The Hidden Half by ctof magazine

I BELIEVE

THOUGHT LEADERS

VIEWPOINT

Plan, Manage, Execute Pg 06

Managing Social Media Risks Pg 70

The Growth of Data Growth Pg 72

T R A C K T E C H N O LO G Y

B U I LD B USI N ESS

Volume 01 Issue 02 February 2012 150

SHAPE SELF

The

Hidden

Half A perceptive look at why the world's women remain hidden and how they can shine Page 38

A special section on leadership designed keeping in mind the evolving information needs of CIOs Page 23 to 37

A 9.9 Media Publication

editorial yashvendra singh | yashvendra.singh@9dot9.in

Woman Power It is time

we realised and leveraged the huge untapped talent of women.

et me start with a big thank to all of you for the tremendous support extended to CIO&Leader. Your warm appreciation of the inaugural issue not just affirms that we are heading in the right direction; it also spurs us to further raise the bar in offering you valuable content. Into the second edition of CIO&Leader, we decided to take the issue of leadership one step further. While our first cover story discovered the personality types of leading CIOs, for this cover story we decided to focus on women and leadership.

The reasons were several and compelling. The biggest was the fact that despite a large number of women enter the corporate sector, the percentage of those that made it to the top remained stubbornly low. In fact, we were able to count top women technology decision makers in India on our finger tips! At a measly 5.3 percent, the number of women directors in Indian corporates is abysmally low. This despite the fact that they bring to corporates value, skills and management style unique to them. We at CIO&Leader feel the tra-

editors pick 38

Their Rightful Place Under the Sun

Organisations have begun to adapt their work ethos for women but more light needs to be shone on multiple issues

ditional approach of leading by commanding absolute authority is passĂŠ. The emerging leadership model emphasises on shared leadership. Women, inherently tuned to unite families, can easily slip into this leadership model. Their empathetic and flexible nature and better interpersonal skills compared to men hold them in good stead to emerge as leaders. Despite such important contemporary leadership attributes, why do majority of women fail to scale the summit in the corporate sector? As our cover story details, there are several factors responsible for this. One of the most prominent being the challenge to maintain work-life balance. Several corporates boast of providing working flexibility to women employees. In most, however, such practices are not institutionalised. Another hindrance for women in their leadership

journey is the lack of adequate coaching, training and mentorship. This is especially crucial for women in the mid-carriers as these are decisive years in their leadership journey. Progressive countries have acknowledged the importance of tapping women talent. Norway in 2003 passed a legislation that obliged publicly listed companies to reserve 40 percent of the seats on their boards for women by 2008. Spain passed a similar legislation in 2007; France followed suit last year. It is time India paid heed to these developments and came up with similar laws. It is time we leveraged the huge untapped talent of women. It is time we broke the glass ceiling once and for all!

February 2012

february 2012

Cov e r D e s i g n: an i l t

Cover Story

38 | Their Rightful Place Under the Sun Organisations have begun to adapt their

work ethos for women but more light needs to be shone on multiple issues Please Recycle This Magazine And Remove Inserts Before Recycling

Copyright, All rights reserved: Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission from Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt Ltd. is prohibited. Printed and published by Anuradha Das Mathur for Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt Ltd, Bungalow No. 725, Sector - 1, Shirvane, Nerul, Navi Mumbai - 400706. Printed at Tara Art Printers Pvt ltd. A-46-47, Sector-5, NOIDA (U.P.) 201301

February 2012

RegulArs 01 | Editorial 08 | Enterprise Roundup

Special leadership section Page 23 to 37 26

25 | Top Down Go Beyond Being a CIO Subramanya C from Hinduja Global Solutions talks to CIO&Leader about what it takes to be the 'Tech CEO' of the IT department

28 | Leading edge How leaders kill meaning at work Most executives donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t act as though progress matters

my story

32 | The best advice I ever got Take Risks to Receive Rewards

Manikkam VS Head IT, Henkel CAC shares the best advice he ever got

33 | ME & MY MENTEE Focus on Issues, Not Personalities

26 | Leaders Zap, not Sap

35 | opinion Creating a Winning Culture There are many

V S Parthasarathy, Group CIO, Mahindra & Mahindra talks about his views on leadership

qualities and skills that that a leader needs to learn to become a great leader

37 | SHELF LIFE The Soul of Leadership At the heart of this book is the idea that leadership emanates from the core of our being

