Two Faces of “Moving Up The Value Chain” (MUTVC) Syndrome

Face-1:

If you are an ICT (Information & Communication Technology) services company headquartered in India, chances are high that you want to “move up the value chain (MUTVC)”. Sometimes you will talk about solution accelerators, other times it will be building a consulting practice or you may be even developing products. In all likelihood “innovation” is one of the core values of your organization. If it is not there already, there is a good chance it will be added in your next value-vision workshop. As the Economic Times article titled “On Cruise Control” says: Today’s globalized businesses are caught in cat-and-mouse game between value and cost.

At this point, it is good to take a step back and see why this sudden fascination for “moving up the value chain (MUTVC)”. Headcount driven time-and-material model has worked well for the past decade and half. And you don’t undermine such a model easily. To quote Mr. Azim Premji from this interview in Knowledge@Wharton, “The mundane business is also extremely profitable. It has a tremendous annuity value, and you don't ignore businesses like that. For example, maintenance of software and hardware are tremendous annuity businesses. If you build strong efficiencies into execution, they make very good margins. It is like a yin-and-yang situation: How do you build these strong annuity businesses and at the same time build other businesses that will establish certain differentiators in the marketplace, so that your image as a partner takes on a different dimension? That is the question.”

As the Economic Times article points out, there are 3 main drivers today for MUTVC. 1) Higher expectations: Customers are no longer satisfied with cost and quality, they want more, speed, end-to-end ownership. 2) Talent shortage: Linearity of the model (for every 1 percent growth add 1 percept to headcount) is making it difficult to scale especially in the context of high attrition and rising salaries 3) New architectures: Emergence of architectures such as SOA (service oriented architecture) which is making building re-usable components a reality (also called solution accelerators).

The ET article concludes by saying that “IT companies will employ more domain experts as well as those who can understand both business and technology”.

Face-2

Scene-1: I am meeting a BU head along with his direct reportees (Director Engineering) and the topic is “Need for technical leadership in the BU”. We project the number of domain/technology specialists side by side the managers in the BU. There is 1 BU head, 4 Directors and 15 Program managers on one side. And there nobody at the same level as even the program managers on the other column. The question was: Do you really need anybody there? Suddenly there was chaos in the room and it was concluded by the directors “We don’t know what to do with such a senior technical person”.

Scene-2: I am meeting a service line head one-on-one in his office. He was excited about discussing technical leadership. At the end he said “Look, when I have a person with Rs.15 Lakh salary, (s)he is becoming an overhead for me. I don’t know how to convert his expertise into business”

For us to move up the value chain, we need to establish clarity about (a) how we will create higher value (b) how we capture an appropriate share of the additional value we create. Perhaps solution accelerators is part of the solution to (a) and for (b) as the ET article says, pricing will have to become more value-based than resource-based.

If you are passionate about something, make everything else secondary says Ashim Prasad

As I mentioned in the last blog, apart from expressing my own views I would also like to present views of some of technical leaders in the industry. It is a pleasure to present one such conversation with a friend and ex-colleague of mine, Ashim Prasad who is currently working as Principal Systems Engineer at Aricent, Bangalore. Ashim is deeply passionate about building new stuff, concrete stuff and prototyping is his second nature. Hope you enjoy the conversation.

Brief bio:
May 2007 – present, Principal Systems Engineer, Aricent
2005-2006, Senior VP, Textual Analytics Solutions,
1998-2005, Technical Manager, Sasken Communication Technologies Limited
1996-1998, Engineer, Verifone
1994-1996, Engineer, ICIM
1994 B.Tech. IIT Bombay

Vinay: What is your current role?
Ashim: Current role has 4 parts: (1) Architecting products – This involves looking at architecture for new products as well as re-looking at existing products. You may have 2-3 different products architected differently at different point of time. I look at convergence points across these multiple products. (2) Technology tracking – It involves primarily standards tracking. Identify common trends. This becomes an input to Product Line Management (PLM). (3) Prototyping – new product ideas (4) Expertise building – This involves mentoring and training people.

Vinay: How will you describe your journey to this point?
Ashim: It was vague. It just happened. Started working from 94. Passion towards certain things started developing from 1999-2000. Before that it was like doing a job, earning money, whichever company gives better salary, join that. Work did not matter. Rather there was no passion.

Vinay: How did you discover your passion?
Ashim: I think passion was there. But it was not out. Self-realization was not there that this is what I like. Hence, for 6 years I was doing whatever came across. And suddenly, I realized that this is not what I want to do and I want to do product development. The feeling was “Have I crated anything?”, “No”, “Do I want to create something?”, “Yes”, “Do I want to create something which people want to use?” “Yes” “How do I do that?” so answer came clear and loud that I can’t do what I want in my existing role. So there was a need to change. Finally I came to a realization that I enjoy “creating”. Initially I was confident of this realization only 20-30% that this is really what I want to do. But I went ahead with that. Then it crystallized after 3 to 4 years.

Vinay: How did the passion manifest?
Ashim: I don’t remember the details. But it was during that time that various ideas started getting fixed in my mind that this is what I should be doing. Ideas with respect to domain that I like to work in, the kind of work I want to do.

Vinay: What kind of idea did you form at that time?
Ashim: Precisely the kind of work I am doing right now. i.e. playing an architect’s role.

