[CTQ Smartcast] The Power of Observation, with Ramkumar Narayanan
Ramkumar Narayanan is VP and Managing Site Director at VMware India. Previously, Ram has led engineering and product management at organisations like Microsoft, Yahoo!, and eBay, and has a keen interest in the entrepreneurship ecosystem and innovation, in many flavours. In this Smartcast, CTQ founders J Ramanand and BV Harish Kumar chat with Ram on what it takes to be future relevant in the tech world, how to drive innovation, and how to uplevel.
Some of the topics we covered
How to find time to pursue your hobbies: Priorities & delegating
How listening skills help / Listening deeply
The art and science of being a good product manager
How curiosity helps you understand better
Books to understand leadership / markets in India
Learning by observing / watching people around you
Lessons for the tech world from FMCG
Skillsets for the tech world and for product managers
Tips to transition from a specialist to a generalist
Recognising that you need to keep a set of individual skillsets sharp.
Adding sensors to your repertoire, how to keep in touch with the rank and file of your org
How to create a safe environment in your organisation for feedback
Connecting across generation divides
Innovation & what it means to have innovators' DNA
Underrated skills for innovation
Some interesting books and authors we spoke about
READ THE TRANSCRIPT OF THIS EPISODE
[Start of Transcript]
[00:00:00]
Ramkumar Narayanan: Everybody, even if you're a manager, even if you are the CEO of a company, there's an element of an individual contributor built into your own. I see people failing where they don't recognize that. They don't recognize the fact that you have to keep certain elements of your skillset, still sharp. The ability to get things done, ability to getting others to get things done, influencing. These are skill sets that you learn early in your career. That doesn't change as you grow in your career. So, certain dimensions of learning that you have early on in your career don't change. How you apply, it may change over time.
Ramanand: Hello! Today on the CTQ Smartcast, we are in conversation with Ramkumar Narayanan. Ram is VP and Managing Site Director at VMware India. Previously, Ram has held engineering and product management roles at companies like Microsoft, Yahoo!, and eBay. He has a keen interest in the entrepreneurship ecosystem, innovation, and quite a lot of other topics. Welcome, Ram.
Ramkumar Narayanan: Thank you. Thanks for having me here.
Ramanand: Thank you. Ram, today, we want to chat about topics like future relevance, especially in the technology world, driving innovation, as well as related topics. But you know, we are quizzers. So, we can't resist the opportunity of starting this conversation with a quick question. It's a question about someone that you've met and interacted with, Bill Gates, and a friend of his called Warren Buffett. I don't know if you know him, but you've heard of him.
Ramkumar Narayanan: Of course.
Ramanand: Both of them are famous for their love for this game, which they say, keeps them [00:02:00] mentally fit. They like to play that all the time. In fact, Warren Buffett says, this is one of the things that he's better at than Gates. Do you know what we are talking about?
Ramkumar Narayanan: You want a Jeopardy-style answer or a quiz-style answer?
Ramanand: Either is fine.
Ramkumar Narayanan: What is Bridge?
Ramanand: Absolutely. You turned the tables on us, you get 100 points for that, Ram. I think these two are very fine examples of people who have had very interesting careers, long spans of being relevant. Is it something that you do, you play Bridge, or what keeps you sharp?
Ramkumar Narayanan: No, I don't play Bridge. I never learnt it. In fact, I have a book somewhere back behind me, that says Teachers of Bridge, but I've never done it. My father in law plays a lot of bridge, but I've never learned the game. I'm not much of a card player, to be honest. Where I keep myself mentally active is few things. One, I just like to observe a lot of other things going on around me, whether it's, nowadays with Twitter etc., it's easy enough to keep track of... and I don't mean just looking at news bits or anything else. Just a wider view of what is going on in the world. Second, I play Sudoku, at a hard level, so I have an app on my phone. I try to play at least two or three games a day just to keep myself active. I don't time myself as much, it's more of finishing it rather than the timing part. I have to say that I have a 99% finish rate according to my app. Once or twice I've abandoned it for other reasons, but I try to at least get it done. So, I do that. [00:04:00] I get a lot of... obviously pre-COVID-19... interacting with people. Just a wide variety of people, diverse varieties of people from various domains, so that you can learn more from them. But, of course, you miss that now because of the COVID-19 situation. That's where I spend my time. Of course, reading, as you guys are aware, I do read a lot.
Ramanand: Which is also borne out by the shelves behind you.
Ramkumar Narayanan: Actually, I have a whole set of shelves above me which you can't see.
Ramanand: Oh, I think we're looking at the wrong side of your room right now.
Ramkumar Narayanan: I don't know how visible it is but I have bookshelves all the way up on top and behind me as well. Behind this monitor, where I have a lot of books. That's probably one failing I have. I have a lot of books. I may not read all of it all the time. But I do buy and I'll get through most of it.
Ramanand: One common thing that a lot of people like to say is that finding time for pursuits is hard. You will hear even younger people say that. Here you are at a leadership position and you're clearly making time for Sudoku and reading. Do you have a system around it? How do you protect your time and make sure that these things are done?
Ramkumar Narayanan: I've always had this right. I prioritize, I take a look at what's critical, and what's important. The important stuff will take a slightly longer time for me to get to. I do procrastinate. So, I can't say that I do everything all the time. I have lists of things that I need to get to over time. Nothing ever, eventually won't get dropped, but it depends on how much time I do. Second thing is that maybe it's a function of as you grow in your career, of delegating. [00:06:00] I have no compunctions in delegating to others to do what they thankfully will get things done better than even I can. I don't mind delegating. I try to carve out about 10 to 15-20%, whatever I can to do something which is not purely work-related. Some of this wasn't true.