Columns

Features

06 | i believe: Plan, Manage and Execute Datacentre

72 | viewpoint: The Growth of Data Growth My Digital

70 | Thought Leaders: Managing Social Media Risks

18 | best of breed: Does Cloud Mean the End of Tape?

migration should be done in such a way that the business continues uninterrupted

Contrail

The need is to have a robust risk management framework that can adapt to changing business environment

Some cloud service providers go so far as to say their solutions eliminate tape. Is it true?

66 | tech for governance: Encryption: A Buzzword, Not a Silver Bullet Consider four encryption components on the server side

February 2012

www.cioandleader.com Managing Director: Dr Pramath Raj Sinha Printer & Publisher: Anuradha Das Mathur Editorial Executive Editor: Yashvendra Singh Consulting Editor: Sanjay Gupta Assistant Editor: Varun Aggarwal Assistant Editor: Ankush Sohoni DEsign Sr Creative Director: Jayan K Narayanan Art Director: Anil VK Associate Art DirectorS: PC Anoop & Atul Deshmukh Visualisers: Prasanth TR, Anil T & Shokeen Saifi Sr Designers: Sristi Maurya & NV Baiju Designers: Suneesh K, Shigil N, Charu Dwivedi Raj Verma, Prince Antony, Binu MP, Peterson & Prameesh Purushothaman C Chief Photographer: Subhojit Paul Photographer: Jiten Gandhi

14 A Question of Answers

14 | Innovate During Crisis

Debdeep Sengupta, Head – Enterprise Sales, SAP, India, talks about the need for enterprises to innovate during crisis 58

advertisers’ index

58 | Next Horizons: Techs Driving IT into Transition Some technology and cultural hot spots to pay attention to as we move through this year and beyond

62 | no holds barred: cyber weapons bigger issue than cyber war Eugene Kaspersky, CEO, Kaspersky Lab talks about the growing threat of a cyber war

February 2012

iOmega Schneider Check Point Datacard VMWare Riverbed Microsoft

IFC 5 7 12 – 13 55 IBC BC

advisory Panel Anil Garg, CIO, Dabur David Briskman, CIO, Ranbaxy Mani Mulki, VP-IT, ICICI Bank Manish Gupta, Director, Enterprise Solutions AMEA, PepsiCo India Foods & Beverages, PepsiCo Raghu Raman, CEO, National Intelligence Grid, Govt. of India S R Mallela, Former CTO, AFL Santrupt Misra, Director, Aditya Birla Group Sushil Prakash, Sr Consultant, NMEICT (National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology) Vijay Sethi, CIO, Hero MotoCorp Vishal Salvi, CISO, HDFC Bank Deepak B Phatak, Subharao M Nilekani Chair Professor and Head, KReSIT, IIT - Bombay Sales & Marketing National Manager – Events and Special Projects: Mahantesh Godi (+91 98804 36623) National Sales Manager: Vinodh K (+91 97407 14817) Assistant General Manager Sales (South): Ashish Kumar Singh (+91 97407 61921) Senior Sales Manager (North): Aveek Bhose (+91 98998 86986) Product Manager - CSO Forum and Strategic Sales: Seema Menon (+91 97403 94000) Brand Manager: Gagandeep S Kaiser (+91 99999 01218) Production & Logistics Sr. GM. Operations: Shivshankar M Hiremath Manager Operations: Rakesh upadhyay Asst. Manager - Logistics: Vijay Menon Executive Logistics: Nilesh Shiravadekar Production Executive: Vilas Mhatre Logistics: MP Singh & Mohd. Ansari OFFICE ADDRESS Published, Printed and Owned by Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt Ltd. Published and printed on their behalf by Anuradha Das Mathur. Published at Bungalow No. 725, Sector - 1, Shirvane, Nerul, Navi Mumbai - 400706. Printed at Tara Art Printers Pvt ltd. A-46-47, Sector-5, NOIDA (U.P.) 201301 For any customer queries and assistance please contact help@9dot9.in This issue of CIO&Leader includes 12 pages of CSO Forum free with the magazine

