Search.

Insights. Strategy Thoughts and insights on strategy, business and world. Read more .. Innovation Thoughts on innovation, ideas and how to be drive innovation. Read more .. Leadership Thoughts on leadership, team work, career and growth. Read more .. Conversations My conversations with other emminent leaders from the industry. Read more ..

Emerging leadership series - In conversation with Sakthivel Viswanathan 9 Feb 2023 Sakthivel Viswanathan is a Technology Principal with Thoughtworks and co-leads the IDP (Internal Developer Platform) Program. With more than a decade of experience, his strong focus has been to bridge the gap between technology and business objectives and to make the jobs of the business leaders easier. How would you introduce yourself? “Hello there!” I am Sakthivel. Working as an application developer in /thoughtworks. In recent months, playing the role of Technology Principal for Digital Platform products. Having a decade long experience in programming and leading the technology side of delivery. In recent years, my strong focus has been on bridging the gap between the technology and business objectives with the goal to support and make the jobs of business leaders easier. I spend most of my time in my leadership role and I continue to find a balance in keeping myself updated with the evolving technology world in the areas that are of interest to me. Can you tell me a bit about your career journey? What inspired you to take on the leadership role? I still feel and remember the enthusiasm, challenges and late nights during the initial days of my programming career. With the days passing, It was personally evident that my interpersonal and career skills grew with varied opportunities and stints. I remember taking on the leadership role during my days in Cognizant for the first time, when I was expected to influence a client with programming expertise with the intention of forming an offshore team with three members. It was a wonderful opportunity to understand the leadership role and I was prepared and ready to take on the unknown and came out well with tons of learnings. The single most important turning point in my career was the experience I gained by putting myself on the spot and to take on the challenges through the journey. It was the best thing that I did for myself and it helped both professionally and personally. What were the top challenges you faced during your journey and how did you overcome them? From my personal experience, the challenges I faced during my journey include managing my time and reducing the cognitive load for operating effectively. I have come a long way from the time it was incredibly difficult to manage my time and I continue to reflect and adapt based on the needs. Some of the key strategies that I follow to be effective in my role is to have a focused time and to start the day with must do items. Ensuring to reflect on the progress at the end of day and course correcting if necessary. This helps to consciously plan the next day better. To manage the cognitive load, I tend to avoid switching contexts too much. While it is important to respond to pressing items, it is equally important to plan for a dedicated time for activities such as these. In my opinion, there is no one rule that fits all but opportunities to experiment and learn from individual experience. I am personally a big fan of doing “One thing at a time” which gives a sense of self satisfaction in accomplishing goals instead of trying to complete “Way too many things at a time”. What motivates you everyday? Nature is a great source of inspiration and motivation for me. Tiny events such as birds chirping, morning sun shine, clear blue skies and cool breeze, gives me a positive vibe which takes the day forward. Do you have a role model in your life? Can you name a few people who you look up to? My parents are my role models. Their dedication and tireless effort to shape my future is the single most thing I admire whole-heartedly. The other personality that I admire most is my spouse. She has been my guiding light and the person I look to during some critical times in the recent years. Apart from them, Late Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam inspired and continues to inspire me. His humbleness, devotion to his profession, dedication and the heights he has reached through hard work is something that is cherished by millions of people, I am proud to say that I am one in the million. I recommend reading his autobiography “Wings of fire”. What does leadership mean to you? How would you describe your leadership style? To me leadership is all about commitment. It is vital for leaders to be committed to a goal. A leader, who demonstrates strong commitment towards a goal can easily nurture confidence and trust among others. No one is perfect and I am no exception. I strongly believe in commitment and I always try my best to be as committed as possible. The other important leadership style that I follow is active listening. A leader listening to his subordinates and juniors demonstrates that he or she is willing to value their ideas and perspectives. This increases trust, innovation and fosters a positive work environment. An environment where people are ready to talk about anything related to their work is an outcome of a leader who values opinions however small they are. What would be your advice to other leaders? Being an effective leader is a continuous learning journey, a general advice that I have for my fellow leaders is to continue the learning process irrespective of the position you are now in. Continuous learning helps us to sharpen our skills and be more effective. Be open minded to accept constructive criticism and feedback. Being humble and understanding the criticism helps us to adapt and course correct in challenging situations and environments. Always embrace failure as you celebrate success.

