Raj Sethuraman - CTO at Wolters Kluwer ELM

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Hello, my friends. Today we are talking to Raj, the CTO at Wolters Kluwer, and we discuss his unique thoughts on the three levels of leadership, the importance of having a mentor to help guide you, and how humility and vulnerability can help you be a better leader. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO Podcast. Here we go. This is the Modern CTO Podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:32) Hello?

(Raj at 00:00:37) Hey, Joel. How are you? I'm doing fantastic. How about you?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:40) Fantastic. So where are you located?

(Raj at 00:00:43) I live in Houston, and it's getting a little warmer out here. But, you know, Houston weather is always unpredictable. It was raining a couple of days ago. How about you?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:57) I'm down in Florida. And, yeah, it's pretty good. It's nice and bright and blue skies, and people are opening up and starting to get out. You can't even tell that there's a pandemic anymore in the office complex I'm in.

(Raj at 00:01:11) I was reading an article yesterday that the beaches are opening up and people are trying to show up. Slowly getting back to normal, so it's all good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:21) Yeah, it was interesting. I am friends with one of the county commissioners, and he was telling me that they had trouble closing the beach because there were no gates because we've never closed the beaches in the history of the beach.

(Raj at 00:01:36) That's interesting.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:38) This is—

(Raj at 00:01:38) This is a totally new phenomenon where you are looking out for gates for closing the beach.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:44) I know. I know. So they went to the construction department and got those cement blocks they use for construction and just, in the middle of the night, dumped them in front of the beach access.

(Raj at 00:01:55) So put those barricades so people don't get—

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:58) Yeah. Yeah. So I heard Elon Musk is going to be moving some of his rocket facilities to Texas. Did you hear about that?

(Raj at 00:02:07) Yeah, I'm hearing about it. It's all interesting. People, when you think about Houston, the first thing that comes to mind is NASA and how these technologies can be built and launched. So a lot of activities, I could tell you that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:23) You ever get into that? Are you like a hobbyist? Do you follow it, or do you just support it?

(Raj at 00:02:28) No, I do follow. And of course, I have three boys, three sons, and they all are interested in going to the place to unpack the technology and what it is, the space technology. So they show a lot of interest. So I've been there a couple of times. I'm not an ardent follower, I would say, but certainly I keep myself stay connected.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:51) These days, I like that we're in a society where, you know, people that are improving the world, like Elon Musk or the Bezoses that are doing interesting things, that they do have a celebrity status. Because when I was growing up, I didn't see a whole lot of that, but I'm seeing more of it, I think.

(Raj at 00:03:08) Yeah. So what's happening right now is, if you take a decade ago, we never thought such technologies would come into play with the private space. Right? Private companies can venture into it and try to do some research, but now things have become so accessible thanks to technology advancement, but also passion. These leaders, they have a strong passion towards what they do. So the combination of the leadership and accessibility of technology is driving greater innovation, in my opinion.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:41) I was reading some of your articles on Forbes Technology Council. You had a really good one I liked about the three levels of leadership.

(Raj at 00:03:48) Correct. I, yeah, I wrote it, I believe a couple of months ago, but I always try to emphasize leadership is not a macro concept, so you have to break that into organization, team, and individual levels. So it gives more clarity in terms of what you could drive and achieve some great outcomes for yourself and your company. So that's the context behind that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:14) Are there like three specific levels?

(Raj at 00:04:17) Yeah. So usually I talk about the levels from the company standpoint. As a leader, you are part of a big company, so you need to understand the company's vision. And when you get up in the morning, you have to live and breathe, so your aspirations are in line with company's goals. So that's the first level of leadership. The second one is your team or organization, because when you drive your own team or organization, it's a branch off from the company, but it has its own goals and measure of success and also some cultural aspect. Right? You need to ensure there are some norms and guidelines that your team is following so that you work as one team to achieve the common goal. That's the second level.

(Raj at 00:05:06) The third level, I always talk about your own leadership. Right? You have a set of leadership attributes that you have to role model. For instance, delegation, motivating your team. How do you break the resistance, and how would you just use your skill to navigate the challenges? For instance, we are in the midst of this COVID. Right? And one of the personal leadership I think about when, how you navigate the challenges when you deal with such scenario is try to be more agile and try to make some real-time decisions because the circumstance is still evolving and it's fluid. As a leader, you need to know how you define yourself to make such decisions in real time without having a lot of future insights into it. So those are the three levels that I always talk about.

(Raj at 00:05:59) Now, if you combine all these three levels, it produces one common output that makes yourself better, your team better, and it advances your company to the next level.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:11) How do you coach leaders on that third aspect that you mentioned about like leading yourself? How do you coach people around that?

