Arun “Rak” Ramchandran, Vertical BU Head, Global Market Leader & Chief Digital Evangelist at Hexaware - Trust in Technology

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:03)
Hello, my friends. Today we're talking to Rock, the CVP Global Market Leader at Hexaware, and we discuss Rock's hiring strategy and Hexaware's program for training talented leaders, why and how we need to be building explainability into AI, and how to establish yourself as a leader when entering a new organization. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO Podcast.

(Rock at 00:00:32)
Here we go.

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:34)
This is the Modern CTO Podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:45)
Can you share with me a little bit how you first got into technology?

(Rock at 00:00:49)
So a little roundabout way. I was in technology, then I moved out of technology, and then I came back to technology. So I did my undergraduate from one of the premier institutes in India. It's called the Indian Institute of Technology, IIT. Very competitive entrance exam. You know, people put in a lot of effort to get into it. Very small entry ratio. So less than 1% of people who apply actually get in.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:23)
Wow, pretty competitive.

(Rock at 00:01:23)
So I managed to get in because I was good at math and science and all the right things when you're growing up. A couple of years into it, I realized, look, I'm actually interested in a whole lot of other things outside of my engineering discipline. Right? I was interested in people. I was interested in management and business and doing cultural programs and debating and all kinds of stuff. Right? So I said, "Listen, maybe I should get into MBA after this." So I then went on to do my MBA from another premier institute called IIM, Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. And then I went into actually a sales and business career with a consumer product company. It was a paint company. My initial job was with a paint company. Then I moved back to technology because, you know, late nineties—so I'm dating myself here, right? Late nineties is when the telecom sector was booming in India, and I'm talking about India right now. And some of these telecom majors had come in. Wireless technology was coming in, cellular technology. I joined Nokia.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:34)
Oh, cool.

(Rock at 00:02:35)
When they were just setting up shop in India. And that is sort of getting back into technology. But the real technology services, the way we talk about, was after that when I joined Infosys. So that's when the whole Internet wave was happening. Y2K was happening. You're probably familiar with the term Y2K, right? The whole—all the systems in the world were supposed to come crashing down on December 31st, 1999, because they had not been, you know, the year had not been coded correctly. Right? So that led to a boom in technology spending. I joined Infosys. I came to the US as part of that. And since then, I've been part of the technology waves right from the dot-com boom and bust, Internet, mobile. Now, of course, a whole lot of emerging technologies and so on, but with a business mindset.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:28)
Yeah, that's really interesting. So I'm sure you had an interesting look at the dot-com boom and bust, being able to have the business perspective of like, "Wow, this seems like a lot of companies are overvalued."

(Rock at 00:03:46)
You can probably say that for companies now as well. A lot of companies seem to be overvalued now too.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:51)
Yeah. I keep hearing the term like "fake money" around, like VC firms borrowing against companies that their value is debatable and using that money to fund other companies to create also debatable value. It's really a crazy time.

(Rock at 00:04:09)
It is. It is. But at least there is a big difference. In the early stages of the dot-com boom, none of these companies—Pets.com and Webvan.com and all—had no revenue. They were only being valued on eyeballs. I think the situation is a little different. I think most of the companies right now nowadays which are getting valued have some revenues, some traction, but still the valuations are, I think, getting to that insane level. Let's see what happens in the rest of this month. The market has already been very choppy. Let's see what happens.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:39)
Well, how did you get involved with Hexaware? How did you find your way to where you're at today?

(Rock at 00:04:47)
So Hexaware, very interesting development, right? I was with Capgemini before this for six years and prior to that with Infosys. So again, solid, big global multinationals. Hexaware represents a different breed of company. Right? It's a smaller company. It's a David. We call it a digital David in the field of Goliaths. I have always loved challenges. I have always loved turnaround situations, situations where I can create an impact. Right? When I joined Infosys, now it's like a $10 billion company, but I joined it first when it was $250 million. Small, relatively 2,500 people, and I was with them till it grew to a $7 billion market cap—$7 billion revenue, actually. A much higher market cap. Capgemini, when I joined them, not a well-known entity in the US, North America. I led their transformation efforts. So I've always been attracted to challenges, situations where there is a growth opportunity. Right? And I tend to joke that wherever I have joined, the market valuation and the brand equity of the company has grown.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:57)
So I'm trying to—

(Rock at 00:05:58)
Say, "Okay, that's a cause and effect. I'll take credit for it."

