By Sid Pai Presented at TW Live India 2017.

1. LEADING IN DISRUPTIVE TIMES
S I D D H A RT H ( S I D ) PA I
THE FUTURE IS NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE

2. CONTENT
1 The Environment
2 Leadership During Change
3 The Mask of Command
4 Buyers

3. MORE ABOUT THE
ENVIRONMENT

4. NEW AGE CAPABILITIES
 Share of Cloud, Digital and Analytics increasing
 Offshore firms are growing 11-13% despite ~10% depreciation in rupee
 Larger firms will not be inclined to cannibalize their business. They often talk
about security concerns and the need for “private clouds”.
 Almost everyone is a one eyed man, king of the blind
 Mid sized firms do not have much to lose. They can use a set of existing
tools and methodologies to offer services to manage legacy IT like a
predictable supply chain. This will free up time and money for innovation

5. SEVERAL BUSINESSES ARE
INSOURCING
 Shell
In-house delivery centre with c. 2000 employees to focus on project
delivery, software, and cloud capabilities
 Astrazeneca
Replaced 7 major suppliers with in-house resources, achieving a cost
savings of US$ 350M (annualised)
 General Motors
Bet big on insourcing, bringing back 10,000 IT jobs
Businesses still want to benefit from low cost delivery but don’t want to
necessarily accept the risk of outsourcing. Some recent examples include:

6. THE RESILIENCE OF
INDIAN IT
 Born during the license raj
 Sustained during a period of massive domestic unrest (1990s) – terrorism,
political instability, and poor infrastructure
 Benefited from the Y2K and survived the dot-com bust of 2000s
 Enjoyed growth during relatively favourable years (2002 – 2007)
 Continued significant growth since 2008 despite GFC, adverse visa regimes,
reduction in labour arbitrage
 Reinvented itself multiple times – from body shopping to managed services
to automation
 India Market has Leapfrogged West, and expects to continue

7. LEADERSHIP DURING
CHANGE

8. TIME IS THE FRIEND OF THE WONDERFUL
COMPANY, THE ENEMY OF THE MEDIOCRE
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Search for vision and management quality:
 Companies taking well-balanced risks in down cycles (e.g. HCL’s investment in
RIM post 2007)
 Weak management living in perpetual fear of making errors of commission while
not paying attention to errors of omission – companies with huge amounts of
underutilised cash on balance sheets with no plan to utilise or return the
shareholder money
 Opportunistic management behaviour focusing on short term gains while
compromising the long term (e.g. unnecessary cost reductions, massive layoffs)

9. THIS IS HOW YOU CAN DELIVER VALUE NOW
In any business, the greater the time taken between a business event and action taken, the greater
the value loss*. This loss is caused by 3 factors:
Technology has been able to address Data Latency to a significant extent
Address Analysis Latency and Decision Latency through proactive and timely research and insight solutions
 Data Latency – the time taken to store
data related to the event
 Analysis Latency – the time taken to
analyze the data related to the event
 Decision Latency – the time taken to
take a decision based on the analysis
Reduce this time lag
Prevent
this
value
leakage
*Source: Paper on BI Latency by Richard Hackathorn

10. LEADING THE CHANGE
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 Call out the anti-pattern (Aggregator)
 Failure is needed. Get up, dust off, move on
 Opportunistic management behaviour - don’t
wait until perfect
 UI and UX is everyone’s problem, not just IT’s
 ‘Me too’ does not work. Each business needs a
tailor made solution primed to its needs – e.g.
Zivame in retail

11. THE MASK OF
COMMAND

12. Hunters?
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13. Or Fishermen?
13

14. YOU are the Bait
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15. HOW do you
become the Bait?
15

16. Attract through
Excellence
16

17. Be Present,
but Patient
17

18. Reach Out
18

19. Empathize & Express
19

20. Self Knowledge
From Standards
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21. And Safety
21

22. ALL OF YOU
ARE BUYERS

23. THOUGHTWORKS PRINCIPLES
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To run a sustainable
business.
To champion software excellence
and revolutionize the IT industry.
To advocate passionately for
social and economic justice.

24. We are passionate technologists. We
provide software delivery, pioneering
tools and consulting for organizations
with ambitious missions.