< Back The path towards technology transformation can be very long, says Swapnil Deshpande, Chief Digital Officer at ThoughtWorks This is an exclusive interview conducted by the Editor Team of CIO News with Swapnil Deshpande, Chief Digital Officer at ThoughtWorks. Technology leaders need to be able to adapt to the constantly changing environment around them, sense the change early, and be ready before the change becomes a problem by responding to the change appropriately How did you plan your career path to be a successful technology leader? Let me break down this question and answer it in two parts. First, “how did I become a technology leader?” and second, “how did I become a successful leader?” For the first part of the question, let me admit that my journey of becoming a technology leader has grown from many small career dreams I had at various stages in my life. My very first career dream as a child was to grow up and be a teacher. Being the son of two teachers, I have always had a great admiration for teachers, their knowledge and wisdom, and their ability to impart knowledge and build the characters of hundreds of students. Growing up further, when I was in my pre-teens, I developed a passion for reading, and I would spend hours and hours reading various kinds of books and novels. Reading would not only broaden my knowledge and understanding of various subjects, but it would also foster a deep respect for the authors’ creativity and story-telling abilities, and their fantastic ability to take readers on a journey through their stories was something I was eager to learn. So, my second career dream was to become an author or storyteller. Later in my early teens, I got introduced to computers, and it unlocked a completely different world for me. I was fascinated by the abilities of computers and the possibilities they could unlock for the world. Computers allowed me to be creative, abstract, and structured at the same time, and I knew that this is what I wanted to pursue for the rest of my life. So, my next career dream was to make a career in computers and technology. Thankfully, I stuck to that for the rest of my life. After completing a formal professional education from NIT Allahabad as a Computer Science and Engineering student, I had work tenures with Cognizant, Tech Mahindra, and Amdocs before taking the plunge to be an entrepreneur and setting up two start-ups. My most valuable lessons about the corporate world came during my days as an entrepreneur. Now, I have almost 10 years of working experience with Thoughtworks. For the second part of the question, I do not know if I am successful or not. The definition of success is different for different people, so I cannot say generally whether my career is successful or not; I will leave that to others to decide if they think of me as successful or not. For me, “career” is a long-term and evolving part of life. A successful career includes great learning as well as using that learning to help build a positive impact on others. For the first part (my professional life), I believe I have had a reasonable amount of success because I have had numerous opportunities to continue my learning over the course of my two decades of experience. For the second one, I would leave it to the people who work with me to tell if I have been successful in delivering a positive impact on their life and helping them grow. What challenges you faced in your career path and how did you overcome them? I have a comprehension issue with the word “challenge.” I find it difficult to treat a specific situation as a challenge; I would rather think of it as an “opportunity” to make an impact or make life better for someone. A couple of examples I can give are: some people think of the “rapidly changing technology landscape” as a challenge; I think of it as an opportunity to continuously learn and expand the horizon. Another example could be the “constrained financial situation of companies and departments” post-COVID, which may be a challenge to deliver impact, but I think of that as an opportunity to “innovate” the business models. Looking at any situation as a challenge makes your brain think of it as a problem to be solved or mitigated and responds like that, possibly in a constrained way where the focus is to avoid loss or issues or risks. However, looking at the same situation as an opportunity makes you think across the horizon to find the best solutions, innovative solutions, and sometimes those that do not exist today. The emphasis then shifts to value maximisation and impact maximisation rather than risk or loss avoidance. Having said that, the real challenge comes when you deal with people and their emotions at work. Understanding human nature and behaviour is indeed challenging, yet an important aspect of leadership. I am pretty sure I have made mistakes in my leadership career; however, it remains a journey of continuous learning. What are the challenges faced by technology leaders today while implementing digital technologies? Continuing from the previous theme, rather than outlining the challenges that are likely to be faced by the technology leaders, I would like to outline the situations that the technology leaders are likely to face and in which they will play an important role in steering the organisation forward. Technology leaders will face increasing pressures from managing and navigating industry and business model disruptions. They are not only expected to react to disruptions, but also to anticipate and prepare for them in many cases. Markets are evolving fast, and the technology landscape is evolving even faster, so navigating this will be a big thing on the minds of the leaders. On the other side, this presents a wonderful opportunity to disrupt yourself and get ahead of the competition. Aside from the topic of disruptions, technology leaders will increasingly face constraints on the investment dollars at their disposal. In the post-pandemic, recession-hit world, investments in building new technology or in the use of new technology are getting harder scrutiny. The technology leaders will need to learn how to manage experiments, innovations, and using new technology for generating tangible value without touching their mainstream businesses (that earn money). The third and perhaps equally important conundrum that the technology leaders will face is to manage the timing of their key investment decisions. When should I invest in developing or deploying technology for commercial purposes? Should we buy technology or build it ourselves? The right decision always lies somewhere in between “opportunity cost” and “cost of missed opportunity.” If you invest too early, you may not get the right value (because the use cases have not matured), while if you invest too late, you may have missed out entirely. Technology leaders will need to always balance their decisions between these two poles. How can technology leaders overcome the challenges faced? While technology is important, the people and leaders of the organisations that drive tech initiatives and business transformation play a larger role. For an effective outcome, they need to have the right mindset and be “transformation ready.” I would advise the technology leaders to focus on the following key aspects for preparing themselves and their teams to respond better to challenges and unpredictable situations: How to think? The technology leaders need to see possibilities and opportunities beyond the current problems and situations they are encountering on a day-to-day basis. Being buried in today’s problems does not help people have the right mindset to imagine a better future. How to act? Because things can get unpredictable along the way and decisions could go wrong along the way, it is important for the leaders to be tolerant of an environment that seems ambiguous and often contains risks. Since the path