(Raj at 00:06:19) Yeah. That's a great question. I think before I start coaching the leaders, first I need to understand those leaders. Right? What are their intrinsic motivation, their extrinsic motivation, and what type of personality they are? So that understanding is critical, the first step. The second step is, I think there are aspects of individual leadership, such as how they have to manage with situations. How do they make decisions? Right? What are the criteria in making decisions? How do they role model innovation, lead by example? And how do they empower, energize, and educate others? So those are all some of the attributes, and usually I don't talk about concepts. I try to give some examples, and I give their own examples. For instance, hey, you did that last time. That's a great example of empowerment. You coached your team member. That's something, a great example. I think, from my standpoint, more than providing them that visibility, you have to give them the continuous feedback on how they work on those aspects. So it's not an event. It's a process. So you have to continuously talk to them and try to coach and shape their skills. That's the way how I do it. I think also it's a teach and learn. Right? When you do that, you are not sitting here and just telling them the concepts. Make it more pragmatic. But also you hear from them, and you ask, hey, how do I do from that standpoint? So you become a learner during that conversation. So that's the way how I manage it, Joel.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:01) You're great. I like you a lot.

(Raj at 00:08:04) I would say I'm not great. I'm still learning on a day-to-day basis, but it's an important continuous learning is a key component here.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:14) So what sort of topics are you learning about right now?

(Raj at 00:08:19) So couple of things. I think, again, given the challenge, the circumstances we are in, the situation is evolving. One side, I'm thinking about how the current crisis, the COVID, which is way beyond the medical phenomenon, how it impacts economy, how it's impacting supply chain, and how in fact it impacts your employees. Right? The psychological safety aspect of it. So trying to get a deeper understanding of that and then connect the dots as a leader. What should I do after I learn what's happening around us and try to put that into context, and then talk to my team and help them navigate the challenge. The second one is interesting. I was reading an article that says the pollution across the world and also animals, birds, they start feeling more empowered during this because there isn't much movement of human community here. So I see a lot of such things happening. So I'm trying to see what's preventing such things happening when things are normal. So that's an interesting learning. The last one is, of course, what does it mean, because you have to define yourself not only the way how you manage such crisis, but what you want to be once you come out of the crisis as a company and leader. So I'm trying to learn that. Those are all some relevant topics for now, but I'm also spending time on my space, like technology, what's happening, leadership, what's happening, and how my business—we are a market leader, enterprise legal management business within Wolters Kluwer. So what's happening in the market space from customers and also from our competition standpoint, and what should we do? So that's the way how I would circle it out.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:21) So what's the main line of business for your company?

(Raj at 00:10:25) So ours is we are a market leader in enterprise legal management software, and our customers are corporate legal departments of all Fortune 500 companies. And we have a set of capabilities and solutions that help them to perform their day-to-day task in terms of dealing with legal matters and also interacting with external law firms, managing the budget. So that's the business model. And our customers these days are pushing hard to make the solutions better. We are living in an era of technology advancement. So that's keeping me up all the night. Right? How you can help our customers to grow in terms of providing them best-in-class products without losing sight on customer experience. So that's the model that we are in.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:21) Oh, that's pretty cool. I built some legal software in the past.

(Raj at 00:11:24) Really?

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:26) Yeah. There was a startup, and then they got funding, and they needed their systems redone from like MVP trial to actually like we can sustain legitimate traffic. And I was the person—my company rewrote their systems, but they were a virtual deposition software.

(Raj at 00:11:47) Interesting. How did you like it?

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:49) It was fun because I got to use, I think it was called like TokBox. It was this video API, and it was a lot of fun because I had never done video API work. And we built them, we built mobile apps. There were like six people in there. And then as we were talking, it transcribed the text, and it was kind of fun. I guess the most fun you could have in the area of depositions.

(Raj at 00:12:15) I totally get it. I totally get it. It's always fun, isn't it? Right? Building software and see how it works, especially when your business users start using it, then you tend to pat yourself on the back. There it goes. It works for you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:33) Oh, yeah. And I love the life cycle of building great products. And, you know, as you go throughout the career and you build so many products, I was actually looking back the other day at how many different products I've built and things. And I started asking myself the question, like, you know, how do you keep yourself excited? I was just trying to figure out like how, why do I keep getting excited about doing these new things? And then how can I keep myself excited when I'm down? And so I figured I'd ask some other great leaders. So I'm curious, you know, how do you keep yourself excited?

