S1E9 Writing for the "Mind of the Era" with Altaf Tyrewala

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 0:08

Hello, listeners. If you are curious about technical communications, then this podcast is for you. On each episode, I will interview a guest who will share the unique journey. This is inside tech comm with Zohra Mutabanna Let's get started. Hello, this knows you're on the inside tech comm show and I'm your host Zohra Mutabanna. I'm honored to welcome today's guest, Altaf Tyrewala. Well, Altaf is a writer par excellence. His experience spans a breadth of genres. He can wrangle words to paint a vivid imagery, or tame it too much. Altaf, please tell us a little more about yourself.

Altaf Tyrewala: 0:52

Hey, Zohra and thank you for the very kind introduction.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 0:56

Absolutely, it's my pleasure, I'm so excited.

Altaf Tyrewala: 1:00

I may be able to paint vivid pictures with words, but I may not be able to paint vivid pictures with my spoken words. So I'm hoping that I don't disappoint your listening audience.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 1:10

I'm sure you want, please go ahead.

Altaf Tyrewala: 1:12

I've been trying to frame my elevator pitch, so to speak, right, or whatever I've been really doing all these past decades of my productive life. And when I look back to my career trajectory, I think what I've always been trying to do is somehow do justice to the realities of the world, I find myself in, you know, I graduated in 99. And at that time, the internet was also coming of age. And I think I was the first generation that grew up reading and accessing content on the internet, especially as a college student. We had terminals throughout our throughout our college library in New York, and the medium of the Internet, and the forms and the format had become internalized. And so I think it was since then, so when I get over to my forays into the E learning space after graduation, my decade of doing my writing, as a novelist and a columnist, and then my return to the corporate learning space in 2012. Throughout all those years, I've always been trying to arrive at that healthy meeting point of communication, technology, and education. And when I say education, it really is the attempt to influence someone. Right, right, because I don't think education is devoid of that attempt to influence right, it hasn't decided or, you know, when we're designing a learning program, there is a an enabling objective, a terminal objective, and you want to be able to make sure that you meet those objectives. The trifecta of communication, technology and education have always been front and center of everything I've done. And so when I look at my, the stuff that I did in my, as a writer, and the books I published, the novels I wrote, The short stories I wrote, they've always been geared towards a specific demographic that grew up consuming the internet. My first book, no God in sight, actually had chapters that were often just two sentences long, from two sentences to maybe a couple of pages long. So it was always that attempt to speak to the realities of today and the mind of today.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 3:14

Oh, great introduction. And I think you do paint a very vivid imagery with your words. So but I think the trifecta that you mentioned, the communication, technology, and education and the influence that all those together can have on your audience is something interesting, and I think it resonates with writers, my intention is the listeners that who will be listening to this podcast will be primarily communicators. They may be technical writers, they may be UX writers, they may be instructional designers. But at the end of the day, this trifecta that you mentioned, is is key to our profession. But you also mentioned you know, how you wrote to a demographic. So it didn't matter whether you were a novelist, or what, when you got into the East Bay, the E learning, arena, audience kind of was something that you were writing too. Can you speak a little bit about that, I'm just interested in kind of seeing how you straddle the two because in my mind, being a creative writer is very different from being an instructional designer or a technical communicator. And I just would love to kind of dig a little deeper into what an audience meant when you were writing for these two different genres.

Altaf Tyrewala: 4:26

So you know, interestingly, I first became an instructional writer and designer before I decided to become a full time novelist,

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 4:33

I think so

Altaf Tyrewala: 4:34

and so in a way I have my inauguration in the world of communication and writing and all of that stuff was, you know, I was I went through the test of fire in the learning space. So, very finely attuned me to the demands of the audiences of today. My I remember the first program that I wrote for was for a call center company in America and how they We're trying to teach their employees on how to be empathetic to homeowners, right. But they said, We don't want any long words, no long paragraphs, it has to be a paragraph has to be not more than 100 words. So it was almost like a pre Twitter demand, you know, before the Twitter era had really become a reality, it was already beginning to think in those ways that brevity, conciseness come to the point fast, somebody should be able to take away something from every paragraph, every paragraph should be serving your learning objectives in some way. And so that entire, that requirement for brevity and conciseness shaped me fundamentally. And of course, it emerged from the fact that we were writing for something that would walk on somebody's computer screen at the end of the day, and they were clicking through a program, and they would have to have sufficient audio visual elements to support the learning experience and graphical elements and things like that. So for me, that was the mind that I was writing for it and call it the demographic, you can call it the mind of the era, so to speak, that I would, that's the kind of mindset that I was writing for the kind of intellectual makeup that I was trying to cater to. And so when I began writing on but when I began working on my first book, I knew who my eventual reader was going to be, right, I was not writing for somebody who was still living in the 1970s, who was comfortable reading long texts, and was willing to get through 1000 pages. I knew that anything more than 100 pages made me uncomfortable made me impatient. So I had to simply extend that courtesy to my readers as well.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 6:38