Vinay: Then what happened?
Ashim: Then I took a change in my career. I was working in a services group in the organization. I decided to move to a products group within the organization. This was in 2000. I went there when there was no position left. The group head was still willing to take me but at a lower salary. So I took a 20% salary hit. So the career change came at a cost. But it helped me in the long run.
Initially there was not much responsibility assigned to me. But still I was in a company of people who shared similar passions. And soon an opportunity came as one person resigned in the group. This new opportunity was a mix of tech and delivery. This involved delivering entire software on a device. At the same time technically responsible for delivery.

Vinay: What do you mean “technically responsible”?
Ashim: It was more like a sub-system design. There was an architect who was responsible for system level architecture. I was responsible for the architecture of a sub-system.

Vinay: What happened next?
Ashim: I continued at sub-system level for about 4 years and then I started moving towards system level architecture. Again, I don’t think I planned it that way. It happened.

Vinay: What did moving from sub-system to system meant?
Ashim: You take into account the entire system and start looking at how it will be deployed. You start taking the resource view (e.g. memory/MIPS) for the entire system.

Vinay: What was the next move in your career?
Ashim: I got into a startup and subsequently started my own business and I did that for one and a half year. Roles in this phase involved doing system level design like in the earlier roles. However, it had an additional component of business attached.

Vinay: What was your learning in this phase?
Ashim: Biggest learning in the phase was this: When I used to do architecture or system design earlier, the business inputs were not considered important. In this phase I learnt that these inputs are the most critical ones.

Vinay: Can you give one example of such a technical decision?
Ashim: We were thinking of a couple of options for a solution which was targeted for retail automation. The 2 main options were (1) build you own device (2) use mobile phone. Building your own device would have meant clean architecture; and making the existing phone work means non-clean architecture and it also meant taking deviations from the specification of the solution. But we went ahead with the second option. Because that made more business sense rather than making your own device.

Vinay: What happened next?
Ashim: This phase lasted for one and half year. After that I decided to focus on technology (rather than business) for some more time. Of course, not loosing the learning that business understanding is critical. But having a primary responsibility for technical leadership.

Vinay: What were some of the exciting moments throughout your career?
Ashim: First one occurred after I shifted from services to products. It was the first launch of the product. This was internal launch (within the organization). However, seeing the entire thing working with plastic and everything integrated was an exciting experience. Second one was the plunge I took of doing my own business. There wasn’t any end result that was achieved. However, the journey was certainly enjoyable.

Vinay: What do you see as challenges in the current role?
Ashim: One challenge still remains is to get a buy-in from everyone for some of the technical decisions you take.

Vinay: What kind of approaches you take to overcome this challenge?
Ashim: One thing which I try to do is try to interact more with people who are really going to implement. Many points I am able to convey off the meeting rooms than in the meeting room (informally than formally). Till now, I have found convincing senior management easier.

Second challenge which I see is keeping track of multiple threads. When you are doing a system design, there are several threads running. For example, for building a phone, you need to take various decisions related to hardware, firmware, RTOS, JVM. These decisions are interdependent. You solve the interdependency between two of them, the third one conks off. Keeping track of all of them simultaneously is a challenge. I haven’t still figured out a better way. I go in an incremental manner. I am not able to handle more than 4 or 5 such threads at a time while in reality there may 10+ threads existing.

Vinay: What kind of advice you will give to people who are aspiring to be technical leaders?
Ashim: This is more of a general suggestion, not only for technical leaders. If you are passionate about something, go for it and make everything else secondary like salary, organization, which people you work with. If your primary goal is organization, then make it primary and make everything else secondary.

Disclaimer: Views expressed here are Ashim's personal and may not be representative of Aricent.

What is technical leadership?

Welcome to this blog on technical leadership!

It has been 9 months since I started conducting 1-day workshop on “Becoming a successful technical leader”. Over 150 budding technical leaders from 10 technology organizations (all based in Bangalore) have participated in this workshop. Information about the workshop can be found here.

During the workshop, we discuss various topics related to technical leadership mostly in the context of the technology industry in India. For example, why do we need technical leaders? Do we really need them at this point? What should be the role of such people in services industry? What should a technical leader be doing in a products company? And so on. I end up meeting various stakeholders like senior managers (including Chief Technology/Development Officers), project managers and technical leaders. I intend to use this blog to express my own ideas on this topic as well as publish conversations I have with various stakeholders.

In this article, we will look at various connotations of the term “Technical leader”. I have come across following usages:

1. Person with designation “technical leader”
2. Person leading or managing technical people
3. Person on technical career ladder (known as tech-ladder)
4. Person who carries a personal technical brand

I guess all the usages are relevant in their contexts and they are overlapping in their meaning. For example, most of the time, a person with designation “technical leader” is also a person who is managing technical people. Similarly, a person on technical ladder is also the one who carries a personal technical brand. However, if I were to choose one defining characteristic of a technical leader, I would choose the last one: i.e. the one who carries personal technical brand.

What is a personal technical brand? It is your ability to influence a bunch people with your technical expertise. These people may or may not be reporting to you. This is where it differs from what is called “span of control” (people directly or indirectly reporting to you). Many times personal brand goes beyond the organization. We will discuss this in more detail in the subsequent articles.