[CTQ Smartcast] How Engineering Leaders of GICs Should Think About Upleveling and Inclusion, with Vinita Gera
Vinita Gera is the General Manager, India COE at Dell Technologies. She is also Co-Chair of CII Center for Digital Transformation which works with MSMEs and partners with them in their Digital Transformation journey. She works very closely with global functional leaders to build world-class competency centers.
In this Smartcast conversation with CTQ’s BV Harish Kumar, we unravel her world-view that has evolved from adapting to different roles from Director, Product Development to VP Engineering to GM; her tips on future relevance for engineering leaders, and how should organisations think about diversity and inclusion in a meaningful way.
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(Read the shownotes or skip to the transcript)
Some of the things we spoke about
Adapting to different scales of companies
Difference between an Engineering leadership role and a GM role
Right and wrong reasons for an IC to become an Engineering manager
Career paths in GICs in India
What companies look for from India sites
The mindsets and skill sets needed to meet new expectations from India sites
The effect of 2020 on GICs
The motivation behind her article ‘What Women Want - An Engineer’s Guide’
Networking for women engineers and tips
PLUS
Vinita’s playbook she uses while taking up a new leadership role
Vinita’s tips for a first-time Engineering manager
AND her take on the future relevance of:
Hackathons
Engineering Managers
GICs in a post-pandemic world
Links to books, articles and links mentioned in the Smartcast
READ THE TRANSCRIPT OF THIS EPISODE
[CTQ Smartcast] How Engineering Leaders of GICs Should Think About Upleveling and Inclusion, with Vinita Gera
[00:00:00]
Vinita Gera heads the Bangalore and Pune centres of Dell EMC. She's responsible for site-level programs and operations, and works very closely with global functional leaders to build world class competency centres that live and breathe the Dell Technologies’ culture code. At CTQ, we help teams and individuals build future relevance in a shape-changing world. So in this Smartcast, I decided to pick Vinita's brains about her own career arc through different engineering roles, her tips on how to think about future relevance, her management style, how the India-sites of a large MNC should think about future relevance, how should organizations think about diversity and inclusion in a meaningful way? Through the course of this interview, I found out how her co-workers can get the best out of Vinita. And which OTT web show should I avoid? If you're an engineering leader, or aspire to be one, you want some ideas on how to think about the future relevance of GIC's, or if you're interested in learning about learning, you will find this chat very useful.
Harish Kumar: Hi, welcome Vinita to this CTQ Smartcast.
Vinita Gera: Thank you, Harish.
Harish Kumar: For the benefit of our listeners and viewers, I'll just give a quick profile introduction of Vinita. Vinita heads the Bangalore and Pune centres of Dell EMC. She's responsible for site-level programs and operations, and works very closely with global functional leaders to build world-class competency centres that live and breathe the Dell Technologies culture code. There's a lot to unpack there. And at Choose to Thinq we help teams and individuals build future relevance [00:02:00] in what we call a shape-changing world through systematic upleveling. Before we get into more details of what you do at Dell right now, I just wanted to take a few steps back and look at your career arc. In the past, you played different roles, Director, Product Development, to VP Engineering, and now General Manager for the India COE at Dell Technologies. So how have your responsibilities and worldview evolved through these roles?
Vinita Gera: Thanks for inviting me over to this podcast, first. One happened very naturally, it was a natural progression. I did my engineering, started coding, went into technical roles, and then ended up building products. So that was more of a natural progression, not so much by choice. I don't know if it would have been different if it was a choice.
But the current role, which is more horizontal, more like a site leader, general management, cutting across business units, this was a conscious choice. And this transition happened in my mind first, when I was in a vertical role, that is my engineering role. But I began doing a more horizontal role already. I'd just begun doing it because I had a natural attraction towards it. And I said, Hey, let me run this program across the company, and so on. And the ecosystem, and this happened at BMC Software, the ecosystem gave me that leverage to run those programs. And then I said, Hey, I want to do this as my career.
So it was a very conscious decision to move from an engineering role to site leadership. If I even peek into the future, which you can only view from your vantage point, but you never know what it holds. I think it could be something hybrid, maybe, [00:04:00] something like site leadership or engineering or a functional role, along with site leadership or something entirely different. So I am a firm believer that you start thinking first on where you want to go, start ideating it and then you can manoeuvre your own career towards it.
Harish Kumar: Right. If you're talking about upleveling, your role clearly demands you to help your site uplevel. But first, we wanted to dig a bit deeper into how you decided to uplevel yourself. When you made this conscious decision, what did it require from your side to make this change, change of mindset, changing what you read, how you think about things? If you can talk us through that?
Vinita Gera: A lot of the change happened, actually, before the decision was finalized in my mind. So let me step back to when I shifted from a more tech-leader to more of a people-leader. I've always been a more people-focused leader even though when I was building engineering products, 'people' was always my strength. The re-skilling or the change of mindset and the change of style of working started then, and what I had done, I think this is back in about 2006-07 itself. I said, Hey, 'people' is my strength, let me just chase that. Let me go... and people and leadership.
There were two choices then: either I go sign up for an MBA, which I did, because I had only done my engineering, I hadn't gone to a B-school. But I looked at the books that came in, it was a distance learning program. I looked at books that came in, and it was largely to begin with finance, general management, which was very, very old school. So I chucked that out, didn't pursue that one. And then what I did is, looked at the B-schools' shorter programs. They all have leadership [00:06:00] programs for corporates like us. And I said, Okay, let me... I made a higher-level goal saying every year, let me just do one new thing from an IIM to begin with. And I started with IIMs because they had this model of leadership, general management, strategic leadership, all these courses, which were sometimes one week, two weeks, but short courses. It looked doable to me. So, I started there. And that's how even coaching happened.
I did my coaching certification also through one of those areas, I said, let me pursue this. In short, to summarize, I was investing in myself on the front of people-leadership, general management right from there. And by the time the full decision had happened, I was actually already the successor of a site leader at BMC, Tarun Sharma, you know him. I was a named successor, and I was almost learning everything on the job with him. So when I actually jumped into a leadership role, of course, there was still more learning, a general management leadership role, there was still more learning because it was a different organization. But a lot of the legwork had already happened before. And after I switched, I think a lot of it was watching and learning.
Even when I joined Dell, I was the site leader for Pune only. My boss Sarv was the site leader for India. So a lot of it was learning on the job by watching him, watching other site leaders in the company. There are more site leaders like me at Dell, and learning from them is the real thing. It wasn't so much of a course or a curriculum, because this is just learned by watching. There's also an ecosystem of GCC leaders, what we call. That ecosystem is very rich. It's in fact a very good group. It's a very giving group. [00:08:00]
We all share with each other how we're doing things. And even in the last one-and-a-half year now, when we've been in the pandemic, that's when the amount of exchange actually increased a lot more. Because none of this was scripted. We didn't know this was going to be coming. So a lot of learning happens from our peer group.
Harish Kumar: That's quite fascinating because I can see a very deliberate way in which you've gone about it from taking a look at formal learning options first, deciding what is not good and chucking it, not really pursuing it just because it's a formal thing, but actually looking at better options there. And then looking at people who are actually doing it and learning from the doers. Was there anything that you did where you actually approached people and said, this is what I want to learn from you, or did you actually take notes? How did that, if you can just more concretely talk about that learning from these doers?
Vinita Gera: I'll tell you an interesting thing about my learning. I call myself a sponge. There's two parts: it's a sponge, and I'm also a huge admirer of people. If I meet someone new, who's charismatic in their work, really good, really out there, really passionate. I just become a fan. I just admire. And there's so many people. The number of people I look at, in an admiration way, is huge. I'm calling this out, this might be a very simple thing to say. But I think my ratio over there is very higher. It comes with its flipside, that sometimes I'm overawed by certain personalities. But that doesn't matter. The cons are very small, right? I just get a reality check and say, Okay, I put this person on a pedestal but this person is not as good as I thought they were. That is an after, that will always happen later if I have over-amplified in my mind. But what that over-amplification does and work that [00:10:00] puts my learning lens at is, Hey, this person is great. Let me just learn to see how this person articulates. Let me just see how they run in a critical time like right now in COVID-19. Let me see how they network, and so on. I'm less of a note-taker but a big sponge when it comes to watching people I admire and learn. And this is a habit, this is very inherent now. I've of course sharpened this habit even more, because I've seen the benefits I get from that. So it's a very simplistic way of learning, but I don't forget.