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:03)
Yeah. That just kind of reminded me of, totally unrelated, but a funny statistic on the topic of correlation not always being causation. Obviously your career, it is a cause and effect. But there's this one stat that's like ice cream sales are directly correlated with crime rates. And that's just because it happens in the summertime when kids are out of school causing trouble and eating ice cream.

(Rock at 00:06:33)
Right. Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:37)
But anyway, so we already did an episode with your colleague Biju a little while ago. And he taught me a lot about digital transformation. It was really cool. But for those that didn't listen to that episode, can you give like the overview of what Hexaware does?

(Rock at 00:06:51)
Yes. So let me bring you a little historical perspective on Hexaware and then where we are from a strategy, and then we'll win the digital transformation. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:01)
Sounds good.

(Rock at 00:07:02)
This is what you're seeing now is Hexaware 3.0. Okay. Hexaware has been a company which has been around for close to 30 years now. But for the first, I would say 22, 23 years, it was focused on regular services. Okay? Technology services with some specialization—PeopleSoft, some enterprise packages, testing, and so on. Then we had the new leadership come in, our new CEO, Keach, as well as some of the private equity investment from Baring. And I would say we moved into 2.0. And the 2.0 was based on understanding some key emerging technology trends, like automation and the whole tsunami which was going to come for automation across different parts of the enterprise. So we got ahead of the wave. We didn't want to get drenched and drown in it. Right? So we got ahead of the wave. We started investing way back in 2014, 2015 on capabilities and hiring and solutions along that. And then we picked up cloud as well. Right? So we understood that there was a huge trend towards cloud, and we needed to have the right kind of alliance partnerships with Microsoft and so on and have our capability. So I would call that a Hexaware 2.0 focused on solutions. Right? Solutions and automation, solutions and cloud. We did have a missing piece, which we tried to build, which was customer experience. Right? I mean, all this is ultimately for the benefit of users and consumers and customers, and we need to give them the right experience. So we created a customer experience transformation team organically, but we also went and then bought a company called Mobiquity. It's into the design space. And it also does cloud-native engineering. So it is a very unique kind of asset that we acquired. And now it forms part of our customer experience pillar. So that was the third set of solution. Early this year, we restructured ourselves, and now we've got a sort of a sharper focus on whatever the future is going to be looking like. And that's around platforms. And I would call that as 3.0. Hexaware 3.0. So Hexaware 1.0 services, 2.0 solutions, 3.0 platforms. And that platform is based on a cloud migration platform we have called Amaze, customer experience platform, which is Mobiquity, and we have an automation platform which works across the enterprise, which is called Tensai. And this is aligning with whatever our customers are doing. They are also trying to become product and platform companies. Right? Now the way we have structured this, obviously, these are the platforms, but we have some service lines which are there to provide transformation capabilities. And Biju and I lead one of them, which is called Digital Core Transformation, which is helping enterprises modernize, helping them become more cutting edge in terms of integration, enterprise architecture, better data and data modernization, essentially helping them leverage all the new emerging technologies and architecture.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:10)
Cool. So in the digital core transformation, you're using all three platforms to help companies transform across the board?

(Rock at 00:10:20)
Yes. Although these platforms can be used independently and there are service lines which are focused on them. But you can look at digital core transformation as bringing a whole bunch of it together for enterprise transformation, especially for the internal employees and users.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:38)
That's really cool. So is that where you spend most of your time today?

(Rock at 00:10:42)
So I actually wear three hats. One of them is leading the service line, which is, as I said, relatively new. We restructured also this year. I also lead a vertical business unit for Hexaware, which is focused on high-tech platforms and professional services. So these are companies like the Big Four firms. These are companies like the high-tech platform firms on the West Coast. So we have a business unit focused on these companies as a domain, and we call it the trust-based industries and the technology-based industries. Right? And we see a lot of symbiotic relationship between trust and technology. And the third hat I wear is leading our management training program globally. So we hire fresh MBA graduates from tier one and tier two schools around the world, and we give them a sort of a head start in becoming future leaders of the company.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:37)
That's really cool. So one thing I wanted to dig into there, you mentioned the trust-based and technology-based. Can you expand? What does that mean?