Maybe 10 years ago, I wasn't paying attention to this. One of my mentors, Pavan Sinha, I was quite burned out, I was traveling a lot, I was managing global teams. I was based in Bangalore, but I was literally living on a plane to somewhere in the world, every month. I remember a tweet, the early days of Twitter, and I have a tweet, I think somewhere very early on, that said, burning a candle from both ends with a blowtorch. I remember writing it when I was sitting in Dubai Airport, and I wasn't sure whether I was coming back to India or leaving from India. Sometimes, you zone out when you're so tired. I don't know if you guys have experienced this. Sometimes you wake up in a hotel room, and you're not sure where you are in the world at that point. I was talking to one of my mentors, and he asked me, he said, 'Hey, what do you do for a hobby?'
When I was younger, I used to do other things, I used to play tennis, I used to do a bunch of other stuff. But work pressures pushed out every other thing that you did. Between work and family, there wasn't a whole lot of time left. I suddenly realized that all my interests had gone away. I used to read because I had time to read on a plane or something. But other than that, I almost lost interest in everything else.
Then I started consciously doing this. I keep a few things, I may not be good at it, whether I'm sketching, you have seen some examples of that. I'd like to share it publicly, not because I want to boast about it, but it's only to give others [00:08:00] that, 'Hey, you can also find time and do that.' I started picking up a few things. I've also dropped a few things along the way. Try to get back to things. I like photography. So I take a lot of pictures. I used to do it with DSLRs in the past, but I now use my phone a lot more. But I like to find unique angles on pictures, and things like that. So, I still do that. I try to keep some amount of time set aside. It doesn't need to be hours. Even if you do it for 10 minutes, I think it's okay. It gives you a distraction and a break, especially nowadays with jumping from one Zoom call to the next, it gives you something to do other than just work-related discussions.
Ramanand: Right. In fact, you make a good point, because it's easy to let the treadmill take you. And then back, rinse and repeat. I wanted to ask you a follow-up question. If we now look back, what have been a few of those things that have given you advantage over the long term, but in the short term felt like inefficient or distracting, people told you that this could be a potential distraction. But now you look back and say it has actually paid off. Anything that comes to mind?
Ramkumar Narayanan: Nothing in particular. I don't get too guilty about wasting time on things. Even if others consider that as a waste of time. Not that I can think of, I think but there are a few things maybe as I think back that have stayed with me more than anything else. I'm not the most talkative person. I like listening. It probably has given me an advantage professionally as well. It allows me to hear other people's point of view without me having to feel obliged to jump in and speak all the time, [00:10:00] which has helped me both professionally and as a manager, for sure. Because, many of my team members as well as others, feel that at least they're getting a good hearing from me and listening from me, not just hearing, but listening. I like to at least imbibe what they're telling me and be able to repeat it back to them over time or do something about it.
But professionally, I'm a product manager by background. And one of the tenets of product management is the fact that you are able to listen to your customers and hear the unstated needs more than what they tell you what's bothering them on a daily basis. Be able to get through that. Get into the depth of some of the things that you're hearing from people. I think that has stood well with me both as a professional in that role, as well as in other roles, to actually get to the heart of what people are trying to say, rather than what they're saying itself. The words sometimes hide the real intent behind what they are. That's one thing that has probably been with me for a long time, that trait. Not that I developed it, maybe it's more natural, but it's a way of turning that around into something.
Ramanand: I think you've mentioned this occasionally to people, keep cultivating your interests, it pays off in ways you don't foresee at the time of doing it. To someone who wants to be a better product manager, for instance, what do you think are the kinds of things they should do to develop this human side, be it listening better, more empathy, those kinds of things?
Ramkumar Narayanan: Those are on the human side. On the professional front, curiosity I think is a very good trait to have. Because you're trying to get through understanding things better, and then get into the depth of things. [00:12:00] Pick the scene, and then go down the scene. But to pick the scene, you need to get a lot of inputs, you need to look around, see inputs, the ability to get a wide variety of people, inputs from wide variety of sources and be able to synthesize that and then say, 'Okay, here are three things that I believe we need to go after and go after those deeply.' Those are the kinds of skills that people need to develop. It's all about hard skills.
In fact, even the other day, I was on another panel. Somebody asked the question about recommending two books that somebody could read about product management. Product Management is not learned by reading books. It's really more of picking up tips and tricks and traits from others that you work with on a constant basis. They need not be other product managers. They could be everybody in your organization that you work with, whether it's salespeople, whether it's lawyers, whether it is your CEO, and be able to pick out the things that are working there, and then apply it to what you do on a daily basis. So there are the hard functional skills, of course, like how do you manage backlogs and room backlogs and all that, but then there are the softer skills, and it's really an art and a science that comes together. Great product managers are very good at art and science; they don't just look at the data. They get informed by the data and then take actions based on that. There’s a big difference between the two.
Ramanand: While we're talking about books, are there any books that you would recommend to people to understand leadership or markets in India. They may not necessarily be books directly about those topics, it could be a work of fiction, for example, but something that you think would make a great window into understanding people or markets better.
