Indranil (Indro) RoyHuman Capital Advisory Leader & CEO Program Leader – Technology and Transformation at Deloitte

My full name is Indranil, but I get to hear that only when I’m in trouble with my wife. My friends, clients, and colleagues know me as Indro.

I trained as an engineer in the fields of machines, automation, and robotics. I was fascinated by the fusion of mathematics, physics, and creative design involved in meticulously solving complex problems in manufacturing. This fascination slowly morphed into my current obsession with artificial intelligence and its growing impact on our lives.

My career as a consultant, however, came together [PCF1] with the added ingredient of human psychology. I studied organizational psychology and found a new fascination with how human beings, ordinary or not, converge [PCF2] at scale to create extraordinary outcomes.

In particular, I was drawn toward the top of the organization pyramid. Leaders and leadership framed the focus of the businesses I helped build across 17 countries. In this journey, as I worked with leaders engaged in everything from Indonesian oil and gas to American pharmaceutical businesses, one thing became clear to me.

We all need help.

Especially today, with the perfect storm of geopolitical, economic, and technological disruption bringing all of us to a place of acceptance, we find ourselves saying[PCF3] —I don’t know how to navigate this new world.

This is my area of research and discovery. I was called upon to lead a global center of excellence on the future of work 6 years ago. This research slowly merged with my client work with leaders and settled on a very simple question.

How do we thrive in a world of extreme uncertainty?

Formulating a meaningful, practical, measurable, and scalable solution to this question has become the central purpose of my life and my work over the last 4 years. This book brings together all my insights, knowledge, and techniques I have learned over the years [PCF4] to solve this question. My intention was to create a playbook that leaders can use to thrive at three levels—individual, team, and enterprise—a playbook that can be applied across cultures, industries, and organizational complexity.

Agency at Work is that playbook.