(Rock at 00:11:48)
Sure. Yeah. So I think there are authors and speakers who have gone on record to say that the currency of the modern economy is trust. And I have a point of view on it. The point of view I have is there are three waves in which three waves of trust which have evolved. So think back 100, 200 years ago, agrarian economy, small communities, and you used to trust the local doctor or the local, you know, person who had the money to lend. They would take the decisions and you would say, "Yes. I mean, we trust this chief or we trust this person." So it was more people-based trust. Then came the modern era in which trust moved to institutions like banks or governments, even media. Right? I mean, you are doing a podcast, but think about what used to happen 20, 30 years ago. There used to be the centralized news organizations, studios, you know, and the news outlets, and they used to control what would be disseminated. So that was the institutional phase of trust. With technology, that whole trust aspect has become disintermediated in almost every industry, every part of life. You take banking and financial. You don't necessarily now go to one of those big banks. You have a lot of fintechs and a lot of ways to make payments and invest and so on. Look at media. I mean, podcast is a great example. You and I can sit and chat and reach thousands or millions of listeners. Right? You don't have to go to a central media organization. Technology is enabling that, and I feel that that's really happening everywhere. Now there is a reverse part to it, which is how much can you trust this technology, right, which is impacting all of us. How much can you trust the social media platforms? Facebook was down yesterday. Like, Facebook and WhatsApp were down for six hours yesterday. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:50)
Yeah.

(Rock at 00:13:50)
You had a lot of business tied up in that, and if you trusted in that technology of social media platform, yesterday, you couldn't do any business because of that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:59)
Yeah. That was pretty crazy. I couldn't believe how long it lasted. Like, usually with such a big company like that, they're able to get back on their feet pretty quickly.

(Rock at 00:14:08)
Yeah. Even I'm surprised that they took so long. Some people are going to lose their jobs in that Facebook.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:16)
Well, that actually makes me think of a while ago, we had on this guy named Tony from the quantum computing division at Honeywell. And I don't know if you remember, but they made some headlines that they came out with the fastest quantum computer in the world at the time, which we were very lucky to interview him like the day after they announced that. And it was really cool.

(Rock at 00:14:37)
Wow.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:37)
But he was talking about how we're in like the building trust phase with quantum computing, because quantum computers eventually are going to be used to solve problems that are impossible to solve on any other machine. And when we get there, we're going to have to trust that the answer is right. So basically what they're doing with quantum computers now is just running really complex problems that can also be run on classical computers so that they can check their work and make sure that the success rate is 100% and that nothing's going wrong in the computation. Because that can have really drastic effects if we're running like these huge problems through the machines and trusting the answer and it ends up not being right. It was just kind of an interesting—

(Rock at 00:15:35)
I know. I think it's central. It's central. It's not just a sidelight. Trusting, being able to trust new technology is going to be central. Right? And forget going towards quantum computing right now. That's still in the future. Even today, AI algorithms, algorithms which go into artificial intelligence tools are making a lot of decisions which are opaque to people. There is a whole focus on something called explainable AI. Which country are you based out of, Adam?

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:07)
I'm in the US. I'm in Orlando, Florida.

(Rock at 00:16:10)
Okay. So in UK, they have come out with a guideline where any AI-based decision has to be explained if it impacts a human being. So let's say your loan application gets denied because of an AI engine. You should be able to challenge it and have an explanation just like you do in a pre-AI situation. Right? Now for certain basic situations, maybe it's still easy. But there are cases, and even in the gaming industry, there is this lovely Netflix documentary called AlphaGo. I don't know if you heard about it. So there is this company which Google acquired. I think it's called DeepMind in UK. They created this chess program initially, and then they moved on to a much higher level of complexity with working on a game called Go. It's a South Korean game, and it involves white and black pieces on a big grid. Okay? And you have to sort of place these pieces one by one so that you can carve out territories and areas and block your opponent. Chess is X level of complexity. This is probably X raised to X level of complexity. Much more open-ended. And it needs a lot of machine learning and AI to train a machine to do it. So they had this machine gain expertise playing against the best players. And at some point in time, it's reached a stage where it can actually make moves, which none of the experts sitting around can fathom, figure out as players why the machine did that move.