Ramkumar Narayanan: There are many books on leadership. I don't know if I can pick out one or two that stand out. Yes, there are a lot [00:14:00] of books. India in particular, I used to look at the India market very closely across two-three different jobs I had over the years. There are books by people like Rama Bijapurkar, for example, who have very deep insights about the consumers in India. What works in these markets? What do you think about the socio-economic segments? It was a little interesting, because my professional journey started in the US, it wasn't here. The US also has different stratas and all those other things.
My big takeaway, when I started looking at the India market is, how discontinuous socio-economic segments are in India? When we talk about India versus Bharat, those kinds of things. They're just not a continuum. One of the things that Western companies do when they start to come to India and start to figure out what to do in India, they tend to bring a lot of that cohesive mindset. They think about continuum between consumer segments, the top of the pyramid, the middle of the pyramid, the middle has two parts, probably upper mid and lower mid, and then the bottom of the pyramid, etc. A lot of it is treated as a continuum. In India, you can't treat it as a continuum. There are discontinuities of various sorts. And those discontinuities have to be handled very differently.
The top 150 million people in the pyramid in India behave very differently than the mid-levels versus the bottom-levels. Those need to be understood well if you're a marketer, if you're building products for these segments, for these markets. Even then it surprises you, because sometimes those things change very rapidly in these markets. And it's not just India. I used to run emerging markets for a while when I was at Yahoo!. Emerging markets cut across geos. [00:16:00]
So, we had parts of Southeast Asia, I had India, we had the Middle East, we had Latin America, and then also the US. I had teams, I had other products that were focused on the other markets. But what my big takeaway as we went through that process is there is a lot more in common across what they would call emerging markets, than what we would think. Until I read the Factfulness book by Hans Rosling. I would look at it as a marketer, if I wear my marketing hat, that book was very eye-opening. I only read it last December, even though the books have been around for a while. It completely reframed for me how I should be thinking about these markets. His whole point is there are four major segments in every market. You cannot be looking at it as emerging markets versus emerged markets. That's how typically, we are taught to look at things.
I'm not a marketing person, I'm a product marketer perhaps, and a product manager. But that book completely turned on its head in terms of how I would think about that, and it made complete sense. Even if I take the US, I would have to think about those four cohorts that he talks about in that book, in terms of examining what works. He talks about, in one case, it's food, in one case, you grow up, you get some transport, and that changes the way what allows you to do or not do, then you go one level above that, you have house and a little more wealth, and then you have the real wealth. It changes, of course, the segments are different sizes, the size may be different across markets, etc.
But if I think about it from that lens, and then I look at some of the books about India, in terms of socio-economic segments, it makes a lot of sense how to examine these markets, and think about it. These are just a few books, but I would say there's a variety of these kinds of books that frame it. [00:18:00] Then there are people who write like Gurucharan Das, who write about the Indian psyche. They are fantastic books to just read and absorb and understand, and of course, a lot of fiction about India.
Ramanand: Factfulness is one of our favourite books, as well. Harish likes to evangelise the book a lot. It's music to his ears. Harish, do you want to say something in connection with that?
Harish Kumar: Not with Factfulness, but one slightly philosophical question that struck me Ram. Do you think people in India who are working as product managers for products addressing, say markets outside, do you think there is some kind of a tension between the life that they're living here in India versus, the kind of thinking that they have in their work-life, when they're looking at these markets? Is there a tension? As you said, is there a clear distinction between the two kinds of markets and the way people work and live?
Ramkumar Narayanan: Yes, and no. Obviously, if you've never lived in the US, and you're trying to cater to that market, we may not be able to relate to everything that happens. But the flip is also true. Where people who live in Silicon Valley don't necessarily experience the rest of the world. But they're able to build something that actually can scale across markets. So, I'm not sure it's as much about where you live and what you do. I think it's more about how open you are to absorbing and understanding what the other person's context is. The ability to figure out ways to understand the context of the market that you're trying to serve. You can build products for any market.
If that's the case, a Facebook Product Manager sitting in Mountain View, should not be able to cater to the Bharat people in India, with WhatsApp, by the same token. In fact, I would say we could experience Western way of life a little better than somebody who is living in the valley, who can't relate to somebody who is [00:20:00] in tier two town in India who's using some of their products. So, there are methods of understanding and getting to the depth of understanding where your core markets are and what is it that's making them tick? It is an effort. I'm not minimizing the effort required to make those kinds of things. Reaching out to people, forming those opinions. Right now, it's not possible, but the ability to visit if you can to just go and walk around.
One of the things I learned, and I saw one of your questions earlier, which is, he talks about what are the one or two traits that have stood me well. One of the things I would say is the power of observation. I like sitting around and watching people. People may think it's strange, but we have done that. When I run emerging markets, I would visit places like Amman, Jordan, where I had a team there. Sitting around in a coffee shop, and just watching people walk by, which is very informative, and illustrates how people operate, how people live their lives. First time I went to Japan, I was on a train. This was pre-smartphone days, when people still had a semi, flip-phone kind of phones. You could observe that nobody is talking. Everybody is typing on their phone. So, text messaging was really large. And then a few years ago, I went to China and sitting around in a Starbucks, drinking a coffee, I was watching, everybody's walking with smartphones held horizontally. Because they were dictating messages, they were not typing, because maybe it's the complexity of typing the language on a phone. But all of them were holding their phones horizontally and talking into the microphone, rather than holding it vertically and talking onto the ear. I asked somebody and they said, 'Oh, they are recording messages.' They were sending voice messages. Those are just small data points. But it is interesting [00:22:00] to observe how people operate, how they live.
