Watching the second CEO transition at IBM


Yesterday evening I had just finished a conference call when my phone lit up with slack messages , WhatsApp messages and calls all together about Arvind Krishna being appointed as our new CEO . Obviously a big moment for all of us . This is the second time I have watched a CEO transition here, and there are some good lessons I learned watching our leaders in action – albeit from considerable distance .

I was an account partner at a semiconductor client in Northern California in GBS in 2012 when Ginni became CEO of IBM . There are three things I remember from that time .

1. The CIO of the company telling me “this is the best CEO transition I have seen anywhere”

2. IBM stock price was around $210 or so . I had put 10% of my paycheck every month since I joined (when stock was around $70) in ESPP to buy the stock and I sold everything I had and paid off the mortgage of our home

3. My mentor, John Leffler, telling me about how accessible Ginni is to line leadership

I did not know Ginni at all when she became our CEO . Nevertheless, I sent her a short congratulatory email about 10 minutes after I saw the announcement email . To my utter surprise – she responded in about 2 mins thanking me . I showed that to everyone in the team and we were all thrilled that we have a new leader who would respond so fast to someone a hundred levels below her in the hierarchy 🙂

John later told me that Ginni actually knew a little about me from the SAP CEOs McDermott and Snabe ( they knew me from the SAP Mentor and blogger programs ) , and had asked him about me .

In any case – this one real time response to my note had a big impact on me. I am very prompt in my email and phone responses as well and a lot of that can be traced back to me thinking “If Ginni who has a thousand times harder job than me can be so responsive, I have no excuse to slack” . I have to add that Bill McDermott , CEO of ServiceNow ( and ex-SAP CEO ) is exactly this way too . Every email and call gets returned quickly .

It certainly couldn’t have been easy for Ginni being the CEO for 8 years facing constant criticism from all around . I absolutely admire how Ginni stayed so positive throughout this time and continued to make big bold bets for the future on research , cloud, quantum etc . The largest business I have ever run is a tiny fraction of what Ginni runs . Even at this tiny level – it’s hard to balance short term vs long term and it’s easy to get criticized whatever trade off you make . I can only imagine – barely – what she must go through routinely at the scale of IBM and with constant comparisons to others. I can’t honestly say I handle pressure with her level of ease – but seeing how she does it has certainly helped me learn how to handle it better .

I have only met her directly very few times . One thing I have always noticed is that she zooms into what is important very quickly without wasting any time. She also doesn’t hold back on feedback – good or bad . In one CEO level meeting at a client – she took me aside and asked about my family and what my daughter was learning at school these days . She was happy to hear about her interest in math and computer programming and asked me about how I thought IBM was helping shape the next generation of technical talent in schools . And an hour later she gave my boss and me some pretty hard hitting feedback on what we should improve on . Again, this was something I could learn from on the balance a leader needs to develop .

From time to time, I would get the pleasure of some quick feedback from her on my blog as well – which of course is major bragging rights . This one was about the future of software on New Year’s Eve .

And as of yesterday we have a new CEO-elect in Arvind Krishna , and a new President in Jim Whitehurst .

Right off the bat – I (and many others) cheered loudly when I heard a hard core technologist was chosen as our new leader (and especially sweet for immigrants like me to see it’s a person of Indian origin) .

When I joined IBM in 2006 , Arvind was already quite well known as a visionary technologist and he has been taking on progressively more senior and impactful roles . I have interacted with him only a handful of times – mostly when I led the consulting business in NA for AI, analytics and IOT . He is the most down to earth leader one can meet – and totally stays away from hype and yet communicates the value of technology so effectively. Something I admire and want to get better at myself !

Twenty years ago or so when I landed in USA as a young engineer, there were not a lot of people of Indian origin in senior leadership roles in tech companies that I could look up to . And now we have immigrant engineers from India as CEOs of IBM, Google , Microsoft , Adobe ! It is a great moment of pride as an American of Indian origin (and an engineer) myself – especially since not that long ago I couldn’t have even dreamt of such a scenario . I was not the only one going through this emotion – so many of us were calling and messaging each other well into the night . What a great testament to the education system in India , and what a great example of America promoting top talent with no bias based on the country they were born !