(Rock at 00:17:53) But still doing the move because it's now learned that that's probably a good move because it's thought through millions and trillions of combinations in the future. Now, if you cannot explain that and it helps you win, how can you explain multiple other decisions an AI engine could take? It could be in the field of crime enforcement or detection, law enforcement. It could be in the field of healthcare diagnostics, cancerous cells. It could be in the field of facial recognition.

(Rock at 00:18:22) There are so many cases. How do you trust technology like that? And that's going to be the central part of the evolution of technology in the future.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:31) I mean, it's really good to hear that at least there's some guidelines getting passed requiring it for those decisions that affect humans. Because I know there's been arrests made on facial recognition that was wrong. But aside from just guidelines, I guess, from a technical perspective, what's the solution here?

(Rock at 00:18:54) So I think explainable AI has a component where you have an engine mimicking the AI engine, which logs all the steps which are being taken. So somebody needs to interpret it. But I think there is another angle opening up, and I feel that's based on blockchains. Right? In a way, blockchain is the ultimate virtual trust platform.

(Rock at 00:19:20) It's moving away from a centralized trust to a distributed trust, right, where every part of the node has the same set of transactions. You know what has been coded or what has been transacted. Nobody can change it. It's open. It's accessible, and then you can layer on top of it.

(Rock at 00:19:38) I think some part will be based on the explainable AI and ethics. Right? Some part will be based on using technologies like blockchain, distributed computing, and building laws and ethical guidelines on top of it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:56) That's really interesting. I hadn't thought of that before because I mean, I'm a bit of a blockchain nerd in that I'm just really interested in it, following the technology stuff.

(Rock at 00:20:07) Me too. Yes. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:09) Yes. But yeah, that's really interesting thinking of blockchain in terms of explainable AI. So it would be kind of like using the blockchain to keep track of those logs of all the decisions that are made along the way.

(Rock at 00:20:25) Prospecting. Exactly. Exactly. It's like a platform for distributed trust. Right?

(Rock at 00:20:32) So whether it is transactions, whether it is programs, whether it is models. And, you know, if you can use something like that, right, which is a distributed ledger where everybody has a say in what's there. It's like open source code. But open source decisions. Right?

(Rock at 00:20:50) Open source decisions or logic.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:53) So I want to bring it back to Hexaware because I know you mentioned we started on talking about this trust because you said you work on it at work. So what are you actually doing in this field day to day?

(Rock at 00:21:08) So we work with trust-based companies. Right? So we work with firms which are in the business of ensuring trust for their customers, companies in the audit business, companies in the accounting business, companies in the advisory space. Right? They themselves call themselves the trust-based organizations.

(Rock at 00:21:29) And we help them with technology challenges and projects, which helps improve trust for their customers. Right? Creating more automation, let's say, in their audit process. Helping migrate some of their platforms to the cloud. Creating more robust AI/ML engines so that they can compute things like tax liability or a deal valuation, which require intensive computing and which require you to refer to previous data and which require you to understand unstructured data.

(Rock at 00:22:05) Right? We are actually helping them with some of these impacts of using emerging technologies in their business. There are four parts to any such business which I think are going to expand to other domains. There is an aspect of accessing data from different sources. How do you make sure that you can collect the right data, right sources, different kinds of data, and store it or categorize it?

(Rock at 00:22:32) Two is the analytical part. How do you analyze this data? Three is how do you make judgments and decisions based on this? What processing models you use, what algorithms, AI, ML, and so on. Then the fourth is actual actions, which involve interacting with other ecosystem players, whether it is banks, regulators, government, consumers, third party vendors, APIs, and interfaces, and dashboards.

(Rock at 00:23:00) All that become important. Right? And there is technology in every part of this. Emerging technology.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:07) And so you guys are helping out on every level of that?

