Sree Tells Us About Digital Strategy

Sree Chadalavada is currently a product executive at Cisco. Before that, he was a managing partner at Gartner where he helped companies lead digital transformations. Prior to Gartner, Sree worked in various leadership roles in telecom, technology consulting and start-up related companies. 

Timestamps:

3:48 - Software eats the world

7:43 - Are we in a bubble today?

10:31 - Are we in the early or late innings of software?

15:31 - Shift in software education

19:15 - What is digital strategy?

20:00 - How do non-tech companies think about digital strategy?

21:45 - What is digital transformation?

23:49  - Walking a company through digital transformation

28:31 - Navigating the human side of digital transformation

31:15 - How do you create a learning organization?

33:18 - How do you get buy-in from non-technical leaders?

35:41 - Communicating plans with public markets

42:24 - Earnings manipulation and transformation narratives

45:44 - Innovating at Cisco

50:09 - Sree’s favorite software 

52:17 - Vasanth and Faraz state their favorite software 

Transcript

0:00

So I've got a story for you. Me. So I remember when I was a freshman in college, I was trying to decide what I wanted to major in. So I decided on electrical engineering and my parents. We're very displeased with this. They told me like, you are making a huge mistake because both of them were software engineers and they were both very familiar with hardware. And they said like, no, do not do this. Like the future is in software. You're gonna have way more opportunity in software. You're making a really bad decision here. And I ignored them. Obviously. I was a teenage rebel, but my mom said, okay, at least do this. I'm going to take you to my work and I'm going to have you speak to our engineers. Some of them are really, really hard for hardware guys. Some of them are really, really hardcore software guys. Just hear what they have to say. And and I was like, okay, fair enough. So I went to the office and I spoke to a bunch of people who are extremely technical leaders in Intel. And all of them said the same thing they said. The world is going to software. Like you really, really should major in software. You're going to be making a big mistake. If you do a hardware, we did hardware because that's what we knew. And that made sense for us at the time. But now all of us, all of us hardware guys are learning software. So just, just do it. This was back in 2012, so it's fairly interesting. Yeah, they were, they were making these remarks almost 10 years ago. Oh my God. I feel so old now. Wow. Yeah, they made, they made these remarks 10 years. Oh my God. So anyway, I ignored them, but I remembered what they said. So I stuck with electrical engineering until I started applying for internships and all of the companies that I applied to said Oh, you programmed in high school. Well, let's hire you as a program. And I'm like, dude, I spent three years as an electrical engineer. And you care that I programmed when I was like 17 years old. So I ended up getting an internship, not as electrical engineer, but as a software engineer. And at that point, number one, it was like pretty fun. But number two, I realized that like for electrical engineering, you're not gonna be able to do something where you're legit doing electrical engineering until you're like a master student. At least if it comes to computers, maybe if you're doing circuits. But for software, you can literally found a company at like 20 years old. So like the amount of time it takes to become useful and to create value is so much faster for software and probably so much more that's. Yeah. I mean the world software eats the world, right? I think no. Well point actually extrapolate that to other industries beyond just engineering. Think of industries like in finance, where there's a very set structure on which age, at which point in your experience, you can do certain tasks. That doesn't exist for software engineering, because it's open source access to quite like literally anything that's ever been created. You can, if you put in the legwork, you can learn it. And once you put into it, you can implement it and create something. I don't think that exists in any other industry beyond even just electrical engineering. I would say that there, I would feel comfortable saying that there was almost no industry in the world besides software where a high school student can create a billion dollar startup. I think that the second layer of abstraction to that is. So the growing influence of influencers. And so we will see a lot of billionaire influencers, but that's also a result of software engineering also result of software engineering. No, I think, yeah. So for us. Great story. Let me use that as a way to introduce our guest. Our guest this week is street child Levada. Who is currently a product executive at Cisco before that he was a managing partner at Gartner where he's helped companies lead digital transformations prior to Gardner's. She worked at various leadership roles in telecom, technology consulting and startup related companies. I'm really excited to talk to street. I think he's going to add a lot more to what we just talked about. Let's get into it. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Sam. Thanks for having me. So I think a great place to start. This would be to go back 11 years ago when Mark Andreessen wrote this really famous or maybe infamous article called why software is eating the world. And in it, he had listed a number of predictions he saw coming, and a lot of them have come true. And in fact, when being for Azara, debating on titling this podcast, one of the suggestions that I had was titling it, software, eats the world. I don't want to do it. Yeah. I thought it was, I actually hadn't read the essay. So I thought it was just a weird thing that was slanted said. I turned, it turns out it was very famous. Anyway, so exactly. So we didn't, we decided against it and it's, it's a, it's a very fascinating title. I'm curious to hear. What does that phrase mean to you? No, I think I'm totally with, for us, you know, you should not have type software eats the world. It just feels like a zombie movie. Right. You know, there are humans who are having difficulty. So I think if I were to think about the software, it's the world, I have at least few parts that regarding that particular topic. So if you look at the history and devolution of software and, and it, a lot of it has been used and used to drive efficiencies, right? Where we talk about mainframes from mainframes onwards, to where we are right now around 50 to 70 years of software journey, a lot of efficiencies came in the core back office functions. We're talking about SAP is what our supply chains, those kinds of things. But now I think it is very fascinating the way Marc countries and actually said it it just feels like now software is everywhere. There are at least three, maybe four broad you know, tectonic shifts have happened. One is mobile. If you think about the mobile with 5,000, I'm sorry, 5 billion people having mobile devices technology is everywhere. It's it's so much more at the gasp of a common man. Or a woman when we think about the mobile cloud computing, if you think about building new software, a new ways of driving value, cloud computing really reduce the barriers of new startups, right? We live in Silicon Valley. We know this all day long which is it takes at least five years for you to get to a, an MVP before cloud. And now with cloud, you can actually do it within, within less than six months. And on top of it, the way the human interactions are increasingly from a cultural standpoint, social media is actually impacting it. So the way we actually talk, it's fascinating when you have two people next to each other, they don't talk to each other, but they have their own mobile phone and they're talking to the world. Part of it is anti-climatic, but also part of it is you know, significant changes in the way we communicate