for each company is unique and unexplored, the teams and leaders need to show a high level of resilience in the face of constant change and constant ambiguity along the way. How to react? The path towards technology transformation can be very long, bumpy, and full of unexpected surprises and blockers along the way. Leadership changes, organisational direction changes, business model changes, organisational politics, shifting powers between teams, and the ability to influence are some of the key reasons why the path can be bumpy. The technology leaders need to be able to adapt to the constantly changing environment around them, sense the change early, and be ready before the change becomes a problem by responding to the change appropriately. Any best practices, industry trends, or advice you’d give to fellow technology leaders to help them succeed professionally? Technology is transient and ever-changing, while the business value paradigm is permanent. While some businesses develop new technologies, the vast majority of businesses use technology to deliver business value. I would strongly advise the technology leaders to take a keen interest in understanding the business model of the organisation and the associated nuances. Knowing how the company runs and generates profit or grows is very important knowledge that the technology leaders should possess. Keep your curiosity quotient high. Go back to the fundamentals and apply first-principles thinking to bring more innovation and impact to your business. Do not be satisfied with the status quo and challenge it continuously. Finally, taking inspiration from the most successful football teams, another message I would like to give to the technology leaders is to forget about the past achievements and successes and focus on delivering future value. What you did in the past is over and should be forgotten as soon as possible, and your focus should be on the next target. A technologist’s true joy comes from the journey of learning and creating value. Any other points that you would like to highlight? Some tips that have helped me along the way are: Try not to overinvest emotionally at work. Invest in people, not work or products. Your career and journey are much larger than the project or team you are currently on. So, invest in long-term relationships and help each other grow. Have a passion (or a hobby) outside of work that you are willing to burn your nights for. For me, watching Manchester United play football is one such passion. I tell my team not to be surprised if they see me responding to some chat messages or emails at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. India time. It’s possible I might have been awake watching football. Take time off. Do not just book time off to fight stress and refresh your mind; take time off to experience new things too. Take care of your physical and mental well-being. The pandemic has taught us how important it is to take care of mental health. Take it seriously and take good care of it. Previous Next

Emerging leadership series - In conversation with Partha Dash 20 Feb 2023 Partha is a thought leader and a passionate technologist having 14 + years of experience in Networks and Security domain. He is currently playing the role of enterprise network architect with Thoughtworks. For Partha, leadership is like parenting and is based on trust and integrity. How would you introduce yourself? A thought leader and a passionate technologist having 14 + years of experience in Networks and Security domain. Currently playing the role of enterprise network architect at Thoughtworks. Can you tell me a bit about your career journey? What inspired you to take on the leadership role? I completed my Bachelors in Computer Science and engineering in 2008 before joining TCS as a desktop support engineer. My stint at Thoughtworks began in 2012 where I played various roles starting from system admin to Infrastructure consultant to leading regional network team and becoming a global network technical leader. The curiosity to understand various cross cutting technologies associated with the network and security domain has actually pushed me to talk to various set of internal and external stakeholders to widen up my perspective and look at things more holistically.This has naturally drifted me to my leadership journey and helped me to think from a global first approach. What were the top challenges you faced during your journey and how did you overcome them? Leading any critical initiatives where there are multiple stakeholders from diversified backgrounds sometimes lead to delay in decision making process and execution.Learning the art of listening and trying to speak in the last has helped me to understand wider perspectives of individuals. This enhanced my articulate skills, bringing the necessary data points to arrive at a common alignment. What motivates you everyday? Smile of my kid. Sense of fulfillment by achieving tiny milestones that is part of a bigger objective. Being part of the growth journeys of other individuals. Do you have a role model in your life? Can you name a few people who you look up to? I am fortunate enough to learn something from many great individuals around me.They have consistently supported me in my growth journey and bring the best out of me. I look up to Nir Zuk (The founder and CTO of Palo Alto Networks).He is the reason why many people like me are passionate about working in the cyber security industry. What does leadership mean to you? How would you describe your leadership style? To me leadership is like Parenting.Leaders should create a safe environment built on trust and integrity where individuals are motivated to do remarkable things. What would be your advice to other leaders? Leadership is a choice not a rank. So it can be performed at any level. Have a clear vision and strategic thought process. Be courageous,transparent and humble.

< Back Putting innovation theory into practice In the first three parts of this series, we’ve explored the ideas of .. [ This article was originally published on Thoughtworks's Insights. You can see the original articles here . ] Get started now In the first three parts of this series, we’ve explored the ideas of building an innovation engine within your enterprise, creating a system for sustainable innovation. Here, we’re going to look at the practicalities of making this real. To give you an idea of how this Innovation to Impact model can work, I’ll share with you the genesis of the concept, which emerged out of some work I was doing at Thoughtworks. A few years ago, I’d started my role heading up the internal IT (workspaces) at Thoughtworks internal technology program — TechOps, and spent some time travelling across our global offices to get a better picture of our capabilities. I’m sure this was an experience familiar to many: the chance to meet incredible colleagues with brilliant ideas. But it was also clear to me that we were often not making as much impact as we could because there wasn’t enough visibility into what people were doing. So for instance, our demand teams in the US would have had no idea about some of the incredible work on Internet of Things (IoT) projects that colleagues in Manchester, UK were doing. It’s a tale that I’m sure’s familiar to many people in enterprises today: the issue isn’t that we don’t have innovative teams, but channeling those ideas into business value is tough. How do you create an ecosystem for innovation? How can you make that ecosystem sustainable? As is often the case in a company such as ours, we started with ideas — a plan to run experiments. But to deliver something truly innovative — something that would add new value to the business — we would only pursue those that had a purpose. We started by setting up meetings across the nine global offices, both in-person events and online meet-ups. And we asked our