And Vijay Says…

Let me share two things that happened this week to me , the “Indian techie”.

1. Incident 1

Me , a Caucasian friend and another friend who is visiting from India were on the phone yesterday . Caucasian friend has a team that is mostly in India and the rest of his team in US also is majority Indian. He is a first time manager and wanted our advice on some team dynamics . So for some topic he asked “so is this an Indian culture thing?” . I said “no” and our other friend said “yes of course” at the same time ! 

Dead silence for a minute and then we burst out laughing 🙂

There were four major themes we discussed about that team and three of the four , my friend from India had a different version of what is Indian . 

I left the call thinking I must be from Mars

2. Incident 2

I had some spare time (it’s the first week of new quarter and the only time when I get to do geeky things without worrying about deals and stuff ) and offered to help some younger colleagues with optimizing SQL performance . They sent me the code and I did not have an explain log to see what was causing the performance issue . The one thing I noticed was that there were some subqueries in the code that was on the same table as the original query . So I thought maybe I can rewrite it to a self join and get a tad more performance . Except – what should have taken 30 minutes for a regular developer took me a few hours to make it work . I was miserable – including some yelling , screaming and cursing . 

Here comes the irony . The code did perform better and my buddies were thoroughly impressed that a suit could actually write production quality code . I on the other hand was in extreme depression that I no longer can even do mundane coding very well . That is a big problem since I think of myself as a developer first and foremost . 

So what am I ? Or as I asked myself yesterday in technical terms – WTF am I ? 

I think of myself as extremely Indian . I was born and raised in a a small South Indian town . I speak English with a thick Indian accent . I don’t think of English as my first language . I speak Malayalam at home, and can speak several other Indian languages . I cook and eat mostly Indian food . I hear mostly Indian music and I read three Indian news papers every day on my phone . The only sport I follow is cricket . Yet – I no longer seem to be able to relate completely to the folks who live in India . 

I am an accidental transplant into the world of management and sales . My identity right from school days has been that of an engineer . I try hard to stay on top of technology all the time . Yet – from an “engineer who also sells and manages” I seem to have morphed into “just an executive who can do a bunch of different things”. 

Don’t tell me that “change is inevitable” or “you have to embrace change” . I know it , just don’t tell me 🙂

I don’t like the term “digital transformation” all that much – and it is no big secret . My views are fairly public on why the term is misleading . That said , the term is indeed very popular and I get asked frequently about critical success factors as they apply to digital transformation . 

My view – simply put – is that it is more about managing transformation (as in change) , and less about digital (as in technology). 

I routinely talk to leaders at my clients who proudly tell me that they have started a Hadoop initiative or IOT project to kick start their digital transformation . I share their enthusiasm – mostly because I know how difficult it is to find budget for new initiatives at many of these companies . But I also know from experience that this is only a very small first step .
I put forward a simple three question framework to get to a common understanding of whether a transformation initiative has a chance to succeed 

1. Are we solving the right problem ? Or are we solving a random problem the best way we possibly can ?

Here is an example from recent experience . Data scientists and Hadoop experts created an amazing “churn analysis” model for a business . Customer loved it – but that project never went very far . Why ? Simply because this customer already had the lowest churn in their peer group of companies . This was not the right problem for the top management to worry about . All that happened was that we found an optimum solution to something that they didn’t really care about . 

2. Why should users switch to a new solution now ?

The CEO or CIO might see the tremendous value in analyzing all kinds of data and deriving deep insights . But when an analyst who has a well developed process of preparing , analyzing and reporting data a certain way for ten years might not see any reason to switch to an unknown new process . 

It’s not enough that users will eventually use the new solution – they need to do it “now”. Are there incentives for them to switch fast ? Inertia kills !

3. Can the solution scale and stick around for a while ?

Not just about scaling technology – but can this solution work everywhere (or in most places ) that we do business ? And is it flexible enough to not need a full redo in near future as business evolves? A transformation should result in something that is both effective and efficient !

Of course there are a hundred other questions to ask and answer about such initiatives – but in my experience , these three will set the right expectations with all the stakeholders quickly and also set the stage for follow on explorations . Worst case , it will still save you time spent chasing the wrong things .