with human beings. So I think when I think about the software, you know, when I look at all those trends and look at what software is doing to us and where we are headed these are some of the belief systems that I have. One is software is going to be everywhere. Anything that you touch will have software in it. Second is if, if you're actually making a particular product aligned with 5 billion people or 6 billion people, right around 70 to 80% of the people who are actually using the technology, you really want to make it simple for them. So the way the software was defined and developed is significantly different than what we should be doing, going forward. And finally you know, we have actually used software. To help, right? It's used as a technology, but increasingly software is learning from humans. That's another thing that we're also learning, right? It's, it's one of those things where today you actually have to click a button in Facebook to do what you want to do, but increasingly you can actually talk to the software and the software does it for you. So there are principles that are changing and software eats the world while morbid actually shows a new word and a new set of paradigms and values that we need to bring to the table to make it more consumable make it more easy to adopt and make it a more effective in the way we actually live our lives. And the way we actually would do our works at our, at our companies. Absolutely. No, I, I agree with everything you said. I was reading about the.com bust a few weeks ago. And one thing which I found very interesting was there are all of these companies who made these promises and. Investors were throwing money at them. Cause they were so hyped up about these traumas says, and then they discovered that many of them couldn't deliver and it caused all of these bubbles to pop. But if you actually go back and look at the promises they were making by today's standards, they're like laughably unambitious the bubble like was not wrong. It just was a little bit too early. So no one at the time thought that, you know, software was going to like social media was going to be defining presidential elections, that we were going to be spending six hours a day using computers and phones. No one thought that so from the height of the bubble now we're in a truly different world. So do you think that we're in a bubble today or just the nature of being a human being has shifted? I think I'd actually talk about a quote from bill Gates. I think he actually says that you know, it's very, we are. Too ambitious for the short term. And in his mind, it is two to three years, right? Whenever you think about a technology innovation cycle, you're less ambitious, right. Too ambitious for a short term, which is more like three year plan frame. And then we're less ambitious when you think about the longterm, which is 10 years. So I think the, the interesting part with any technology evolution and this, I think you guys actually looked at.com bubbles, but actually look at all the, all the bubbles that you see in us history and oftentimes use history as the most recorded bubbles every 10 years, there is always a bubble, right? That we talk about oil. We talk about we talk about industrialization. There are a number of these bubbles that came and went and you're in no different situation than we were in the past. That's what I think about it. Are we at the bubble at this point? I'm not completely sure if we're in a bubble. The, the fascinating part of it is. I would say we were in a bubble before coronavirus hit, right? It's it's the fundamentals are completely different now. So the reason why I'm cautious about us being in a bubble is because tell me one thing that you can do with our technology today. Right? In today's world, I understand from a blue collar workers, it's, it's still challenging, highly challenging having to do work without going to factories. But a lot of the white collar jobs are primarily dependent on technology. So if I were to actually think about that and say, you know, are we really in a bubble? Yes, because the technology evaluations are significantly higher because we are living in a completely different world, but are we going to go through a correction? I'm not completely sure. Yeah. I think you gave a great timeline of how software is developed and as you look into the future, do you think we're in the early innings of software development or are we towards the end oh I love this look back on the history and actually explain the context of how we are in software. Software is only 50 years old. What I mean by that is what is the first company that built business on software that is Microsoft. Right. Microsoft is 46 years old. So if you think about the software, we always had software in it. You can always say that, but as a business model, as a, as a, as an area of significant value creation software, as a discipline was recognized 56 years back. So then I go back and say, you know, what does it really mean? Where are we going here? So if I think about this willingness and history for the six years, then I'm thinking that we're in a very early stages of this software evolution. And where are we going from here? I do believe, right. If I were to think about where are we headed software in and of itself is, is like theoretical physics. In my opinion, it's, it's going to stop becoming theoretical very quickly. You will start looking at software for civil engineering software for you know, medicines pharmaceuticals. So I think that I think is a natural evolution. I do believe that with software and data science, I think we have done enough like physics chemistry and math. And those are like like that then the foundations of digital world. But after that, now we have to really look at applications, right? Applications is how do you actually build resilient systems? Complex systems where people's life depend on it, but then every single facet of what we do needs to actually the software needs to catch up at this point, the disciplines of software are not there yet, but increasingly as your place software to various disciplines, then software needs to catch up to understanding, you know, how do you reduce technology debt? Right? Build good software, chaos, monkey testing, right? We're actually talking about complex systems and explainability of artificial intelligence and the last gen, but not the least is they take, send the bias. That is that is getting into the software because as we think about the software written by very few people. Who are not as diverse as you want them to be there representing the world of 8 billion people. So increasingly the, it takes on the bias reduction needs to seep into our systems. So what I mean by that is when I think about the software and artificial intelligence and data science, I believe that the evolution is an application of the software is more important than the software principles. Yes, don't get me wrong. The foundational software engineering principles are important, but they will have significant digression as we think about how software actually helps each one of these other other disciplines. Yeah. I think you bring up a great point. We had a guest on, I think now it's been a month or so our mutual friend Ardon farm-fresh he is pursuing a PhD in computational chemistry. So by title, he is a chemist, but he spends all day coding and he effectively uses Python to discover new drugs find faster ways to research, you know, drug efficacies. And I think that speaks to your point, which is software is really going to. I don't want to say eat every single sort of sector field, but it's, it really does sound like that. Yes, absolutely. Right. So I actually, so let me give you this example, right? And some of the times, what is it in 1990s? I had this aha moment. I wrote a code you know, I was working for WorldCom. This is a telco company. Now it's now part of MCI. MCI is becoming Verizon, you know, have had a lot of years in the industry. So I wrote a software, right. It's not the best