staff for ideas that would help us tackle issues they saw in their day-to-day roles. Identifying the right projects From those meetings, we generated 185 nominations, which we narrowed down to 130 ideas when we’d removed duplicates. Out of those 130 ideas, we then had to streamline further, looking at which were commercially viable, and where we could start creating impact first. We eventually decided on a project for our recruitment teams — one looking at getting consistent feedback from candidates. We also carved out a small, but separate incubator team, from an existing large team to focus especially on delivering business value through innovation. The team had a people with product and domain, strategy, design and development skills, with a person often playing multiple roles. Their challenge was to find a consistent way of getting high quality feedback from candidates — and in a way that would enable us to improve our recruitment process, give better feedback to candidates and measure the effectiveness of our recruitment teams. The team had their first prototype done in eight weeks: a tablet-based system that candidates use immediately after their interview. That enabled us to get a trial out quickly, which we then monitored to ensure people were using it, to identify areas that could be improved and to ensure our recruitment teams were finding it useful. This solution quickly established the notion that our incubator team could not only innovate, but come up with ideas that impacted the business. And having established our credentials, we could then build on this by returning to our ideas board, re-evaluating our list of potential projects and finding new ways to help the business. This process for creating sustainable innovation can be seen as a four-stage process: Through this approach we’ve expanded our projects to include a global room booking system and multi-sensor environmental sensors. And we continue to grow and become an increasingly important engine of innovation. An eight-point plan for success To summarize, this series of articles has explored mechanisms to make innovation an integral part of business-as-usual — to make you less reliant on Eureka moments and to innovate systematically. I believe that by following the eight working principles outlined below, you’ll have an opportunity to create an innovation culture that enables your organization to outmatch its competitors in the long run. Co-creation and high-touch engagement. Building ‘with’ is better than building ‘for’ to build a sense of shared ownership High-velocity decisions. Speed is imperative for innovation, so avoid delays Think ‘openness’. Use open protocols, build your products / prototypes for interoperability by default Intrepreneurship attitude. Think from outcome perspective, having a high-level vision and navigating to achieve desired results First-principle approach. Go back to basics and challenge your fundamentals, revalidate all rooted assumptions Sense of urgency. Bringing a sense of urgency into entire process can eliminate blockages and clear the path Use +1 thinking. Going beyond your immediate problem or idea to find the next and solve for that Build for scale. You don’t want to spend extra time “later” to scale your innovations, do you! Previous Next

< Back Learning innovation ! – Part I – Innovation by Subtraction Many years ago I always used to think that innovation is ... Many years ago I always used to think that innovation is something that can never be taught on the job and I thought it must come from within individual to break the mould and find out better ways of doing the job. I never thought that you can actually teach someone to think innovative and come up with innovative ideas, implement the innovation concepts and practice innovation techniques. How wrong I was to think that! I have been part of the Innovation Sessions in my organization and the experience there has been nothing short of great. Not only these sessions have given me a direction to think different on innovation, but also to learn more on various innovation techniques and processes. With this post, I would starting a new article series Learning Innovation based on my own learning and my thoughts on the same. I hope this first post will give you few leads to help yourself learn more on innovation techniques and processes so you can also try them in your organization, Innovation by Subtraction Innovation by Subtraction is a bit uncommon process but might yield surprising results. To use the IbS process for doing an innovation in a process, we are expected to make a list of components of the process. The list should contain the MUST have components of the process. Now, as a part of the IbS, you are expected to brainstorm on how the process would still function without each of the components. We are expected to innovate the potential value or benefits would be without the components. However, the most important part of the solution must be the fact that the solution should not compromise the business value or benefits coming out the process. It should sound like a workable business idea ! The examples we discussed within our session were very interesting and the ideas that came out were even better. Have a look at the following example which might give you an idea on how radical can your thinking get when you remove the most essential part (you thought) from your process, service, product. Product / process - Mobile phone Most essential part of your product / process to remove - Battery charging Innovative Solutions when you remove the most essential part Can the phone use solar energy? Can the phone use bio cells? Can the phone breath? Self sustaining power? IbS has been a catalyst for many great innovations over the year. Most notably of them were, Phone call with IVR (Interactive Voice Recording) The most important thing when you deal transactions on phone, are of course the people. You need someone to listen to you and act on your instructions or help you in dealing issues. Now when you apply the IbS rule to this process of a phone call and remove the most important part of the process, the listener (person) and replace with an automated solution, what remains is an innovative solution of IVR. Business benefits – Significant reduction of costs, reduction in errors, more customer satisfaction in general. Client server technology The most important part of the computer functionality was the business processing and the subsequent hardware that is consumed by desktop PCs do support the business processing. When you remove both 1. an ability to compute itself and 2. CPU unit, what remains is an innovative solution of Client server technology. The server controls the business processing and has significant CPU power while the clients are more of dumb terminals with only monitor & keyboard as significant hardware. You can still perform full tasks and can add more terminals with less costs. Business benefits – Significant reduction of costs, space & consistent performance Touchscreen Did you ever think of any computing device until last few years with no keyboard to interact with? Calculators, mobile phones, notebooks, desktops were all having dedicated keyboards for users to interact with them. You now take out the most important part of the device interaction i.e. keyboard and the innovative solution is to have a touch screen interface. Touchscreen technology has been touted as one of the most popular device interaction technology now a days with more and more devices giving option of touch screens. Business benefits – Style factor, bigger screen areas, better interaction techniques So, think on you can use the IbS technique for finding out innovative ideas and solutions for your processes, services. #Innovation #productivity #Softwareengineering #techniques Previous Next