Where should transformation focus ?

A lot of transformation initiatives tend to focus on changing the technology and the processes , and not as much on people . This is also why most of these transformations fail, even though the original proofs of concept were declared a success . 

Example – This lack of focus on users is also the number one reason why self service reporting solutions don’t live up to their full potential is most cases – users just don’t see a reason to switch and suffer from a temporary loss of productivity . And very few leaders have the guts to switch off the legacy reports and “force” users to leap into the new world 🙂 

When there are two ways of doing something !

Technology and process will evolve faster and faster with time -but human beings won’t change that fast if they have a default option of sticking with what they know . This is why startups generally have an inherent advantage in shaking things up in the world compared to an established company . 

Why do more people rave about uber as opposed to say GE when it comes to transformation ? Disruption is always easier when you need to disrupt others without needing to disrupt yourself . 

It’s not as if larger companies have no chance to transform – it just is more painful . Many companies have successful incubation programs in place to nurture new ideas . Integrating the good ideas past incubation into mainstream business is where there are not as many success stories available today . That should change over time .

Jon Reed wrote an excellent article on work life balance http://diginomica.com/2015/08/21/pulling-truth-from-the-viral-absurdity-of-the-amazon-workplace-debate/ and that prompted some thoughts in my mind based on my own work and life over the last two decades.

There are two simple principles in life that keep me sane when I follow them both religiously. And when I don’t follow them , it invariably screws me over 

1. We have to draw lines when it comes to how we want to lead our lives . If we don’t do that, someone else will draw it for us and we won’t always like it – in fact most times we will hate it .

2. There will always be some people smarter and luckier than us . We have to make peace with that quickly and not let it drive us nuts every day

Work life balance is just one example for this . I have a job that needs me to travel most weeks . If I don’t draw a line – I could easily be traveling every day of the week , all year , for my employer’s business . So I do draw reasonable lines and try to be home as much as I can . In the process of drawing these lines , I might lose out on some opportunities and the price to pay for that might be high. What often makes it hard is that we have to draw these lines without perfect data . But if I don’t draw that line – I won’t have a life outside work at all.

In my job, I spend a lot of time negotiating with customers, partners and my own colleagues . One of the  golden rules of negotiations is that “they will keep asking till you say no”. Saying no doesn’t come naturally to me . But if I don’t say no when required , then I can’t fairly complain when I am asked to do things that I don’t like . So I learned to say No and it helps a lot in managing my life on my terms . This is true outside work too.

Then there are the people who think being difficult is a badge of honor . In reality, it’s exactly the opposite . Being easy to work with is much harder than being difficult . If you want to be easy to work with, you need to make principled compromises on the fly . Being difficult is just an easy way to buy more time to make decisions . It slows things down and then no one will want to work with you any way. Being easy to work with comes at a high risk and it could be taken as a sign of weakness by some . But when you can combine being easy to work with AND the ability to draw lines when required , you will get somewhere you like .

I have always worked with a lot of over achievers . It is hard to not compare myself from time to time with them. There are many who are significantly more successful than me in any dimension I choose to compare – money , how fast they progressed in their career, how big is their house – or pretty much anything at all. It’s partly good fodder for motivating me to try harder , but for the most part it just made me miserable . Then I realized that there are two aspects that I am not considering 

1. They might be better at one dimension – like say they made it to executive ranks sooner than I did . But they have also paid a price for that – like sacrificing on quality time with family . Some chose to not marry or not have kids , unlike me . I wanted a family and when I add that to the framework, I no longer felt like an under achiever . 

2. There are always elements of luck, risk taking ability and intelligence that they may have that I have no control over whatsoever  . So why stress over that at all ?

This perspective is not something I have had all my life . I got it while I took a time out between my last job and my current job . It just made me realize that the only way to do a meaningful comparison is to see if I am better today than I was yesterday . Words cannot explain how peaceful I felt when I came to that conclusion . I just needed to get off the hamster wheel before I could get that clarity in my mind .

I will stop this with one last thought . If we don’t keep skills sharp , and keep learning all the time – our ability to say no will decrease at an alarming rate . And at a certain level , it might get to a stage where you cannot make peace with it . So it’s in our own best interests to stay relevant .