Even in India, I think observations of how people who are not literate, who don't know how to read and write language, are still using smartphones. Or in the previous generation, were using text phones, were able to text messages. They had figured out a language of communication through that mechanism, even if they didn't know how to read and write. How do you cater to that? If I wear my product management tag, and I'm designing a product for that market space, you have to understand that. How do people interact with those devices, how do they actually make themselves understood and communicate? So, I think observation of your people around you is a very critical piece. And I do that today. I learn a lot by observing the way my organization operates; how do people work? How do people think? That forms opinions on what we need to do within the organization from a strategy perspective.
Once you publish this, everybody will be watching me keenly to see if I am being observed.
Ramanand: Are you the kind that takes notes or distributes them? Is there a recording aspect to the observation?
Ramkumar Narayanan: Sometimes, but a lot of times not. A lot of times it forms opinions... Actually, it doesn't form an opinion. It refines an opinion. The way I like to think is I will form hypotheses, and then validate and invalidate the hypotheses based on what I'm observing, what I'm reading. It allows me to learn faster when I do that. Initially, yes. Initially, if I'm completely greenfield, say, I take on a new role. I take about 90 days to talk to people, observe, read, do whatever.
But by the end of the 60th day, I generally have an opinion on what needs to happen, hypotheses, what we need to do? [00:24:00] The rest of the time is spent on validating, invalidating, talking to people, putting hypotheses in front of people to see how they react, what their observations are, etc. You have seen some of the strategy work that we were doing, even in VMware, and a lot of the early stages of that opinion was formed in my first 90 days in the company and we have refined it since then.
Ramanand: I just wanted to also ask you, some of the things that you mentioned, understanding your market, getting out there, spending time surrounded by people, it's almost anthropological in that sense. These are things that other industries, you look at FMCG, for instance, that they teach young graduates, freshers, very early. But if you look at the tech world, we're often very abstracted from the outside world and out of the good, the bad, the ugly of who you're actually building for doesn't reach you very quickly. So, do you have any thoughts on how someone who's just starting off, or how companies also should organize this a little bit, so that this aspect comes into play far earlier?
Ramkumar Narayanan: You're absolutely right. FMCG, the role of a product manager was defined in FMCG, if you think about it. We adapted it for the tech world, from the FMCG world. In fact, one of the things I would say about 10 years ago, when I joined Yahoo!, my boss at that time challenged me to go and say... At that time, tech product management was prevalent in India... we wanted to start a movement in the market to evangelize product management more. So I used to go to business schools to talk to MBA students. And I would ask the question, how many of you wanted to be product managers. Three-fourths of the room would put up their hands. [00:26:00] I'd then ask them, ‘How many of you want to be tech product managers?’ There'll probably be two hands left. Because their aspiration was to go join Hindustan Lever, ITC and companies like that, to be brand managers/product managers, depending on what the role was called. But it was really that. People were wanting to that. But the skill sets that as you rightly point out, what they learned in business schools, communication skills or marketing skills, etc. How to break down a market, how do you look at an addressable market, how do you actually start to look at segmentation and be able to then build a strategy around segmentation. Those are no different than what you would do in a tech world. It's the same thing.
If the product is different, technology is different, how you may go to market could be different, etc. But the mechanics of what you do is not very different. I was fortunate to work for companies early on in my career, where this was actually well understood. There were people that you would learn from around you, there were formal processes where you could learn from others around you, as well as in the job. You could observe others, work with others who are further along in the career in these domains. I think that's what we will try to replicate even in India, if you look at it over the years, we've had many different forums, both industry forums, people at NASSCOM, etc., where product management as a skill set has been brought forward.
The good part now is there's been a lot more people in the market who hold those kinds of roles. Both senior people who have done this in multiple avatars, as well as people who are just starting out their careers and could learn from others. And there are industry forums starting up to share ideas, share experiences, and bring that forward, which is great. That needs to happen. Because, we can build all the engineering we want. Engineering products [00:28:00] still requires the ability of somebody to take the customer's point of view on building those products. It's not just about the technology you build. But the good part is, in the last 5-10 years, especially with startups, you see a lot more of that type of skill sets coming up. I won't say they are all great at it. But at least they're doing it. I think they are willing to ask the questions, willing to learn.
So, there's a lot more forums coming up now, which are about practicing product managers, and how they get better at it, rather than people just saying, 'Okay, I want to get into product management, and how do I make the entry?' That is a lot of conversation that used to happen in the past. Now, people are stepping up and saying, 'How do I get better at what I do?'
Ramanand: Staying with that, a lot of people now, they start off as specialists, and then they make a transition to a more generalist kind of role, which calls for a wider variety of inputs, the observation ability, the ability to connect, and also work with data. That's something that keeps happening.
Ramkumar Narayanan: Right.
Ramanand: What is your advice for people who are struggling with or are attempting to make that transition happen? Is that a transition you also made? What would you advise people?
Ramkumar Narayanan: I made that too. My role today has nothing to do with building products. But the experiences that I gained by working with people, understanding segments, understanding how to build strategy, how do you validate it, invalidate it with data, as well as observation, and then take it forward? That's what I do today, which is no different. My role is a more general manager role at this point of the India side. And so, I don't build products. The India site is a product by itself for me. You would treat it that way. I know there is a transition, you rightly point out, there's a transition in your career, as you grow in your career, [00:30:00] where you're going to move from being a specialist to becoming a generalist. You have to be comfortable doing that.