This index is provided as an additional service.The publisher does not assume any liabilities for errors or omissions.

cto forum thectoforum.com

07 MONTH 2010

The strategic bridge between your data centre and your business? You. Only StruxureWare for Data Centres enables a healthy, business-driven data centre Tap into the health of your data centre As an IT or data centre manager, you know that doing your job well means saving your company both time and money. Today, there finally is a way for you to be completely tapped into the overall health of your data centre. StruxureWare™ for Data Centres gives you visibility across your entire data centre infrastructure so you can make informed decisions — not arbitrary ones — about your infrastructure. For example, you can plan proactively for needed capacity and streamline workflow management to improve your business agility and availability. In fact, now more than ever, infrastructure decisions are business decisions.

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Blueprint data centre expansions and consolidations.

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Make changes knowing how they will affect your business.

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An always available, efficient data centre What’s more, StruxureWare for Data Centres communicates in real time with the leading virtualization platforms: VMware vSphere™ and Microsoft® System Centre Virtual Machine Manager. The software’s built-in automated response capabilities ensure that virtual loads always have healthy host environments. With your VMs on healthy hosts, you can focus on running your data centre more efficiently. The software also gives insight into PUE/DCiE trending over time, enabling you to make intelligent energy management decisions. With StruxureWare for Data Centres planning and reporting capabilities, who’s the company hero now? You are! APC™ by Schneider Electric™ is the pioneer of modular data centre infrastructure and innovative cooling technology. Its products and solutions, including InfraStruxure™, are an integral part of the Schneider Electric IT portfolio.

How Data Center Infrastructure Management Software Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs White Paper 107

> Executive summary

Download White Paper #107: ‘How Data Center Infrastructure Management Software Improves Planning and Cuts Operational Costs’. Visit www.SEreply.com Key Code 15884p Toll Free 1800 4254 877/272

©2012 Schneider Electric. All Rights Reserved. Schneider Electric, InfraStruxure, StruxureWare, and APC are trademarks owned by Schneider Electric Industries SAS or its affiliated companies. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. Schneider Electric India Pvt. Ltd., 9th Floor, DLF Building No. 10, Tower C, DLF Cyber City, Phase II, Gurgaon - 122 002, Haryana, India. Phone: +33 (0) 1 41 29 70 00 • 998-4108_IN-GB

I Believe

By Jayabalan Subramanium CTO, Netmagic Solutions The author has over two decades of experience in building information technology solutions to drive business growth

Plan, Manage and Execute Datacentre migration

should be done in such a way that the business continues uninterrupted Datacentre migration is often regarded as a purely technical, almost trivial side-project, to be delivered by existing IT staff alongside their day jobs. With core business services reliant on IT, a datacentre migration can expose the business itself to a significant degree of risk. Yet change is inevitable, and as the business grows, companies may find there are

February 2012

current challenge ensuring a smooth and seamless datacentre migration

mission-critical reasons why such a move makes sense. The benefits of carefully planned and executed datacentre migration go well beyond what meets the eye of the user or customer. I believe, to bring in a seamless datacentre migration there are certain stages that need to be followed. These are as below. Stage 1 (Planning & Design): Define the scope and size of the project; plan, agree and allocate resources & budget; agree key determining factors, limitation, (network, security etc); undertake a risk analysis and complete due diligence activities; create project plan identifying the critical path & key resources; complete inventories of existing systems and interdependencies; identify future system requirements (pipeline for growth); create a step-by-step decommissioning, rebuilding equipment plan, including health and safety procedures; determine interim equipment requirements to keep systems operational during the migration; devise a contingency plan to include illness, accidents and damage to equipment; define connectivity requirements and allocate adequate time for new connections; LAN design/ WAN detailed diagram. Stage 2 (Pre Migration): Check for readiness of racks, power circuits, cage and biometric reader; ensure back-up systems are in place & operational; Data Backup (prior to migration); check that transportation and buildings can cope with equipment size and weight. Stage 3 (Migration): Review deployment teams' tasks and timelines; plan new space configuration and reference racks; install and test new data cabling (certification to be issued); ensure all identified processes and procedures are followed; checking on connectivity between hardware equipments; test network and application components.