piece of software anyways, but I actually wrote a software and I left the company. Right. And after I left the company you know, I actually asked, you know, what happened to the software that I wrote now I'm in the, in the consulting management consulting. So I don't try to. I've taught enough software. But when I actually asked them the question, what happened to the software, they said, nobody touched the software. It's it's working when I'm going to break it. So the, the thing is the software, the systems that we're billing what's really fascinating is anything that we are going to put a code in that went to Oklahoma's that's the fundamental facet of the software. So as we think about, you know, to your point, you know, how are we actually are playing all these disciplines? I think we have. We have stood on the top of the shoulders of, of the big software companies. These are the innovators. And I think in my mind, a lot of us who are writing the code and building new systems are going to really help help a lot of other people do some cool things. So I think in my mind, I think to the point that you actually said, you know, where are we in terms of software? We're in a very early stages. We're in very early stages. Don't get me wrong. Anything that you write is going to outlive view by far and be careful what you write because you do not want a copy code of software to help the world. But then a lot of innovation is going to come on top of software, which is going to be exciting. I think we're in a very unique position to affect where the world is headed. I think a lot of people know about kind of the early days of like Xerox park and Apple and Microsoft and all those guys. But actually I would argue that software is even younger than that. The reason I say that is so my father is a software engineer but he studied electrical engineering when he was in college. And the reason for that was there was no degree called computer science when he was in university. In fact even today at UC Berkeley, you can't major in computer science, you major in ETCs electrical engineering and computer science. So computer science being thought of this distinct thing that is software being different than hardware is a fairly new, like maybe two decades widely spread idea. So what do you think caused the shift and why do you think it matters? There are at least few ideas that I have. So the one thing is the. So, first of all, my first hypothesis I would like to positive is the educational system is, is an able to catch up with, with the technology trends that are actually there. So there is number one, right? So if you think about Khan Academy, and if you think about the new ways of learning and even Elon Musk has a new school called ad Astra. So the, so the way the, the education as an institution is really old, but they are unable to catch up with new technologies. That is number one. So if you are actually telling me that right, that for us, that UCB does not have a computer science that baffles me. I did not have my bachelor's here by the way, my, I did it in India, but computer science, if you think about all the money that is being made on Khan Academy, you dummy and all of the new places. Significant amount of money that is being made that actually shows the untapped market that actually exists for computer science. So the first thing that I'd like to say is the education institutions are slower in terms of developing new disciplines, because they are unable to catch up with the level of innovation and the level of new sophistication, right? The sophistication that is coming with software. So a lot of companies like IBM, they have their own universities that are focused on software engineering principles, because a lot of large organizations on universities that are able to catch up. So that is number one. There is no way around it. UCB will catch up one day and they are going to build a new discipline called software engineering. I'm not going to say soft, you know, software, you know, as, as a separate thing, it's an engineering discipline for me, any complex systems requires engineering disciplines. And that actually has, that has that ability to learn the fundamentals of what engineering is. So I think UCB one day we'll get there. But I do believe that we, it has been a long time coming and, and I, I believe that we're still catching up. I think they noticed this or unable to catch up. I see that hardware and software are two separate disciplines. I did a computer science and engineering in my bachelor's. I didn't I don't do a lot of hardware anymore. So these are two separate disciplines. So the way today, if you think about what UCB is doing and saying, you know, you have hardware and software combined, then I'm like, okay, how much of that hardware principles that I learned in my bachelor's that I used nothing. Right. I didn't use any, I eat. It's good to know what hardware is. I can actually learn it from a book. I don't really need to spend half of my bachelor's in learning about hardware because it's, it's a completely different skillset altogether. So you're, so I think what I'm kind of going with this is there is a way in my mind that these organizations are going to catch up. If they're not going to catch up, then the disruption is already happening in terms of what you will education and all these courses they're going to actually kind of fulfill the market demands. So switching topics a little bit, you used to be a partner at Gartner. Now you help oversee digital strategy at Cisco. What is digital strategy in 2021? The fascinating part of it is digital strategy. I actually asked a number of people, what is digital strategy? And nobody really knows what exactly the definition is. Every single company has its own definition, as well as every single person has their own definition of what they, so I think if I were to think about what a digital strategy is it's as simple as how can you use digital technologies to better drive outcomes? And if you were to think about the business outcomes that are important to stakeholders and shareholders, how do you reduce costs? How do you increase revenues and how do you reduce risks? Yeah, I think, I think you're right. There is a lot of confusion. When people think digital strategy, they must think of the incumbent tech companies like Google and Facebook maybe, or any general fan company. But it's also true that industrial companies, manufacturing companies that have been around for 60, 70 years, they are now becoming digital. Nike is a very digital company. Toyota has to become a digital company. So how would you explain digital in the context of a company like Toyota or some 60 year old or 70 year old industrial manufacturing company. It's amazing. So I think the, the way there are three different vectors that I want to pursue, right? So one is digital products. So if you think about the Fang and, and even, I think Cisco, they're all digital products at the end of the day, these are all the products that enable digital technologies. So there is number one. Now let us assume that you have products like in Toyota and in Nike, those are non digital products. These are physical products, right? What we're talking about are physical products. Then the question really comes down is there are two questions that come down, right? One is how do you use digital technologies to optimize your business processes? So there is number one and majority of the companies out there, right? So they're actually saying, well, you know, have been actually using technology in a FA ineffectively. So now can we actually use the technology, the mobile technologies, the cloud technologies to. Improve productivity, right? The asset productivity is really about cost optimization. Right? So how do you get more out of the existing listing assets and how do you reduce costs? When I think about, you know, the companies like Toyota and Nike, the first vector that a lot of these companies are focused on is how do you get more productivity of the assets and how do