A lot of people struggle with that transition point. They don't want to give up their execution mindset. They've become successful by doing that. They grew through the organization because they were specialists, they were very good at building products, engineering or some other function in their role, or sales or whatever. But there is a point in their career where, by necessity, they have to switch over, especially when you're becoming a manager of multiple levels of people, you're far removed from execution. While you should not lose your mind, your role as a... I'm a bit of a heretic here when I say that everybody, even if you're a manager, even if you are the CEO of a company, there's an element of an individual contributor built into your own. I see people failing where they don't recognize that.
They don't recognize the fact that you have to keep certain elements of your skillset, still sharp. The ability to get things done, ability to get others to get things done, influencing. These are skill sets that you learn early in your career. Because influencing people, influencing outcomes, framing outcomes, the whole goal-setting process is framing an outcome. It's not about, I'm going to do five meetings today. That's not what it's about. It's about getting things done. And that doesn't change as you grow in your career.
Certain dimensions of learning that you have early on in your career doesn't change. How you apply it may change over time. You have to get comfortable at some point that you're switching into much more of a generalist role. This is a career conversation I have with many of our senior folks in our organization and other organizations that we reach out to. Now they keep saying, 'Oh, I need to hold on to my engineering strengths.' I say, don't lose that. The point here is not to lose [00:32:00] an area that you resonate with, you're good at, etc. You have made a career choice, you either become a manager early on, or sometime in mid-career, you made a shift. You become a manager, or you've remained an individual contributor. In the technology ranks, in particular. You have remained an individual contributor, fantastic, but you're still a leader at some point, right? People are looking up to you for leadership, and you are bringing in those generalist skills. If you become a manager, your career path is decided.
A manager's role is not about engineering execution. You're transitioning out of that, when you hit about director level, senior director, etc. By the time you're a VP, which is by designation would be multiple levels of organization below you, you're no longer executor of engineering. You've not lost your engineering skills. But you're now a General Manager. You have to take into account people management, organizational influencing, working with your senior leadership on strategy, you have to take on that. Now, you don't want to wake up one morning and be in that role without having gained the experience to do it.
So, you have to recognize when you're making that switch, and when you're making the transition, get comfortable with it, and start to give up some of that to people below you. Let them execute, let them do the work that needs to be done. Create capacity for yourself to learn those new skills that are needed. I think it's very important that you do that over time, and do it thoughtfully.
Ramanand: In some sense, the individual contributor shifting out means that the way they have leverage over the situation is now different, because as you said, it shifts from directly affecting the outcome to influencing the other parts of the system to get that done. In fact, in this book, written by Pixar's Edwin Catmull, he talks about how when he became a leader, then he stopped, he only started getting good news. Because he no longer had the network [00:34:00] to tell him about things that are not going fine, and all those layers start to emerge. So, what are the different kinds of sense-making elements that you start to add to your repertoire in some sense, so that you are discerning bad news early? Tell us a little about that?
Ramkumar Narayanan: You're absolutely right. You don't have to be that high up in the organization before you start to lose touch with the rank and file of your organization, especially if you are in management. Because as you grow levels, you're only talking to people, if you're only talking to your next level below you, you'll hear what's coming, getting filtered. One of the things that I consciously started doing was setting up smaller group meetings with the next levels, skipping levels to some extent. Or even right now, for example, we have a very large organization. And one of the things I do more consciously is set up time with smaller groups, cohorts of people, from the rank and file that I spend time with. Because then you start to hear the unfiltered information that's coming back. And then you can correlate that against what else you are hearing?
Second thing is you have to make it a safe environment to come have those conversations. Not be judgmental. In fact, notionally, I actually don't take notes in those meetings, not written... I'm not writing down in a notebook what they tell me. Because some of it is also about trust. What's mentioned in the room stays in the room, sometimes, if it's a touchy conversation. And if it's feedback that's coming back about the organization, people are naturally hesitant about opening up. So you have to create those safer atmospheres where people are willing to speak up. You need to hear multiple parts of that conversation, and then bring a synthesized version of that to other forums, so that you can look at it not by individuals' feedback, but collective [00:36:00] feedback of what's coming back. We have done that. The effect of it gets felt when you take that collective feedback, read into it, and then make a change that lets you do that.
For example, we change the way we do larger organizational level all-hands, for example. Because one of the feedbacks we heard was, people didn't find the topics effective enough for them. They couldn't relate their job to the information that they were getting. So we actually changed it. We made it a lot more purpose-driven, in the sense that people could relate better to their day to day job to what is happening in the market, what's happening in the company, and hence, why is their job relevant. That started getting positive feedback. But we started to use it as a mechanism to also give feedback to the organization that look, few people mentioned it in a meeting, and that had an effect of changing the way we think about how we do things.
So let's make sure those pipelines of communication are open and available, so that we can actually make it more effective. It's an effective dialogue mechanism, rather than it is about pinpointing problems. Because I like soliciting ideas from people, how do we fix it? It's not just about coming up with a problem. We have ideas on how we can do something differently or better. That always makes for a positive dialogue.
Ramanand: Since you mentioned getting together with different groups, as a leader, you now have people from multiple generations below you. We've seen you in action. How do you try to connect with someone and be seen as relevant by them? More than they being relevant to you as well, you also have to be seen as relevant to these audiences so that they can talk to you, they can share what's on their mind?
