But, we are a product company
Technical leadership consulting work takes me to various technology organizations based primarily out of Bangalore. I meet people in following roles: manager training, VP HR, VP/Director engineering, head technology or CTO, head of a business unit and India center head. By now, I am quite familiar with first responses I get after I introduce myself as a consultant assisting organizations in maturing technical leadership. One such peculiar response is: “But, we are a product company”.
As I try to understand the underlying assumptions behind this response, I discover either or both of following:
- We are part of a global product company. Technology innovation is part of our DNA and technical leadership is very important to us. Hence, technical leadership is not our problem (at least not among the top few problems).
- You seem to come from a services background (i.e. majority of your experience comes from IT services business). We are a product company. Hence, our challenges are different.
Both the assumptions have an element of truth in them. However, many times, I find that the element weighs much lesser than the overall truth.
I talk to senior technical specialists to understand the kind of work India center is doing. I ask what kind of contribution they are making to product roadmap either to the product features (called feature roadmap) or to its architecture (sometimes referred to as product quality roadmap). Usually answer is “none”. Hardly anyone considers mentoring as a serious responsibility. Assisting business development is not part of their agenda. Writing white papers or prototyping is unheard of. These are hardly indicative of a mature technical leadership.
The second assumption (services vs products) misses the most fundamental objective of a for-profit organization: economic value creation. For an engineering organization, it does not matter who owns the IP. What matters is what value you are adding. I have been part of services engagements where we had end-to-end product development responsibility including requirement specification (way back in 1998). On the other hand, I meet many technical specialists whos work hardly creates any value in the overall product context. Many times, product manager (who sits in one of the developed countries) does not have time for these people and one can understand why.
It is no surprise that Economic Times article “Grooming Technical Leaders” which presents technical leadership at Texas Instruments (which has created brand for its technical leadership) says that “While publishing papers and patents are important criteria for selection, a bigger criterion is the impact of the technology created by the engineer on the business”. It is time India centers of global product organizations start assessing themselves on the business impact due to technology creation and not just cost saving.
Labels: business impact, product company, technical leadership
posted by Vinay Dabholkar @ 2:41 AM
1 Comments
1 Comments:
The question one has to ask is the following: Why should I do it? What is the benefit?
In previous years, most of the indian IT companies were happy doing services as there was sufficient growth, more profit than any sector, etc. Today, most of the IT companies are talking about consulting, product focus, etc. Why?
In the earlier days, there was no pressure to do so. Today, it is not the case. The usual, services business is under margin pressures, etc and one is forced look at other ways of improving the bottom line.
The same way, is there any pressure on the indian ARM of MNC product companies to add value at a product level? I feel the time has not come. We do not have a strong domestic market; nor do we have the pressure to drive the global strategy of the parent company and hence there is no need to look at adding value at a product / strategy level.
I guess the time will come when our own existence would be questioned. Mere cost savers are not going to last for long. It is important for the senior managers in the indian MNCs to realise this and start influencing the parent companies. You won't see these questions in an HLL, where the role of the indian manager or engineer is a important as their parent counter parts.
Regards
Krishna
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