy platform in India? In this episode of SignalQuest, Nawal Saini, Managing Partner at Brookfield Renewable Power, shares hard-earned lessons from his journey spanning banking, private equity, and building one of India’s most formidable renewable energy platforms. This is not a conversation about deals alone. It’s about leadership, operating reality vs Excel-sheet fiction, hiring and grooming talent, killing bureaucracy, and why culture and alignment matter more than transactions. If you’re a CEO, founder, investor, or leader navigating scale, complexity, and long-term value creation, this episode is for you. ⸻ Key Themes Covered • Leadership vs deal-making in long-term value creation • Building operating capability, not just financial models • Hiring senior talent and grooming leaders internally • Culture, alignment, and killing bureaucracy • Lessons from scaling renewables in India • Why “greenwashing” deserves to be banned • Thinking big while executing step by step ⸻ Timestamps 00:00 – Welcome to Signal Quest 00:07 – The most unexpected learning: leadership vs deal-making 02:30 – A pivotal moment in the journey 03:37 – The J-Curve: 2018–2023 foundation building 04:29 – “Do you want to be right or get things done?” 05:38 – The overnight success that took 5 years 06:14 – Being a good listener and empowering people 08:22 – Hiring philosophy 11:31 – Challenges of hiring senior CXO-level talent 13:36 – Grooming young talent internally 14:36 – Investment philosophy alignment with hiring 17:35 – Is renewables “sexy” enough? 19:30 – Hidden success factors: business building vs deal-making 21:01 – Boots on the ground: operating capabilities 25:41 – Negotiation: understanding what the other side wants 27:18 – Excel sheet fiction vs operating reality 28:23 – People-first investment execution strategy 29:38 – “Doing a deal is like a bank robbery” 30:15 – Asset management: 100-day plans and 5-year plans 33:33 – Alignment: financial and cultural 36:54 – Killing bureaucracy: direct-access culture 38:18 – DNA of all successful businesses 39:19 – Systematization vs bureaucracy challenge 40:06 – Leading by example through quick decisions 41:31 – Culture percolation can’t be outsourced 43:32 – Cross-regional teams: “It takes a village” 47:47 – Working with founders: the marriage analogy 51:38 – Trust takes time (6–12 months) 54:10 – Changed belief: think big, execute step by step 59:42 – Advice to CEOs: think unconventionally 61:47 – “We are paid to think” 63:01 – Saying no to create thinking time 62:23 – Personal ritual: switching off 64:22 – Book recommendations: Morgan Housel and Charles Duhigg 65:20 – Phrase to banish: “Greenwashing” 66:18 – Billboard message: “Don’t come to office if you’re not having fun” 66:48 – Closing #Leadership #RenewableEnergy #India #Investing #CEOPodcast #EnergyTransition #SignalQuest