When I saw the news yesterday on a slack channel, I sent a quick note to Ginni – and the only request I had was for her to write a book on her time in IBM . I sure hope she does and there will be a lot for us to learn from it !

Good luck Arvind and Jim ! All of us are cheering for you as you lead us into the future .

Usual disclaimer : As always, these are purely my personal thoughts and not that of IBM . I am not an IBM spokesperson . I do own IBM stock .

What the heck is strategy ?


I don’t know what is more difficult to get consensus on a definition – “meaning of life” or “strategy” . And I am only partly kidding here 🙂

Vast majority of the literature and talks on strategy are about what it is not , as opposed to what it really is . This was true when I was in business school a couple of decades ago , and it’s still true in the work place debates today . Recently I attended some leadership training at HBS and apparently Professors still love to debate what it is not !

I don’t deny that I enjoy these debates – but with a business to run, I also need simple definitions to do something with it . The reason I am thinking about it one more time is because I have an “all hands” call coming up with my global team in a few days and as it happens every year – I am challenging everything one more time just to make sure I set the team on a good path to success .

So here is how I look at strategy

1. Strategy is a way to get to a set of goals under uncertain conditions and limited resources within a certain period of time

2. It can only be defined at a high level given the uncertainty , and there needs to be a plan for known trade offs

3. The plan to execute on it consequently need to be constantly refined as you learn more over time

4. It needs to be defined at the highest level of an organization since a good strategy needs a lot of decisions on allocation of scarce resources , the goals itself will need to be questioned , and the result of those decisions has to serve as a compass (as opposed to a map) for the rest of the team as they execute on it

5. It should leave plenty of room to improvise during execution.

The goals are fairly straight forward for the business I lead . Where I need to temper my enthusiasm is how many of those goals can I map to a bottoms up plan . It’s very easy to make too many assumptions and become over confident in attaining those goals – but that would be ignoring the simple idea that there is no strategy if there is no uncertainty ! The trick is to minimize uncertainty instead of eliminating it .

Then there is the constraint of limited resources . I have swung on either extremes of “constraints are good” VS “unconstrained is good” over the years . These days I am a believer that it’s best to acknowledge constraints right upfront – but then start challenging them from first principles to see if they are as real as they appear . When we don’t acknowledge real constraints , we end up saying ridiculous things like “it was a great strategy, but execution failed us”.

All strategies have an expiration date and I realize that over time – the shelf life is becoming shorter . What seems to work for me is an annual overhaul with quarterly tweaks . If operational results trend the wrong way – I don’t wait for the next year to overhaul the strategy though 🙂

The easiest way to communicate a strategy for me is in the form of a plan . Too high level and it gives the feeling of a “slogan on a banner” which gets you not a lot more than eye rolls . Too much detail and it gets tedious for everyone . So I run it by a few people to iterate and get it to a decent enough shape . No magic bullets have been found so far !

Iterations come in all sizes and are triggered by multiple factors . The most common reason is the variance during execution. But there could be really big factors like the economy going into a recession . The key here is to keep an eye for detail on operations, while also scanning the environment for changes .

Zooming in and out constantly takes a lot of time and energy – and this is one of the many reasons why you should constantly grow more leaders in your team. The more (and better) leaders you groom – the more you can focus yourself on fewer high impact decisions .

The last point I want to make here is on leaving room for everyone to make decisions during execution . There is no creativity in following explicit and prescriptive directions all the time . This is why I like to think of my job as providing a compass and not a map . Unless your team develops skills to make their own plans – and intelligently change them as required along the way – they will not develop as leaders !

When you are powered by good espresso !


Some of you may know that I am a big dog lover . I also used to compete actively in dog shows with German shepherds , labs and goldens . As career started taking more and more of my time – I gave up on dog shows . I actually don’t care very much about winning a show any more – I don’t miss that thrill anymore . But I terribly miss the fun of training a puppy from scratch and competing and the constant problem solving .