Enterprise

Worldwide Smartphone Sales Soared 47% in Q4, 2011 Pg 10

Illustration by pc anoop

Round-up

story InsIde

Volume Alone is Not Big Data: Gartner

The research firm says that the data warehouse DBMS market is undergoing a transformation

According to Gartner's latest Magic Quadrant report for the data warehouse DBMS market, introduction of big data is causing transformational changes for both vendors and enterprise users. The supplier side of the data warehouse database management system (DBMS) market consists of those vendors supplying DBMS products for the database infrastructure of a data warehouse and the required operational management controls, says Gartner. This market is specific to DBMSs used as a platform for a data warehouse. It is important to note that a DBMS cannot be used as a data warehouse â&#x20AC;&#x201D; rather, a data warehouse is deployed on a DBMS platform, says

February 2012

Gartner. A data warehouse solution architecture can use many different data constructs and repositories. The definition of this market is changing and a DBMS will become only part of the overall market definition as the logical data warehouse continues to grow in acceptance. A data warehouse DBMS is now expected to coordinate virtualisation strategies, as well as distributed and/or processing approaches such as MapReduce, to handle one aspect of big or extreme data situations. Volume alone is not Big Data. From 2012 onwards, defining the size of a warehouse will become less important and information asset access will become more important.

Data Briefing

472

million

smartphone units sold worldwide in 2011

Enterprise Round-up

They Kapil Said it Sibal

Illustration by binu MP

The low-cost Aakash tablet PC will be made completely indigenous and its production base diversified, HRD Minister Kapil Sibal said. He said the IITs and the ITIs are onboard on development of the device which has so far reached out to a handful of students.

Dassault Systèmes Acquires Netvibes Intelligence technologies to enrich 3D Experience platform

“We are planning to create eco-system for end to end development of Aakash in India. This will create enormous opportunities for R&D institutions, developers, electronic production houses.” — Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Science and Technology

Systèmes has announced the acquisition of Netvibes, a company offering dashboard intelligence technologies to enrich 3D Experience platform. Netvibes is an internet platform that delivers a holistic snapshot of any key information related to ‘my company’ or my ‘personal interest’. Netvibes offers an easy and fast way to create personalised dashboards for real-time monitoring, social analytics, knowledge sharing, and decision support. Netvibes helps Fortune 500 brands such as the Coca-Cola Company and the US Department of Energy or advertising agencies like Universal McCann to monitor, analyse and understand everything inside and outside their company in real-time with dashboard intelligence, connecting critical information for better decision-making. All companies today face the challenge of adapting to the increasing speed and volume of information coming from multiple enterprise systems and the real-time Web. With the acquisition of Netvibes, Dassault Systèmes reaffirms its belief that virtual worlds can improve the real world. Integrated into Dassault Systèmes’ 3D Experience platform, Netvibes will help customers reveal critical information such as consumer sentiment, brand image or the adherence rate of early adopters. Dassault

Quick Byte on SECURITY

Microsoft released nine new security bulletins fixing 21 vulnerabilities in all supported versions of Internet Explorer and the Windows operating system, Microsoft Office and .NET/Silverlight in its February Patch Tuesday release.

February 2012

photo by photos.com

Enterprise Round-up

Worldwide Smartphone Sales Soared 47% in Q4, 2011 Total

sales in 2011 reached 472 million units Worldwide smartphone sales to end users soared to 149 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011, a 47.3 per cent increase from the fourth quarter of 2010, according to Gartner, Inc. Total smartphone sales in 2011 reached 472 million units and accounted for 31 percent of all mobile devices sales, up 58 percent from 2010. Smartphone volumes during the quarter rose due to record sales of Apple iPhones. As a result, Apple became the third-largest

mobile phone vendor in the world, overtaking LG. Apple also became the world's top smartphone vendor, with a market share of 23.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, and the top smartphone vendor for 2011 as a whole, with a 19 percent market share. "Western Europe and North America led most of the smartphone growth for Apple during the fourth quarter of 2011," said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner. "InWestern Europe the spike in