(Raj at 00:13:08) Yeah, that's a great question. I think the first thing is as a leader, especially as a technology leader, you are living in times where things are changing so drastically. Right? So what was working yesterday may not work tomorrow, so the technology is changing. When the technology changes, your customer expectations, they change. For instance, even in our space, our customers, corporate legal department, attorneys, and paralegals, they want all their applications to work like their personalized applications, like Facebook, LinkedIn. Right? So they want everything to work on mobile, and they want everything to be so responsive, high quality. So the expectations have gone up. With that said, technology is shifting, and your competition is stiffening. Right? So it's not like you do something today, it's going to keep you going for the next five years. You have to watch like a hawk what's happening from technology, competition, and customers, and that's a great source of motivation for me because the center of gravity is technology. So with that said, constantly looking for opportunities to improve because you are called as a market leader, our business, not because of market share, because of market-leading capability through innovation, customer centricity, hiring great people, and also ensure that you disrupt yourself. Right? That's the thing I like the most. When you view your business as a disruption, like someone else is looking at you, then you are pushed yourself out of your comfort zone, and that gives you a different way to think about yourself. So that level of self-realization, self-motivation that's pushed by this external environment is a great source of motivation for me, and that's also pushing me to learn continuously.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:16) So you must push yourself in multiple areas of life other than just professionally.

(Raj at 00:15:21) Correct.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:22) Yeah. So how are you pushing yourself? How are you growing personally right now?

(Raj at 00:15:27) I think two things. The first thing is continuous learning. I talked about it. When I started my career as a software engineer after I earned my bachelor's and master's degree in electronics, I was under the impression, okay, I'm done with all studies. Now I'm going to go for a job, going to make money. My life is settled. Right? In hindsight, after 15 years, I realized I could have learned more during those 15 years that would have helped me to keep moving. So I think you have to broaden your perspective. You have to broaden your horizon beyond what you know, and that's always, I think, a great passion for me. Although I started my career as a technology executive, I went for my MBA. I did my advanced managed program from Harvard. The reason is just not I wanted to earn some degrees, but that actually expands, broadens your perspective. That's a transformational experience, and that is what still it's keeping me. And I would like to, as I said, it's just not technology. What's happening around you? How other leaders, right, in other companies are dealing with some crisis? How the successful leaders are constantly reimagining themselves? Some companies like Google and Amazon, they always try to reinvent themselves and try to diversify. So those are all the sources of learning for me. And my own family, when I talk to my kids, it's not like, oh, my son is 10 years old. I get some good perspectives from them because when they point it out, like, why are you thinking like this? Again, it broadens your perspective. Okay. So you don't try to be in your own swim lane. Try to get out of it, and it opens up. When it opens up, you get that level of passion and motivation. So that's an important thing for me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:32) What ages are your kids?

(Raj at 00:17:34) 13, 10, and 18.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:38) Okay. Nice. Are any of them in the programming? Or—

(Raj at 00:17:44) No. Not really. In fact, my oldest one, he's a graduating senior, and he is interested in pursuing business major. But all of them, one thing is common, they all play tennis, but no software technology yet.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:02) So they all play tennis?

(Raj at 00:18:04) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:05) That's pretty cool. Do they have smart rackets yet? Do they have rackets that are, like, hooked to your iPhone with GPS and—I can't remember the word right now, but the inertia tracking chips?

(Raj at 00:18:18) Not really. There were some technology in the past. I forgot the name. Like, it would simulate you to play the tennis, just to move your hands and show the motion. So that was three years ago, but that's pretty outdated. These days, kids, they want to go. They just want to get into the court, and they want to play. So that's the way how it is now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:43) That's cool. It teaches them about, you know, how to work together, how to win, how to be competitive. And, yeah, that's awesome.

(Raj at 00:18:51) That's correct. That's correct.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:53) So what are—so you got the 18-year-old business interest. What are the other two interested in?

(Raj at 00:18:59) At this point in time, my second son is showing some interest towards medicine. He would like to become a doctor. My third son is too early. When I asked that question, he says, "You know what? I'm still thinking, so let me get back to you." He doesn't want to commit at all.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:17) Every night, my three-year-old daughter has this doctor kit, like a box. Yeah. And it's got a real stethoscope in there because my wife is in the medical profession. And it's got a couple other, you know, kid toys in there. But whenever someone's sick, she grabs the box and, like, runs over and opens it up. And we're like, "Man, maybe she will be—maybe she'll end up in the medicine field."

(Raj at 00:19:43) Yeah. So, actually, their interest changes quite frequently, especially until they become 12 or 13. So one day he says something, and next day, you know, he gets motivated or inspired by some television shows or something, then he changes his mind. "You know what? I might become a pilot." Oh, okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:03) That's like a classic thing. I think everybody at some point wanted to be a pilot.