Yeah, thank you for sharing that. What inspires me is that the podcasts that I'm trying to create this, to answer, I, myself, I'm looking for a lot of answers as a technical writer. And a lot of technical writers that I have gotten to know in my career have been career changers. with having you on my show, what I'm taking away is that you can kind of navigate these different spaces, these different genres, because there is a common thread that runs through them. As a novelist, you may call it the demographic and as an instructional designer, you might call it an audience. But there is a certain skill set, you're training your mind to start addressing that demographic that need of the audience or the, as you call it, the mind of the era. I like that I really like that phrase. It really is fascinating to me that people can navigate these two spaces. And what you have done in the past doesn't have to be compromised, that you can actually build upon that. That is a common thread that I tried to kind of emphasize and reinforce in each of my episodes is that if you've done something in the past, you always can leverage from that. So thank you so much for sharing that with us. Although I was looking at your LinkedIn profile, and I'm it's impressive, to say the least, you have done project management, you've done content strategy, you have done, of course, you're in the E learning space. So you're writing there is that that need for quick learning. There is something terminal about it, as well as a novelist and as an instructional designer. How was that for you?

Altaf Tyrewala: 8:17

So Zohra. First of all, I want to backtrack to what you said earlier. And I appreciate that you recognized that what you do in the past, should be able to contribute to your future. Thank you. Thank you, that is something that you have to work towards. And it may it may sound like of course, if it worked out, then it worked out. But if it doesn't, then what, but I think everything that we do, and if we do it with kind of a sense of true emotion and dedication, should and ought to be able to contribute to your future endeavors. And so again, it's not like if I were to be looking at this objectively, I would be like there is no intersection between writing novels and working in the corporate learning space. But you have to be able to extract the right lessons from what you've done. I extracted the lessons of independent thinking, the importance of always looking at the opposite perspective, or taking into account opposing perspectives. As a novelist, that was my constant thing that I may write a page. But then I also have to think of it as a critic, and then be ready to kill my darlings. And so I've tried to carry over all those ways of thinking and being into my corporate working space in the corporate working mindset. And I find value in doing that, right. So when I work today, I'm always thinking both as a part of the organization but also as someone who's removed from it so that I can maintain that objectivity and bring in that external perspective, even if I'm not an external.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 9:50

And that's very important as a writer. Absolutely. I think the word you said was empathy. And I love the fact that you mentioned it because if you cannot empathize With your audience, then you're not putting yourself in their shoes, what their challenges could be or how they're thinking.

Altaf Tyrewala: 10:06

Absolutely.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 10:07

So I think it's very important. But an interesting question comes to my mind is, did you have to have empathy as a creative writer? Or is it something that you can, you know, not pay that much attention to? I'm just curious for my personal

Altaf Tyrewala: 10:21

No, no, I mean, you may start with the usual narcissism and self regard, and concern for oneself. But as any writer will attest, the craft and form and the very process of writing, especially fiction writing, if done with kind of true emotion, cannot but leave you with a sense of deep empathy and compassion. It starts with your characters first. But then you realize that my characters are finally figments of my imagination, but there is a whole world of living, breathing people around me. And that sense of empathy and compassion is unavoidable. And then of course, as to build on that, then when you have that in you, then that you can extend that empathy and compassion to all sorts of audiences. So you know, as you know, design centric thinking is a big buzzword now. But I think at the heart of it is a sense of empathy that Do you truly understand your audience? Do you truly design, whatever it is you're designing, by keeping your your end user front and center? And the empathy is the spark of that process

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 11:28

is the spark it is at its core and the spark soda. Okay, that's awesome. You know, you mentioned characters, and I'm thinking in my world, that would probably translate to personas. I used to enjoy creator writing, and but I felt like when once I became a technical writer, I had to sort of tone down that aspect about me, did you have that challenge of when you had to struggle one or the other? Did you have to kind of let go of one to balance the other, although we are seeing that there are these common threads. But there is this other facet? That seems to me like conflicting, right? Because as an as a writer, as a technical writer, or as an instructional designer, you have to rein in your creativity. And I'm just curious to understand what what would your take be on that,