you reduce costs? Right? So that is number one, the second aspect that is, and what we call this is what we call digital optimization. You're actually using digital technologies to optimize business processes and it processes. And then if you shift your focus and say, how can I use digital technologies to drive new revenue models and new business models? That is where it gets very tricky. It's very difficult to get there. And very few companies are getting their rates. So for example, I'll give you, I'll give you a sample. I heard, I don't know which tire company now, you, you don't buy tires. You usually buy tires as an asset today. And there is a third company. I don't know which one it is Michelin. I'm sure that every one of the type of companies that are actually evaluating these business models is now they sell the tires is that you drive, okay. She's a very fascinating situation. So this is a new way of selling the current product by using digital means you can actually conduct telemetry the tire. Now, you know how many miles and they're actually saying, well, you don't have to, I paid per tire. I'm going to, to charge you$20 because you actually used it for driving 5,000 miles. So that I think is a very fascinating approach that we are actually seeing with a lot of these companies. I think about these companies and say, if I were to compare a technology company and a company like Toyota, I believe that from a cost optimization, right? Digital optimization standpoint, technology companies have been way ahead of companies like Toyota. And Nike now that I think is that they're actually kind of filling, but if you're actually looking at new business models and new revenue streams, I think the technology companies are also slowly getting to that. And that I think is, is the value creation is yet not certain, right? Not a lot of companies are able to create new values by using digital technologies. And that I think is, is the, is the Holy grail. Every company is going after. I'm sure that time Nike, they are able to catch up with technology companies by then. And they all will create new values to their customers. If that makes sense. What would be really interesting is if you could walk us through when you were a gardener and you, you know, you were hired by a certain company to come and consult for them and help them shape digital strategy, and you walked through the doors, how would you lay this out? What sort of plan would you put in place? From beginning to finish? Yeah. So I think there, there are there are two, maybe there are three things that I would actually look at. I will give you a consultant view, but then I'll also give you a practitioners view because I actually work on similar problem statements at Cisco. If you are a consultant, the first thing that you are really looking at with any transformation, the first thing that you have to define is a, is a North star. What is the knots chart for that company and that not stuff for a company, whenever you think about the future and create an all-star, it is a vision statement, right? You really are actually saying, you know, this is where we want to be. And, and and the important part of the, where we want to be is why should we be here? It always starts with customers, by the way, you know, oftentimes you can say, well, we want to be Google and they cannot be Google, right? If you're actually asking, and the consulting in the consulting world, you go to the companies and you say, Hey, you know, you need a digital strategy. And they're like, we want to be like Google. And I'm like, no, you don't want to be like Google because because there's only one company that actually has significant profitability in digital ad revenues, you cannot be Google and you don't want to be Google. So I think every company, I think what we ascertain whenever we have these conversations with the company is what is your knots chart? And that actually is. Defined by a set of companies, a set of companies within the industry or outside the industry. Look at those case studies and say, if they are achieving with digital technologies, these kinds of business benefits, can we create an Artstor for you guys? So that is number one. Number two is what is the plan to achieve the digital strategy? There is significant impatience. This is a, this is the biggest challenge that we see is for some reason I think it, it just it just so happens, right? You're you're creating new habits. What do you do when you're creating new habits, you need to crawl, walk and run and, and, and the plants are always ambitious. So that is something that we always go whenever we were at gardener, we actually say, well, we created an Australia. Yes, but we also need to take a realistic view of how long did other companies take to get to the North shore and then develop a reasonable plan. And then the third thing is you're actually looking at the cultural challenges, right? If you think about, you know, any new transformation, it is about your fighting, the culture is status quo. So how do you create, you know, small wins and not a waterfall, but agile based digital execution that actually helps you with with, with getting to the outcomes and give confidence to your stakeholders that you are making progress. So I think those are three steps in my mind. Right? So the first one is, are you able to create an arts char and you really need to know why, and you really need to kind of have a sense of how long did it take for other companies to get there. Then you develop a detailed plan. Oftentimes these plants you know, request, you know, I need$20 million to do digital strategy. Then the moment you actually say that, then you're losing credibility. You're like, okay, nobody has that kind of money. Come on. You know, how can I actually kind of do this? You know, it's not like you can take the money from a company in one pool and then give it to another pool. You really need to develop a plan that is incremental at best. It's kind of busy because you have to actually manage two different operating models. But then the third is how do you develop the discipline of continually providing outcomes? It really comes down to the flywheel analogy. There is no one single initiative or a silver bullet that actually moves the flywheel faster. It is thousands of people actually doing small incremental things that actually kind of creates the velocity of the flywheel. And if you take that analogy for a digital transformation, it's like 400 things that gets you there, but it's no one thing that gets you there. So that I think is the realism that you need to have. And oftentimes the companies want this jazzy, okay, this, this. Initiative that is going to change the world. And that's where they fall into the quality issues. And that, that I think is something that the anti-pattern that we tried to come out and say, you need to really have the disciplined execution without having the disciplined execution. Everything else is on PowerPoints. And, you know, we can talk about all day long, but as a consultant, I can make my living, but as a practitioner or an operator, I cannot because I like to lose my job. You know, it's actually funny that you bring up the flywheel because the slant and I talk about this all the time. Like we use the flywheel analogy, but we didn't actually know where it came from until you just said it. So that's a very helpful, I'm glad that I finally know. Yes. So this is a good up, I think, to our next question, which is the word transformation implies significant change from how things were being done to how they're going to be done. So what does this mean? Does this mean slashing departments doesn't mean layoffs, I mean, hiring new people. How do you navigate the human side of this is my question. So the way you're absolutely right. Transformation is like, I'll give you an example. I moved from Atlanta to Bay area. I'll give you a very trite example to help explain the transformation. Right? So in Atlanta, when I actually moved from Atlanta to Bay area, I made all