Global Tracker

Mobile cloud traffic to account for 71%, or 7.6 exabytes per month, of total mobile data traffic by 2016, compared to 45% in 2011 10

February 2012

Source: Cisco Visual Networking Inde

Growth in Mobile Cloud Traffic

iPhone sales in the fourth quarter saved the overall smartphone market after two consecutive quarters of slow sales." The quarter saw Samsung and Apple cement their positions further at the top of the market as their brands and new products clearly stood out. LG, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Research In Motion (RIM) again recorded disappointing results as they struggled to improve volumes and profits significantly. These vendors were also exposed to a much stronger threat from the midrange and low end of the smartphone market as ZTE and Huawei continued to gain share during the quarter. Worldwide mobile device sales to end users totaled 476.5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011, a 5.4 percent increase from the same period in 2010. In 2011 as a whole, end users bought 1.8 billion units, an 11.1 percent increase from 2010. "Expectations for 2012 are for the overall market to grow by about 7 percent, while smartphone growth is expected to slow to around 39 percent," said Annette Zimmermann, principal research analyst at Gartner. In the fourth quarter of 2011, Nokia's mobile phone sales numbered 111.7 million units, an 8.7 percent decrease from last year. "Samsung closed the gap with Nokia in overall market share," said Cozza. "Samsung profited from strong smartphone sales of 34 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011. The troubled economic environment in Europe and Nokia's weakened brand status posed challenges that were hard to overcome in just one quarter. However, Nokia proved its ability to execute and deliver on time with its new Lumia 710 and 800 handsets. Nokia will have to continue to offer aggressive prices to encourage communications service providers (CSPs) to add its products to portfolios currently dominated by Android-based devices.” Apple had an exceptional fourth quarter, selling 35.5 million smartphones to end users, a 121.4 percent increase year on year. Apple's continued attention to channel management helped it take full advantage of the strong quarter to further close the gap with Samsung, which saw some inventory build up for its smartphone range. Apple's strong performance will continue into the first quarter of 2012 as availability of the iPhone 4S widens.

Enterprise Round-up

photo by photos.com

Citrix Launches Open Source Cloud Platform called CloudStack3

Citrix has announced the general availability of Citrix CloudStack 3, the first release of the opensource cloud platform under the Citrix brand. CloudStack is claimed to be the world’s most successful platform for public clouds, powering over $1 billion in revenue for more than 85 large-scale production clouds, including some of the biggest brands in the industry. With the new CloudStack 3 release, Citrix brings the power of Amazon-style clouds to customers of all sizes. For the first time, enterprise customers who want to

build clouds the way the world’s most successful clouds are built, can quickly and easily transform virtualised datacenter resources into automated, elastic, self-service clouds. Citrix CloudStack is a key component of the Citrix cloud computing portfolio, providing customers with solutions that make it easy to build new clouds, connect to existing cloud services, and deliver any cloud with the best security, performance and reliability. Since its introduction, CloudStack has rapidly become the leading commercial open source platform for building, managing and delivering highly scalable infrastructure-as-a-service clouds for a wide range of customers such as Datapipe, Edmunds.com, IDC Frontier, Nokia Research and Zynga. CloudStack is designed to ensure organisations can build production cloud environments on a platform designed for economics, elasticity and scale. It is not a traditional enterprise server virtualisation platform with cloud-like management layers on top. Rather, it was designed from the ground up as an open, multi-hypervisor platform to help customers build public and private clouds the way the world’s most innovative clouds are built – simple, automated, elastic, scalable and efficient. New capabilities in CloudStack 3 focus on openness, flexibility and completeness. Citrix is also unveiling a Citrix Cloud Community Program, which introduces over 2,200 products and services that are Citrix Ready verified to work with Citrix cloud solutions. The program showcases hundreds of leading technology companies and service providers who are partnering with Citrix to build the largest cloud computing ecosystem in the industry.