< Back Innovation in practice One of the core principles of our Innovate to Impact framework ... [ This article was originally published on Thoughtworks's Insights. You can see the original articles here . ] Making good on ideas Four phases of innovation One of the core principles of our Innovate to Impact framework is the notion that we’re creating something that adds new value to the business. And as we’ve seen, that value might be realized in new revenue streams, new customer services or internal efficiencies. As you move through the four-stage maturity model, the goal is to build out more impactful innovations. But as discussed, there’s little point in expecting the business to appreciate and support your efforts unless you can articulate the value derived. Validation and measurement are key. So the four stages of innovation throughout the Innovate to Impact framework can be summarized as: Ideate. Generate a backlog of ideas through voice of customers, crowdsourcing, hackathons, workshops. Your initial focus should be on quantity. Validate. Test your initial set of ideas against a defined set of parameters to understand the likely impact. Prioritize those with the biggest potential returns. Incubate. Build rapid prototypes, regularly showcase your work, co-create the product with your stakeholders to target value delivery Measure. How have you performed against expected targets? Measuring your impact. Let’s take a look at these phases in detail. Ideate The purpose here is to generate ideas. Every idea is welcome as long as it’s in keeping with the theme of the task. Whether something strikes you as a flash of genius or total clanger: park your judgement for now. You want to encourage your innovation team to become an ideation powerhouse. So gather up every idea coming your way. Some form of ideation workshop can be a great way to kickstart the process. Of course, not every idea has to be new. Your stakeholders are likely to already have their own ideas in mind, so you’ll want to ensure you involve them in the ideation process too. IT might also be necessary to do some for of discovery to identify what ideas are already out there. Another mechanism for encouraging the flow of ideas is by using the lens of the customers’ voice. What are their pain points or their needs? What are they telling you about potential opportunities to improve your offerings? Validate Here, your focus is validating your pool of ideas against predefined criteria to score ideas’ potential value. This helps us prioritize and identify which ideas bring the biggest impact. The validation process forms part of what I’ve dubbed the ‘ideas funnel’. Taking a set of ideas and narrowing it down through understanding which ones will offer you the most bang for your buck. When scoring, you may want to consider some of the following criteria: Commercial viability . Is the idea commercially marketable? Can it be showcased to, or used by, potential clients? Would this influence our clients or staff? Usability (Proof of value) . Is the idea usable in the current condition and within the existing context of your organization? Is it simple and intuitive to use by people? Is it easier to deploy and maintain? User adaptation . How easy would it be to get first 100/1000 etc. users to adopt this? Would they find it easy to get on board? How likely are they going to be repeat users? Strategy alignment . Is it aligned with the organizational strategy, vision and objectives? Does it help your organization achieve its goals? Feasibility . How feasible the idea is to qualify as incubator idea? Is it likely to result in a large programme of work? Can it be implemented in a definite period of time? What are the considerations for costs, efforts, team etc. needed to build this? Incubate Once you have validated your ideas, you’ll need to move fast to deliver a product or prototype. The incubate phase is based on high-touch engagement, high-speed decisions, intrapreneurship thinking and bringing a sense of urgency into the process so that we can meet the desired outcome with speed. To succeed here, your working team needs to be rapidly established. It should comprise of decision makers and people with domain expertise, so that they can collaborate with your incubator team. Their first task is to dive deeper into the problem at hand while developing a shared context within the working team so that they all coalesce around desired outcomes and possible measures of success. We advocate daily showcases to ensure everyone is aware of what’s coming up, how the solution is shaping up and what the early indicators suggest about chances of success. Changes is an integral part of incubation — you shouldn’t expect that you have the perfect solution from the get-go; but this iterative process should help you stay on track to meet your goals. Measure In some ways, measurements should take place at every stage of this incubation process. It’s essential to ensure you’re on the right track. But if you’re looking to create sustainable innovation within your enterprise, measurement comes into its own once you’re first solution is finished and you’re building a pipeline of ideas. You might start by measuring what I’d describe as targeted innovation. Make qualitative assessments on your impact on the business — as well as their perception of the incubator team. This enables you to track your overall success as an innovation engine. But you’ll also want to keep tabs on things at the initiative level. Can you show that your initiatives have saved money, time or effort? Have new market opportunities opened up? Has your organizational decision making improved? Can you demonstrate a return on investment? Ultimately, your success as an innovation team will depend on the number of ideas that you’ve turned into long-term products. So you should plan to track this from the outset. Always learn, always The path towards sustainable innovation isn’t about producing the perfect solution. What matters is continuously measuring the impact of your actions and learning from that. As the diagram above shows, what this means in practice continually revisiting your backlog of ideas. Things that may once have seemed impractical might now look urgent. Likewise, if some ideas haven’t produced the anticipated results, can you identify why not and plot a course to success? By constantly challenging yourself and your incubator team you won’t just come up with one quick win, but a sustainable program of improvements over the long term. In Part Four of this series, we’ll take a look at how all these ideas have played out in practice. Previous Next

Emerging leadership series - In conversation with Gyanesh Ojha 16 Feb 2023 Gyanesh started his IT career as a developer more than two decades ago but soon transitioned into the security domain out of curiosity. He is someone who does not like to say "no" and help whoever comes to him with a problem. Gyanesh derives satisfaction on solving problems and feeling of responsibility and trust motivates him. How would you introduce yourself? I am Gyanesh Ojha. Some people miss the “y” in my name and call me Ganesh. I know it's difficult to pronounce names but I’d prefer people pronounce my name correctly 🙂 . I am from India but am currently living in Singapore with my wife and daughter. I work at Thoughtworks and am currently responsible for South East Asia (SEA) InfoSec. I am passionate about Information Security and spend time sharing my knowledge with others to make them InfoSec savvy. I have been continuously honing my Infosec skills for over two decades now. Can you tell me a bit about your career journey? What inspired you to take on the leadership role? I started my IT career as a developer more than two decades ago but soon transitioned into the security domain out of curiosity. Early in my career, my focus area was application security, vulnerability assessment, penetration testing and audit. Those were my consulting