kinds of financial statements, right. In a cost benefit, you know, it's going to cost me a lot in Bay area. Why am I even moving in? Should not, you know, that kind of thing. And then the one thing that actually triggered when I came to Atlanta to Bailey is I hated Bailey because I did not have my cleaner skills from my home. This is really simple analogy. The reason why I bring that up is because the human habits are difficult to change. You don't even know what those habits are. Whenever you talk about transformation, the transformation is about changing the core of what makes you successful to what are the things that you need to do to be successful going forward. So this is about change management. Whenever we think about the transformation, it's the change management, the, like I said, digital optimization is driving down the cost. And at oftentimes you actually look at the optimization as a way to do two things. One is if you're really a forward thinking company, you want to get more efficiency from your assets, human and digital assets. That is the optimization that you need to do. And then if you are actually. W, if you are, let's assume that you have a revenue stream and say, you know, you're actually a$5 billion company, and let's assume that you've got more productivity from your assets then to keep the cost base easy and more profitability, then you need to continually grow revenue. So in my mind, I think whenever you go through the digital transformation, the first thing that you need to do is get more value from your assets, which is 10 X is five X, whatever that is more from your assets, that's really why you do the optimization. The second thing is it's always going to be that impact on people, impact on people is going to be huge in any one of these transformations. There are multiple ways that companies have done to have, have dealt with this. So there are companies that actually lay off people. We know that, and we have seen that in, in globalization technology like globalization is yet another believer. To reduce costs and then you're actually taking jobs and those, you know, reducing jobs, layoffs, those kinds of things. The second vector that I believe is how do you create a little learning organizations? This is the most important thing. What I think people do is they actually kind of give all these new technologies and they don't actually give the tools for the employees to scale up to the new demands of what is required by the transformations. So there are companies that actually say, you know, these are the laggards and not leaders. They actually kind of lay off people. That's the easiest thing to do because you are reducing the bottom line. The second, there are some people who actually say, well, we got a lot of profitability from the assets. We are able to save money. Now let's actually invest back in the people. That is the thing that a lot of leaders are doing and they are taking significant pains to build continuous learning organizations. I think that's, I think is the missing link. And that's what I think a lot of companies should do. Not a lot of companies are doing, but they should be doing is that whenever you do the transformation, people are going through this mindset shifts and you really need to make them a continuous learning organization to learn. So when you build a continuous learning organizations that are three things that are going to happen, right? One is people will learn and they get a better job than your company. They're okay with that. They learn and they scale up to the transformation that is second, and they do not want to learn and they get retired. So I think those are the only three things, but as, as companies, companies should be taking more of the position of helping employees scale up to the transformation you know, transformation does not mean layoffs. In my opinion, transformation requires a significant leadership trust to not only take the company to be relevant where the company's going, but also help the employees to decide how to deal with the transformation, which is give them the tools if they don't want to do it. So be it. But that's the reality of the situation. If they want to learn, if you give them the tools they are going to scale up and they are going to be part of this transformation because they have to either be part of this company or other companies that are going into the future. If that makes sense. Absolutely. So I think for people from my generation, it seems like a no brainer to shifts towards putting things on the internet, using digital technologies wherever possible. But if I could have empathy for people who maybe have been running a company that has not focused on digital, maybe they're in their fifties or sixties, and they've been leading this very successful business and someone else comes in and says, you know what? We've got to change everything and move it to digital infrastructure. And they're an executive. I would imagine there might be some resistance there. So how do you get buy in from people like this? The fighting, I think at this point, I think the digital transformation, it's a double edged sword. When we talk about digital transformation, right? You are really saying, are you, it really comes down to the core that you really need to be playing to where the puck is headed, not where the puck is right now. So in my mind, I think the forward thinking leaders are going to think about two or three vectors. One is. You know, how should we continually use the digital technologies? It cannot be transformation. You cannot keep transforming yourself. Yes. Now you talk about transformation. The more you think about it, you're continually using digital technologies to improve business outcomes. That has to be a discipline that you develop within your organization. But like I said, you all, you also need to, you also need to actually get to build these build the systems. So in my mind, if you were to talk to some of the people and say, you know, what does it mean? It is, it is change management. It is really hard change management problem. It is a change management for your shareholders, telling them that we will have a place in the future. You, you need to do that. That is one swim lane. Second from Ben is you need to actually develop a strategy that you need, that you can actually execute with some level of conviction. That is the second swim lane. And the third is you need to bring your employees along through it. The only thing that you can do is like I said, right? You, you, you need to communicate, communicate, communicate in a change management that you do not want any surprises you need to communicate as often as frequently and learn becoming, becoming a learning organization than fail fastest is the best way is the best way to think about it. So you just need to kind of do it. I think it's, there's no silver bullet for this. It's, it's hard job for leaders to actually kind of drive the digital transformation. Sure. Another interesting thing that I wanted to touch on is I'm like an avid student of the public markets. I really like reading earnings reports and how these things are perceived by the investors in the public markets and a recent trend in the last like five or 10 years is that a lot of these incumbent companies that are really not tech forward, come out with digital transformation plans. They presented to the public markets. Public markets are really excited. Analysts are really excited. The stock shoots up for the same reasons you said, which is better top line revenue, better profitability, lower costs, new growth, but then, you know, a few years later they haven't really implemented it that well it's taking longer than they expected. And then the stock either tanks again or it doesn't do well. So when you come up with these plans, how do you present it to the public market? Yep. I think that's a, a very good question. The, the interesting part with public markets, I think I'll give you an example of how. Adobe did it. Right. And then I also know Microsoft, how