Ramkumar Narayanan: On a lighter [00:38:00] note, I may think I'm relevant, but they may not think I'm relevant. You have to ask them the question to find that answer out. But what I've found is that the other generations, they don't want to be preached to. I hear that a lot from my own kids. They're probably in the same age groups. What I enjoy in talking to them is the lack of hesitancy in just saying things. Not in this role, but in one of my previous jobs, I was the general manager of the India site, and I had a fairly large team, globally reporting to me; I had a new college graduate walk into my office late one evening. I said, 'Okay, come on in.' So he says, 'You're not doing your job well.' I said, 'Why?' I don't even remember what it was. But, he had some pet peeve about something that wasn't hearing. But I think I completely enjoyed it. I spent half an hour with him. I'm sure he walked away more confused than he walked in! But I actually enjoy that.
I like the youngsters coming in with their own very hard opinions on what's not working. Because then you can engage them in a dialogue and say, 'Okay, good. Now tell me how you would fix it. You have my job for a day, what would you do?' And they come up with ideas, which is okay. But it informs us. The change that I just said on our all-hands. It came out of a conversation with a new college graduate, who was six months in the system. And this young lady said, 'Hey, I attend these meetings, but I'm getting nothing out of it.' So, I said, 'Why?' And she said, 'I'm getting nothing out of it because I can't relate to what's being said.' [00:40:00] Then I actually went and probed people in mid-levels as well, saying, 'Hey, this is what I'm hearing, what do you think?' And they also said the same thing. But they had not spoken up. Because they had inhibitions of speaking up. We made the change and that had a positive effect through the organization. But that came from somebody from, like I said, had been in the company for six months, was a new college graduate.
So, great ideas don't need to come from only people with grey hair, or no hair like me. It can come from anywhere. And again, it comes back to that listening thing that I talked about. People want to be listened to, they don't want to be heard. They want to be listened to. And I tell them, I said great ideas, but I may not be able to do all of it that you're telling me. But we will look at the essence of what you're saying and try to see what we can do about it. No guarantees, but what we will guarantee is that what you have said will have an impact in terms of how we take things into consideration. That's what I've seen. The way to relate to that age group or any age group really, is that. People should feel that they're having an honest conversation with somebody. I think that helps a great deal in doing that.
Ramanand: This is almost a timeless approach. You can do this forever with anyone and I think it should pay off.
Ramkumar Narayanan: I get irritated when somebody starts off by telling me, 'Let me tell you.' And I'm like, 'Okay, that's not what I'm here for. Let me tell you what you should be doing.' Tell me what the issue is. Tell me what the problem is, and then we'll see. Let me be the judge of what I believe I need to hear and decide.
Ramanand: Speaking of ideas, one question that we wanted to ask you was that innovation inside companies versus innovation outside where, especially in these days, when the incentives [00:42:00] are so starkly different, you could be in a startup, your ideas have instant ramifications, you can see the feedback loop is much smaller, versus companies where... How do you get people to contribute to innovation is more of the persuasion route, or linking it to purpose, for example? Or, like you said, in the example of someone who's fresh, just give them that avenue to get their energies flowing. How do you see incentives for people within an organization and how do you shape those incentives so that people contribute to what is after all something that you do outside your stated job?
Ramkumar Narayanan: It's not easy. You guys should know it more than anybody else. You do this for a living, helping organizations with helping them drive the whole innovation charter. There is a certain group of people, you don't have to do anything for them. They will come into any forum, and you can almost predictively know that they will show up, if there is an opportunity to do something. We shouldn't lose that energy. One is to give them more and more incentives and opportunities to exercise what they do. Of course, there is an element in companies that they still have to do their day job, they can't be just doing other things. But as long as they're doing that, give them more opportunities. There is a group that requires various levels of motivation. And it could be as simple as giving them a contest and giving them a prize at the end of it.
So you almost need to segment your audience, even within organizations to truly understand who you're dealing with, and what incentives you want to put in front of them. Some people are purely looking for recognition, by their management, by their senior people that they believe. Whether it's rightfully or wrongfully believed that they need to be seen by certain kinds of people in the organization and recognized. [00:44:00] Okay, that's fine. If that's going to lead to good outcomes, let's create those opportunities for people to be able to do that. In any organization, at least tech organizations that I'm more familiar with, there are two kinds of innovation. There is one which is in the roadmap. It's not what you do, it's how you do it.
When you're building a feature in a product, are you thinking through the implications of who's going to use it? How are they going to use it, and then do the right set of innovations to make it come alive? That's one way of doing it. That's important. Maybe some group of people will only do that. They don't get into future orientation. There are others who are very good at greenfield type innovation thought. It's a continuum. Let me take this as a continuum. There is a rolling roadmap work. There's extensions to the roadmap. There are ideas which are adjacencies to what you're already doing, which is okay. It could be things that could either come back to the roadmap at some point or you could put it out.
Different companies have different mechanisms to release innovation into their market. Then there are people who are futuristic, who are looking at things happening in the technology world, who are rethinking how this should be done. Those are very small subset. They aren't going to be, if you're talking about 100 people, I would say less than 10% will be in that bracket, which is okay. You don't need 100 people doing all future-oriented work, moonshot work. You need to segment that and say, 'Okay, how is my innovation charter going?'
If I look at these three core areas, in roadmap, adjacencies to roadmap, and moonshots, am I involving the right set of people in each of those who are going to get motivated to do that? If you go to the people who are only motivated by roadmap work, and try to get them to do moonshot work, it may not work. So don't get disappointed that 100 people are not showing up for moonshot. But [00:46:00] look at your charter and look at your landscape and say, am I addressing the people who would be most relevant to what they want to do, and be able to do that. And not everybody can go to a startup and be successful.