(Rock at 00:23:10) Of course. All of these. Right? Whether it is data, you know, collecting data and automating that data collection, creating new data models, whether it is in better analytics, it's in better user interface for consumers and dashboards and so on, better processing engines. So we work on almost all of these projects and leverage some of these platforms that we call emerging technologies.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:36) That's really cool. I'm sorry. This just popped into my head because recently we've done a couple episodes with a company called Cradlepoint, which on the topic of emerging technologies, they're leveraging cellular to offer enterprise grade network connections over cellular. And that's, obviously 5G coming mainstream is being a really big part of that. And I remember the guest I spoke to, his name's Manish, was saying that he was able to travel across the country with one of their routers and host a webinar of like a thousand people from a national park, because that's where he wanted to be and he had to do the webinar and that was really cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:19) But anyway, it just seems like a cool technology to especially help companies provide secure connections as remote becomes more mainstream, like remote work. And I'm curious, what are some ways you think the workplace is going to change forever as a result of remote work becoming more mainstream?

(Rock at 00:24:40) Yeah. And how does it impact our business model? Right? I mean, you know, ever since COVID, right, we just changed the world completely the way we understood, and things are not going to go back to the way they were before. Right? Nobody is going to come to office, especially in white collar jobs, five days a week. I don't think that's going to happen. There will be hybrid work arrangements. But with that comes different sets of challenges, and technology will play a role in that.

(Rock at 00:25:10) Even right now, right, last one and a half years, hiring has gone up. Everybody is hiring like crazy. Resignations have gone up. People are leaving like crazy. Right? It's called the great resignation wave. Keeping people motivated, engaged, measure their performance in a remote setting, all involves technology. Right? When you onboard someone, if that person doesn't come to office, how do you do a good onboarding? How do you get that person up to speed?

(Rock at 00:25:43) When that person is working with team members, how does the collaboration happen? How does that person become an effective contributing member? When that person leaves, you know, how do you sort of have the exit ramp? Right? And how do you measure performance in this situation?

(Rock at 00:26:00) How do you, especially there are certain roles and jobs which also require privacy and security. Right? A lot of our business process services industry, which is remote transactions and remote processing of, let's say, you know, credit card details or billing data and claims processing and so on, they require access to private information. And in a setting like working in a single office, it's more easily effected because you can put in place physical controls and network controls to make sure there is no unauthorized copying of data, no divulging of trade secrets and so on. But how do you do that when people are working from home?

(Rock at 00:26:41) What technology tools can you use? So we have put in place certain models, whether it's the cameras in the laptops, whether there is a mechanism to sense whether there is a mobile phone nearby or another screen. You know, how active the person is on the screen or is there a lull? And if you can lock that screen, you know, if you think there is unauthorized access and different, so different ways of using technology to sustain this model. I feel we will be in a hybrid work model, which is going to be great for people from a family perspective and being able to have balanced lives.

(Rock at 00:27:16) And everybody will have to retool their business models. All these big campuses may become more satellite offices. Right? People don't want to be commuting one, one and a half hours to go to a big office when they can, you know, save that time and work out of home or nearby. But they still want to be with people. They want to be with their team colleagues, and they want to have their coffee breaks and want to have those chance conversations. Not everything can be scripted. So I think we would need to balance all these aspects out.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:46) Yeah. Definitely. I think on the topic of how people are saving so much time from their commutes, that was a big part of why, when we went to remote work, a lot of people were worried that productivity would go down as people aren't in the office. But it turns out when you get to get an extra hour of sleep, you actually can be a lot more productive. And that was a big contributor to a lot of the studies that were done throughout the pandemic of that. A lot of that ended up finding that productivity actually went up with remote work, which I'm not sure.

(Rock at 00:28:22) You can use an extra hour to watch some more TV or play some video games or...

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:27) That's true. Just relax in whatever way you like. I prefer sleeping, but, yeah, to each their own.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:34) Yeah. So I want to hear about your leadership training program that you spoke about briefly at the beginning of the interview. So what's different about this hiring and training program in comparison to other companies that also do some kind of leadership development stuff?