Like even now, years later, I can remember a couple of people, and how they did a certain thing. And it's literally etched in my mind. The trick, however, is to apply. Getting fascinated by how they're doing and so on, and that means a lot of this sitting down and thinking of situations of the past. Anytime someone asks you a question or asks you a story, it doesn't come top of your mind because of the recency effect, you'll only remember the most recent story.
I'm a dreamer, I love to dream and what dreaming also gets along with it is there's a little futuristic and there is also the past part. So whenever I'm in a situation, I go back and think about all these people and say, how would they have done it? Sometimes thinking harder brings me those stories from the past, or the mapping, they're not the exact same stories, like if you look at pandemic right now, none of us have a past story, which is exactly the same. But we've had similar things at maybe a smaller scale. We've had floods in the past, we've had other things and how did we think then? What was our approach, more than ideas, what was our approach? And just sitting down and thinking about that brings me those ideas. I'm less organized when it comes to some of these things, but more in the head, more thinking kind of person.
Harish Kumar: I hear a lot of reflection and thinking meta about different things. [00:12:00]
Vinita Gera: You're articulating so much better. I'm admiring that.
Harish Kumar: Thanks. Another thing that fascinated me when I looked at your career arc, Vinita, was the change of scale. You worked at companies like BMC Software, which were great in terms of learning environment. But suddenly, when you moved to a company like Dell, it's an order of magnitude that you're talking about the transition. Did it make any impact and how did you prepare yourself for that change?
Vinita Gera: If I had moved from a smaller company to a bigger company, like Dell, in an engineering role, I don't think it would have been a bigger change. It would have still been a change because the company's large, the ecosystem is large. But it wouldn't have been a big thing. But because I moved to a horizontal role in a bigger company. To just take an example, the entire... BMC was a great company, like I said, earlier, I learned most of my site leadership work over there. But the entire BMC Global is smaller than Dell India, as an example, just to give you a scale of it. Dell is the biggest company I've ever worked for. And absolutely, I was almost like a no-one when I came in. So the whole credibility had to be established again. Defining stakeholders, I still do that. It's been almost close to four years now and I still find newer stakeholders that I haven't built my relationship with yet, and have to work with them. Their immediate ones have been done, of course, but it's an ever-changing ecosystem.
Also finding out within your big company, what's your space? Who will benefit from what you do? And how do you focus as well as go broader? The other thing is finding the gaps. [00:14:00] This is even more important in bigger companies because there is so much you can do. You can get totally overwhelmed with the size of the company and spread yourself too thin, or find out the first few problems and first few gaps that are directly attached to your role, and your scope of overall functionality. And then it increases again and again. But at Dell specifically, I think the one thing that eased my entry into the company was the employee resource groups (ERGs), because these just cut across. These cut across the globe, cut across seniority, and we have many employee resource groups in the company. So I picked the two that I'm most passionate about immediately as soon as I came in. And that gave me a whole network of, within two ERG's, network of people across business units that I could quickly work with.
When you're working for a cause, all our employee resource groups work for a cause, when you're working for a cause your mindset of work is very different. You're holistically working for one common purpose. The dynamics are very different, and you network in a very different style. So that I think used to mean a lot.
But I think the biggest leverage a big company like Dell has, is its size, but also the career hops you can do. When I came to Dell, I met a lot of people who've been in the company for many, many years. My own boss has been in the company for 33 years. When I learned that I was like, Okay, right out of college you've been here. But what most people, tenured people in the company have done is a lot of career hops. So when you move from a whole engineering function to an IT function, or to services, it's like joining a new company altogether. And people have done that. That's the leverage you have that within the company, you could do your learning and switching. And of course, we encourage moving teams quite a bit. [00:16:00]
Harish Kumar: Even on the networking side, what you were saying, if I put my marketing lens, it was like doing your STPs, your segmentation, and targeting the right segment knowing what to position to whom.
Vinita Gera: Correct. And look, it didn't all go well, it took time. When you come from a smaller company to a bigger company, and how much ever humility you have, you have a reputation in a smaller company, and you start thinking you have a reputation, you're good at this, and so on. When you come in here, nobody knows you, you're new. Or very few people know you. Your reputation sometimes precedes you for people who know you from the past or have a connection or a network. But to an absolutely stranger person who's never worked with you, never had a cross-connection with you, you're just another newbie and you have to just build your brand, completely from scratch.
Harish Kumar: Right. Talking of software product companies, they're these tracks that you usually associate people with. They're either in the engineering side, even within engineering, you have an individual contributor role. And there are some people like you who make that switch to a more managerial and executive kind of role. So what do you think are the right and wrong reasons for people to make these switches?
Vinita Gera: Let's go to the first level of switch, you have a tech track, and you have a management track, and when you want to switch to a management track. In India, a lot of people want to. Atleast, it's reducing now. But I remember, early on, in my team, everyone wanted to become a manager. And I'm like, when you ask them, Why do you want to become a manager? You get all kinds of answers. I've got answers, like, I'm not getting married because I'm not a manager (in the arranged marriage scenario). Then you dig deeper into it, because the IT industry evolved so fast. [00:18:00] If you go with the traditional, whether it's banks or the government sector, manager has a higher standing. You're more superior, you have more power, and there's a whole perception around the 'manager' word. That's not true in our industry. Absolutely not true. Any day, I would put my money more over the product architect, because I think it's a world of subject matter experts.
So getting to these reasons, the 'why', and anytime a person in my team wants to become a manager, I love having this conversation and finding their 'why', finding their purpose, what's the reason? Are they going to feel more powerful about it? And sometimes genuinely people come up with the answer saying, they are good decision-makers. They want to have a broader impact. Those are the right reasons. Or they know they can put in that extra focus to a broader area beyond their scope of work, to a whole process part, a whole risk-taking ability, all of those. If you've identified that you've really been doing that already and you can do even better in a leadership position, which makes you take more decisions, take more risks, then those are the right reasons, in my opinion. But very few have that clarity of thought. Many are going behind the title, unfortunately, even now.
Harish Kumar: Knowing yourself, what is motivating you and what are you good at? I think that's the key that you're talking about.
Vinita Gera: Correct. As an example, I'll take my own story, when I decided to move from engineering to site leadership. I could have the world view and I could have my own view. The worldview actually is not that great necessarily, because the world still looks at when you move from an engineering to a site leader role, you're not building a product. You're not directly [00:20:00] impacting in terms of dollars to the top line of the company, in a very tangible measure. You're not customer-focused in terms of an external customer. Your customers are internal stakeholders. In the lens of someone, this could be a role, which is not important, or not that crucial or not that value-generating. But that didn't matter. To me, it was... and the same external view could also be saying, Oh, you're the site leader, and you have a bigger responsibility. So, the external views could vary from their vantage point. But that wasn't important. The important part was why I wanted to do this. Of course, I made this decision after spending about 20 years in my career. So it was much later. But you have to know why you're doing something.
Harish Kumar: Right. Do you see this changing, evolving in the Indian space?
Vinita Gera: Yes, a lot. It's so much more different. If I just take numbers, at one state, everyone in my team wanted to be a people manager. And I was like, we don't need so many people managers, as an example. But now I think the younger crowd that we are getting in is so much more clearer. Some are even very clear that they want to do tech for 10 years only. That's it. And they'll say we'll figure out what the next part is. They talk about switching out completely from the IT industry.
I think that kind of clarity is a generational gift that we've got over time. I'm glad if the previous generation helped get that clarity or whatever the ecosystem or the schooling, whatever led to or the internet, led to this kind of clarity. It's good because we need that. We need people to work on something that they enjoy doing and know why they want to work on that.
Harish Kumar: In general, how do you think GICs, what we call Global Centres...