I think there's this misinformed notion that everybody who's in a startup is also innovative. I think the same things apply there, too. You will have a few people, the founders of the company are coming in with their baby, their hypotheses of what they're doing. There are people they will employ to bring it to life. They are your roadmap people. There'll be a few of them who are pushing the envelope and kind of rethinking about, 'Hey, you know, if we did this differently, how will it work?' They are adjacencies. And there are a few people who will be the moonshot people, and most likely will spin out and do their own startup, which is okay. We can't assume that everybody who works on a startup is also this extremely innovative person. You need bench players, right? Like any team, you need the bench players, you need the superstars, you need the coaches, you need everybody.
Ramanand: You make a very valid point there because even big successful companies started off like those startups, and they're just a reflection, or a much bigger reflection of that. In fact, that's I think the question that you were alluding to earlier, the book, The Innovator's DNA talks about those five traits, and distinguishes between the delivery skills, and the discovery skills. Discovery, we spoke about observation a little earlier in great detail.
There were other traits mentioned, like experimentation, associating new ideas, questioning, and also networking. A lot of tech innovation or programs within are often about experimentation. But do you think any of the others are underrated, people should bring them in? We've all already spoken about observation. But, does networking, for example, strike you as something that people don't do enough of? [00:48:00]
Ramkumar Narayanan: Absolutely. Networking for reasons, I mean, it's not about sending out LinkedIn invites. I get a lot of those. But that's not networking. Networking to me, real networking, or true networking, getting to know people of diverse backgrounds, feeds the other things. You talked about those five DNAs, and I don't remember all of them. I read the book a while ago. They are not five fingers in a hand, ultimately the hand is also still connected, right?
So, to me, experimentation and observation are not necessarily disjoint. If you look at scientific temper, it is about experimentation linked with observation. You're observing what is happening in an experiment. Similarly, networking is no different. Networking is an input to... that's where the curiosity angle kicks in. That's where you are going out and talking to people whom you would not talk to normally. You meet a diversity of people of various points of view, various experiences, if you're looking at a market area that you want to go, you want to go talk to people. Because the fastest way to learn is by talking to others who have learned something in that business and then triangulate to what you think you need to do. So, yes, absolutely. Networking skills are very important, very critical. And some of the way to network is also to give back.
I'm also a believer that you can't be just a taker in the world, it'll never work. You have to have the ability to lean in and help others as well. Otherwise, why would they come to you? So, you need to be a giver, you need to give back as well. You need to pay it forward in some sense. That's all part of networking, too.
Ramanand: In fact, a great way to just contribute to innovation for just half an hour could be to listen to someone's idea and give them feedback. That's a great way to contribute [00:50:00] as well. We have about five minutes left on the clock. So, before we go into that, since we have spoken about curiosity, we have one more question for you today. And one thing we didn't tell you at the beginning was that for every question you answer correctly, they're going to give you a little prize, which is a free gift membership you can give someone to our reading groups, our reading compounds. We also love curiosity.
That's a hint, by the way, just pay attention to what I just said. Because our next question is, there was someone employed at 10 Downing Street, the British Prime Minister's Office, who had a budget of 100 pounds a year. He was called Humphrey. He served under three administrations. And during the Tony Blair administration, he was forced into retirement, because the prime minister's wife was allergic to him. This person had an official title in 10 Downing Street's cabinet staff. Do you know who Humphrey is?
Ramkumar Narayanan: It's not a cat, right?
Ramanand: Oh, you should have done the Jeopardy on it. It is a cat. Well done. So, on the theme of curiosity...
Ramkumar Narayanan: I remember reading that.
Ramanand: Yeah. I know. In fact, it's named after the character or the civil servant in Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister.
Ramkumar Narayanan: Yes, I was going to say that. I was going to ask you if it was named after Humphrey from Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister.
Ramanand: I know you have a cat and you like your animals.
Ramkumar Narayanan: Is that a hint from my Twitter feeds? I tend to like all the animal videos.
Ramanand: I think it's a golden age to live in, the internet and animals.
Ramkumar Narayanan: True.
Ramanand: Have you had a lot of pets over the years?
Ramkumar Narayanan: Actually, no. We had a dog when I was really young. After that, we never had pets. [00:52:00] Even the cat we have is an adoptee, she adopted us. Walked into our house one day, and the kids forced us to keep it. The kids are no longer here, the cat is still around.
Ramanand: That's actually the story of Humphrey as well, because Humphrey was a stray and became Chief Mouser.
Ramkumar Narayanan: Cats tend to do more than dogs. Dogs, you have to go out of your way to go adopt them. Cats have a tendency to adopt you.
Ramanand: Our last section, we just want quick hot takes, we call this the FutureStack section, which is things that people should add to their skill stack in some sense, so as to be a little more future relevant in the days and years ahead. I want to ask you one thing that product managers should add to their FutureStack? It could be an area, it could be a skill, it could be a timeless piece of wisdom.
Ramkumar Narayanan: I don't know, I'm not the wisdom type. I don't know if I want to do that. But I think if you're in the tech space, it's getting more and more interesting to watch the cross-pollination across areas. Synthetic biology, for example. I will look at some things like climate change, sustainability. I think those are areas that are going to get more and more important as we look ahead. If you are in the tech space, I think that also opens up some really interesting ideas that will potentially come forward. Depending on your interest, those are areas that are going to start emerging as opportunity. I don't think, pure computer sciences, I think data is another interesting aspect, the applicability of data across domains. And then looking at those domains, sometimes, some of these [00:54:00] cross-domain pollinations can produce some really interesting results over time.