(Rock at 00:28:58) Yeah. I think, you know, the fact that you can hire young, bright, ambitious talent and give them a career pathway, first of all, by itself, I think it's a great service, right, to be able to mentor young talent, people who are just stepping into the workforce, who have the intellect, who have the ambition to make a change. The world is changing into the millennials and the Zoomers sort of stepping into leadership roles. So I think every company needs to hire and promote such people. What we are trying to do is to give them an environment where they learn quickly and they get exposed to different parts of our organization.

(Rock at 00:29:40) So we give them mini projects. We rotate them to different units. And for good performance and high performance, we have a fast track. So they join at a particular grade, but we give them a jump within a year, within two years, double jumps if needed so that they become the fast trackers. And the leadership abilities are visible across the organization. Right? We move people to on-site locations like US and Europe pretty quickly. We think that, and we call this program Hexaware Future Leaders Program. So the name itself is an indication of what the goal of this program is, to hire these folks from great MBA schools with a technology background. So they come with a business orientation.

(Rock at 00:30:23) They know aspects of an organization and enterprise, but they have a technology background or they hone that skill. And then we are able to rotate them into leadership roles in the future.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:33) So how is it different training someone to be a leader when they're fresh out of school versus training someone to be a leader that's been an individual contributor for a while. And they're like, hey, I want to get into management. What's kind of some of the differences there?

(Rock at 00:30:50) So the people we hire are not complete freshers. Right? So they have had a couple of years of work experience either before doing their MBA program or around that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:57) Okay. Yeah.

(Rock at 00:30:58) The fact that they come from established tier one kind of MBA programs means that they are management material. Right? Because that's what the selection process is like to get into these MBA schools. They have shown some leadership abilities and they understand the business aspect and are able to do problem solving on that scale. And then it's just a matter of giving them the right opportunities.

(Rock at 00:31:20) I personally get involved in mentoring them. In fact, I am involved in hiring most of them in terms of campus interviews and placements and so on. And then we do performance reviews every six months. I get involved in that. I think we pay a lot of close attention, not just me, all the leaders in the company in Hexaware see this as a critical underpinning for our future leadership talent.

(Rock at 00:31:44) So every one of the management council members is involved in the hiring process, goes to campuses, interviews them, and is involved in grooming them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:53) That's awesome. Yeah. That's very forward thinking. So what are some of the things you look for in these people?

(Rock at 00:32:02) Great communication ability. I think we look for attitude. Right? I think that's one of the biggest things, positive attitude. And being able to learn and network and present yourself well. And a lot of, I mean, everybody has great intellect. Right? I mean, great abilities. But how you package it, how you're open to new experiences, how do you take setbacks in stride? I mean, sometimes you may not get the unit or the role you thought while you're doing an MBA that I will become this. It doesn't happen right away. You have to go through a process.

(Rock at 00:32:34) And how do you take those learning experiences and become more effective in your role? I think you can sense that. You can sense that with some people who are fast trackers, their ability to be quick, at the same time, be mature and patient.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:55) So one question I like asking on the podcast is when you're, so obviously, this isn't you directly, but these people that are coming in, when you're new at a company and you are given a leadership role, how do you establish yourself as a leader among your team and your peers?

(Rock at 00:33:15) Yeah. And that question probably applies to every level. Right? I mean, sometimes you get, I think there is an aspect of capability. At the same time, there is an aspect of leadership by example. The only way you can get credibility among your peers is by showing that you have what it takes and you can help them. Right? You roll up your sleeves, get involved in a deal or an opportunity, get involved in creating a solution, working on a bid. You throw yourself into it, show that ability to take things on, take the challenges on. I think others will automatically gravitate to you as a leader. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:02) Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, leading by example is obviously the most powerful thing you can do. I mean, watching someone do something is a lot more powerful than hearing them tell you to do that.

(Rock at 00:34:15) And you've seen it in every organization. You became a leader yourself, you said. Right? I mean, you've worked through this. I think you can give somebody a role on a tie and a title. That doesn't automatically make someone a leader.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:26) Right.

(Rock at 00:34:27) Right? A leader emerges based on their ability to take ownership, learn, and lead others by example. Right? And I feel that if I see somebody doing it, if I see an individual exhibiting this, I know that person is a future leader, whether or not that person has the title or the level right now or not. And I would like to do whatever I can as a leader in the company to groom that talent and to encourage those set of people.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:54) That's awesome. So what would you say was a really impactful lesson that you learned early on in your career from maybe an early failure or challenge that you came up against?