days when we used to test government websites, private organization’s applications and used to audit banks and private organizations against IT security standards. Gradually I moved towards compliance and internal information security management. My mentor, Dr Deoraj Bhanu Murthy inspired me to think out of the box to solve real world problems and in the process made me take on the leadership role. What were the top challenges you faced during your journey and how did you overcome them? I am a person who doesn’t like to say “no” and the reason is simple. I want to help whoever comes to me with a problem. When I worked as an individual contributor, this would result in a constant backlog that I found difficult to clear. But when I started to lead a team, I had to decide where my focus should be and prioritize my tasks. So, I started to filter and focus on high priorities looking at my team’s bandwidth and, in the process, I learnt to say “no”. Though it is still not that easy for me, I have made quite a good progress. What motivates you every day? The satisfaction I derive on solving a problem, no matter how big or small; the joy I feel on seeing a colleague being more infosec aware and the responsibility my seniors trust me with, motivates me every day. In my personal life, the support and unconditional love of my family push me to outperform in every aspect of life. Do you have a role model in your life? Can you name a few people who you look up to? I look at the positive side of all the individuals I have connected with so far, both in my professional and personal life. But Dr Deoraj Bhanu Murthy is the one I truly Iook up to. I feel blessed to have had the chance of working with him early in my career. What does leadership mean to you? How would you describe your leadership style? Guiding team members in the right direction, taking ownership and responsibility of the team’s work and making the team believe in themselves is leadership according to me. Simon Sinek says, “Leaders are the ones who are willing to give up something of their own for us.” This pretty much sums up my style of leadership because I believe true leaders don’t think their team works for them, instead they work for their team. What would be your advice to other leaders? There is no perfect leadership style. So don’t stick to just one style of leadership. You might have to change your style to better suit a situation. So, be open to change and bring out the best in you without compromising on the values. Also remember that being a manager is not the same as being a leader

< Back Learning Emotional Intelligence There are two kinds of emotions that one can experience. Simple enough to guess ... So, to start with, do you know what is an “Emotion”? It seems so simple, but when asked this question during the training, probably none could give an exact answer. The answers were such as, ‘ An emotion is a feeling.’ , ‘An emotion is a thought in one’s mind.’ . The answer that the trainer gave was ‘An emotion is an energy within the body that creates an awareness of its state through feeling’, which probably was a sensible answer! There are two kinds of emotions that one can experience. Simple enough to guess, they are Good emotions and Bad emotions. Good emotions (happiness etc) are the ones that the body likes to carry and the Bad emotions (fear etc) are the ones that the body does NOT like to carry. The mind is an invisible force that resides within the human body and assists the human being to experience various states of emotions. The mind plays an important part in managing the emotional state of a person. The equation is simple, Mind is a slate on which the external situation, understood by 5 senses (see, smell, hear, touch, taste) and governed by one’s intelligence, intellect, memory, beliefs & values create an emotion that is visible through the gesture of a human being. Now, what does EI tells us? EI has 5 basic competencies as follows, Self awareness Self awareness is all about being aware of the emotional state of oneself. It also extends to expressing the emotions at right time and not suppressing them within yourself. If you are getting angry, upset, disappointed or frustrated, then its essential to identify the state of emotion and take a corrective action immediately. Self management This is all about managing one’s emotions and how you appear to others. For example, if in a meeting, due to some lengthy arguments and counter arguments you are feeling angry, then its better to announce that I am getting angry, and I suppose I need to take a break. than continuing with the meting, which is likely to affect your judgment and might end into something you might repent ! Self motivation Self motivations tells you to have a passion in life. It tells you to discover your own passion and pursue it in order to keep you motivated in life. It suggest you to have a goal in life (personal & professional) so you can go all about pursuing the goal. Doing the job you love and loving the job you do is the mantra of keeping one highly motivated. Empathy Empathy is all about getting in someone else’s shoes and DO nothing ! Yes, do nothing ! It suggest you should empathize with others to understand what situation they are going through before taking any decision about anyone. It helps you to understand what pains or problems someone is going through and how it might affect someone’s performance at work. It also suggest that one should empathize with oneself. It helps understand what emotional state you are going through and what situation you are under. Self empathy is all about giving time to yourself every day to ensure you are in a good emotional state to realize your situation control limits. Effective relationships Effective relationships is the relationship that is Goal Oriented. In the discussion, after much debate, it was convinced that all relationships you can think of are goal oriented. An effective relationship is also one the one that comes with expectations and the one where the expectations are met. Its recommended that you have a clear understanding of emotions with whom you get into an effective relationship. Finally, in my own words, I would define EI as, EI is all about knowing and motivating yourself, controlling your behavior irrespective of situation type, understanding others better, relate to them for betterment of your social and work life that could translate into more happiness and help earn more money and growth. #personality #EQ #thoughts #emotions #emotionalintelligence Previous Next

< Back How developers can become a lot more productive Swapnil Deshpande & Vivek Kant speak on developer effectiveness, with Times Jobs. The phenomenal pace of digitalisation, especially following the pandemic, has led to a surge in demand for developers. But hiring and reskilling developers is turning out to be an expensive and time-consuming affair. Another way to tackle the problem is to improve the productivity and effectiveness of your existing developers. That was the subject of our discussion in the Times Techies Webinar last week. “A typical programmer spends no more than 30-40% time in actual coding,” said Vivek Kant, CTO of Finserv MARKETS. The rest of the time, she is in meetings, asking and following up on approvals (like for use of IT infra), following up with another team which has built an API she needs to use, going back to business analysts or product owners for clarifications of requirements and design. “There’s also the discoverability issue in today’s microservices and API world, where all applications are dependent on each other. There are so many of these, I wouldn’t know what all exists, what each one’s capabilities are. The developer spends a lot of time trying to find these, raising tickets, waiting for responses,” Swapnil Deshpande, chief digital officer at Thoughtworks, said. Deshpande also found different Thoughtworks offices working on exactly the same problems, without realising it. So Deshpande’s team set about developing what they call an internal developer platform and a developer experience portal, and launched the beta version in July. Called Neo (network-enabled organisation), the platform connected all developers, became a repository for all knowledge in the organisation, enabled requests and approvals (it’s increasingly even automating provisioning once an approval is given). “Getting basic IT infrastructure now takes less than a day, compared to 7-10 days earlier; the average time between ideation and first line of code has gone down from a couple of weeks to a couple of days; building APIs is down to minutes, from days. Developers can discover all assets entirely by themselves by searching on the portal,” Deshpande said. Kant said developer effectiveness at Finserv MARKETS has increased 20-30% after his team improved tooling, automated processes, and built developer self-service capabilities. “I believe we can go another 2x, 3x on developer effectiveness,” he said. Previous Next

