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I want to welcome Ganesh air who is the CEO of emphasis nit services company and
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also cark hosanagar who is a professor of operations information and decision here at Wharton thanks for joining us uh
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today for this conversation about how CEOs and other top officials can get the digital skills they need uh to lead
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their companies in the new digital age Ganesh let's start with you uh some of
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observers note that CEOs don't necessarily have to have all the technical skills that their technical
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staff has obviously but they have to at least be comfortable with it and with uh
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with digital topics uh but the question is how do they get that information how do they pick it up uh is this knowledge
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uh best to come in say through mentors is it learning through experience uh who can who can train the CEO to be a
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digital leader today a very interesting question and let me kind of draw upon my own
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experience when digital kind of started coming through in the industry some people see it as a disruption some
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people call it Revolution as a CEO I took a step back and I said am I the right person to lead this company in the
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digital world we are in IT services clearly at the leading bleeding edge of digital so um I decided that despite me
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being 54 years old and 30 years in the industry that cannot be the baggage that cannot prevent me from learning and
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picking up these skills and I felt compelled that as a CEO I need to learn so that I can work with my team to take
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emphasis in the digital era if I may so I went and spoke to Educators people like Karthik um understood their point
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of view I went to startups amazing work is being done by youngsters they are challenging status quo Innovation their
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language is different the way they think is very different of course you have forums where people come and talk about
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digital pure place um and you get to learn I went to conferences which are actually meant for really young people
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because I wanted to experience what goes on in the real world so uh that's how you know from
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books is is a good source of knowledge but it doesn't give you that vibrancy
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because it is a kind of there is no interaction but talking to uh people who are both practitioners and
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professors uh young people so I uh I had to lower my ego I had to uh be prepared
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to fail and uh I had to admit that I need that knowledge and that source of knowledge can be anywhere and I need not
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feel like a CEO that I cannot go and learn from somebody down below in the organization youngster or these
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conferences and that helped me a lot cark U what what's been your experience how do you find that CEOs are
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getting their information or how should they be going about it yeah first of all
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I appreciate the not to professors uh very much uh but you know I I think uh ganesh's uh answer really um resonates
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with me as well uh I think what is important first and foremost is for leaders to be open to learning and have
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that uh attitude of exploration and and trying to acquire new knowledge I think they do need mentors especially analog
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CEOs that are trying to make this transition they do need mentors and those mentors may be within the
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organization for example to include your CTO and and cios in key strategic uh discussions and and conversations they
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can also be from outside and and Ganesh mentioned startups and uh it's actually
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a very um helpful exercise for uh very traditional analog CEOs to be actively following that industry to perhaps even
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actively participate in that we see many companies have corporate Venture Capital
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divisions through which they partake in the startup activities as investors and sometimes they invest in opportunities
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that even appear competitive to what they're doing but that's a way to learn
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that's a way to stay relevant and that's a way to be able to respond when the
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time is right to do that finding mentors and sources of information but after that it's still up to you up to CEOs to
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sort through all of that noise and figure out what's best for the company CIO can help you but ultimately the
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decision rests with with the CEO so how do you do that how do you sort through that information after listening to your
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mentors and listening to your technical staff um how do how do you make your way
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through all of that just one um point about technical staff because I think the world under has misunderstood that
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digital is about technology I believe digital is about business and uh technology enables the
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business so the the distance between technology and business is blurring now it has become
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integral um so to that extent if I just rely on my CIO or technical staff to give me advice about digital I would be
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probably not doing the right thing by just relying on that information now coming to your question
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how do I separate music from noise how do I convert uh my knowledge or experience into something useful for the
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company I watched this video which was very fascinating which talks about why do you exist what do you do and how you
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do these three circles as long as you are clear as to why do you exist and that why is not generating
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shareholder returns because I mean I think that is a that is a very common term people say why do you exist my job
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is to generate shareholder returns that's true of every company you have to talk about what is the value that you
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bring to your customers your employees and uh the society at large so why do you exist if you visit that and think
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about your vision and mission statement that's a that's a very telling thing and
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when you look at it lots of ideas come flooding to you you don't feel constrained by how you operate today
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because you start thinking uh completely fresh and U I had the advantage because
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our vision and Mission is so clear as to why we exist that became my guiding principle and that helped me to to uh
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separate uh music from noise and second thing which helped me is as this disorientation is happening the access
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which I'm hanging on to is my customer because ultimately my job is to make my
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customer successful so if you hang on to your customer and make sure that you are
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closely knit with your customer that gives you that access of stability so these are the two things which have
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guided me and uh time would tell whether that has I become success suful in it or
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not I'm just sharing what how I approached it personally cark the the CEOs are are are looking at all of these
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sources of information making decisions such as Ganesha is talking about but at the same time they're they are trying to
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focus on their business it's great if your if your mission is very clear but
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they're looking at the cloud they're looking at mobile they're looking at all
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these things and it and it does get confusing what's your advice on how they
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could separate the noise from the music I think there there is certainly going to be a temptation to adopt the next
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buzzword in your organization if everyone else is going on the cloud I need to be on the cloud if everyone's on
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mobile I need to be on mobile and so on and that's going to be more so true I