Vinita Gera: Yeah, GICs or GCCs, both are the terms. [00:22:00]
Harish Kumar: How have they evolved over the years, especially in your career? A lot of what used to happen earlier was this cost arbitrage. You start an India centre, primarily for cost arbitrage. But then, slowly, you started seeing more of these GICs wanting to have ownership of products. Now what? Where are we now? Where are we headed? Is the Indian market itself now big enough for people to think of, Okay, we have a development centre here, and the Indian market itself is big enough for us to have business here. How are things changing? I know it's going to probably use a very wide lens.
Vinita Gera: No... this is my life. You're right, it's totally evolved. From just about 10 years back, also, not too long back, 10 years back also, we were talking about the quality of work that comes to India. We used to have discussions with global stakeholders in the US saying, no, we can do this. Trust us to do this. We can have leaders here, we can build products out of here and so on. That language has changed completely.
If you go even before that a little bit, it was largely maintenance work and porting work. I remember starting my career with porting. It's evolved so beautifully in these two decades that it's very heart-warming to see that we're not always, there's still some of it, but that's not the starting point of the discussion, that we have the talent and we can do it. But still, depending on the stage and depending on the maturity of the company, depending on when they came to India, when the India GIC was established, a lot of the company's maturity graph will go through that stage still.
So, if a new centre gets established like now in 2021, even though the intent is right, even [00:24:00] though that company's leadership has done it in the past with another company in India, even then there will be the teething troubles. That is a given, given the forming norming cycle will happen, it's probably shrunk. But to the ones who have been in the country for much longer, companies like ours and others, I think there's a whole change in the landscape of global leaders sitting out of India. That in my mind changes. Then you're not talking headcount. Then you're talking a whole different language on the roadmap being driven. And we are not talking about global leaders sitting in India managing teams only in India. Some of our global leaders, and again, it's few, it's not too many people, it's still a dozen or so, are sitting in India but managing a global workforce. And a dozen for a big company like ours is still a smaller footprint.
But there are very few such leaders in India, who are based out of India and it doesn't matter anymore. They could tomorrow, be based out of Singapore, if they have to, but managing global teams, so that's happening on leadership. The other part is what product roadmap or what strategy or what function is being driven entirely from here. Now we are seeing more and more progress of entire products being built out of India. I don't think at this time and age, any big multinational can not look at India as a strategic location, and you see this across. So, the ecosystem is a pleasant thing to look at. But you could be on different stages of the maturity graph. It will all get there finally, if the leadership is... any smart leader would look at it. We also continue to be the best cost location. If you are the best cost location, and a lot of people don't want to talk about our cost, saying, let's just talk about value. I think you want to talk about both. You would talk about value at the best cost, [00:26:00] and then the position becomes more compelling for anybody to look at it.
Harish Kumar: In fact, we've been actually talking to some of our clients from other industries, even in FMCG companies, we know people who are sitting in Gurgaon, and now playing global leadership roles. I think that's beginning to change across industries. But one question that comes to mind immediately, when you talk about this Vinita is, there's a change that you need to make, like you talked about how you deliberately looked at upleveling yourself. So there are two aspects to this. One is, upleveling of the leadership, and upleveling of the employees. What are the changes that people need to make? And what are the changes which these GIC leaders need to make in terms of how they think about the site and their vision for the site?
Vinita Gera: I think first we got to do less of us versus them, especially now. Now, when we're all remote across the world, I think it's just such a level playing field. It doesn't matter. But of course, there's familiarity with your own country more. So when I say us versus them, I don't mean to just completely call all of us 'us'. It is about bridging the gap. It's about familiarizing yourself with each other, familiarizing the cultural aspects. And look, this is happening, but it doesn't have to happen in a condescending way. It has to happen on a very level playing field. In terms of the overall world dynamics, India is still not the first world country yet, but it doesn't matter. Because if you look at the IT sector, that is not even a factor you have to consider right now. It's just all level playing. So that us versus them has to be going away from both sides.
Even we from India have to do a massive effort in just not putting those gaps, and [00:28:00] not making hierarchies where they don't exist. And this happens, this still happens, because it's so ingrained in us. It's so ingrained that that is the headquarters, that's where direction will come from. And while that's true, while that is the headquarters, and you're relying, but it all matters on where your direction is coming from. Your direction could be coming from anywhere. What about your own thought leadership? So that's the us versus them.
I think the other factor that's important for India to think about more is the productivity. I think we grew very fast. The IT sector in India grew very fast. And we've not had that slow, systematic growth that the US has had. We're creating specialists now. We have a lot of specialists in the country, who are subject matter experts and do really, really good at what they do. But when it comes to productivity, it's really inconsistent. We have to have a hard look at that aspect. It's not a generalized problem. But we got to give a consistent picture out. And we got to be true to ourselves. We got to be true to ourselves because there's a little difference in how the outlook is right. India is more about like, and here I'm absolutely generalizing and stereotyping, more like getting things done. We love getting things done. We love completing things. And that's how we grew up, just let's get this done.
A lot of the global sites go much deeper and think about how can I do this even better than what I've done. Let me just improvise on this. Let me just tomorrow, get up and improvise my code even further. I think we got to bring in that with our getting it done behaviour that's already ingrained. That combination will serve us very nicely in the long term.
Harish Kumar: Any concrete examples of how people have or rather sites have [00:30:00] made that change doing these two or three things which other companies, other sites can immediately think of saying, Oh, yes, this is something which we have not done and we may want to pick these up.
Vinita Gera: Some companies have gone down that route of documenting productivity very well. I think there is merit in it. But it has to be treaded very carefully, because productivity is not just about the hours part of it. The other factor, concrete examples that people have really done is build successful products from here. Just put your skin in the game and say, and that's where my first point of having global leaders sit out of India is very important. Because they are putting their neck out and saying, I got this, I'll do this, and they did it. That is the only way to build that as a next step for the larger company.
I don't know how concrete this sounds, but building credibility by delivering is the straightforward method of doing it beyond your productivity numbers and your PowerPoints and your business reviews.
Harish Kumar: Right. You did hint about this, but how has 2020 changed the equations here? Because as you said, now, everyone is at a very level playing field. Do you think any of those changes are actually permanent?
Vinita Gera: Look, hybrid is here to stay. It's certainly a change. Hybrid is not going anywhere, we don't see at least in the near future, a complete return to what it was before March 2020 coming back very soon. So it's here to stay. But the changes are not just from the GCC and headquarters and India centre perspective. The changes are also right here within India. There is no majority and minority, and [00:32:00] when I say majority and minority, what I mean to say is at Dell, we were always promoting a flexible culture of working, you could work from home, there were a certain smaller number of people were already remote, even before the pandemic because we had that option. But largely within India, the majority of the workforce was coming into office, but they could have been in different locations.
As an example, if I am hosting an event, an innovation event. Let's talk about your area and things that you help us out with. If I'm hosting an innovation event in one site, or one building in Bangalore, everyone else is a minority. And this is the majority, because the people in this building had the benefit of just walking into the auditorium and attending the event. We obviously saw more people attending here, lesser people from other sites. Now that has completely gone away. I love that change. In my role that change has been one of the biggest gifts of this remote working. Because to me, now an event is pan-India. It doesn't matter where it is being hosted. And there is no minority who is not able to hear clearly because somebody's speaking off the mic and so on. Everyone is in this system of a Zoom window. Now it has its cons, of course, but we've seen this change bring us more together on our programs than before.
Harish Kumar: Also, can you briefly talk about your role in terms of people living and breathing the Dell culture? What does that really mean? Because these can be very high sounding words, but people don't understand what it really means, how do you actually live that culture? So if you can talk about what that means? What does it look like? Your day-to-day schedule in terms of making this work for the company, if you can talk about that.
Vinita Gera: We have a very strong culture code. [00:34:00] But let me speak more about which are the parts of the culture code that resonate the most with me, and my programs that I run across. So to me, the part of being a conscious company, we are a very conscious company. And when we say conscious organization, it starts from our packaging material of our laptop to how we behave with each other, to how inclusive we are. It's a whole spectrum. We're changing the landscape here. Many companies are doing it, but to do it in reality, like when we say inclusion, which is a word you will hear from most organizations, it's a top of mind aspect for companies to work on. But it means so many things. It means many things. It's not just gender, which is what it gets labelled as mostly. So that part resonates with me the most, and how it ties down to being a conscious company, that is. How it ties down to my work, my scope of work is in all aspects.