< Back Seven tricks to feel motivated at workplace and in life Have you ever felt de-motivated, dejected, disappointed or down hearted ... Have you ever felt de-motivated, dejected, disappointed or down hearted after a long day’s work ? I am sure you would have at some point in your life, if not every day after the work. Staying motivated and positive for long time is a real struggle. We are surrounded by and often assaulted by negative thinking and anxiety about the present situation and of course about the future ! We always have a phase where we start doubting ourselves and feel depressed. Unfortunately there is no master key or a simple solution to unlock the mystery of de-motivation. Even after we feel we are over it, sometimes, it comes back to haunt us in an even bigger way. Here, in this article, I would like to mention few of the points that would help one keep up the motivation, focus and avoid the long spells of depression and dejection, especially at work ! Love music Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. ~Berthold Auerbach Whilst I am not a big fan of music collection, I do have a small collection of specific songs that I find dear to my heart. It is a decent mixture of all types of songs ranging from disco to classical and ghazals to bhajans. Depending on what emotional state I want to get, I choose the song and listen. This helps me often to get right state of mind before I proceed to do next task. Have a buddy at work Its important to have someone at work whom you can consider a best friend or a buddy. You need to have one such friend with whom you can share your work difficulties and vent out temporary frustration. Believe me, more often than not, you need some kind of instant emotional support with whom you can talk and share things. At more stressful jobs, you often experience bursts of negativity around due to several work related matters. So it is always helpful to have someone who you can count on to help you get out of negativity and back to normal mind state. Human is a social animal and we all have an inherent need of talking and being heard. In case you do not have anyone whom you can to and talk your heart out, it really feels like dejected and lonely at times. Spent a good time with your friend and talk on topics that interest you to get your positivity back on track. On the other hand, please extend help to your buddy when he / she is in the need of help. Have a hobby / passion In my opinion, having some passion in life is very important. For me, my passion is watching football. It keeps me going and helps me keep happy. My favorite club is Manchester United and I do everything I can to watch them playing (on TV at least). Watching them play my favorite game makes me happier and feel inspired. However, if they lose then there is an equal chance of me feeling more miserable after that. I do keep recordings of certain match clips which I tend to watch when I am feeling a little low and it certainly has helped in keeping me inspired. Passion is closely related to the emotional behavior of the human and if you see your passion fulfilled, its more of a chance that you feel inspired and motivated. Focus on positives Sometimes, if we experience too much negativity for a prolonged period of time and feel de-motivated for a longer spell of time, we go into a state of mind where all the thoughts start with negative options and creates negative vibes around us. Once you fall into the negativity trap, its not very easy to come out and have any positive feeling about anything. In past, when I had fallen into the trap of negativity, I used to feel negative for no real reason and sometimes a mere presence of few people around used to make me start feel de-motivated. However, the wiser I got, I tend to avoid feeling on this trap by concentrating more on the positives that are coming out from the situation. Look at the scenario holistically rather than what is only seen to you Thank God for not making things any worse Find out one positive thing that you can take out of the situation. As I often mention in many of my conversations, “there are always 100s of negative things that can be made out of the situation, but if you find at least one positive thing out of it, consider it a learning for life and thank GOD”. Positivity is a habit, and once you get it, you can easily overcome situations that are trying to put you back in the hole of negativity and de-motivation. Praise others Spreading good words makes one feel positive and help others feel good about themselves. This, in turn make change in people’s behavior towards you in a better way, making you feel better. Believe me, speaking positive about someone else’s work and personality is the best way to connect with the person in a right way. I remember a specific incident when I was given to work with a so-called difficult person. All the people who worked with that person earlier, warned me about the boring and micro-management behavior of the person. While I too felt a little bit strange with his work methods, the more I started to talk to him and praise him about some real good work he had done in past (in some cases without anyone’s real help), it made him really comfortable with me and I could see an immediate behavior change in him towards me allowing me freedom to work the way I want. Ultimately this led to work satisfaction for both of us and a little bit more positive at work for me ! However, one thing that you need to keep in mind is when to praise someone and how much to praise. There is fine line between real appreciative person and feet-licking bastard ! You need to ensure that you do not cross to the other side .. Open your mind I always feel that one need to share what he / she feels about the situation in a right way. Its not often very motivating to work in uneasy, unconvincing situations or scenarios where you are in a confused state or feel half-committed to the cause. Learn a bit about emotional intelligence and try to be aware of your state of mind. One very important, but often neglected, fact is to know our state of mind and understand our emotions. We go through so many emotions such as happiness, inspired, dejection, unhappy, nervousness etc., at work place during various hours of the day and due to several causes, it almost becomes a habit to suppress them and continue with the job we are doing. Can you stay in a meeting where you do not feel like being, and contribute productively ? Can you give right suggestions and solutions to a problem, when you are in a state of anger or frustration ? Definitely not ! The more you suppress your emotions, the more you feel out of control and start losing your own focus. Its important to let others know what state of mind you are and help yourself in getting back