When you compete seriously – you need a puppy or young adult who is suitable for your specific needs and that needs a lot of research to find one. I haven’t been at the big shows or following pedigrees closely for a long time – so I had to make a fresh start . I have several friends who are active in the field and I will get plenty of good advice from them . But for me to follow along their advice intelligently, I need to do some homework first .

So during the vacation period, I decided to start my research. Seeing several people walking their beautiful and well trained dogs in the streets of London and Paris added to my motivation 🙂

First step of any good research is of course to stock up on coffee . And we had just returned from Europe and the Parisian cafes had set a very high bar . Thanks to Amazon prime – it only took a couple of days to get a few different coffee bean packs . For good measure I brought out the old Espresso machines from their boxes so that I have enough options to find the perfect match .

Then I opened up YouTube and started watching clips from the big german Shepherd shows in Germany . About ten videos in – and probably 2 double shot espressos – I realized there is an unaddressed problem . I am in no shape physically to train a dog at the level I need to . I need strength , endurance , flexibility and things of that nature .

Two years ago – I had lost a lot of weight by signing up with a personal trainer and working out at the gym . Well that ended up with muscle tears in both arms and that kept me away from the gym for a year . I still lost some weight but it was negligible . At that pace – I wouldn’t get to the physical state I need to be anytime soon . Darn !

I love outdoors – and I hate doing cardio at the gym with a passion . Thanks to our mild winter in Chandler – I put on tennis shoes , and started walking . About 45 mins later – I couldn’t figure out how much distance I covered or how many calories I burned . This is the curse of being an analytics guy at work – I get this intense urge to measure ! Thankfully there are plenty of apps that can do it all – and I dutifully downloaded the requisite apps and started measuring weight , exercise , food , water etc .

I started at around 2 miles and can now do 5 miles of brisk walk . And in the first week I lost about 3 pounds . I hope I can continue the good habits and get into the right shape by the time I get the pup .

Thanks to the insistence of my teenage daughter who has been using AirPods for a while – I had bought a set for myself too but never used them . It’s one of those things – I always felt like a total idiot talking with Bluetooth headsets and generally have avoided using them . But the daily walks proved to be a turning point – I am now a big fan , using them for work calls as well as music from the phone .

Anyways – back to my research on dogs. So I read through the breed standard again – and surprisingly could more or less recite it verbatim from memory . I started looking at my favorite dogs from 80s and 90s to get my eye tuned to the ideal version . And then I started watching the videos and pictures of the more recent dogs .

I did not like most dogs . I started saying things in my mind like “great head but too long in the body” and “great movement but don’t like the tail set” . Highly frustrating to say the least !

And then came some sad news – my mentor in dog shows passed away and a dear friend from India sent me a message about it . I was so terribly sad and spent a lot of time thinking about the times I have spent with him when I was in college . And then the light bulb went on – I was doing a cardinal sin of evaluation of dogs called “fault judging”. My mentor – Nawab Nazeer – had warned me about it several times .

Purebred dogs have a written standard . Everyone knows the standard is for an ideal dog and no dog is ideal . So the principle of judging is to figure out how close a given dog comes to the ideal . However it is a lot easier for less experienced and lesser skilled people to judge all the faults and compare that way . That’s what fault judging means – and it’s a bad idea . I knew that from before – and yet I was doing it with full enthusiasm . Go figure !

Any way – I have some unlearning and resetting to do before I continue my research to find my puppy . Probably that gives me a bit more time to lose the weight 🙂

Today, I am typing this from the plane to NY – the first business trip of the year . And as I am slowly getting back to the normal work routine, I started thinking about how much fault judging happens in the work place . It’s much more easy for many of us to spot weaknesses and criticize people about it than recognize strengths and give them credit for it .

It’s funny how one thing leads to another when you are powered by great espresso ! For good measure , I just ordered some more espresso beans 🙂