Gauri Bhalla, is a Remarkable mentor who lends her time, expertise and enthusiasm to our startups and the Remarkable team. Gauri loves learning and helping others think differently. She has worked in Universities in the UK, US and Australia. She is the Founder of the Curious Collective which helps people in companies build skills for the future of work. Those skills include curiosity, diversity of thinking, empathy, and foundational toolkits like design thinking and lean start up.
Here’s a little more about Gauri and her Remarkable experience.
What are your core areas of expertise, particularly when it comes to mentoring for Remarkable?
Identifying customer needs and jobs to be done. Asking good questions. Listening and being able to judge how much capability/capacity the team has to learn and take action.
What inspired you become a mentor for Remarkable?
The Remarkable team made me do it! They are inspiring and gave me the confidence to believe I could be of use to a team.
Do you work with any other accelerator programs or startups? How is Remarkable different?
Yes. I teach on lots of programs – Remarkable is different because of the sense of purpose – what we are doing really matters, not just creating another app to make people rich…and the care for founders and clients is genuine and embedded in everything.
Are there any parts of the accelerator program that you particularly enjoy?
I’m a lead mentor for Spacee – I look forward to Thursday mornings each week when we meet Madi and Tom to learn from them and see how we can effectively help with contacts, encouragement, a different perspective.
What is your top tool, blog, book or podcast that you’d recommend others look at?
I love learning from people and experiences, so I run a lot of experiments and meet as diverse a range of people as I can, with an open mind. I teach at The School of Life, and love how people and sessions there always stretch my thinking. I still think the business model canvas is the most elegant, useful tool for business thinking – I use it constantly to test ideas and unpack businesses.
We’d love to hear your advice for the teams. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given in your work life that you would like to pass on to the startups?
I love this quote because it speaks to our ability to constantly evolve and the surrender to discomfort to enable our potential.
“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be” (Lao Tzu)