Altaf Tyrewala: 12:14

I would probably try to propose a slightly differing point of view, I don't think you need to pull back on your creativity. I think the way the The world is evolving, and we all know that there is just no predicting the future. Really, the only way to survive and to somewhat thrive in a landscape like this is to continually hold on to your creative sensibility. Because you may be in one role at for example, the work I do at my current organization is drastically different from what I was doing two years ago, right? Now, if I was not being agile and creative in my approach to my work, and if I was like, This is me, I'm formed, I can't change. I would be obsolete at my workplace. But the challenge is continually to maintain that sense of suppleness, flexibility and creativity, agility, they're all in the same family of attributes, right? To be able to quickly change your mind.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 13:15

Yeah, fundamentally, I think I see your point is that the interpretation of creativity can mean so many things in a different context. So if you're continuing to keep yourself to challenge yourself, and being adaptable, then that is a testimony of your creative self.

Altaf Tyrewala: 13:33

Yeah, absolutely. And I think there is also a cultural cultural competence underlying all of this. Again, I'm just going to go out there and theorize based on my limited understanding of this, but having worked in the, in the Indian corporate space, and having worked in the in the American corporate space, ironically, I often felt freer to be creative in the Indian corporate space simply because there were no strict definitions of who or what is creative, right?

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 13:57

Interesting.

Altaf Tyrewala: 13:58

creativity can come from anywhere. And I often felt that we were willing to take ideas from anybody, regardless of how it was packaged. Whereas I often feel like in the American corporate space, there is a sense that, again, it stems from because we have such diversity in the American corporate space, there is an attempt to want to understand and categorize who the creative person is somebody who dresses interestingly, who manifest tiddly is creative and therefore one can rely that rely on the person to be creative. You don't I'm saying pop psychology from Altaf Tyrewala No, no basis in reality, possibly, but that's the way I see it. But one more thing that I did bring up one more point, you know, you brought up the fact that How easy was it for you to kind of switch from those, the rewriting space to the corporate learning space? And did you have to kind of pull back on your creativity and I answered that, but I think what I did have to do is I did have to learn how to be a team player. You when you're writing you're a solo player, that but i reentered the corporate learning space. After that. A decade of a break, I had to once again learn to restrain my individualistic impulses, and always take into account the team's perspective. And I think that's how I really picked up on project management's. Although I don't have a formal degree in project management, the ability to do that allowed me to take on more and more responsibility to be able to facilitate conversations between different parts of the team. Graphic Designers speak to it, it speak to visuals, visual speak to sound designer, let's see how we can all come together to create a more robust learning product, let's see how we can serve our clients better by ensuring that we're also being proactive with their requirements and really being empathetic towards their future needs. And so that ability to facilitate the conversation, and that's something I've truly enjoyed as well. And that's something I think I enjoy much more now than the solo activity of sitting alone in a room with my laptop.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 15:57

I think that's a very important perspective. Because, again, this is something that I'm theorizing based on my experience, there is this perception of writers being soul, it's a social act, they are introverts, we have all these labels that are attached to us. And I think the distinction is it depends who you're writing to, and what you're writing, then then there is a need for that you need to be there, it has to be a solo act. But when you are in the corporate world, for our listeners, it is important that you collaborate and understand the importance of working on a cross functional team. Because we are all the team is working towards a common goal, a common objective, to fulfill a common business need. And collaboration is key. And I think, you know, sharing that perspective, is invaluable. I have so many questions going through my mind all at once. And I've had a I've had them written down here. So you mentioned that you had an advertising background. But then advertising is very different from being a novelist from and it's kind of, again, we are talking about the common thread, but at the same time, there are differences. What are some of the challenges? You know, we've talked about what has worked? What was some of the challenges, if you would like to share any

Altaf Tyrewala: 17:10

challenges pertaining to what's specifically the

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 17:13

I would say just you know, if there were any challenges in the context of you mentioned that you took a break of a decade, and then you came back? Was it seamless to reintegrate into the corporate world? Or did you have to overcome any challenges? If so, if you'd like to share? And if not,

Altaf Tyrewala: 17:32

that's great, too, mostly logistical challenges began, that's not supposed to be part of this conversation. But no, I, you know, I think when I was two, three years that I worked in the corporate learning space, before I decided to become a full time novelist, I worked for some really great organizations, and I was able to build some really deep connections with people in those organizations. And so when I showed interest to return to the corporate learning space, I was able to find room again, in one of those organizations, and they were working on a great project on a great initiative. And it was exciting work. And that really drew me in, of course, over that decade of writing was also the what also saw the rise of social media, the decimation of our attention spans and of the publishing industry. I grew up in a family that owned one of Bombay's oldest bookstores, new and secondhand bookshop, and in 2011, that bookshop closed down because my uncle's couldn't, didn't find it viable to continue anymore. And so there were so many things that occurred from 2002 to 2012. That made it more and more clear to me that I needed to pivot as much out of self interest, of course, but also out of a sense of if I want to continue to be at that intersection of communication, technology and education, I began to see how my service as a writer or a columnist, would have to lessen in volume to sort of speak I don't I mean, I guess I would have to scale back on that if I wanted to continue to be a part of this world of this era.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 19:15