(Raj at 00:20:07) That's right. That's right. There is always a piece of passion there. I'm not sure what it is, but it certainly attracts kids. You know? Even I was when I was growing up, but when you hit the reality, it's different.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:25) When you were in your thirties, were you planning your life in, like, five-year chunks of things you wanted to get done, or did you just kind of go through your thirties?

(Raj at 00:20:38) That's a great question. To be honest, I always try to plan the future. Now I know you can plan, but you cannot just increase your hopes 100% that it's going to happen. But, certainly, planning is part of my DNA, and that was the driver behind me going out for my MBA program. Because when I was—when I started managing teams after I moved to United States, I grew up in India, and I moved here in 2000. One thing that struck me was for you to be a successful leader, it's just not technology alone. Technology is an enabler, but you are enabling the technology to achieve some business goals and also make that profound and immeasurable impact to your customers. Right? So that was such a big eye-opener for me. Now I'm a technology executive, and I need to have a seat at the executive table. And I need to first understand the business well, whether it's marketing, strategy, finance, whatever it is, and try to connect the dots.

So with that said, I planned when I was 30 years old, okay, where I should be next five years. So, typically, I tend to plan for every three to four years and try to put something called PDP. I call it myself personalized development plan or personal development plan around my own improvements, self-reflection, introspection, and things like that, but also the toolkits, skills, and capabilities that I need to advance. Because the best way I think of myself is I'm still learning. That's the first thought. The second thing is, you know whom I might compete against? Who is my competitor? No one else. It's me. Because when I measure after three years, you measure yourself against the baseline, Raj, before three years. "Oh, probably, you know, you learned something good, but you are still not done. Let's move from point B to point C." It's like you are trying to reach a summit. You have to start from the base camp, second, third, fourth, and before you hit the summit. So that's the way how I think about my career so far. I wouldn't say everything was perfect. I learned from my own scars and mistakes, but that's part of the game, in my opinion.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:15) That's interesting because I decided to run my first five-year plan around 25, age 25. And when I completed it, it was just an unbelievable thing. And I'm 32 now. So I completed my first five-year plan two years ago. And I had heard some professional development speaker or somebody talking about it. And so I said, "Okay. I want to accomplish this in the next five years." And I actually got farther than I thought in many of the areas. But that exercise of, like, what it's like to intentionally say, "Here's a five-year plan" and then execute it and then look back on it, it gave me this whole new perspective of the entire world because I realized that no matter how much energy I have or hype I have, I can't go do something and burn out in the moment to make something happen.

(Raj at 00:24:11) That's true.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:12) The only thing I can really do is put together a series of systems that will compound over time, and then I'll get a result from it. And that was—that's a very humbling thing. It's like you can't do anything immediately. You can only decide, "I'm going to make this repeatable habit that's going to yield an outcome in the much greater future."

(Raj at 00:24:36) Oh, that's absolutely right. Because, to my earlier point, you can come up with a great plan. You may not be able to hit the bull's-eye. That's okay. Right? The second thing that's important in my opinion, humble opinion—again, I don't claim I'm right. You see a lot of these books. Right? So when you go and do this MBA program or go to Harvard, you get a lot of these books and you look at leaders giving great talks. I think the most important is just not listening, but you have to put that to your own context. That's the game changer. When you understand such things and see how it's going to impact you, then you can just go broad and narrow that to your own self. That would help you to open up and learn. Right?

So I think my mentor, Brad Smith, former Intuit CEO, he coached me all along saying that you cannot become other person, but you learn from them, their life experiences, read books, and try to see how you apply some of the principles to your own context. Right? That's the interesting thing. As you try to plan your next five years, you learn something, but also learning without applying and trying to experiment is not going to be a great value add in my opinion.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:06) Where do you think most people mess up? Like, where people that have good intentions, where do you think that they mess up?

(Raj at 00:26:12) Are you asking more from the technology and company standpoint or in general?

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:18) Just in general. People who want to do things in life.

(Raj at 00:26:22) Okay. Yeah. Well, few things. Right? I think the first thing is, as I said, you have to plan for the best, but you need to prepare for the worst. You need to have a clear understanding on what aspects of your life you can control and what you cannot. When you don't have the clarity, when you hit a roadblock or if you have to pick a big rock, then your emotional energy drops. Your emotional energy and your motivation is the source of your success. When your emotional energy drops, that results in much lower confidence. And when your confidence is low, the probability of success is much lower. Right? Because all these parameters are connected together. So that's the first thing. Right?