(Rock at 00:35:11) Yeah. Yeah. No. That's always, these failures are the ones which become stepping stones for future success. And I have had a few.

(Rock at 00:35:20) Right? I mean, I don't think there's anybody who doesn't. Right? And you need to learn from it and step on it to take it forward. I would say being patient is one of the lessons.

(Rock at 00:35:34) Right? You may think you have it. You may think that role is yours, but you need to be patient. Right? And sometimes disappointments do happen.

(Rock at 00:35:47) Wait it out. Right? Sometimes you may end up with a wrong boss. Sometimes somebody else whom you think is not qualified may get promoted over you. Sometimes you may end up with a role which you really don't like.

(Rock at 00:36:02) But, you know, career is not a sprint. It's a marathon. Right? And everybody has 30, 40 years ahead of them in terms of the career. Maybe you will do two or three different kinds of careers.

(Rock at 00:36:15) Right? So you need to have patience. You need to learn with each experience. You need to not burn bridges. Right?

(Rock at 00:36:24) While, you know, be patient, don't burn bridges, and use every experience as a learning stage in your career growth. And seek out mentors. I think that's the other thing I learned, is always seek out mentors. They may not be in your direct line of hierarchy, but always seek out mentors in your network.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:45) Do you do mentoring with people at your company?

(Rock at 00:36:49) Yes. So actually, I'm the chief mentor for this management training program. So I do mentor some of these MBA graduates who come in. And even within my own team, I try to seek out potential leadership talent, which may be two or three levels below. But I do make it a point to meet with our high potentials whenever I visit offices or visit different locations. And I try to get to know them, what's going on, what's challenging them, how they are succeeding and what they're doing, and how I can help them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:20) What advice do you have for people that are looking to find a mentor?

(Rock at 00:37:24) Understand yourself and be open about it. Be humble. And I think people are willing to help if they know it's coming from a genuine place. Right? If they see it as somebody who's just trying to curry favor or, you know, asking too much, then they may not.

(Rock at 00:37:46) But if they know that the person is genuine in asking for help and mentorship and is really interested in improving, I think people will offer their help. People will automatically say yes. And I think every one of us as a professional likes to do that. We want to pass on our learnings and pass on what we have gained through our experience to people who are on the same track.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:13) That was something that I learned when I was in college, because I would go to these business networking events. And whenever I would go, they knew students liked to go to these things. So everyone would wear a name tag and the students would have like a special one. And when you walk up to someone and you have a student name tag on, that person like immediately smiles and they're like, "Hey, I'm so excited that you're here. Like, what are you studying? What are you trying to do with your life? How can I help you?" And that was just like a really powerful thing for me. Like these strangers are just excited because they know that I'm trying to build a future and they want to know how they can help. And that was just, I don't know, really kind of them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:01) And I'm not to say that this only extends to students. It's just that they knew I was in that position because I was a student. I mean, I feel like as long as you're vocal about like, "Hey, I'm working on this area of personal growth," that same kind of logic applies that people see that and they're like excited about that and excited to help you.

(Rock at 00:39:31) Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I just dropped my son off at college. He's just starting his undergrad. He's a freshman.

(Rock at 00:39:38) And recently, you know, I went to one of these events where the particular unit, yeah, the school he joined, they're having their session to welcome the freshmen and some of the alumni. And you could see a similar spirit of mentorship. Right? We met. They saw my son. They sort of offered. The dean was there. The undergraduate dean was there. Some of the faculty members were there. The career and placement office people, and almost everybody. And there were some alumni as well. Right? And you could see that that whole aspect of mentorship is what is gonna help these students, and they are ready to offer. They came out and said, "Hey, you should, you know, are you looking at this? How are you looking at internships? If you need to contact me during office hours." You know, so that happens in academia, that happens in student life, and why shouldn't it happen in corporate life? Right? And we are trying to enable that in Hexaware. You know, apart from me being one of the mentors, for every HFL, we have assigned a mentor who's from a different unit than what they work in so that they can genuinely, you know, speak about their career aspirations, frustrations, ability to navigate, and, you know, figure things out and see what makes sense in terms of the career roadmap. And we have that as a first year mentorship and second year mentorship.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:55) Wow. That's really cool. And I'm sure that really helps to keep the different parts of your organization from getting siloed as well.