I see

Altaf Tyrewala: 19:16

what may sound I may it may sound very, very cold blooded or kind of scheming. But that was never the case. Of course, I have a family to to feed, the need to pay rent. That was of course, important, but also not wanting to be left behind and become obsolete. And I began to see that in the later years of my writing life.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 19:39

I'll start off Thank you, you know, that was something very personal that you shared with us. So we really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. And this is really sort of the reason for that question is more to be encouraging to our listeners that you got to pivot. I think that's the key word here. And if you don't pivot, then you are not going to be responding. To the times, and, and grow as an individual more. So I'll never forget

Altaf Tyrewala: 20:06

the never forget the importance of nurturing relationships of, again, you know, I know that building one's brand is such an abused term. And I often find it distasteful when it is done in this kind of cold blooded manner. But I think you build your blind in it, build your brand, inadvertently, when you do do your best. When you give your all, when you truly are empathetic towards the needs of the folks you're working with. And so then they forever remember the services you provided to them in whatever capacity you could. And that is a form of building one's brand or leaving one's legacy for however short period of time you've interacted with someone.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 20:44

Now, I love what you said, I think, yeah, we're all trying to constantly build our brand. And I think the influence that you have on other people is also kind of building your brand, right? It's not what you put out on social media and just on your LinkedIn profile. But these organic relationships that you build with people also speak to your brand. I want to go back to when you transition from being a novelist to a back into the corporate world. One of the things that I mentor students who want to kind of make it into technical writing, and we talked about portfolios. Now, did you have to update your portfolio? Or were you able to use the different genres of writing that you had created under the corporate world respond well to that,

Altaf Tyrewala: 21:32

the team that I rejoined, I had been in touch with them. And they had been bureau watching my portfolio out in the public, because I was also a columnist for some newspapers in Bombay, and Lockwood, my books were kind of in the news a bit. So there was, you know, that portfolio was out there. And I think that helped, that helped. And then when I rejoined it, I was kind of on probation for the first nine months, because I think I needed to make sure the organization also needed to make sure. But it worked out well. I was able to pivot, I was able to adapt to the new realities of my situation and of the new working environment, because again, I hadn't worked in 10 years, and the entire working world had changed new technologies, new ways of collaborating and communicating across teams, and with clients and client expectations that evolved as well. So I think,

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 22:24

actually, so this goes back to what you just said, about building relationships and nurturing them. And that's what you're not kind of pay itself forward. Yeah, true, right. As we grow in our careers, and the grades appear, you kind of tend to fall back on those relationships. And for anybody that is starting of their career, I always recommend that keeping that communication alive is key, because you never know when that relationship can can grow to become something better. It's not just about benefiting monetarily, but just as humans, keeping in touch, there's something that is what your experience sort of reinforces, but is there anything else that you would like to share, not just advice, anything else that you'd like to share with our audience, and our listeners,

Altaf Tyrewala: 23:12

you know, I'd like to loop back to what I said earlier about how what I'm doing now is so drastically different from what I was doing just a couple of years ago. And, and I know that two years later, I'll be doing something radically different within hopefully the talent management and talent development space, but it's going to be different. So I'd like to talk a little bit about what I'm doing now. And in my current role, we're not creating content, okay, in the same volume that we were just until a couple of years ago, curation has become a very important aspect of my role. And this is primarily because our technological platforms that deliver learning have evolved and are being driven by AI. And so automated and advanced, that they are able to pull together resources from disparate sources at a much better scale than any one individual or team can do, right. So, if you want to create a truly robust learning experience for your user, you have to be able to provide them a full bouquet of offerings. And you have to then so I almost feel like I am now co partnering with technology and AI and using it for to to to serve my user, the best I can. Earlier it was just our team and the E learning creation development team that was servicing the user. Now AI is also helping us out and it is reducing the requirement for development. But it is truly enhancing the user experience. It is truly bringing the world at the user's fingertips. And going forward I can just see possibly that the curation aspect will also you know, the the need for humans to curate content will slowly ebb because will become more and more refined and sophisticated. And so we'll have to take on more strategic roles, we'll have to start thinking of how components of the present will fit together and unknown permutations and combinations in the future. And that's where the human ability to strategize and plan for the future will become more and more important.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 25:21

Wow, that sounds really fascinating to me. Unfortunately, I have not had as much interaction with AI. As much as I would like, you know, there's sort of a humanizing element to the way you meant talked about AI. And that's going to become more and more true. And I think curating content is the way to go. Nobody will be creating content from scratch, but rather curating that content that has already been created. So yes, being forward thinking being open minded, is the name of the game. Absolutely, absolutely.