So anticipate risks, anticipate for unknowns, and tell yourself that nothing is going to be a smooth ride. But as you navigate the challenges, learn, but just don't fall. Rise up immediately like a horse. Horses, they fall down, but they know how to rise and keep going on. Right? That's that's the first thing.

The second thing I think, from my own life experience, is we don't value something called the human connection. Sometimes, you know, you appreciate your own skills. You think that once you go to a great school and learn things that you are a great person, but the value of human connection is so important. So you talk to others, build the bonds, and forge relationships, and you'll get a lot of insights. Right? When you talk, you're talking what you know. When you listen, you are learning something you don't know. Right? So I think building that connection and learning from others as part of your journey and working your way forward is the second thing. So people tend to not focus more on learning from others as opposed to they just keep their focus on their own swim lane is the next thing I believe is an important aspect.

So when you try to connect this again, this is not a philosophy. This is from my own mistakes. I didn't do both of these things early in my career. But when I just did my personal introspection, what Raj could have done a little better, it opened my eyes, and you need to have a mentor. That's the third one. A person who is your sounding board and who could just provide a harnessed feedback to harness your strengths, but also shed some light on the areas you need to improve upon. So those are the things I think is important for anyone, not only to plan, but make sure that you are making incremental improvements towards your big vision. You have to eat in smaller bites as opposed to hitting a big milestone.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:40) While at the same time, maintaining your emotional energy and motivation. Like, right? That's what you're saying. So if I maintain my motivation and emotional energy by taking care of myself, my health, and then I grow my relationships and have intention there. And then I have a plan, but it's not like a bet-the-company plan. It's like a realistic long-term plan.

(Raj at 00:30:04) Correct.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:04) But have those boxes checked, I should be in good shape.

(Raj at 00:30:10) Absolutely. That's my humble two cents based on my life experience.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:15) It's good. No. All we are trying to do is just wrap our mind around concepts. I think that's one of the—I do meditation and time to think deeply and things like that. And one of the thoughts I was having the other night is back in the fifties, you could orientate your worldview around the single one or two sources of news. And so you had your personal family life or close life, and then some information would come in, and you would learn about the world or whatever's happening. And then you could develop this mental map of the world, make sense around it, build your life and your structure around it. Now we have an infinite source of news and stimulation coming in, and it's harder today than ever in history to be able to wrap your mind around what is life, what is the world, and where is your place in it.

(Raj at 00:31:11) Yeah. No. That's an interesting thing because there is one big constraint we all have, which is time. Right? We all are interested in doing several things, but, essentially, we don't have time. And I think that's why I personally feel the planning is an important component because you know which things are important, which things are urgent, so you tend to focus. Even in your business world, as a CTO, I have 20, 30 priorities when I start my day, but I need to have a clear understanding around what are my core priorities for the given day and how that priority is going to impact my tactical deliverables, but also my strategic focus. Right? That's very important for an executive or leader in my humble opinion.

Similarly, in your personal life, in terms of family, your emotions, and your spiritual or religious aspects, you need to clearly break them and figure out what extent you want to focus. And you talked about meditation. It's an interesting thing. I try to practice yoga daily. Again, I'm not an expert, but one thing is for sure. Anything, right, in our human life, you are talking about tools. There are certain tools that are critical. For example, if I want to assemble a computer, I need a tool. Similarly, for humans, you need some tools for you to become better, and one of such tools is meditation. So that tool is helping you to shape who you are, how you can be better. So if you try to relate such things, then you know you are not by yourself, and you need to rely on certain tools that can make you better both in your professional life as well as in your personal life.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:08) I've noticed that I have this pattern of learning tools, picking them up, integrating them into my life for, I don't know, maybe three to six months. And then they kind of just fade away, and then I get new tools in a certain area. And it's—I—it's just this cycle that I've noticed. Have you noticed that too?

(Raj at 00:33:31) Yeah. No. I think, like, when I talk from my technology standpoint, you have an iPhone. Right? So it has several versions because every new version, it provides some new capabilities. Similarly, when you try to learn something, now, for instance, leadership, you take a concept within leadership. How do you manage risks? There are several frameworks. You try to apply it, but, suddenly, there is a new perspective after a couple of years, which talks you about, "Okay. Risk management is a great plan, but crisis management is something different because risk can talk about probable outcomes and how do you protect you from those outcomes. Crisis? No. No one anticipated COVID on what you have to do." Then you have to learn something new. "Okay. This is something real-time challenge and how you have to fight with it."