I'll give you a quick example. If we're running a hackathon, most of our hackathons are business-driven. But then if I'm thinking from the organization culture code perspective, I will think beyond the business outcome of a hackathon. Just a few months back, it happened during the pandemic itself. We did a hackathon that was focused on building technologies for people with disabilities. The first customer in our mind was our own employees. What can we solve? The moment we started thinking with that, we got 30 ideas. I hadn't imagined when we rolled out the hackathon that we will get 30 ideas that were real. And that could be taken to different teams like within tech, within our IT, within our facilities, or to our HR or to business units, that could immediately [00:36:00] be implemented as technology solutions to make life for people with disabilities easier beyond what we had already done. And we thought we had already done a lot.
Now, just thinking through that culture code, and mapping it down into a program is one of the examples. So you got to make it real, credible, when you have to map your culture code into a program, you have to do that deep thinking and reflection, again, to see how you can do that. That's really my life in my role to think of these things. And a lot of it comes from people, by the way, you don't have to think about it alone. A lot of these ideas come from employees.
Harish Kumar: I think it boils down to how you can constantly keep reinforcing the message through different channels, different ways. That's what you were talking about.
Vinita Gera: It's almost infectious. Once you do one, it makes people think of more, saying Oh, we can do this, then we could also do this. So it's a very infectious circle of thinking.
Harish Kumar: Probably not the best word to use.
Vinita Gera: Oh yes!
Harish Kumar: But the virus has always got it right, in terms of how best to spread.
Vinita Gera: Correct. Learn from the virus.
Harish Kumar: Yes, in the least resource-intensive way, how do you spread.
Vinita Gera: After we've kicked it out, learn from it. Don't give a formula, don't tell people how you are spreading.
Harish Kumar: Right. There's a lot more that I want to ask you about the diversity and inclusion bit that you referred to, but before that, I wanted to talk to you about your management style. If I were to ask you, say, one question, what's the one thing that you would have done differently when you started off as a manager?
Vinita Gera: I went in it very aimlessly. Because somebody pushed me into it. It wasn't a choice decision, I was just pushed into, Hey, you might be good as a manager, so start doing it. [00:38:00] I didn't even take it very seriously. If I would have done something differently, I would have gone back to the why, and the thinking of why me? Why have I been picked to become a manager? How can I do more justice to this role? I was very young, I became a manager literally six years after coding, I was the first line manager. So I was still figuring out my overall career, forget my track. It's a very different way of thinking that I have now, but the simple answer is I didn't think too hard. And it had its own gift.
Not thinking too hard about it made me the sponge that I am, because I listened and I was just curious about how to do this. I didn't have a set formula. I didn't have too many role models ahead on how to become a manager and so on. I don't know how different it would have been if I had a lot of IP in my head on how to become a manager before I did.
Harish Kumar: I think that's a natural segue to the next question. Now that you have the IP, do you think you have a playbook before you take up any new leadership role? Or something that somebody else could actually use?
Vinita Gera: It's not a documented kind of playbook. But I lead a lot from the heart. A lot of it comes from my heart. I'm sure it is true for many other people. This is not a unique thing. But I tend to just assess and gauge. The reason I put the heart out first, I'll tell you why. Because everything you do, when I say I assess the ecosystem, if it's a new role, I have to understand what is it. What problem am I trying to solve? Who are the people involved? What are the current processes? What's my exact definition over here, beyond the couple of lines that have been given to me? Now the reason the heart is important is because [00:40:00] you could assess this with a huge critique angle, or you could assess this in a loving way. And I think it's important to assess it in a loving way. Because when you've come into a new role, the people before you haven't created a mess, like most people like to believe I came in and I cleared the mess. Not always, usually not. Sometimes, yes. Sometimes there's a mess that you have to clean up. But most times, there is a system, there's places and like they say, when you're trying to solve a problem, the third or fourth person who comes into solving that problem has maximum leverage, because people have done a lot of trial and error before that. So assessing it in a loving way, is the first step I would do.
The second thing I do, and which I'm not 100% sure is the best approach, I take baby steps. I don't go unless it's a firefighting kind of role where I have to solve a big problem very quickly. If it's a regular, enhance the organization, transform the organization, do it quickly, I tend to take baby steps. And that's why I said it's not necessarily the best approach, always. Sometimes you have to change that stance and not take baby steps and go faster.
The third thing I do is, of course, relationship building. It's very important to me and to figure out where. Often these teams are mixed teams, they're remote, they're not in the same city or the same site, or the same country. So just relationship building is important. That can be clubbed with the assessment engaging step, because when you're doing that, you could also, on the way, figure out who the people involved are and work with them. Again, not a very complex framework, but watch, tread, watch, tread, fix. Show people who you are. In the process, don't forget your identity. Show what you bring to the table and what you care about.
Harish Kumar: This is really fantastic, Vinita, because we're probably getting the... it's like precis writing. What you've learned [00:42:00] over so many years we're getting that in the form of this easy playbook.
Vinita Gera: Thank you. I find it very simplistic, actually. But I think simple works. You don't need a very complex formula for everything.
Harish Kumar: Any people or books or influencers who have affected your management style, influenced your management style?
Vinita Gera: Yeah, I spoke about this a little bit earlier. Like I said, I do a lot. And it continues. It's amazing how much I get into the admiration zone; I have to pull myself out of it because your own identity can get lost if you're getting into too much of an admiration zone. But yeah, I think I learn constantly. I have this constant lens on, if you just leave aside the whole admiration part, I have this constant lesson, what can I do better? Part of it stems from me having my own insecurities of me not being the best. This is not all as rosy as I make it sound I admire people, and so on. It's a lot about me not... and it's so much better now. But when I started off, I didn't start off as thinking and I yet don't think that I'm really good.
It's only now where I've started telling myself no I'm good at quite a few things. That's a little bit of an imposter syndrome that's lesser now but much higher before. But I think that has, and people look at imposter syndrome always negatively. I think there are aspects of it, which while I've worked on it, that has made me learn more. There's this constant meter in my head saying, Oh, this person is good. How did that person do it? I know I'm repeating the earlier point on admiration. But adding the factor of it is to do with who I think I am. And I don't know if I will ever, in this lifetime, hit a stage where I think I'm really good. Most likely not. So this will continue.
Books, yes. I used to read much more than I do now. But, I got deeper on, again, [00:44:00] the kind of books I've started going deeper on are very different now from what I was reading about 10 years back. To give you a couple of examples. And I don't know if you and me have already chatted about this, but all of Brené Brown's books have worked very well for me. She talks about authenticity, she talks about fear, she talks about shame. The reason I like these books is because those were the problems I was working on myself with, so they made a huge impact. But Brené Brown is sort of done-done. Then I like to read books on... done means... when I say done it's already in my system. Then I like to read books on things like Presence. Again, these are areas that I work on myself, so I naturally get drawn towards these books.
Amy Cuddy's Presence has helped me a lot. I'm also a repeat reader. I don't know if it is just because I can't retain too much and remember too much long term, but I have to go back and listen to it and re-iterate and re-etch it into my mind for it to stay and practice and become a part of my life. So Amy Cuddy is my go-to book for any time I have to do a big presentation or a big interview or something big. It's Amy Cuddy who I go to. Now in this phase, I'm actually looking at two categories of books. We've gone into a whole book thing, because I've spoken about the people front. But now I'm looking at this book called Shakti Leadership.
Now, I'm more on the books, which are about inclusion and energy and masculine energy, feminine energy, and how it's all there in you. And how do you find which one is stronger? When does which one pop up? How can you dance between your energies at different times? Because often we slot ourselves saying, Okay, I'm an emotional person. But I'm also a strong person in terms of emotional strength, but I'm also a very aggressive person [00:46:00] when it comes to getting things done. Like there's some deadline tomorrow, I can have a different aspect, that time I'm not emotional. When I'm saying I, it is the same person. Every human being has these aspects in it. Some are passive, and some are very active. So whenever somebody says, I'm an emotional person, it just means that's more dominant. But there's many other things which are there and passive. These are what we call masculine and feminine energy. So that's the part I'm learning right now, from this book called Shakti Leadership. And it's amazing to just read about a concept. Go within, think about it, bring out a different hat in a different time, practice it.