Fact ticker

India PC Market Declined 6.5% in Q4, 2011 HP worst hit The combined desk-based and mobile PC market in India totaled nearly 2.5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011, a 6.5 per cent decrease from the fourth quarter of 2010, according to Gartner, Inc. “The hard-disk drive (HDD) shortage due to the floods in Thailand significantly impacted the desktop market which declined 18 percent

year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2011,” said Vishal Tripathi, principal research analyst at Gartner. “White boxes (including parallel import), which accounted for 45 percent of the overall desktop market, registered a 32 percent decline in the quarter compared to Q4 2010. Mobile PCs, with a 12 percent increase from the fourth quarter of 2010, were able to stop a

further decline of the PC market.” In the fourth quarter of 2011, Lenovo and Dell recorded 28 percent and 11 percent growth respectively, while HP declined 26 percent compared to fourth quarter of 2010. Multinational brands contributed more than half of the total PC shipments in the fourth quarter of 2011 with shipments from Acer, Dell, HP and Lenovo, the top 4 vendors, representing 53.1 percent of the market. Local vendor HCL accounted for 5.5 percent of PC shipments in the fourth quarter of 2011, with 34 percent year-on-year decline from the fourth quarter of 2010.

Taleo

racle has entered into an agreement to acquire Taleo Corporation, a leading provider of cloud-based talent management for $46.00 per share or approximately $1.9 billion, net of Taleo’s cash and debt. Taleo’s Talent Management Cloud helps organisations attract, develop, motivate and retain human capital to improve performance and drive growth. Together, Oracle and Taleo expect to create a comprehensive cloud offering for organisations to manage their Human Resource operations and employee careers. The combination is expected to empower employees and managers to effectively manage careers throughout their entire employment, enable organisations to retain talent and optimise costs, and improve the employee experience through faster on boarding and better collaboration with team members via social media. The Board of Directors of Taleo has unanimously approved the transaction. The transaction is expected to close mid-year 2012, subject to Taleo stockholder approval, certain regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. “Human capital management has become a strategic initiative for organisations,” said Thomas Kurian, Executive Vice President, Oracle Development.

February 2012

A Ques tion of answers | Debdeep Sengup ta

India Strategy: For the Indian market, Sengupta will be focusing on areas such as applications, analytics, cloud and mobility

February 2012

Debdeep Sengup ta | A Ques tion of answers

Debdeep Sengupta | SAP

Innovate During Crisis In a conversation with Ankush Sohoni, Debdeep Sengupta, VP – Enterprise Sales, SAP India, talks about the need for enterprises to innovate during the time of crisis, and how they can get the edge by deploying real time analytics What is SAPs HANA strategy for large enterprises? We are seeing a significant amount of momentum from customers specifically in adopting innovate and cutting edge technology. Technology just for the sake of technology does not matter, but what really matters is the fact that a technology can help you figure out a solution to your problem and help your enterprise in a certain way. Every technology is good or bad depending on how customers are using it - that is the context. Given the economic fluxes in recent times we have seen that a lot of customers have involved themselves in strategic initiatives while looking at the bigger picture and thinking ahead.

That is one of the key learnings that our customers have had. Knee jerk reactions are a thing of the past and there are two to three aspects of dealing with a scenario depending on the kind of business environment– Brick and Mortar, Retail or Banking. This typically defines business growth and innovation. Most CEOs are concerned with growth and how to improve operational skills. We have seen a lot of business models in many businesses and what has come under common thread is customers who do not innovate in terms of customer segmentation, product strategy are not successful in tough times. One of the key learnings that have happened in

recent economic times is that, if you don’t innovate whether you’re a large player or a small player it is difficult to sustain through a moment of crises. We have seen this as a common thread among various customers and accounts. SAP’s real time analytics have really paid off well, because the customer is using the technology to leverage their own internal business innovation process. We find that customers are pretty happy – because our philosophy and theirs are very similar – because be it in tough economic times or in the good times – innovation is crucial. This is why we have seen major interest in our technologies like HANA and In-Memory computing.