(Rock at 00:41:03) Absolutely. That is one of the key motivators for that. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:08) That's awesome. So what's one thing that you're learning right now? Like, what's something that's challenging you and you're learning to overcome that?

(Rock at 00:41:21) I think it's a lifelong learning process. Right? Yeah. In fact, I just finished a course on AWS Cloud certification. So I'm trying to get a little bit more in-depth on some of the technologies I'm coming across. Right? I'm not a techie as such. I don't do coding. I am not involved in the actual, you know, software development process. I do understand what's going on. I have a good view of the trends and what's shaping the business models and consumer requirements. But it also makes sense to understand some of the underpinnings. So I'm trying to make sure, and the technology landscape is changing every minute, every hour, every day. Whether it is blockchains, I have invested quite a bit of my own time trying to understand what's going on in the world of blockchain. Okay? And how different, you know, currencies are there, and not just currencies, but things like decentralized finance and so on. So I'm trying to spend some time trying to understand the impact those technologies will have on the future of business and personal lives. Similarly, I'm trying to understand what's going on in the Cloud world, the whole digital transformation aspect, right, and how things like AI, ML, and trust in technology and how that is shaping up. I'm trying to spend more time on learning some of these concepts, and that's one of the areas where I'm challenging myself. And, of course, the organization challenges on how to grow, how to groom talent, how to retain talent. That's my, I guess, other biggest area of focus.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:59) Nice. So before we wrap up, there's one thing I wanna hit on because I have it in my notes that you have your own podcast. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

(Rock at 00:43:09) That's right. That's right. Yeah. I think we had talked about it in our briefing. Right?

(Rock at 00:43:15) Yeah. So it's a side hobby. Yeah. Yeah. It's something which I'm very excited about with what I can do with it in the future. So I just finished one season, 15 episodes. I've got a pretty funny name for it. It's called "What the F's."

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:31) What the F's?

(Rock at 00:43:33) Yes. Nice. And it's my weekly take in five minutes or around that on fads, films, finance, and fun.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:46) Nice.

(Rock at 00:43:47) With friends. So I'm using these F words, so to speak, to create some themes. What I saw was I'm interested in some of these topics, whether it is finance and investing and films and, you know, entertainment. And I'm pretty clued in. COVID has given me, everybody, a lot of options to watch and so on. And whenever I have suggested to friends and talked about some of these, they have said, "Oh, wow. That's great." Right? And they've liked it. Similarly, investing tips and finance tips. Right? Not just like trading, but things like what do you do for college education? Right? How do you get, you know, how do you invest in cryptocurrencies? Right? What are some of the retirement options? You know, Roth IRA conversions, things like that. So I've tried to put it in a series of episodes in a little bit of a short manner, ten minutes, five to ten minutes, and put some fun into it. Now I think I'm taking a pause because I wanna do something like what you're doing, which is invite some guest speakers who can talk on some of these topics and make it more focused on specific franchises, like What the Finance, What the Film, those kind of things. So that's gonna be the next season.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:01) Awesome. That's really cool.

(Rock at 00:45:02) And it's available on all the platforms, Apple Podcasts and Google and Spotify and so on. It's What the F's, single word, What the F's, single word.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:14) Yep. Nice. Check it out.

(Rock at 00:45:16) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:17) Well, before we close, anything we didn't get to touch on today that you wanna make sure we do? Like, are you guys hiring? What do you wanna plug for Hexaware?

(Rock at 00:45:29) I think, as I said, Hexaware 3.0. This is an exciting time for us. We are going through some of our biggest transformations right now, becoming a platform company. We need people. We definitely need talented people who believe in the future of technology and how it can impact humankind in all its form. And we are the right place. I think we are small enough, but we have a great big future ahead of us. We're growing well. So join. Come on. Join the growth story here. Right? And thanks for giving us this platform to talk about Hexaware and talk about some of our focus areas and, you know, how we are changing the world one technology at a time.

(Intro Narrator at 00:46:16) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email, [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.