I think, in my honest opinion, it's not going to completely go out, but you need to upgrade like an iPhone. Right? Try to see how you can enhance those skills and try to see how you can become a better person. That's the way how I look at it, whether it's leadership or technology. Technology, specifically, you think about the days, COBOL and Fortran, those technologies are completely gone. I may not be able to relate that to Java or microservices today because they are different. But if you look into the core of it, right, when you try to write a business logic, the way how you structure it, the way how you make your code to flow through your back end, there may not be a big change. Right? So your creativity, the way how you think about it remains same. So that's the way how I try to connect the dots when things rapidly get upgraded or updated and how you ensure that you don't lose the genesis of it. You have to hold it, and you have to slowly improve upon that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:41) Yeah. I was thinking about that. I found that reflection helps a lot with what tools do I build upon and which ones were just tools I was trying. One tool that I have found very useful that I continued to build upon that was just somebody mentioning it. They mentioned it in passing on the podcast. And then I tried it once. Okay. Went away, came back couple weeks later, tried it again, and then it, like, really stuck, was working from your calendar. So before I had worked with, like, to-do lists, I have my Evernote, and I have the things I'm doing today. But then I was—to in order to put them into blocks on your calendar, that discipline happens to be highly effective.

(Raj at 00:36:30) Yeah. No. I think that's absolutely right. And one thing is, when you talk about tools, right, calendar is a classic example. When I think about the technology world right? So I thought of sharing this. It's an interesting—but our company, Wolters Kluwer, ELM Solutions, we follow this religiously. In today's technology world, there are some big buzzwords. Right? Artificial intelligence, machine learning, like, virtual reality, all such great things, augmented reality.

(Raj at 00:37:06) Now the question is, if you want to be successful with those technologies, it's not like you go and say that we are an AI company. That's not going to help you be successful. We are a company in the legal management space, and we use AI to deliver better outcomes. Right? That shifts. That's why we call it an expert solution.

(Raj at 00:37:30) Expert is you have a strong domain expertise, and you bring that into life with the technologies like AI so that it makes that profound impact to your customers, not because they are using your systems. It helps you to achieve productivity, efficiency, lowers the cost. And sometimes in today's world, when I try to see the personalized application with your business application, they get emotionally attached, so they cannot think about going back to their old ways. So the reason I'm trying to explain this to your calendar example, it all boils down to that usability and user experience and ensuring that you are bringing in the right tool to solve the problem, not because it's a great tool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:18) I love that. So what is the type of person that stands? I guess the better question would be, what are some of the behaviors of high-performing individuals that stand out to you?

(Raj at 00:38:38) I think the most important thing in my opinion is you have to be vulnerable. I think that's an important trait of high-performing leaders or anyone, because if I go and expose my vulnerability to my team, that opens up that environment. Oh, when this person says he is not good at something, that means we have that leverage to say that we are not good at. That's not because it's your weakness, but that's a strength that provides an opportunity for you to learn. So that's an important thing.

(Raj at 00:39:21) Ensure that, you know, you are not great at everything, but expose it and learn from it. The second one I would say is humility and humbleness. Because when you think that you know everything and you want to become best at everything what you do, that's your self-confidence. But when you think that I still have to learn more from other people or from these books or from something else, that's humility. That means I have still more to learn, and you need to go with that.

(Raj at 00:40:02) So every interaction that you have with someone, like today, you and I are talking. You have to leave that with something new to learn. Right? That's the second one I think is important. The third one is learn from the failures.

(Raj at 00:40:19) Failures are inevitable. You cannot say that everything is going to be great. But once you learn, don't repeat the same mistake. You learn from it, course correct it, and move on. This is what I've seen with my team members when I manage, when I call something a high-performing team. It's not a label.

(Raj at 00:40:40) When I see the attributes and the characteristics of my team members, and they talk about it, these three aspects, for me, honestly, they stand out, and it's an important thing in order for someone to stay above and what sets apart what sets those individuals apart from others.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:05) So what are you most excited about right now?

(Raj at 00:41:08) I'm excited about, like, I'm 45. I still have some time left for me to continuously learn. And I'm really, I feel fortunate and blessed as a leader to work for a company and work with a great team. So I think every time if you look at my career, I work for several industries, big companies, smaller companies, but different industries. Intuit, entertainment partners, now Wolters Kluwer. So this is a great source of motivation and excitement for me because different environment, different company, different culture, and that's really good. And technology world is changing rapidly, so I have to stay ahead, and I have to learn.

(Raj at 00:42:01) That's a great excitement for me. And at a personal level, I'm spending time with my family, and playing tennis with my kids. Right? I'm not a pro player, but I think it's an exciting thing, seeing my kids grow in front of my eyes and try to go through that transformation at personal level is something exciting.