To me, some of these books are like courses, they're not books, they're courses, because you got to go back and apply it. Just reading it never, never makes sense. So I tend to go very slow in my reading, because I'm reading, applying, going back, repeating. And it works for me. So I don't count the books, I look at what I did differently.
Harish Kumar: There's this concept called centireading, where you actually read one book 100 times.
Vinita Gera: That sounds like me, almost. It's funny, because I kept telling myself, I don't have a retention parser like Brené Brown's books as an example. When I was in BMC, I did a book review on her book. And when I did a book review, I had to put up a presentation and everything, and I did it. I did it again, here at Dell, and I had to redo the whole thing again. And I was like, Why do I have to do it again? But I had to go back to the matter. Otherwise, I'll just be doing a presentation. So yeah, probably I'm a centireader.
Harish Kumar: One thing that has been distracting me for the last 45 minutes, 1 hour, from the time we started, is those two books that I see in the background, which I'm not able to figure out what the titles are. You can just quickly tell and put me out of my misery.
Vinita Gera: Both on the way, this is a book gifted to me by someone about 10 years back, and I didn't read it. Is it coming [00:48:00] up okay on the screen? Think Like Da Vinci. I don't know if you're familiar with this. It's not caught my full attention yet. Atomic Habits is referred to me by my current mentor. And this is, again, a pain area, because I don't have a very strong discipline when it comes to habits that I'm not naturally drawn towards. The ones I love doing, I embrace those like crazy. And Atomic Habits, I know I'm halfway through this book, it's already working. When my mentor was talking about it, she gave me examples of the four or five different things that changed, and she actually started doing and how she did it and the framework. So she almost gave me a summary of the book before she gifted it to me, actually. And then I was like, Okay, let's read this now. It’s a popular book.
Harish Kumar: Yes, we can definitely vouch for the value of whatever he talks about in the book. We've implemented that for ourselves and for our customers. So we know. We can guarantee that.
Vinita Gera: Yeah, your drip system of learning is actually aligned with Atomic Habits in a way.
Harish Kumar: One more thing that I wanted to ask you about, author Adam Grant. I listened to one of his podcasts where he talks about this concept of user manual. He says, every product comes with a user manual. But we never get a user manual for people or for leaders. What's the best way to work with someone? What'll get the best out of someone? So if I were to ask you that question, what brings the best out of you? What would you answer to that?
Vinita Gera: I'll get to that answer, and before that, and I know the concept that you're talking about Adam Grant's user manual. Sometimes just figuring out your user manual actually, the real user manual is itself a task, knowing that is a task. The whole area of self-awareness is not as... [00:50:00] like a lot of people like to believe they're very self-aware. But it's constant work. I think suddenly you get surprised with, oh... like a big aha moment pops up. So yeah, these are topics I think about a lot. I make an attempt at answering this. The first thing that comes in my user manual is authenticity. So if you're my connection, be my real connection. Don't fake it. This goes with also who I am. I can't even fake a compliment to a person. So if I've complimented someone, it is real. Absolutely real, just can't do it. As a receiving end also the same thing happens. I literally recognize a genuine compliment and a fake one. I love to, especially if it's my team members, as an example, or if it's the immediate people I work with, not necessarily my direct reportees. If I already like them, sometimes in my head, I'm going don't suck it up. Don't do anything to give me a fake compliment. I already like you. You mess it up by doing that, actually. So the authenticity to me is very brand. And it's not that I don't like compliments. I love the compliments. But the genuine ones, the genuine praise is what I care about, and genuineness in everything.
Right from telling me about a task, telling me about a status, or telling me if you had a genuine idea, and this happens often in a work environment. The idea will be someone’s, and somebody else is saying, Oh, I have the same idea. And suppose you keep saying that. Oh, I have the same idea. But you didn't speak about it. It just makes it so fake. To me that authenticity is a winner. And the opposite of it is a complete tick-off. The second thing is I think, I don't like people taking me for granted. This is very important for me because I am a giver. I love giving. I like to genuinely [00:52:00] help, and I'm very happy when I get help. It's a different thing, this one is more proactive, I will help, but if I get help, I'm super happy.
So, when it comes to mentorship, anytime I've received sound advice, anytime somebody has been a champion of mine, without me asking for it, I'm really happy. I'll do everything to thank them genuinely. But when it comes to me and what I give people, I hate it when people take it for granted that I will do it. In short, what I'm saying is I hate the askers. The funny thing is that we are in a world of people just shamelessly asking right now.
On a lighter note, if you look at LinkedIn, and I made the mistake of just accepting most people, as long as they're in the tech industry, one hop away, I just accept everyone's LinkedIn request. What follows immediately is here's my resume, help me find a job in Dell. I'm like, but I don't know you, you're just a new LinkedIn Connect. Of course, that's the extreme, but it's not the extreme because it's common. It's shamelessly common that how can I refer you? How can I put my name on you as a referral when I don't even know you? Forget working with you, I would want to have worked with you, I would want to have known you, or at the minimum. So either you're in this category that I've worked with you and I know who you are, and I think you're good, then I refer you. Or the second category is I have not worked with you but I genuinely know about you, and you're desperately in need of some help. You're in a situation which needs help. But in all other categories, I don't think you can even ask me for it. So those mails don't even get responded to by me most of the time. But that's of course, the LinkedIn part.
In general, people can take you for granted sometimes, and I get very ticked out on that one. In distress times like we are now, I think asking shamelessly for help is fine. We are in an exceptional situation now, but not in normal times. It sounds a little selfish. [00:54:00]
The third area is again, what I call generally assuming something about my life without knowing much about me. If you are my best friend, and if you know so much about me and you give me a judgmental comment, I'll take it. The reason I call this out is because I get this a lot. I get all kinds of statements saying Oh, you're so well placed in the industry because you're a woman. The world needs more women in the task force, and I'm like, Okay, where did that come from? Not just on gender. I've had comments saying this is easy for you because you have the money. I'm like first, do you know my bank balance? How do you know I have money? So, loose comments about my life and assumptions about my life without asking me if it's true is just uncalled for. But again, on the face of it, I just smile and take it. But in my head, I have a cross working thing. No, not doing anything for you ever in future. I get very judgemental when it comes to people doing these things with me. So that's my user manual, more about what not to do, less about what to do. Because the ‘what to do’ is simple, just be authentic.
Harish Kumar: Yes. This is great, we should actually play this to anyone who's joining your team next.
Vinita Gera: I think that's the first thing my team members usually get to know about, very easily.
Harish Kumar: But, one thing that I've seen, coming out in this entire interview, and this is something which is not because of these questions and answers, but this is something which comes out very genuinely is like you mentioned, the heart in what you are doing. We are going through tough times. So, I just wanted to ask you about how has this way of looking at things, and leading, how has that impacted in the way Dell has [00:56:00] actually tried to do things or tried to do things differently. If you can talk about that, how Dell has done it and how you have also played a role. Please don't be too humble and underplay your role. But just talk about what you people have been doing.
Vinita Gera: Phase-1 was easier. We did a few things like just enabling people to work remotely. Give the standard things, like give a monitor, give a chair, give docking stations, get people productive at home. We did all of those right away, immediately when we knew that this is not something that is going to last only one or two weeks and it’s longer-term. This phase, the current new phase with the double mutant, triple mutant, that's hit India now, specifically in India, has been harder, because we are at the mercy of the city infrastructure. And the city infrastructure, depending on how much of a peak we are in, is literally at a big test right now. So most of our work now, and I'll talk more about the current phase, because everything from crisis leave to empathy to doing the dialogue to just customizing mental health, everything was already in place. Now what we're trying to do is, look, the virus has hit us very badly. Now it's a matter of saving lives.
In very simple words, we're seeing how can we save lives of our employees and their family members. Beyond the benefits' definition, benefits are taken care of. Like most companies, we have a health care provider, we have someone for telemedicine, we have someone for mental health, we have these systems in place, but they are also stretched. Now is where we are looking at how the employees, how the leadership team can lead from the front and how we can use our employees as volunteers to help each other. It's almost like it's all in progress right now.