Altaf Tyrewala: 25:52

It's scary. Of course, it's also often disorienting, because things change so much, you don't even know what direction you need to be going into. But which is where I feel that you have to kind of be alive to the moment. And never truly think of yourself as a finished product. Oh, I love that always be ready to change and flex. And I know, it sounds very kind of Oh, okay. Yeah, everybody would love to do that. But it's not easy. It's not easy, it's painful, it's scary. It's terrifying, to not know what your role is going to be in the next six months or one year. But I think if you just make peace with that state of terror, you can truly ride the wave.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 26:33

Yeah, and we are doing that. It's just that, you know, when you think too far, you tend to feel overwhelmed. But then you you'd rather be proactive than reactive. So I think that's a very important takeaway from this conversation is to, to be connected with your tribe to be responsive. And to be aware, self awareness is one thing, and then what is going on around you,

Altaf Tyrewala: 26:58

and learn from the past, learn from the failures of the past. And don't think of them as failures, as much as think of them as lessons to be learned and internalized and never to be repeated. I mentioned that bookshop, right, the new and secondhand bookshop, it was part of my family's legacy. And I remember for a couple of years before it closed down, I was like, No, I should take over this, I should be the one running this. But now when I look back, I'm like, I'm glad I didn't, because I would have been, I would have taken on an establishment that eventually would have had to accept the reality of the time, right to scale back. And that would have been more painful. So while I grieve the loss of that establishment or grieve the loss of so many ways of being that I had become comfortable within the past, I also accept the fact that yes, if I had remained stuck in that I would have become obsolete. I wouldn't have been able to measure now.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 27:51

Yeah, I mean, in hindsight, that seems like you made the right decision, because it has allowed you to be here and to be enjoying it.

Altaf Tyrewala: 28:00

So well. Yeah, enjoyment might be a far stretch.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 28:03

I know. I should choose my words more carefully. I agree. But I think I guess in a state of mind where you feel like you're creating value for the skepticism, skepticism. So I think

Altaf Tyrewala: 28:15

I think all value is retrospective, all value is retrospective, you looked back and you realize you've created value, out of 100 things we do. 40 of them may end up feeling like that was valuable. But 60 of them are like Oh, that was a total waste of time. I shouldn't even have gone down that path. But that's fine. That's that's life.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 28:32

That is life. Exactly. And I think there is no right or wrong to it. It's just what it was. And you've moved on. And as much as as you said, you grieve the loss of that establishment. But you've been able to pivot, and I think being adaptable. And moving on is how you can I guess, be able to live with the times and strategize. So, on that note, Altaf, I really had fun engaging in this conversation with you. Is there any resources that you would like to share? If you have any?

Altaf Tyrewala: 29:05

No, no, not that I can. There's no flexibility of course, I have my own, go to things go to places. But that's I try to always ensure that I have a lot of extra curricular reading that happens. You know, I try to keep in touch with the latest trends in art and philosophy and science and technology. And it may seem like it's not directly related to my work, but when I read that stuff, I'm gonna keep in touch with that stuff it It enriches what I bring to the table when I get to work, which is why I'm a big fan also of always nurturing a side passion. Think of it as Plan B, but think of it as something that allows your brain to switch off from your main money earning activities and switch back to something that truly gives you so much of self sustained pleasure and joy but also enriches you. So when you go back to plan a from Plan B, you enrich Plan A as well. ability to pivot in And existing towards at the same time.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 30:02

I think with the 2020 being the way it was, it has allowed us to pause and decompress and having that as something that you do on a regular basis. Yeah, is important, I think. And on that note, Altaf, thank you so very much. It was an absolute pleasure.

Altaf Tyrewala: 30:19

Thank you for having me.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 30:21

Absolutely. enjoyed

Altaf Tyrewala: 30:22

the conversation. Thank you. Thank

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 30:23

you. Thank you. Have a wonderful day. You too. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please share on your social media to help me reach a wider audience. subscribe to the podcast on your favorite app, including Apple, Google or Spotify. Follow us on Twitter at insight tech comm or visit us at w w w dot insight tech comm dot show. For the latest updates. Catch you on another episode.