I think digital is becoming the core of a lot of things. We look at traditional industries; everybody is now talking digital. I think what would be interesting, as we look ahead, is how does that digital come to life across various domains and areas? What does it mean for various organizations and companies, across domains? If you're in the tech space today, like you mentioned, it's a golden era emerging, which is how do you get relevant to various kinds of industries?
Ramanand: If you are a fresher walking into your organization today, what is one piece of advice you would give yourself?
Ramkumar Narayanan: Go get your fundamentals strengthened. Science, math, especially if you're in the tech space. I get this question constantly about people saying, what next technology should I learn? I've been in this business long enough to know that technologies have a shelf life of two to three years. What stands over time is the fundamentals of what you learn. If you are coming from a business school, make sure that you're keeping your marketing skills, your finance skills up to date. If you're coming from an engineering background, make sure that you still continue to learn and understand math and stats. I wish somebody had told me this early on, because my dislike for stats is quite deep. I still can't get beyond flipping a coin maybe a few times, when it comes to probability and things like that.
But now, those skills are getting more and more important. If you are in science don't just focus on physics. We look at physics, chemistry, biology, for all the points I just made, which is about those cross-domain pollinations coming up, get your fundamentals. Don't lose your fundamentals, keep that strengthened. It's probably easier for a fresh grad than for a mid-career person. Because by the time [00:56:00] you're mid-career, you've lost most of those skills, including me. So, you need to keep those up to date, because I think that will be more relevant in the future than which programming language you are going to learn.
Ramanand: So, for mid-level pros, one big threat and one big opportunity in the next decade?
Ramkumar Narayanan: Your half-life is rapidly reducing. Especially if you have not kept up your skill sets, you've not understood what's happening around you, if you're banked on the fact that I've been comfortable in my job for 'n' number of years, be ready for change. There's no doubt. So that was the 'what to watch out for?' What was the second question?
Ramanand: The opportunity.
Ramkumar Narayanan: I think opportunity is based on how you take the experiences you have gained over all these years, and be able to unlock that to help your organization, your customers better. People are sitting with a goldmine of information. But they don't think about how to take that and make it relevant to today's context. That, I think, is a skill set, all of us have to learn. It's not about re-skilling. People keep talking about re-skilling. What is re-skilling? It is really to frame yourself in a new context, and bring forward the experiences that you have gained over time into the next role that you do or next job you do, and make yourself relevant to the company. Because this is a time when even organizations are in existential crisis. And they're always looking for people to step forward and say, 'Hey, how can I help?' So, don't treat your job as a 9 to 5 job, because like with any other adage, if you're not growing, and if you're just sitting in a steady state, your shelf life becomes endangered very quickly.
Ramanand: In fact, since you mentioned minefield and goldmine, probably people instead of treating it as a goldmine or treating it as a minefield, [00:58:00] that's the mindset they bring in.
Ramkumar Narayanan: No, it's not that. I think people need coaching. I mean, you need people around you who are helping you through that process. It's very difficult for somebody who's in a role to reframe themselves. I think the role of people, of their mentors, that's the other thing, right? We didn't talk about building a mentorship network around you. Who can give you a reflection of, help you to think through what you need to do next. Not tell you what to do, but help you discover what is essential, based on your interests, your areas of focus, how you can bring forward your own experiences to the next level, and hence be relevant to what is going on. So, I think you need more of that.
You need people around you who can help you through that process. And that comes from networking, and mentorship, building a network of mentors around you and building a network of people around you from whom you can learn. Pay it forward, like I said, go get involved in volunteering, do other things that will help you learn better, get you out of that rut, if you may, that you're part of.
Harish Kumar: Ram, any tips on how to build this mentoring network around you, because people start with that block when I have to solve my problems myself, and as you say, that's one of the fundamental problems. So, how do they make that switch and how do they actually go seek out these mentors?
Ramkumar Narayanan: I think it can be through recommendations. It doesn't need to be that you have to... see I think a lot of people think that they don't know anybody and they have to get there. But sometimes it could be just talking to people you already know and say, 'Hey, you know, I would like to meet a couple of people who can help me through this problem that I'm struggling with. Do you know anybody?' And they will be surprised. Because getting a friend or a colleague to [01:00:00] introduce you to somebody else is a lot easier than making a cold call to somebody and saying, 'Can you mentor me?' Doesn't work that way. A good starting point is just to talk to the people you already know and say, 'Hey, can you recommend somebody?' And it doesn't need to be somebody in your profession. It could be somebody completely different. But, you bring up a good point Harish, which is you have to be honest with yourself that you have a problem, or you need help.
Now, if you're not, if you're going around saying nobody can tell me anything, and I don't need to have any help, then that's a different problem. Then you have to figure that path out for yourself. But finding and building a network is not that difficult, especially in our kind of world. Or you could just follow people. Twitter allows you to do that. Find four or five people that you can really resonate with and follow, not for the wrong reasons, obviously, but that's easy to do also. But somehow you can learn and do that. There are various ways of doing it, but not doing it is not a good idea. Good, what else?
Ramanand: On that note, thanks a lot. It's been a fascinating hour listening to a lot of things that we spoke about. So, thanks so much for doing this Ram.
Ramkumar Narayanan: You're welcome. Thank you, and thank you for having me.
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