CREATING A NEW MINDSET
Vision & Mission
Shaktify stands for unleashing our full potential by powering individuals to be mindful of the choices they exercise in their personal, social, and professional lives. It seeks to help people attain a unifying world view and help them foster positive change in the communities they live and work in. It aims to build a constellation of changemakers and help people and organizations find common ground to work together for human and planetary welfare.
‘Powering Changemakers’ is the mission of Shaktify which is centred around ‘agency’ creation. In the commercial world, agency refers to a business entity that provides a particular service or product on behalf of another business, or group. In social sciences, however, agency is the ability to stand for who one is and the unfolding of that ability through capacity building of oneself.
Shaktify will achieve its mission through a signature series of webinars, through storytelling and blogs, by raising awareness on systems thinking and by offering mentoring and advisory services to enhance social impact. Shaktify’s forte lies in its ability to take a systemic view of global and local challenges by providing insights and a library of pro-bono resources.
Shaktify is the brainchild of Shakti Saran, a retired banker, management consultant and corporate sector professional who crossed over to the non-profit sector in 2017. His initiative supports people in agency building regardless of their profession or background. One doesn’t have to necessarily belong to or cross over to the social sector to achieve social impact.
CREATING A NEW MINDSET
Systems Thinking
- Shaktify aims to build a constellation of changemakers
Systems thinking is a space for refining our mental models of complex social problems, by unearthing inter-relationships between people, things, phenomena and our planet in a way that cognitive bias is removed and polarisation is mitigated.
Science can be mapped into two streams, i.e. reductionist or linear thinking and systems or non-linear thinking. It is the former that has been acclaimed and glorified through much of history. Without a doubt, linear thinking has been responsible for many of mankind’s technical breakthroughs. Whether it was the invention of the light bulb or the discovery of penicillin, reductionist science paved the way for much of humanity’s material progress. Reductionism is termed so because its process is to breakdown a system into smaller and smaller parts.
Systems thinking on the other hand supports a process quite the opposite to reductionism whilst not excluding it altogether. It’s a branch of science that constructs interrelationships between parts of a system and the whole since parts of a system often behave differently when separated from other parts or from the system’s environment itself. For example, poverty, unemployment, social injustice, economic growth, energy shortage, urban decay, environmental degradation, climate change, violence, and war are interrelated and if seen in isolation provide a misleading picture.
It is a method for diagnosing problems at a systemic level; it is multi-disciplinary in nature, addresses root causes and supports a long-term outlook. Since it is based on the principles of partnership and collaboration, it has the potential to remove bias, build consensus, and unify.
CREATING A NEW MINDSET
Systems Thinking
- Shaktify aims to build a constellation of changemakers
Systems thinking is a space for refining our mental models of complex social problems, by unearthing inter-relationships between people, things, phenomena and our planet in a way that cognitive bias is removed and polarisation is mitigated.
Science can be mapped into two streams, i.e. reductionist or linear thinking and systems or non-linear thinking. It is the former that has been acclaimed and glorified through much of history. Without a doubt, linear thinking has been responsible for many of mankind’s technical breakthroughs. Whether it was the invention of the light bulb or the discovery of penicillin, reductionist science paved the way for much of humanity’s material progress. Reductionism is termed so because its process is to breakdown a system into smaller and smaller parts.
Systems thinking on the other hand supports a process quite the opposite to reductionism whilst not excluding it altogether. It’s a branch of science that constructs interrelationships between parts of a system and the whole since parts of a system often behave differently when separated from other parts or from the system’s environment itself. For example, poverty, unemployment, social injustice, economic growth, energy shortage, urban decay, environmental degradation, climate change, violence, and war are interrelated and if seen in isolation provide a misleading picture.
It is a method for diagnosing problems at a systemic level; it is multi-disciplinary in nature, addresses root causes and supports a long-term outlook. Since it is based on the principles of partnership and collaboration, it has the potential to remove bias, build consensus, and unify.
