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

Описание: 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.

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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

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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