(Raj at 00:42:26) And last but not least, I think when you look at your professional and personal life within one bucket, because some people think that, oh, your personal life is different. Your professional life is different. I don't think so in my humble opinion because you are driven by your own values, sense of purpose, and those things need to stay consistent, whether it's your personal or professional life. So that level of things gives me a great energy and passion, and I think it's important also. Right? When you do all such things, when you look at the outcomes, whether from the business outcome standpoint or when you see your kid saying that, "Dad, I learned it from you, and I applied it at work." That's the moment.

(Raj at 00:43:23) Right? That's the moment that you are not by yourself. Right? Everybody is teamwork and everything is happening in tandem with others, but those things excite me, and that's my energy. So learn from it and go.

(Raj at 00:43:39) You have to take advantage of this moment in life. That's the source of inspiration. Nothing else. Live in the moment, enjoy it, and keep going.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:50) I love it. And I have, you know, two little ones, and I thought the other day, um, you know, they're being difficult. Right? And, uh, but then I thought to myself, you know, I can't think of a better way to measure my life other than against the growth of these kids. Because as I'm starting to think back, I'm like, oh, everything's being tied.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:14) It's like the ultimate timeline. It's like I'm remembering things not based off of the maturity of my business and where that was at, but, oh, when they were an infant, my life was like this. And when they were in elementary school, my life was like this. So that's a new shade, a new dynamic to my life because they're just getting three. So we've just got enough time for my mind to start doing that. But I thought that's kind of, like, that's a cool thing that's happening, and I don't know. I just thought I'd share.

(Raj at 00:44:45) No, that's good. You mentioned you are 32, and you still have a lot of time to learn as your kids grow. Oh, man. That's all, like, great thing. Just learn from it, and you'll enjoy every moment. So it's all good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:01) The fun and scary thing about accomplishing my first five-year plan was the realization that I could do anything. It's like before, I just wanted to have success or, like, I was blind. I was just twenty. Like, I just gotta get out of whatever I'm in, and I just have to have some more success.

(Raj at 00:45:21) Correct.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:21) And then I was intentional about something that took a long time, and I did it. And then I said, "Oh my goodness. Like, I can do anything by leveraging the length of time." And then came a new dilemma, like, a new area of thought for me is with that knowledge, what should I choose to do now? Knowing what I know now that I can use time and accomplish anything over a large scale of time, I've got twenty to thirty professional years.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:53) What am I going to do with that time? And that's actually been an area that my mind's been thinking a lot about lately.

(Raj at 00:46:03) Yeah. No, I think that's important. And one thing I wanted to also mention when you are talking about plan, put some timelines, tasks. Yeah. You know, those are all great things. But the important thing that you would realize as part of this planning process is you will be forced to hold yourself accountable. Right? Because you are working under some framework, and you have to act on certain things, and that gives you that sense of ownership. And when you don't follow that, there is an accountability.

(Raj at 00:46:38) Nobody needs to question you. As a person and a leader, you know that you have to act on something. So that's a great source for you to make progress in my honest opinion.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:50) Yeah. Raising the standard for myself was important. So, like, this year, actually, I have about four goals, but because I wanted to experiment with, like, just doing something for the year. Because I took a five-year plan and then I broke it into year goals. And before it was just, "Here's a five-year plan. Let's go for it." Now I'm saying, "Here's a five-year plan," and then work backwards from that, and it means I have to have these. So right now, I'm in a foundation year of my five-year plan.

(Raj at 00:47:17) Wow.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:17) Yeah. So year one's like the foundations.

(Raj at 00:47:20) Correct.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:20) And so I was improving my fitness and my health. And the way I track that is you only get the twenty-four hours in a day. And these things, for them to compound, they have to happen pretty much daily or every other day. And so I looked at my schedule and I broke it up so that I'm progressing my health goal every day. Whether I'm learning about nutrition or doing a workout, I just have to increase my, I look at myself like a character in a video game. I have to increase my skill points. Right?

(Raj at 00:47:51) So I

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:51) have to do something there. And then, of course, there's a financial goal getting our business. We're, like, right on the edge of cash flow positive, so I want to get that over cash flow positive and into growth mode. And then if I have my health improved over the year, my knowledge of nutrition and fitness and working out, and then I have that foundation of a business that's kicking off excess capital, then that'll put me in a much better position for year two through five. And so the whole theme of this five-year plan is foundation.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:28) Right. Um, and so that's kind of how I'm approaching it. But if you would have talked to me at, like, twenty-one about this, I would just roll my eyes probably.