But looking [00:58:00] at a level two support beyond healthcare providers, of us directly helping. A lot of this is already informally being done by our employees within their own teams, or whenever they hear. I literally get up in the morning, some of this is being done through WhatsApp and informally, unofficially, through groups.
Many days, I get up in the morning and look at those messages and then through the day, these messages are coming in and I'm like, did this person even realize he or she or they saved two lives today, literally saved two lives. And I don't know, I was having this discussion with a colleague yesterday saying, Do we even know what's happening? Does a person who's being found a bed by 10 other people in the backend, does that person know who helped? And she said, it doesn't matter. She gave me a phrase from... and I'm not a big mythology person... from mythology that was, I had to look it up and see what it means, but it really meant 'it doesn't matter.' We're just all in this together. And it won't matter who saved them. What matters right now is just getting that person the resource, the oximeter, the concentrator that they need. The informal one is really working well.
But formally, of course, as a company, we're looking at all aspects of it. We're figuring out what to do on vaccinations, what to do on oxygen concentrators, how to get people the help that they need, and how to come out of this alive literally.
Harish Kumar: Again, thinking meta about this. If you look at what are the skills and the operating system required for managing, say a support problem like this. If you think of it as an operations management exercise, these are solved problems. I mean, companies have done this at scale. Yes, not probably with what is at stake here, but a lot of those best practices can [01:00:00] and should be used here, right?
Vinita Gera: Correct. It's in-house. These skills are in-house. Like if we were to set up which we are thinking of setting up a level three support centre, it's the same as a product, tech support centre, but this is a different thing. So picking the right people to do this, and those skills exist in the company. This is just not the business we are in. But this is more in-house for our employees. But we didn't have to innovate on the processes and we used technology.
In fact, most of the technology that we're using to do all of this is in-house by our IT team, just some amount of customization needed and so on. The other interesting thing that's happening is a lot of us in the leadership team are doing things we've never done. And it doesn't matter whether you have the background for it or not. This is what a life and death situation teaches you. When it comes to something as critical as saving lives, you don't assess whether I have the skills for it or not, and so on.
As an example, right now, I am partnering with our communications leader to run communications for this period. I don't come from a comms background, but I'm literally doing comms now in partnership with my comms leader. And it didn't matter. In a normal time, if I was given a comms project, I would question myself, ask a question to my leader saying, but I don't know about this, so and so. None of it mattered. It was like, Yes, I'll do it. I don't know, what's the reflection that's going to come out of this later. We don't always live in such times. We don't want to always live in such times. But the fearlessness that came in for us leaders to do this was amazing. I wish if we can translate this down even to peaceful times, it's a gift we've learnt.
Harish Kumar: Let me change tracks a bit, but not too much here. I wanted to bring your attention to an article that you had co-authored last year [01:02:00] around the time of the International Women's Day. It was titled if I remember correctly, What Women Want - An Engineer's Guide. What triggered you to write that article?
Vinita Gera: My co-author, Sarika Phatak was really the trigger. She nudged me more and she did the massive work over there. But, the trigger really was, let me go back to Sarika, and let me talk about a few things here. Sarika's a recent friend. I have known her for about two years now. She's not like a lifetime friend. But the moment we got to know each other, we realized the commonalities. And this is not just she and me, I think there is this segment of what I call my kind of people - career women. When I say career, it could be any career, it could be a teaching career, it could be an NGO career, not IT, anything. Something that you do, mid-level, my age kind of people, this spectrum of 35 to upwards anything, senior and successful in their own definition of success, not in the world's definition of success, and secure, and having an identity and having a voice. This is my default formula of friend.
Anyone who's this is by default going to be my friend, I'm going to get along well. It doesn't matter. The rest of the things don't matter. And these people who are living life wholeheartedly. And there are many of them. It's a wonderful world for these people, and so Sarika and me, both are absolutely one of them. When we spoke about examples like this, some of these were dark examples. I think some of these were like, Oh, you know, this is what we were told. How funny that somebody could even... how funny and how sad that somebody could say this to me, or how, like as an example, somebody could say, Hey, you have two incomes in the family, you need not work. I'm like not your business, again, not your business.
Statements like these, which are just thrown around. [01:04:00] I don't want to sound very negative about these statements or make it only my problem, because it's not my problem alone. Ask any woman more or less and ask some men, they've been given these statements. More women, less men, but we've all received it. Whether we've turned a blind eye towards it, responded to it, corrected it, fought for it is a different thing. But we've been given this. And that's where she and I said, let's look at this and let's start writing around it. We were a little more ambitious than what we actually acted upon. We wanted to do more of these, we should go back to doing more of these. But we started with that one, which was fun to write. It was received very well. It was an interesting thing to do. I need to do more of those.
Harish Kumar: Yes, definitely you should. We'll definitely link to the article in our show notes. But if you can quickly talk about any interesting reactions, responses you got for those articles. Did people's attitudes about you or about life in general change? Did they have to reflect on what they've been saying, doing, how they've been thinking about it?
Vinita Gera: We actually got some people who even called us but if I look at what's the most common reaction I got on that, or the most common comment, the feeling, sentiment, most people said bang on. Exact. You didn't mince words. You were funny. A lot of credit for this goes to Sarika for keeping it crisp and keeping it funny. Like, I wouldn't think of writing a funny article on this topic by myself. So it was really interesting, but most people love the directness of that article.
Harish Kumar: How have things changed with respect to diversity and inclusion in the last one year, because suddenly, like you said, a lot of things have actually got leveled. It's a level [01:06:00] playing field. But in some cases, if those biases had existed, it has actually gotten worse. Because, we've seen stories where we've talked to some leaders where they've said, yeah, this person is not going to be available, because she will need to... she's at home, so she'll be taking care of the kids. It's just an assumption. But yeah, that's a foregone conclusion, almost. So have those things got worse? Have you seen such things? In general, how have things changed in the last one year?
Vinita Gera: Let's talk about the in-general part and then let's talk about the remote working part. In general, things have been on the progression for quite some time now, and very good progression. Because it's no longer acceptable. Systems are in place for people to not make comments that are off the line or off the mark, or say something disrespectful, or assume something. I have a system in place to call it out, not just to that person, and I have the courage but also go back to my organizational systems to say, this was disrespectful, this was unethical, this was whatever. So, because of that work that has been done over the years, overall, things are improving. There is absolutely zero doubt about that. I love the pace with which it has increased over the last four or five years even more. The pace is really caught up now. The carefulness, it's also making people ultra-careful and ultra-close, but those are the flip sides of it.
But I'd rather prefer people think before they speak, than just making these comments. And look, this is not just two women in general. I am guilty of me having made a comment and immediately going back and apologizing. That's okay, because we all have different conditionings. But being unaware and speaking about it is also okay, because you're just unaware, [01:08:00] you don't know. You will always find out something unaware. What's not okay in my mind is being aware and feeling, I can still get away with this and I can still say it. That is, in my mind, the worst thing to do and shouldn't be accepted. So that's that.
To your point on last year and the situation because of remote working, it's really a very mixed bag. Because some women have absolutely had it harder, had it harder depending on how many people are working and studying from home. What is the house size? All of these aspects matter. Because it's a daily thing. And not just logistics on people working from home and the size of the house, but also the equation in the family. If the equation in the family's already tilted, and the larger part of the work in the house is on the women's shoulders and hands, then they are having it hard, because for a lot of time our help was gone away, the day-care being closed, children not going to school. So a large population depending on how many in this stage are struggling has been impacted and they've had to figure out on their own.
I'm not in one of those situations, so it's more coming from an outside-in view, but I'm hoping that in this one year more families understood the role and the tilted equation, if it was tilted, and balanced it even slightly. To get to an equal work 50-50 or even other ways, tilted equation in families, is still a few more years to go. But even if it corrected to some aspect and even if people took on, whether it's the children or the partner, or whoever, the seniors of the house, whoever took on more responsibilities and corrected the tripod on the table kind of situation, [01:10:00] I'm glad that happened. From an organization perspective, I think that isn't a problem if your culture code is in place. You wouldn't do this. Even if in your mind, it's a talk. Even if in your mind, you feel that a woman won't bring her full self to work, you can't say it without testing it out. So that's a good thing. If you test it out, and if you really feel there's a problem, and you have a discussion with your employee, that's like any other, it could be a man, it could be a woman, and look at it from a non -gender perspective right now.
