What steps do you take to help your team buy into transformation?
Even though we all know that “change is the only constant,” it is still difficult and requires a lifelong-learner mindset. I’ve faced many challenges — and gone through many different types of changes — in my more than 20 years with IBM. So when it comes to managing challenges and reinventing ourselves, the key question I always ask myself and my team is whether we are relevant to our clients and to IBM. Staying relevant requires constant reinvention and lifelong learning — on multiple levels. Markets change, technologies change and our clients’ needs change. That means that a legacy e-commerce expert might need to become a mobility expert, or that you might have to shift your focus to blockchain, cloud, AI or quantum because that’s where the future is for us and for our clients. Through it all, you have to keep learning and keep contributing so that you can remain essential.
Where do your best client project ideas come from?
IBM is a smart company full of smart people, so if you allow your team to contribute freely — in the absence of preconceived notions or judgment — they’re bound to surface some great ideas. A few years ago, my team was faced with a challenge borne of our own success: how to scale the e-commerce capacities of a major retailer to handle customer demand after a successful Super Bowl ad. The answer came via an informal conversation with one of my web designers, who suggested we flatten the catalog pages and link to the commerce engine only when the customer wanted to initiate buying. This simple yet radical idea brought about a paradigm shift in our thinking about architecture redesign for scalability for this retail giant. To make a long story short, we were able to handle huge spikes in both general web traffic and transactions, while maintaining a seamless experience for their customers. And that solution was enabled by forgetting about titles and just letting smart IBMers innovate.
“This simple yet radical idea brought about a paradigm shift in our thinking about architecture redesign for scalability.”
What was a major turning point in your life?
About 15 years ago, I broke my leg while rollerblading. During a dinner table conversation while I was recovering, I started whining about my inability to inline skate any more (per doctor advice) and my son Raghav, who was about eight years old at the time, suggested that I take up cycling or running. That gentle nudge was all I needed to get back to running. Fast forward to now, and I’ve completed 60 marathons around the world — including all of the six (Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, New York, Tokyo) that make up the World Marathon Majors. And recently, to conquer my fear of heights, I went skydiving with my son on my birthday. I’ve found that if I stay curious and keep learning, I keep growing and end up scaling new frontiers.