(Raj at 00:48:38) I think that's interesting. Again, my two cents. I'm not sure when I talk about the personal development plan. What helped me immensely was I had my sounding board mentor. So I always run by them, right, saying that this was my goal. Here is where I am, and what do you think? Do I have to approach differently? Right? And I would recommend that if you don't have one, having that person would make a tremendous difference in terms of opening up your eyes on some of the things which you might have not even thought about. So that's my

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:19) Thank you.

(Raj at 00:49:19) That's my view. So

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:21) Do you still keep in touch with Brad?

(Raj at 00:49:24) Yeah. So not in the last three, four months. Until then, I would say every other quarter, we had a call. So this all started when I started my executive MBA program. And as part of the program, I had to talk to some leaders and get their input.

(Raj at 00:49:44) So I interviewed Brad, and that's when the, I was working at Intuit for so long. So I was fortunate enough to have that one-on-one with Brad, then that engagement and working relationship continued. And even four months ago, I called him, and he helped me with the scenario. So the way I talk to my mentors, I have couple of them. Like, I call Brad and say, "Brad, here is the situation, a client situation that happened, and here are the implications of the situation.

(Raj at 00:50:19) Here is how I managed it. And did I do the right thing? What's your input?" So that's the powerful conversation in my opinion. Then he helps saying that, "Okay, Raj. That's good. I really, glad to hear that. But, uh, authenticity is important, for example, when it comes to leadership and how you could have done this differently." So a scenario-based conversation, in my opinion, is the most powerful, and it gives you a lot of great insights to make you better. But, as I said, I should credit him because he has already spent a lot of time in coaching me and motivating me and pushing me in the right direction as a leader.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:04) Yeah. Shout out to Brad. He's the man.

(Raj at 00:51:06) Yeah. One of the greatest leaders.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:09) I like that you brought that up or that you made that point about having a scenario, having something prepared. So often, people will say, "Will you mentor me?" And then it's just like, with what? You know? Or they come without, they put the responsibility on the mentor to figure out what they should be doing.

(Raj at 00:51:31) Correct. Yeah. No. I think right now, in my organization, not my team members, but few others as well when I try to coach them, I think the first thing is the whole concept of change needs to start from within yourself. Right?

(Raj at 00:51:49) For instance, here, where you are, where you would like to be from personal standpoint, from professional standpoint, what type of tools you use, like these books or talking to someone. But the coaching is more scenario-based. The coaching is more how you can just move a notch up on the trajectory. So trying to help you, "Oh, here is what my skills are. What should I do to move to the point B?"

(Raj at 00:52:19) I think that type of focused conversations would yield much better results in my own experience. Whether it's technology or leadership or anything of that nature, that's the most powerful way of approaching your mentor and the way how you coach others. Right? So that's my opinion, honestly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:40) This is an amazing conversation. I'm so glad I got to meet you.

(Raj at 00:52:44) Oh, my pleasure. Right? As I said, we all are learning here, and I've been enjoying this conversation. Lot of great insights from you as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:54) Is there anything that we didn't cover that you want to cover?

(Raj at 00:52:59) I think I'd like to say something, since, you know, this is Modern CTO conversation. Yeah. We talk a little bit about technology, but the important thing is, I'd like to mention this to everyone. If you would like to pursue your career as an executive or leadership role, you need to ensure that there are three dimensions: technology, leadership, and business. You have to ensure all these dimensions meet each other that will bring the best out of you.

(Raj at 00:53:35) So many people, they start their career as an individual contributor, then they start managing smaller teams, then they become executive. Right? So that's fine. That's you raise through the ranks as you just move up in the ladder, but you need to have a great exposure on all these three dimensions. As a CTO, I need to know what's my P&L and what's the total cost of ownership and things like that.

(Raj at 00:54:00) So that three dimensions are very important. The second one is in your professional life, you have to keep customer at heart. There is no option B. Even if it is an internal decision, you need to see how it's going to have impact on your customers, and that's going to be the key thing. Whether it's innovation or decision or anything, try to see that through the lens of customer, and that will open up your eyes.

(Raj at 00:54:30) The last one from a personal level, every day is an opportunity for learning, continuous learn, and you are going to hit your milestone. That's it. So I think that's the way how I would like to summarize my final thoughts.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:44) Yeah, Raj. Man, this is great. You know, I get off these podcasts, and I talk with Jake and, you know, every, you know, couple of them, we get someone that's just unbelievable. And I'm like, "This is why we do the podcast." And so thank you so much.

(Raj at 00:55:03) No. My pleasure. Thank you so much, and have a good rest of the day.

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:07) Alright. Talk soon, Raj.