Leadership Summit- II Season " Accelerating Growth"
The Leadership Council kick started the second season with a Summit in Madh island, on the 5th and 6th of February, 2010. Titled Accelerating Growth, the summit saw an interesting and eclectic gathering of about 30 top CIOs of the country, along with some very thought provoking speakers. Arpit Agarwal, CEO Bajaj Financial services spoke about dealing with failure in a corporate role, while Karthi Marshan, Head, Marketing, Kotak Group presented a treatise on the art of persuasion. The four round tables were centered on the theme of accelerating growth. Geometric COO, Raja Ramana Macha, in his presentation on wastes elimination as cost management, pointed out the ways of running a lean organization by ensuring wastes are efficiently managed. Ashank Desai, Director of Mastek Software, enlightened the council members with his thoughts on the Art of Influence. The evening rounded off on a festive note with APC paving away Green IT awards to ten deserving CIOs.
Key Highlights
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Arpit Agarwal
CEO, Bajaj Financial SolutionsArpit Agarwal, CEO Bajaj Financial Solutions, said that CIOs should be intimately involved with business to avoid project failure. The back office and front office should be aligned to have a laser sharp focus on the strategic objectives of the organization. The modern day CIO has to train his sights on business outcomes and not just on the implementation of technology. For this, it is important for the management to create learning opportunities for the CIO. The management should encourage a CIO to take on adjunct responsibilities exposing him to multiple business functions. A CIO who has managed diverse business functions can read the pulse of his management, interpreting the needs of business more appropriately. CIOs should interact with business, understand their needs and build solutions customized to their needs. IT should not be held solely responsible for any project failure, instead it should create a favorable environment where it can appreciate the limitations of IT and IT can understand business' requirement for agility and both can work in tandem.
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Ashank Desai
Founder, Ex-Chairman & Director,MastekStrategic management has always been a CIO's challenge, said Ashank Desai, founder, ex-Chairman and director of Mastek in his interaction with CIOs at the CIO Leadership Summit. Desai admitted that most CEOs don't look at CIOs as strategic leaders. He held both the parties responsible for such a gridlocked situation, and asked CIOs to ruminate on adopting a changed demeanor and learning the art of influencing the businesses, management and the boards.
Desai presented his 7-point Formula for CIOs to alter the existing landscape. He stressed on CIOs to wear a CEO's hat while presenting themselves to boards. He pointed out that it's a CIO's responsibility to change the board's perception of IT. It's no longer a department that just maintains the organization, it's a division that alleviates the organization's pain and helps run business. Desai challenged to take risks and to communicate well with the business. He cautioned IT departments against having only one-way communication in a language that business doesn't understand.
Desai asked IT leaders to strive to make a difference to give their an edge over competition. He said that CIOs should challenge their own position in the organization and take up the responsibility of effectuating 'change'.
Karthi Marshan
Head-Marketing, Kotak GroupNature equips each creature to nurture its abilities to survive in a dynamic environment.
The cicada has, by instinct, decided to emerge from its abode underground only in prime number years, so it can escape its predators. This is the kind of flexibility that helps achieve goals (in the cicada's case, it's about survival). And CIOs said, Karthi Marshan, head marketing, Kotak Group, should adopt such ways and means CXOs can persuade their way to success. Among the tricks is to ascertain what who wants, and give it to them. Having a specific goal helps set strategies in place. Marshan said that CIOs should be focused on the objective, like the mayfly which is only created to mate and die in 24 hours. "We have to pay attention to what we came here for," he said. A CIO should get recognized for what he is, and to do that, he has to engage with the business and his customers to be able to meet his objective of using IT to facilitate business.
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Raja Ramana Macha
COO, GeometricIn a system or infrastructure, anything a user or customer is unwilling to pay for is a waste. Eliminating waste of any kind from the system can help cut costs. Raj Ramana Macha, COO, Geometric emphasized that cutting waste generation should be a part of the production processes design. "Any type of waste -- time, resources or computing power -- is a drain on finances. Higher computing power also conceals a lot of wasted data," he said. Proper knowledge management, Macha said, can prevent wasting time on redundant tasks. He added that concept-based management and availability of real-time information leads to proper identification and elimination of wastage points. Visible data leads to clear information flows, which can help prevent duplication and resource wastage. Macha said that it was time that companies realized that not all information is data.