Anybody who's unwell, you've got to give the time because it's so risky, you don't know if that person is going through COVID? Or is it mental health? Or is it general sickness? You have to give them their time. So the gender is off the table completely over here, it's everyone over there. We have to overall become more empathetic. So, that's happening. More empathy has come into the equation at work right now. I covered these three areas.
Harish Kumar: Let's go a bit deeper on looking at diversity and inclusion, not from a gender lens. Even ages also matter.
Vinita Gera: Absolutely.
Harish Kumar: You probably have people who are maybe 50-55, and their children joining in the same company. There is clearly a generational change there in terms of thinking. You talked about inclusiveness in terms of say, like in the work from home situation where you need to think of everyone, depending on how many devices are actually being used at home, for school or for work. You have to factor all that in. Yes, empathy is increasing, because people are probably being forced into situations where they now have to start thinking about these things.
But what do you think, are some concrete ways in which some of these can be improved? How do you actually get more empathy? [01:12:00] How do you help everyone develop that inclusive attitude? In fact, if you just look at the ageism thing, you need the younger ones to be more inclusive of the older ones, and vice versa. How do you get that? What are the concrete ways in which we can do that?
Vinita Gera: Correct. You're right. I have 24 year-olds joining my team. They're practically the age of my daughters. You're right on that, I realize that I'm bending backwards to fit in with them, just because they’re reporting to me, it's not like they have to figure it out. I try to do a dialogue with them in an area in which we will connect, which will be very different. My interest areas and their interest areas, my language and their language are also very different. So, a lot of it is aligning and bridging the gap somewhere. But at an organizational level, it's a hard problem to solve simply because this is adult learning. We're trying to learn a skill.
Let me take an example. When I learned about the whole LGBTQI+ terminology, it was a lot of work, because I had to start from the definition first. Then I had to understand the life of someone in the community. Then I had to understand my language, I had to understand my pronouns. So there was a lot of learning that I had to do. It was learning. And it was still a learning where I only have learned it theoretically. I'm not in a world where I'm around too many people who've come out. I haven't even practised what I have learnt. Am I really inclusive or not on that aspect. So, you're spot on. The learning is hard, what we have done, a couple of things that we've done, organizationally, and [01:14:00] then I'll tell you about individually.
Organizationally, we do have a very beautiful class on inclusion. I'm a huge fan of that class. It's called MARC, which is called Many Advocating Real Change. We work with a company to do that. But it's one of the life-changing classes. I thought I was quite inclusive. I've done a lot of work on inclusion. But when I did that two-day class and I walked out of it learning a few more things. When doing that class with your colleagues is even more beautiful. Because then in that class, you learn a few things. Sometimes it's simple things like who or what profession were your parents in?
Even privilege comes around inclusion. We can act so privileged because we got our education. Some of our colleagues' parents and many of our colleagues, not just some, many of our colleagues' parents didn't have a job in a company but were doing something which needed them to work with their hands. Whether it is farming or whatever. Their education, their system, their learning was so different from, say mine. So how do I not make it like a level? How do I make it an understanding? Okay, this is how this person grew up. This much harder this person had to grow because I was more privileged, I had to work less harder on this front, and the whole ecosystem, I'm just taking one example.
But the whole ecosystem of understanding how different we are, and now we're all in the same company. So, should we apply the same lens and so on. It goes very deep, that class goes very deep. I think while we ensure everyone does this class, I am a proponent of doing the class multiple times, because each time you will learn something differently, and the class is also evolving. But you don't have to rely on your organizational classes or workshops for this. A lot of the learning can happen if you do the conversation. I love bringing out this conversation. Not as a joke. [01:16:00]
Ageism, like you said, there's so many jokes on age, there're so many jokes on hair, there're so many jokes on skin colour, and whatnot. Name it and you have a joke. I think we have a little less sensitivity because we label it as a joke. Oh, it's just a joke. No, if the joke is not on your own hair, or your own age or your own colour, then you might as well not crack it, then it's not inclusive. So a lot of it is bringing this conversation out, calling it out with the risk. And look Harish, I can do this so much better now. I can do the call out so much better, because I am ready to take the risk of ruining a relationship, because I brought out a conversation. I couldn't always do it.
I understand when people can't call out because they don't want to ruin relationships. I know I've been a little all over the place, but a structured workshop, our own learning, our own effort into it has to go in. When I gave you the LGBTQ example, I learnt it without being a part of the community. So, similarly on women, you don't have to be a woman to learn more about women. Everyone needs to learn about the other sex. Yeah, a couple of things that we have to do.
Harish Kumar: Again, I was just going slightly meta about it when you were talking about this. Like you said, you went out of your way to learn about these things. Now, this has been a problem in another area that I just can't let you go without talking about, which is encouraging a culture of innovation. Everyone is expected to do their day job and deliver what has been asked of them. But every site, again, wants people to work on innovation-related activities. So how do you actually persuade people to volunteer their time? I mean, what you did around learning was literally volunteering your time. Similarly, how do you persuade people to volunteer their time around something like this? Are there any [01:18:00] incentives that you can actually give to people saying, no, you actually need to think about this because it's going to help you?
Vinita Gera: You know a little bit about our work in the innovation space, we've worked together. You've helped us with a few things, in fact. We had the benefit of doing this for multiple years now. So the ripple effect is happening now. It's the start, which is a problem. But even with the ripple effect, because people have their day jobs, the day jobs are always going to take priority and this is always going to be the extra. So the extra should be so purpose-driven, that you don't look at it as an extra. You're willing to do that extra part is one thing. But at the same time, it's easier for me to say, Hey, day job, and this is your extra. But it's not fair. It's not fair to say, volunteer in your own time, and we won't give you any benefit from your day job perspective. So as a leadership team, two things that I'm trying to say here.
One, drive your programs around innovation, such that people find their purpose. Whether like I said, it's a hackathon around building technology for people with disabilities, or whether it's patents, or whether it is a new idea in an existing product, whichever way, there has to be a passion and a purpose on why I should volunteer for that. That's from the larger team members’ perspective.
From a leadership perspective, I think the least we can do when we do this very well, for employee resource groups, not just for innovation, is encourage it. So employee resource groups are a great example and innovation is no different, except that employee resource groups have a cause associated with it and innovation has a different objective associated with it, but they're all beyond your day job. They're all in your volunteer time. So I'll take the ERG example because we encourage the ERG joining to the level that, if I were a new manager in the company and I was coming, or I [01:20:00] acquire a new team, when I get introduced to my team members, I will certainly ask them which ERG are they a part of? If they're not a part of any ERG, in my mind, I'm wondering if we have the right ERGs in place, because our ERGs are so diverse from planets to the new age, the age divide that you spoke about, to women, to connectivity right now, all of these, to cultural differences. They are so different that I find it hard to believe that you don't connect with either of them.
But the point that I'm trying to make is that when I asked the question, which ERG are you a part of, I indirectly mean, I hope you're a part of at least one ERG. Same goes with innovation. So it's almost become a show-off point if you are doing this in the right way, in the right spirit, saying, Hey, I do this. And I'm also passionate about this. It's like one of those interviews. You go to the interview, and if you have all the skills, but you have no passion outside of what you've done. Some people say, No, you're not fit for my company's culture code. Same goes with everything that we volunteer with. When we look at talent cards of our companies for certain programs or certain initiatives, we look at the talent card, what you've done, what you've achieved, and then we have to look at the section of what additional have you done? And that's where innovation ties down to me. So we support it as an organization and the purpose has to be driven.
Harish Kumar: How do you actually show value for multi-year initiatives like this?
Vinita Gera: There is value. Simple. I'm thinking about the question because I'm thinking of a multi-year initiative. We have a multi-year initiative around high talent, High Potential Talent Development Program. The talent itself, the alumni speaks about itself. Same goes with our innovation program, a lot of the work that we've done. I'm imagining now, I keep sticking to one example for the inclusion hackathon that we did, I want to do that every year. But by the time [01:22:00] I get to the inclusion hackathon next year, the value of the previous year is already shown. Because the change has been implemented and a lot of our inclusion hackathon ideas were around our building facilities. So we'll be able to implement those but not actually use those.