Microsoft did it. The one thing I don't know if you guys actually read this article about how Adobe became a software company. They're one of the companies that did go through the SAS transformation. And oftentimes when you go through transformation, what happens is you were dairies, there are changes in your earnings report. What I mean by that is either you are incurring more costs because you're going through transformation that actually reduces your profitability or your renew, your revenue source, our revenues are going to drop significantly. So in a SAS transformation, what actually happens is there is a trough before your revenues pickup. When you were selling software for five years and you actually were able to account all five years in one year versus you're taking every year, right. You're actually kind of apportioning, there is a significant trough in revenues. So I think you're absolutely right. First, what you really need to do is you need to run a multiple scenarios and see what is the best case and the worst case scenario. You really need to have that sense, because at the end of the day, this is a simulation. Nobody can predict what the future is, who would have thought coronavirus comes, right? You know, there are a set of scenarios that you need to develop within an organization. And the scenario analysis is very important for leaders develop that kind of scenario analysis to say, what is the best case and what is the worst case in this transformation journey. And then the second thing that you need to do is how do you continually look at the key. Performance indicators to manage between the best and the worst case. So I don't know if there is a better way to say it, you know, it's, it's very appealing to tell the investors saying, you know, we're going to go through the transformation, but there is a car just optimism that that any leader who is going through digital transformation needs to gung-ho, we're going to get there. We'll do it. You know, it's, it's, it's really difficult because you're really, whenever we think about digital transformation, it's really hitting the culture of the company. You're really transformed the culture of the company that actually has a lot more lasting impacts for that reason. You need to be cautiously optimistic when you're sharing a plan with the investors. And you are maniacal about managing within the guardrails of the worst case and the best case and say, you know, how do I continually manage it? If it is going below the worst case, man, do I have a problem? I just will get one or two chances to change my plan. If I, if I don't get it right then, you know, there's no reason for me to continue, right. Because I have not actually managed the execution properly. And that definitely becomes a challenge. When we look at this, you know, it's just, don't like surprises. They just do not like surprises. You tell me that my company's valuation is going down by 30%. They're okay. Right. They'll come back, but you cannot keep doing it two or three times when you do it, you lose credibility as a leader. So I wonder if you followed the the ordeals of WeWork. Some not, not extensively. I did. Okay. The reason I ask is because this is, this is a debate that Masonic and I have had for some time. I think that they're a real estate company. And I think that then throwing the digital label on it is a way to honestly manipulate their stock price. I think it's a challenge. Whenever we think about a tech company versus a non-tech company, I think that's a, I'll give you this example, and this is very fascinating. You know, when we think about we work, it is a very similar analogy that picks up has been through. I don't know if you know about the history of the Pixar then Steve jobs became the CEO of Pixar because he comes from Apple, which is a technology company. The valuations were like Pixar as a technology company. So the valuations were super high and then Steve jobs had to go on. On this road show to explain to the investor saying we are a media company, not, we are like Disney's of the world. We are not a technology company. Yes. We are actually using technology to build animation, which a Walt Disney did on paper. But we're fundamentally the principles that underlie our valuation should be a media company, not a high-tech company. So I think you have this guard rails. I think I think there's no right or wrong answers. So the question then becomes is what, what do you, what is your ultimate goal as a leader? If your ultimate goal as a leader is to create a sustaining company, a company that is long lasting and is going to stay there for a long time, then you are very apprehensive to label anything that is different than a business fundamentals would look like. Because you cannot sustain it because the markets are going to correct itself. So you can always play this game. And, and that's the beauty of people who are very thoughtful, like Jeff pieces, who is actually saying, Hey, investors don't even invest in our company because we're going to continually not give you dividends. So they are being truthful about what is driving a set of investments like Amazon and what Jeff, Steve jobs actually said the same thing about Pixar. And there are some leaders who actually want to play this game off. We are a tech company. So it only goes so far so far. In my opinion, the, when the collection actually happens, that's it right? We're going to people are going to lose jobs, those kinds of things. So that is the reason why you really need to use the business fundamentals as a way to communicate value. Even if the market wants you to be the tech company, you really need to actually align with the business fundamentals too, to ensure that at least from your standpoint, you're not creating the hype. I just wanted to bring up one thing I don't know if you guys are familiar with earnings manipulation so, yeah, so Sri, I don't know if you've come across this in your time as a consultant, but earnings manipulation is like a very well studied sort of phenomenon in accounting. And it's this idea that leaders have this toolkit that they can put to use at earnings a time, like every quarter where they can manipulate earnings just a little bit to either be better or worse than what the analysts are expecting. And obviously a theory goes that if you beat analyst expectations, your stock should go up. And the reason you know, not necessarily like go up in the longterm, but at least in the short-term in the next few days or a few weeks, and the reason leaders or CEOs and the C-suite would want this is because they have options tied to the value of the stock price. So this is a, this is an interesting, it's like a very well studied and typically they use accounting and they use the way revenues is that things like that to do this, but a recent trend that I've been reading about is they actually use the narrative around digital strategy to also do this deciding when to release basically new news on their digital strategy and their point in the transformation really does affect the stock price. And so it's like an added toolkit to them manipulating earnings. No, I think the, the way I think we're it is that are that when I, when I think about the fluctuations, I think like we, we live in a very complex markets, right? So this is a complex markets where we don't know what is actually happening. If you think about. What is this a game stop? You know, you look at all the things and you're like, okay, what is happening? You just don't have, seem to have a lot of control as to what's really happening. So in those situations, I think there are only two ways. I think about the problem statement. There's always some level of gaming. I think the first principles in my mind is investors do not like surprises. So that is number one. So if you had to actually kind of say, you know, if that is the first principle, then how do I manage their expectations? I'm sure that every CEO is actually thinking, even if they are not doing, they're always thinking about it. My