CREATING A NEW MINDSET
From Shakti to Shaktify
- Shaktify aims to build a constellation of changemakers
I was born and raised in cosmopolitan Mumbai, formerly Bombay, to a household that had both conservative and liberal influences and a lineage of entrepreneurship.The India of the ‘60s and ‘70s was chaotic, unorganized and in some respects isolated from the world. At college, I discovered how fragmented our world was and it created a hunger to study liberal arts which I satisfied through voracious reading alongside management studies.
On graduating from my MBA class at Boston University, I settled on a corporate career starting as a banker, later as a management consultant and ending as a general management professional. While much of my career was spent in adapting to a mechanistic view of life, I experienced two fundamental shifts during the last few years of my corporate life at IBM.The first occurred in 2011 when IBM, celebrating its centenary year, urged every employee to take-on a day of service on IBM pay. I opted to volunteer for V Care Foundation, a cancer care NGO and my association continues to date. The experience at V Care allowed me to dip my toes in the non-profit sector and was an eye opener.
Later in 2017, I was one of the few IBMers selected for the Corporate Service Corps (CSC), a skills-based volunteering program, and deputed to Morocco. It was here during a trip to Marrakech (the city hosted COP22 the previous year) that the gravity of our planetary crisis dawned on me and that saving our environment was everyone’s responsibility. IBM-CSC resulted in an accelerated realisation that for social and environmental impact to be sustainable, it was essential to bring synergy between the private and non-profit sectors, governments and civil society.
On my flight back home from Morocco, I made up my mind to cross-over to the social sector on hitting IBM retirement age which was just a few months down the road and soon enrolled in a leadership program offered by India Leaders for Social Sector(ILSS). Here, through a process of self-discovery, I decided to devote the rest of my life to building awareness of preserving our planet and making our economics more sustainable and inclusive. I felt equipped to take the plunge and started work with Pyxera Global, a D.C. based non-profit.
CREATING A NEW MINDSET
The First Step
Soon after starting my new career, I was fortunate to have encountered the Radical Transformation Leadership (RTL) program which laid bare the nuances of the social sector. It focused on developing change makers and strengthening one’s capability to shift unwholesome systems and cultural norms. It also helped me establish linkages between social change and personal self-transformation.
RTL introduced me to the discipline of systems thinking and I was keen to get grounded in systems theory and change. My pursuit led me to a certification in systems thinking from eCornell followed by the Systems View of Life, an advanced systems thinking program, offered by Capra Course.
BLOGS
Discover Insights: Your Gateway to Knowledge
Systems thinking is a space for refining our mental models of complex social problems by unearthing inter-relationships between people, things, phenomena and our planet in a way that cognitive bias is removed and polarization is lessened. For instance, energy shortage, environmental degradation, climate change, economic inequality, social injustice, violence, and war cannot be seen as different problems but in fact are different facets of the same problem.
Now, several decades later, looking back, everything has fallen in place neatly, quite like finding my Ikigai, the Japanese art of bringing meaning and happiness into one’s life. This new-found equanimity gave me the power to set up Shaktify, an assimilation of my life-long learnings.
Discover Insights: Your Gateway to Knowledge
Shaktify aims to build a constellation of changemakers to unleash an individual’s potential by helping her or him gain a unifying world view and foster positive change in the communities they live and work in. It powers social and environmental change to help people and organizations find common ground to work together for human and planetary welfare. Shaktify’s forte lies in its ability to take a systemic view of global and local challenges by providing insights and resources.
Shaktify will achieve its mission through a signature series of webinars, by storytelling, by raising awareness of systems thinking through a set of masterclasses, providing a library of pro-bono resources and offering consulting and coaching services to enhance social impact.
Welcome to the world of Shaktify!
Discover Insights: Your Gateway to Knowledge
Shaktify aims to build a constellation of changemakers to unleash an individual’s potential by helping her or him gain a unifying world view and foster positive change in the communities they live and work in. It powers social and environmental change to help people and organizations find common ground to work together for human and planetary welfare. Shaktify’s forte lies in its ability to take a systemic view of global and local challenges by providing insights and resources.
Shaktify will achieve its mission through a signature series of webinars, by storytelling, by raising awareness of systems thinking through a set of masterclasses, providing a library of pro-bono resources and offering consulting and coaching services to enhance social impact.