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think where the CEO feels less and less comfortable with um I think with their knowledge of the digital domain
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um and I think I go back to what Ganesh was saying that it's not really important or necessary for the CEO to be
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a technologist uh really digital transformation is not fundamentally about digital it's about digital being
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an enabler of a business Mission or a strategy so I think at the end CEOs have to understand technology to the extent
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of knowing what it can or cannot enable and once you understand what technology can or cannot enable that is a secondary
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consideration and the primary consideration is what does your customer want and are you able to deliver unique
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value and I think when you pair the two together I think that's where uh they
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can succeed uh but also I think to your point about there being a lot of noise I
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think uh in this kind of an environment I feel Business Leaders have to also accept that there will always be a
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certain amount of noise uh in the market and in the landscape and they have to be
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willing to take a few more risks than usual because of that I completely agree I mean I think we need to be prepared to
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fail right exactly because as you get to the position of CEO one of the things which happens to CEOs is they are very
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afraid of failure because they are worried about their public face you have reached uh that height and the fall can
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be huge and and we need to overcome that fear and that's when you will try and
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when you try 10 things it's okay if you fail in three uh as long as you fail early you cut
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your losses it's okay but uh not trying is not an option at least in my mind I
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think that is so important uh today because you know I've worked with many companies and I've always noticed there
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is this tendency as you said the higher you are the more fear you have of falling from that height and I think
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there is this tendency among a lot of companies to be more risk ofs and manage everything around what can go wrong as
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opposed go to what's the opportunity and I think uh and that's why startups
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sometimes can pursue those big opportunities because they're not as worried but I think CEOs need to adopt
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or Embrace failure as a natural part of innovation so a lot of top leaders also recognize that they need to do this
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digital transformation in order to protect themselves from Pure place or startups and that sort of thing how can
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leaders actually protect themselves perhaps impossible to do completely but protect themselves as best they can from
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so-called asymmetrical challenges and bolts out of the blue those kinds of things um you know people used to talk
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about being amazoned you know back in the dotc era there everyone's worried about being amazoned the way amazoned
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amazoned the uh the book sellers so can you prepare how what's the best that you
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can do in that realm at least the mindset that I carry that I don't have to worry about protecting myself I have
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to focus on attacking because that's attack is the best form of Defense I see digital as a huge
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opportunity for IT services company I see that as a huge opportunity for emphasis I see this as a shuffling of
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the deck and if we do the right thing we will come on top of the deck so I don't
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worry about protecting I think about what is the advantage that I have versus uh Pure Play and I want to leverage that
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advantage in this new world of digital of course I have to deal with the challenge of Duality I'm not going to
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give up on my analog overnight being a listed company and yet I have to adopt digital that Duality is an additional
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burden that an organization like mine carries but comes with The Duality certain
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strengths if I have worked with a customer for the last 12 years and they trust our brand they believe that we
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care about uh their success a new player who comes in despite being glamorous will have to prove themselves
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and if I can leverage that inherent brand value that's something they don't
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have so I think about becoming an asymmetric um attacker rather than defending myself uh from asymmetric
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competition and the second point which I want to make in all this of course CEOs get either
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slaughtered or glorified but none of this is possible if you're not taking the entire village
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with you success is can never be achieved alone especially if you're a listed
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company CEO you need to find the board who is supportive who is willing to be the Challenger who is willing to back
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you you need to have a leadership team which believes that they want to change as well to be successful because what's
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in it for me is a question which all of us ask including the CEO so these are the factors that you have to keep in
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view while you're trying to transform the organization and injecting the the
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excitement that we are going to win and we are going to win big so cark the best
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defense is a good offense do you agree with that and and what would you add to it or what how would you disagree uh I
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agree with what Ganesh said I think I agree completely with your strategy I'll
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maybe uh suggest a couple uh more uh tactics as opposed to uh an alternative strategy I think strategically going as
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you suggested be uh you know be aggressive as opposed to being defensive um so how do we do that I think one way
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to do that might be to create a structure within within the organization that allows you to pursue these new
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digital opportunities what's going to happen is often times for large successful incumbent analog
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organizations new digital opportunities may not meet your standard litmus test is the market size big enough is it uh
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is it meeting the needs of my current customers and so on 5 years 10 years down the road it might but not today and
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so it becomes hard to pursue those opportunities in the traditional structure so you need to create a
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structure to be able to pursue that I think the second is that sometimes those opportunities will cannibalize your
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traditional revenue streams and so Ganesh said you cannot ignore your analog uh opportunities which are today
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which are delivering shareholder returns today so again with a more traditional format when you're cannibalizing your
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cash cow at some point you're going to say let's shut this new opportunity so
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you need to create a structure to be able to support that one structure which I particularly like is where you spin
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off divisions you might control them but let them work semi-independently uh to be able to
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pursue those opportunities and at at the right time you decide whether you uh you
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know you kill the initiative you let it continue in the in the format it's continuing or spin it off as a separate
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entity or bring it back in and this is your new uh main cash cow but I think at the end of the day
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acknowledging that cannibalization is going to be the nature of digital Innovation and
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you have to support that cannibalization by allowing new initiatives to be independent thanks to both of you for
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coming in today and chatting with us thank you for having us thank you [Music]