biggest thing I always go back to is what are the business fundamentals that you are you're going to lead with that I think is the true North, in my opinion, the messaging, I think you can try to create some local maximums in my opinion, but that's really not the essence of a true leadership. So I think that a lot of companies would think about it. You know, there is no CEO who is not thinking about the first principle that investors do not like surprises. However, a lot of the leaders focus on how do they create sustainable value. And, and, and yes, there are some games that will inevitably be played because of pressures, but that should never lead. You were strategies or tactics. If you do that, then I think you're actually, you're, you're, you're missing the point, right? You're you're not really helping the company succeed. And oftentimes, you know, there is a significant responsibility that these leadership leaders have, you know, either you'll be truthful and maybe you'll get fired, but at least you have saved a lot of jobs for your employees. I think that that should be the true, not for any leader because, you know, you can only play so many games to achieve local maximums. You can never gain a global maximum. Right. And that that's a totally in line. Exactly. That makes a lot of sense. So Sri, I think a good time now would be to pivot to your experience now at Cisco, you're a product executive there. How are you helping transform Cisco and maybe particular challenges or successes you've had? Yep. So I think the one thing that I would actually qualify when I look at the companies, you know, Silicon Valley actually has this multiple waves of innovation. So you think about dentals of the world. So that actually led to. Companies like Cisco and then somebody like Cisco led to companies like Google companies, like Google led to companies, you know, more net new companies. I actually think about these are these as different waves of innovation. So if you think about Cisco, Cisco is that three the, the whole social, digital kind of mindset, right? So definitely I think there is there are, there are things that we're doing to improve. So we are not Google. We do not want to be Google, but, but for me, anything related to transformation, I do not know if I want to call it transformation. And that actually kind of misses the point. Right? When I think about any strategy, it is about where you're headed versus where you want to be. That's the reason why I do not like the labels, like digital transformation. It actually gives a free pass for. Strategy leaders. If you are a strategy person, if you are thinking five years down the line, you don't call it digital transformation. You're also always continually inventing where the world is headed and how you want to be relevant. So that I think is the reason why I consider myself as a strategist and an operator to help with executing a strategy. So coming back to your very specific question I cannot comment on Google and how they have done it because I have not worked with Google, but I can actually say with Cisco, I think, you know, we do have a way of achieving business outcomes. We do know that there are things that we need to be do to be relevant and create a sustainable company in the future. The way I think about a lot of our work. And I'll give you a couple of examples, but like any high-performance teams, the, and I don't know if you guys actually read the book. By Reed Hastings. He actually talks about every organization should consider their people as a high-performing teams. So these are like professional sports. So the focus will always be on within the context of Cisco. What are the strengths and weaknesses of, by the way, we all have strengths and weaknesses and even Google have weaknesses, right? It's not like any, one of the companies are impervious to strengths and weaknesses. So we do the question then becomes is how do we take those strengths and amplify those? How do we take our weaknesses and, and, and mitigate those and how do we achieve the business outcomes? So a lot of my job as somebody who is actually helping execute a strategy is continually looking at what are the barriers. So what are the barriers that are actually limiting Cisco's ability to be relevant in the future, be maniacal about prioritization, and then take the top three big rocks and help. Find the champions, because it's all people's business. I live with people. If people are not happy with the three big rocks I'm going to, I will not be successful and other organizations will not be successful. So we, we build consensus on what the big rocks are and we go execute it. So it is no different. I think in my mind, you know, wherever I actually, as a strategist, becoming an operator, executing a strategy, it is not different. Whether you call it digital transformation or not digital transformation, the only thing that is different this time is like you're dead in my mind. I likely likened the digital transformation with globalization. In 1990s and two thousands. You never said we need a globe. Yes. Maybe people call global globalization strategy, but globalization is just a tactic, right? You're actually saying, well, globalization gives me better efficiency of assets. So you actually, as part of strategy, you actually included global position as part of your strategy. Very similar in my opinion is you do not want to get into this mindset, that digital transformation, something crazy, something new, you always need to actually use the current industry context as a way to create value. And digital transformation in my mind is not different than globalization and many other trends that we have foreseen in the past. And so that's how I actually think about it. And that's how I actually kind of operate at Cisco three. It's been a pleasure listening to you talk, and I feel like I've learned a lot. We like rabbi. We'd like to wrap up these episodes by asking our guests, in your opinion, what's the best piece of software made either in recent memory or of all time. So I'll, I'll give you one. You're like, okay, I'm not going to like, this is what you'll say, but I'll say iOS it's a cop out, right? It's like who doesn't like iPhone, but I'll actually explained why that is the case. You know, I, I part about it, right. You know, there are, we use technology everywhere. And all the things that I do right now, or apps and all the apps on iPhone that is the only technology that I can accept and myself and say, that software really improved my work. 10 X, you see what I'm talking about? So that comes close to the iPhone and the, and, and, and the way it actually kind of improved my productivity. And I also liked the software because. Maybe I'm one of those crazy guys who is a fan of Steve jobs, but this there's no reason why I phone should have happened in 2008. If you were to think about any technology evolution, iPhone may have been, we have stumbled upon a technology like iPhone in 2015, maybe to get to that kind of sophistication, but it just is five to seven years ahead of its time from a technology standpoint. So I'm like when I, when I started using the iPhone, I never felt like I had to learn something new because I was using a clunky phone. It was so difficult to actually use a clunky phone, then learning iPhone. So that from a cost of adoption was so low. But then my productivity gain are like 10 X high. And I cannot find any technology that I have actually used. It is as it has so much impact on me as a person, culturally then iPhone. I think that's a really interesting response. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I've never, I've never actually thought about it in those terms, but you're absolutely right. I think the iPhone was literally, it was like someone came from a time machine and brought us this gift 10 years earlier than it was supposed to be. Yeah. And that's the reason why that is important, but I would love to, you know, you guys actually have this you know, about the software. So I want to hear. What is the best piece of stuff. And don't tell me iPhone, but I want you to, ah, yes. Now we always ask this question, but I don't think we understood how difficult it was until the ball was in our court. You know what, I'm going to let answer first. So I'll give an answer. It's going to sound super clunky. And then for also coming a well, like scripted, perfectly like annunciated answer. So I think, I think, yeah, so, you know, I have maybe a small cop-out answer myself in recent memory, the best software that I've used on a day-to-day basis is probably zoom. I am in school right now. Having a conversation with brother, like. You know, when we do go back in person, do you really think the schooling experience will be better in person versus over zoom? And I think we both agreed that zoom is much better. It saves us a lot of time. Yeah. My brother then going to school better than going into the classroom, at least in my brother's case, you know, he's a UC San Diego. And so he would have to walk these Hills to get to class every day and take him like an hour to get to class and an hour to get back. You'd be sweating by the time he got there. In my case, I mean, zoom is far more multi-faceted right. Besides school, we run a podcast on zoom. It's Lord barriers to entry for a number of things. People that couldn't before get to a certain geography because of, you know financial limitations or physical mutations or whatever it may be. Now they have zoom. I think a lot of it with a lot of other guests we've talked about what makes software great and sort of a signal that software is fantastic is that you've forgotten how great it is. It's become so standard. It's become so embedded in our day-to-day lives that we'll just stop giving it any credence. With zoom. I feel like it's occurred now. Nobody really cares to talk about zoom, but there's no competitors. It's not like anybody ever talks about Google Hangouts or no one listens to me though, WebEx or something like that. Yeah, comment on it. Wasn't I think you know, zoom definitely changed and it just so happens that we got lucky having zoom and of course, WebEx also benefited a lot from the coronavirus thing, but while I complain a lot, you know, the zoom fatigue and I'm like, I know I can't have this, you know, what, chill coffee sessions anymore. You know, I just need some physical. I'm like, you know, the more I actually use zoom for some reason, our, our WebEx for that matter. I just feel like, you know, I just crave for human interaction. The virtual coffees and virtual celebrations are like, man, we were very corny, but I agree with you or something. The fact that it's so timely, if we didn't have these communication technologies, what would we have done? Right. That's that's fascinating. I know. What about you for us? Well, I, I, I just want to add on to comment about zoom first. I think maybe the, even more remarkable thing about zoom is something which will become apparent over the next five years. So our last guest so that he believes that the internet was going to make. Everyone in the world have access to opportunities that typically only like historically only let's say middle-class or upper middle-class people have had. And the biggest one is education. So if we're doing college classes in the U S right now over zoom, and it's successful, who's to say someone from the village in Ghana or someone from a village in India or anywhere as long as they have internet or able to get like a university education, I, one of the top universities in the world, like if that happens, then the entire human race is going to be advanced, I think a more fundamentally for us. But I think for me, that I think is YouTube for me, because I can get into the Stanford courses without being in Stanford. You know almost always because I can't get into Stanford. Maybe I didn't actually apply it when I was, when I was younger. How does felt like Stanford is all rated, but I have like the rich number of classes that are from Stanford on YouTube. It's like, I'm missing your point. I think the digital technologies, yes. Zoom is one of the facets, but I know that there are many tools that are actually fundamentally reducing the barriers of education, right? Thinking like Ted, this is, this is the time I think you can be more enlightened than hour because the barriers for information has reduced. But I also believe that there's so much more misinformation, but as long as I, I treated education as a very important foundations for civilization and, and hopefully we're not giving the system. I think the digital technology is, is, has a, has a fundamental impact on many of us, right. And generations to come on, how easy it is to get access to technology. Yeah, I learned everything I know about circuits and circuit design from YouTube university. So my answer for what I think the best piece of software ever built is it's probably a TCP rip. And the reason for that is okay. So first of all, if we look at the end user experience, I mean, the internet is it's fundamental. Like this is a fundamental technology that we had to crack, but what I think is maybe more impressive is the architecture of it. So, you know, if we let's say we roll out let's say we roll out a new version of zoom. Great. We can just replace the existing version and we're good to go, but you can't do that with TCP over IP. If you want to rip out some change and add another layer If you don't do it in a seamless way, there's going to be a lot of, a lot of people who are suffering. There's going to be a lot of internet outages. So in order to create the scalable architecture, like 30 years ago, when no one had any idea how big the internet was going to be, and then modular, like doing it with modularity and adding to it and growing in it in a very seamless way is incredible. I think the design behind it is one of the most impressive feats to ever be done in software engineering. The, the, the one thing though, I think it's the principles like you know, when you think about America and people talk about the principles from the founding fathers, the TCP IP, the, the principles that drove TCP IP was about democratization of technology. Maybe that's the first element of how you looked at democratization. Think about even if I think about a lot of other technologies, right. That came before mainframes was IBM PC and and Microsoft, it was Microsoft. And the Mac was all Apple. There was no technology that, that somebody said, and then after TCPA became a bit of a thing, right. But the democratization of information highway, this is very deep by the way for us. But the democratization started with PCP. Nobody made any money, but those foundational blocks, I think if you think about the TCPA and if I came up with that, if this is coming somewhat but, but really the founding fathers of who came up with the TCP IP, they really created the information highway. Maybe they did not get benefit from all the riches that it created, but it is the highway that we all build new value and, and make a lot of careers. So I come from India by the way, but All this actually is is on implement and digital technology. So I can always attest to the fact that those foundational principles really impacted me and the opportunities that that gave me. So I think that's, that's really cool answer by the way. Cool. Thank you. Yeah. Well, Sherry, thank you for asking us a question. I mean, that's yeah, wasn't this spreading I just, you put me on the spot. I was like, no, you know, my original, I was like, my first immediate reaction to that question would be like Kindle books. But then I came up with the zoom. I felt like I'd give them more convincing, convincing. It was a good answer. Yeah, actually I just told you the truth TSP over IP. I asked my dad this question and he told me TCP IP and he told me, I just said the answer that he said. Oh, dude, that's zero authenticity networking engineer. Like I'm going to top that, but he liked it for us actually, when he was enlightened by what his father said, it became. Exactly. Exactly.