But around tech, if we've been able to already implement something from the last hackathon within this year, and then when we go in here, it's just like I said earlier, a ripple effect. It becomes sticky. You know what you're going to get out of it. You know if you put in an idea and work on that in that hackathon, there is a possibility that it's going to impact lives, and that builds on each other. Then it's a matter of capturing all this properly in a proposal or a PPT, or a review of logistics of all of that.
Harish Kumar: Till now, this has been very useful, very valuable, but slightly heavy in terms of the weight of the conversation. So let's just make things a bit light. What do you do outside of your work?
Vinita Gera: These days, it's just gardening because there's hardly anything outside of the campus society. There's nothing outside. Let me tell you some interesting things about my gardening. I'm a plant killer, I kill plants a lot because I didn't sit down and learn about it. But I love plants. My dad has a green thumb and he's always been. So, it's an aspiration. I want to be like my father, when it comes to gardening. He can randomly grow things from anywhere and everywhere. So that's an aspiration, and I'm a huge fan of his gardening. I'm going step by step now.
First, I started with doing the more capitalistic thing. Going and buying as many plants and planters and planting them. That's not enough. You can't throw money and get a garden out of it. So now I'm learning, now I'm going back and learning. I still kill plants, because I'm a little casual about it. [01:24:00] I'm not giving it my eight hours a day, I give it like 30-minutes a day. But I'm trying to do it a little bit more systematically. That's one thing that's become a... it's been what now...? I've always been doing it in little habits, but properly in the lockdown, since March 2020. It's been about over a year that I've done it and very happy with the whole work. It's just putting that seed and something popping out of it is like a child. It's amazing. I literally count flowers every day, and every day over chai, I think my husband must have gotten bored out of this, I say, oh, look new leaf, or look new flower, and they grow fast. Some of these things. I think it's gone quiet in my head. Now, I'm becoming the plant lady.
Harish Kumar: Great! That's another topic that we should be extending notes on.
Vinita Gera: I know you're in it. You're much better I'm sure. I'm the plant killer. Don't show me your plants.
Harish Kumar: We spoke about some of the books that you read, but anything outside of these work-related books that you read, and other things that you do?
Vinita Gera: Most of my books are outside, as in they're more psychological kind of an effect. On books very quickly, what I do more is while you saw two physical books here, I'm more on Audible right now, because I can club it with walking. That's why the multiple repeats are needed, on Audible, it takes some time to go in. But, I'm so thankful I went to Audible, and I haven't cancelled my US audible subscription now, it's much cheaper in India, just because I always have more credits than I can read. I keep doing that, again, like gardening, I'm more of an aspiration... My aspiration on reading is much higher than what I'm actually doing. I'll get to it. You keep thinking of when you retire, how much [01:26:00] more you'll do. But I don't know if that'll happen, because now in the lockdown we really had more time with less travel. But I only moved a few steps in that direction. But I'm also, outside of work and outside of work-related books, I'm also a massive Netflix, Amazon Prime watcher, because to me, that's also somewhere not just... it's not useless to me, watching TV is absolutely not useless to me.
I remember watching Madam Secretary, and getting inspired by her, her body language and just everything. Then I watch some of the useless stuff, like I watch crime, and then I get bad dreams, and then I stop crime for some time. But TV and series are an important part of my life. And also the bonding between, there's some parts that I watch alone, and some parts which I watch with my husband. So we discuss characters, sometimes. We get quite into it. What we don't like to watch is badly made series, very badly directed series, bad acting, and no plot. That's what we don't watch. We watch some hard-core stuff of good crime with lots of killings kind of series.
Harish Kumar: So what's the show that I should not watch?
Vinita Gera: I am sounding a little country critical right now. But I'm not a big fan of some of the Indian series. Very few have come out, and only recently they've come out to be. So I watched this one on Arya, it's Sushmita. Sen. And I said, Hey, Sushmita Sen, has to be good. But so badly made, I was like can't watch it, can't watch it. Maybe the bar has risen higher because some of the European shows are so well made, they'll never give it out. They'll never explicitly call out something saying, Okay, look, I lifted this book. Whereas some of our shows are calling it out, for a dumb audience maybe, or I don't know what, but that pisses me off completely. [01:28:00] So don't watch Arya for sure. Even if you're a fan of Sushmita Sen.
Harish Kumar: Noted! Any hacks that you have done which you're really proud of?
Vinita Gera: Let's take fitness as an example, which is again, an area which I've been working on for quite some time. It's always ups and downs, it's never like nothing. But it's never been very good. And when I say fitness, anything, just doing some fitness activity, even if it's simple walking every day. So one hack, and I want to do something for 40 minutes every day, whatever it is.
One hack that's working right now is the step challenges. I thought I was not very competitive on every aspect, like steps, but I am. I secretly hope for people adding me to their step challenges, or I create one and I join one because that triggers this little bit of, at least do 10,000 everyday kind of thing in me and makes me do it. I think that's one hack, which is working for me on steps. I always want to be a part of a step challenge, not with strangers. It has to be with people I know who will judge me if I walk 2000 steps a day.
Harish Kumar: That's interesting. That's I think putting Atomic Habits to a different use case. But yes, that's good at quiet times. What's the first non-work related app that you open in the day?
Vinita Gera: Instagram? I'm right down on Insta. I am a fan of Insta and most of it is plant feeds, by the way.
Harish Kumar: Which you can't touch and kill!
Vinita Gera: Yes, I see and then I aspire even more. I'm like okay, I can do this. I'll be there.
Harish Kumar: Nice. Let's just come to the last section, where I'm going to ask you for your hot takes on three things. I'm going to give you these words. [01:30:00] This may sound like a rapid-fire, but it need not be a rapid-fire. You can take your time.
Vinita Gera: I'm terrible at rapid-fire. Give me time to think.
Harish Kumar: You can take your time to think about it. What is the future relevance of hackathons?
Vinita Gera: You want me to answer a few words you said, right?
Harish Kumar: You can take your time. It’s a hot take.
Vinita Gera: I think when you want to do something quickly, quick, rapid. Do it. Put it out there. I think the pandemic is a great example. If I want to build a quick command centre to help my employees, a hackathon - perfect way to do it.
Harish Kumar: What do you think is the future relevance of engineering managers?
Vinita Gera: Need very few of them, don't need too many. We have a ratio of say 1:12. But it can expand to 1:20, from a numbers perspective. But the role is changing. The role of ‘process’ is changing. With CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery & Deployment), with everything being a burndown chart, if you're using Scrum, or whatever tools doing your job or task, your engineering manager role evolves, and you need lesser of them. It has to become more people-centric and more strategic. Where should my direction go. I'm using a product engineering example because that's really my life, but any manager. It could be a manager in services. What customer problem am I solving? What strategy am I solving? How am I ensuring my people are at their best, happy, productive team? If they can do that, that's what we need.
Harish Kumar: Finally, what is the future relevance of GICs in a post-pandemic world?
Vinita Gera: Truly global. You're in the same ecosystem. It just happens to be in a different time zone. [01:32:00] The only thing that matters, and in fact is of benefit, is that we're also low cost. But I really feel now jobs should be posted across. The whole facility management part, where you are based out of, won't go away fully, but it reduces and focus on work increases. So, hybrid model, hybrid GICs, that's what we're getting to should become boundaryless now, post-pandemic.
Harish Kumar: That was the last one that I had, Vinita. This was fantastic, like I said. We've actually got playbooks on how should leaders be thinking about how to get their teams to do more. We've got playbooks on how engineering managers should be thinking about how to do better, how to manage better. How and when to make the switch and not to make the switch. I think the most important thing that we picked is your user manual. If someone wants to join your team, what is it that works well with you and what does not. Really great, enjoyed a lot. Lots of things to learn.
Vinita Gera: Thank you. I enjoyed talking. It was very conversational and it was really nice talking to you on this different set of topics.
Harish Kumar: Thank you.