And Vijay Says…

Cow slaughter and beef ban news have hogged the lime light for several weeks now in Indian media . Some one even got killed by a mob for eating beef recently in North India . I can’t begin to say how stupid the whole controversy is. But this silliness gets magnified when we read about one rape after another in India . Surely we can give more attention to the plight of women than holy cows ?

I am vehemently against capital punishment – I don’t think it has a place in civilized world . But when I read the news about a two year old girl getting raped in India , I started thinking whether capital punishment is still needed in a minority of cases ( “rarest of rare” as Supreme Court refers to it ). I know it’s a slippery slope if we start supporting capital punishment for some situations arbitrarily but not others – but as a father of a little girl myself , I can’t be totally objective on this matter . 

My own family has some amazingly strong women who bucked the general trend of women in India  – my mom ran multiple small businesses to help raise our family , my younger sister did her masters and anchored for TV channels while working at an IT company , one aunt was the first woman IPS police officer in our state, multiple female cousins did their masters degrees and have great careers and so on . Given this background – for the longest time I didn’t quite have an appreciation of what it “really” means to grow up as a girl in India . 
That said – I didn’t have to look very far to see things were not all totally kosher for women.

When I was a little kid vacationing at my grand parents house annually – the accepted norm was that the men (and boys) of the house would eat before the women (and girls). Most of my aunts and older female cousins were married off really early . There wasn’t really much of an emphasis in educating girls or helping them build a career at that time .
I went to a boys only school . And in engineering college , there was just one girl in our class . So the first time I really sat next to a girl or had a conversation with a girl was when I was in business school . It took me several months to feel comfortable in a co-Ed environment . I know first hand that it took a lot longer than that for some of the girls in our class . And that is a big problem – there is no reason why we can’t have co-Ed classes from kindergarten all the way . When guys and gals get comfortable being next to each other and talking as friends  , a lot of problems go away . With proper education – Over the next generation we won’t need separate lines for women , separate railway compartments for women and so on in India if we start kids on the right path from school .

Next up – we need to set things right on the home front . A dad who doesn’t respect mom and his girl children doesn’t help his son behave any better . I can’t honestly say I am setting the perfect example myself – there is plenty more I can do to share the domestic work load with my dear wife . I am trying to improve though . I do tell my little daughter all the time that there is nothing she can’t do that another boy or girl can do . I also know several friends and family members who look at it the same way . We need to change the attitude ground up – and have some real urgency about that . The duty of Indian dads and moms should move away from “best possible marriage for my daughter” to “best possible education and career for my daughter”.

There is already a lot of attention on equality of women in work place . More things are done to make it right today compared to the past – but it has to be more than just a slogan or a metric to be hit . The few women who have broken the glass ceiling has a big job now to be stellar role models to their younger female colleagues . But to solve the inequality problem meaningfully and quickly  , men have to take direct responsibility . It will be an absolute shame if the male leaders of our generation don’t fix this problem for good .

Coming back to the case of rape – I absolutely think law enforcement needs to kick the offenders butt every chance they get and set an example . But knowing the level of corruption and loop holes in the Indian system – I am not holding my breath on a solution that is primarily about law enforcement. 

As a society – we need to stop treating the victims of rape as bad people . They need support – medical , emotional , financial, legal. We should take away the shame factor in reporting rape . “Who will marry her now?” Is the reason why a lot of families don’t report rape . It’s time we moved on from our Stone Age mindset . 

I have started seeing some folks in social media saying girls carrying guns are the solution to rapes in India . I can’t change your beliefs other than point you to the fact that there are more rapes per capita in US compared to India , while there are more guns per capita in US compared to not just India , but every other country on earth.

There are some controversial solutions being discussed as well – like legalizing prostitution in India . It definitely shocked my Indian values quite a bit – but the more I think about it , this is something that might actually work in India in reducing rapes . I wonder if someone is studying this seriously to put a proposal before the law makers . Given the ruling BJP is extremely right wing Hindu in ideology – I don’t think they will entertain a radical solution like this . 

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 .