- [Brad] It's lunchtime, and this
is Brad Anderson's Lunch Break.
Here in Redmond, we're visited by some of the smartest
people on the planet pretty much every day.
Every chance I get, I meet up with them for lunch.
(cheerful music)
Today I wrap up my conversation with Raja Ukil,
the Senior Vice President and CIO
at the massive Indian IT company Wipro.
I saw a story about how there was a big change
in the tax structure in India.
How did you leverage technology and the
skills of your organization to
help lead your company through that?
- [Raja] If you had followed what the Indian government
was doing, they pushed the change through
very quickly, even though they were not ready.
So it was very well our time.
We as an organization sat down,
let's put all hands on the deck,
let's all assemble and do it like a workshop more.
And I don't want anybody to clarify things
on email or phone calls or anything else.
Right, it has to be then and there.
And it was learning for us, right,
it was not a thing which existed in the past.
- You have to innovate to adjust.
- [Raja] We just finished the project, start to finish,
all in nineteen days, and we were compliant on day one.
- Wow, so what did you personally,
what was the biggest challenge you as the leader
had to go drive or change in the company?
Do it in nineteen days?
- I think you will get the technology.
My team over the years, because we do things fast,
have reoriented to think that way, right?
The only thing is, in an organization, minds are changed.
There is something coming in, think of the group
which does invoicing for our customers.
It's a change for them.
They do invoicing globally for all our customers.
And you're talking about thirty-first,
you are doing it in a particular way,
and on first, you are doing it in a particular way,
and you had all of nineteen days when
the solution was not ready to train them.
I think the leadership and all the team members cross,
put their hands up, but I have never seen that happen
in many projects in many organizations.
I think that was the key to success.
Obviously, all people like us, our CFO, et cetera,
was to come in and motivate them every one hour,
and say, "The team did a good job."
- [Brad] We're gonna play a game called This or That.
- [Raja] Okay.
- [Brad] I'm gonna give you two topics
and I'm gonna read you some descriptions,
and then you tell me which one
of the two things I'm describing,
is it explaining cricket to somebody in the U.S.,
or trying to teach a dog calculus?
You can tell they want to understand what you're saying
but it's obvious they have no idea what's going on.
- It's teaching a dog calculus.
- It could actually be both.
(both laughing)
Using food as a motivator doesn't help very much.
- This is probably cricket, explaining.
- The only part of the conversation
they really care about is the ball.
- This is cricket, yeah.
- Okay, they have no idea what to do
with the information once the conversation's over.
- This is definitely cricket.
- [Brad] One of the things I read one time that you had said
is you talked about your migration to Office 365 was done
just in this incredibly smooth way that your users
didn't even recognize that there had been a change
even though they saw the new functionality.
What advice would you give anyone who's looking
at that move to Office 365, but they're hesitating?
What advice would you give them?
- Technically, it's not a big deal.
It's super simple.
Things like this, the new wave solutions,
the ones from Microsoft are easy to remove.
If you do planning well and focus on user adoption,
because the users are getting more than
what they used to get, and how do
you handle that is the most critical piece.
I advise my peers that if this is what your business wants,
if this is what your users do, then try it out.
It's okay to fail on a small scale.
- That's a growth mindset as well.
- Experiment with one or two people,
you can experiment with five, ten thousand people,
and once you're satisfied, fine-tune it,
and then go boom.
- Just go do it, experiment, learn,
and then see how you roll it out broadly.
- And, in that recess, wear a hat off an end user,
and see what disruption it is causing him or her.
- Yeah, get your hands into it.
- If you can eliminate that disruption, then you're home.
- One thing I've heard you say is,
there's a million things that IT could do,
but IT has to focus on things that matter.
What are those things that matter right now, to you?
- Honestly, I think all the million things matter.
So what are trying to do, IT should not become
a bottle-neck for doing things and achieving things faster.
If you talk to any CIO around the world,
they will say that they is stock
in the API problem correction.
That's one of the things which is critical to us.
Our businesses typically are anywhere between
one and a half billion to two billion,
and "one size fits all" will not work across
acquisitions who have different processes, et cetera.
But the second thing we believe, the future of work,
IT work, will be crowdsourced.
So my job as a CIO is to enable
the large organization to participate in
a structured way and solve their own problems.
Today, that's my priority.
- [ Brad] One thing that really
stands out about your company is this
commitment to be a good citizen on the planet.
I mean, you guys are listed as one
of the world's most ethical companies,
you're rated number one in India in sustainability,
you've been honored for ethical corporate governance,
you're recognized all over the world for
diversity and disability hiring.
It's a long list.
What is the corporate culture that enabled you
to be so incredibly strong in these areas?
- It essentially stems from our core value system,
which was articulated by our Chairman
when he started the company, and it flows through
down from the CEO to all the employees.
We have always tried to be diverse, inclusive,
give back to society, and today I'm
proud to say that every dollar we own,
of all descents, goes back to charity.
- Wow, I did not know that.
- Our Chairman, who is the majority share holder,
has pledged forty percent of--
- Imagine how different the world would be
if others followed your example.
- For our vision of the company,
we were more Indian in our mindset,
as we started growing, we recognized the need
to be more global and more inclusive.
So if you look at, we include diversity, our definition
is gender diversity, nationality, underprivileged.
- Diversity in its broadest terms.
- Yeah, and also people with disabilities.
So we hire across the spectrum.
Leaders are measured on how diverse they are in their team.
Because honestly, it's not a question of, you go to press,
you get recognized, which is why you do it.
- But it is imperative.
- It's a business imperative.
Secondly, I think you get very inclusive views.
- If you're trying to design products for the world,
how can you do it if you don't have the world
as broadly represented internally as you can?
- Yeah, absolutely.
Honestly, whatever we do, ultimately we are in business,
we are responsible towards society,
and we do our best to live up to it.
- [Brad] That's awesome.
Great to talk with you.
- [Raja] Absolutely, same to you.
- I look forward to this continued partnership.
Let's do this again, right?
Thanks, Raja.
Next time on Brad Anderson's Lunch Break.
So Terry, you've had an incredibly long,
historic career at Microsoft.
- Long's probably a good adjective, sure.
- So I think all of that leads to this question.
What's it like to be my new boss?
(both laughing)
- [Terry] I went to my bosses and said,
"We need a website," and they're like,
"No. We don't know what that is."
And so we started a company.
(cheerful music)