to where you should be. Believe me, the more I tried this, the more I felt in control of the situation and my responses were getting better, in turn making me feel positive and motivated. Think big and have faith When you get the questions, such as “why does it always happen with me”, “why am I being pushed to do something that I do not want to do”, “no one seems to help me here” start flowing in your mind, think of is as time to take a step back and consider the bigger picture and look at the intention behind the situation. When such situation occurs, look at the big picture and find out the intentions behind this situation. In case you are wondering how to do this, I recommend reading a story in my leadership series. You can safely bank on the thumb rule of “intentions of people at work place are never bad, sometimes behaviors are” to sail through this period. On the other hand, if you are unable to trace the intentions and get any positivity of the big picture, think of it as the lowest point and be happy that things can only improve on this point onwards. Just have faith ! #positivethinking #work #mindset #behaviour #worklife #emotions #emotionalintelligence Previous Next

Women leadership series - In conversations with Caihong Liu 5 Mar 2022 Caihong is one of the best at organizing and executing all kinds of work and is absolutely super efficient to get stuff done. Almost relentless! How would you introduce yourself? Hi, My name is Caihong Liu. My husband, me and our 11-year-old son live / work and study in Chengdu, China. My husband's biased description of me is that I am good at organizing and executing all kinds of work and is super efficient. My son doesn't have a mature description of me yet, sometimes he calls me the best mom in the world, sometimes he is not very happy with me because I am firm on his study and can be pushy in order to keep his time management on track. One common description of my colleagues towards me is that I am very good at getting things done. Can you tell me a bit about your career journey? When did you first get into a leadership role? I majored in Computer Science for both of my Bachelor and Master degrees in a good university (University of Electronics, Science and Technology of China) in Chengdu. After graduation I joined Motorola, and worked there first as a Developer / QA and 3 years later my first Project Manager leadership role. I started to interview candidates, managing teams and teams’ delivery. Motorola passed the CMMI level 5 certificate back then so I was educated in the way of following the process in every step of the software development lifecycle. The 5 years working in Motorola led me into the TeleCOM industry. After Motorola I worked in Nokia (later changed to NSN) and TietoEnator (later changed to Tieto), with the role of Project Manager, R&D Manager, Networks Director, Site Manager, the size of the teams under my management grew to over 1000 people. I was in the leadership role for another 7 years. Within this period, I was the first batch of scrum masters and started to use agile and lean practices in our daily deliveries. Then my experience of growing a new site for a foreign invested company in Chengdu got noticed by a headhunter and after the interviews I took the position of the site manager for the Bleum Chengdu office. That is the time I transferred from the TeleCOM industry to a software consultancy company and started to learn to provide the service for all different industries. Over 7 months in Bleum, the typical conflict between being a “2-year-old’s mom” and a “full time working mom” reached to the peak - My constant traveling and my own mom who took care of my son at that time had to leave us to take care of my brother’s baby. So I had to stop my “full time work” and be the “2-year-old’s mom” temporarily until he was old enough to go to kindergarten. I created an Elance (it is a freelancer platform) account at that time, doing research, translations, writing articles for my clients in parallel with taking care of my son. My husband complained a lot because most of my clients were from the US and I had to work till very late hours and my husband was concerned about my health and did not think it would be sustainable. Fortunately 1 year later, my son started kindergarten and I joined ThoughtWorks as a staffing manager first, Later community manager, project manager, I will be with ThoughtWorks for 8 years this June. What were the top challenges you faced during your journey and how did you overcome them? One of the top challenges I faced during my journey is things can always be more complicated than they seem to be and I don’t have all the answers, but teams are counting on me for. What I usually do in this scenario is to organize the people who have the best knowledge to break down all the problems, get them analyzed, prioritized and get them tackled one after another. Explain as much and clearly as possible, and be the first person to take responsibility, walk my talk to move the whole team forward together. The other top challenge I face is to find the balance of my focus and time spent among context analysis, planning, operational and administrative tasks, managing team(s) deliveries, managing up, cross teams’ cooperation etc. The context is changing so flexibility is always required. When I first stepped into my leadership role, I made the mistake of still taking all the difficult tech tasks with me (Because I did them very well in the past), which left the other team members less opportunities to grow. What I do after I realize the problem is to adjust my focus according to the context and support people to own the tasks which could build their expertise and help on their growth. What motivates you? Making people’s lives better, it doesn’t matter if it is via Tech or not, I feel achievement when a problem is solved and people benefit from what I do. Do you have a role model in your life? Can you name a few people who you look up to? My mum is my life long role model, she did not receive much education, but she is the best at everything she does and is usually super fast at everything, plus she is always kind to all people, even the ones who are mean to her. Oprah Winfrey (An American host) and Echo Chen (A Chinese writer) are also my role models, I admire their storytelling talents, their energy and interpretation of making the world a more interesting place, and their courage to move on when the world is not so beautiful. I wish to be more like them to tell stories and influence people positively. What does leadership mean to you? How would you describe your leadership style? To me leadership means a good facilitator and a transformer, sometimes you need to be a beacon, sometimes an architect, sometimes a catalyst, sometimes just a person. Being a good facilitator helps to put everything together and being the transformer helps to roll in different roles when context changes, with the goal to organize a group of people to get things done. My leadership style (or my goal) is pretty much the same. I’d like to borrow the words I heard before “We play to win, or we don’t play” as my leadership identity. What would be your advice to young leaders? The best lesson I learned from my experience is leadership is about creating conditions that enable others to be at their best. It is easy said but can be hard to do. I find running rehearsals in my head beforehand can help me practice from different angles. It is like playing chess, I get to think forwardly what are those conditions, how they will help other people, from what ways and what are the best shots; Also young leaders might feel embarrassed to reach out for help and support at the beginning, but what I learned is that it is absolutely OK to do so, other people usually would love to offer you the needed help and support, so don’t lose the opportunity to learn from other people.