February 2012

A Ques tion of answers | Debdeep Sengup ta

What opportunities exist in the large enterprise market? HANA scenarios are not being built by SAP but by customers. I’ll give you an example. If you look at a company like Essar – they are very diversified being into oil and gas, metals, technology and so on. With a technology like HANA, customers can innovate no matter what industry they are in. In downstream oil and gas marketing, a business that Essar is in, there are quite a few scenarios which will be very applicable. Wherever the customer requires high end analytics, HANA will be very applicable. Most customers are adopting technologies like HANA to get that competitive advantage. That’s where we are seeing trends. If you look at what Google has done. If I need to know anything about anything, I just Google it. Similarly within an enterprise if I need to know my financial accounting information it shouldn’t be too difficult to process. Today technologies like HANA are making this as simple and fast as possible so as to provide data at any given time in real time. Data can come from social networks, excel sheets and so on. So HANA kind of brings things together, and looks at real time insights. How are you planning on bringing more customers on board? Well we are looking to evangelise our platform, but at the end of the day a customer is only going to take what they need. Of course it’s a different thing that we know that this technology can be utilized by the customers in many innovative ways, but currently the market seems to be hungry for solutions of this kind. Another thing about our HANA platform is that it becomes very easy to scale. The beauty of In-Memory computing is that systems are extremely fast, flexible and scalable. This is a huge value add for our customers and for any one who needs information in an enterprise. We do

February 2012

“Customers are adopting technologies like HANA to get that competitive advantage”

not believe that people need to wait for data. We bring data to them when they want access to it. The funny thing is customers today are coming to us and asking us how they can utilize HANA effectively within their enterprises, as opposed to us going to them and showing them its value. What else does SAP have brewing for the Indian market? We will focus on a few areas, such as applications, analytics, the cloud, mobility. We are not just an application company but a provider of platforms. Today there are a billion mobile phones in the country. The question is how can I take advantage of that as a business. How can I open up to new consumers that I haven’t been able to reach before using mobility as a platform. Mobility is a top of mind concern for every customer. Every customer is evaluating mobile strategies for their

things I Believe in There is a significant amount of momentum from customers specifically in adopting innovative and cutting edge technology Those who do not innovate in terms of customer segmentation, product strategy are not successful in tough times ost users are M seriously looking at analytics

organisation. Using Sybase we are focused on mobility. We are looking at how we can enable internal and external processes. The second aspect which every CIO is looking at is building a cloud strategy. The question of which of their processes they will have in-house and the one’s they will give to third parties is plaguing most CIOs today. Most users are very seriously looking at analytics. If I look at the west, they do not depend upon the CIO or the IT department for daily reports. They look at reports themselves and slash and dice data using tools. It is impossible for IT departments, to keep up with speed and keep drilling into data. In India this trend is catching on too. We want to be in a position where we can help build these platforms for Indian enterprises and enable everyone who needs access to information to have access to platforms like HANA.

Best of

Breed Feature Inside

Illustration by prince Antony

Thriving by Embracing Disruptive Practices Pg 20

Does Cloud Mean the End of Tape? Some cloud backup and recovery service providers go so far as to say their solutions eliminate tape. Is it true?

By Dick Fordham

ith the rapid maturing of cloud-based backup and disaster recovery services enabled by the convergence of virtualisation, highly efficient disk-based backup technology and high bandwidth networks, enterprises can now design disaster recovery (DR) strategies driven by their core business objectives -- instead of doing it the other way around. After all, how many companies can actually afford to be out of business for the several days it

February 2012

s t o r a g e | B EST OF B REED

could take to retrieve tapes from storage and then restore systems, applications and data if tape provided their only backup? Today’s disk- and cloud-based backup and recovery solutions support modern day business continuity and DR requirements by storing customer data on multiple mirrored disk systems from which almost any virtual or physical replacement server can be quickly repopulated. In the event of a disaster, companies can resume operations in a matter of hours or even minutes. Emphasising these advantages, some cloud backup and recovery service providers go so far as to say their solutions eliminate tape.

The cloud But does the cloud really mean the end of tape? No. While no dynamic or data-intensive business can depend solely on tape for acceptable backup and recovery, this year’s highly publicised cloud services failures such as at Google and Amazon demonstrate that neither can one depend solely on the cloud. Tape can still fill an important role in many companies’ DR plans as part of a hybrid disk-cloud-tape solution; one that assigns different tiers of data to the storage technology that best meets an organisation’s varied recovery point and recovery time objectives. At a minimum, such a solution employs tape for economical and secure long-term retention and archiving of data that does not require the immediate access of higher cost disk storage. After 50 years, time for a better approach Traditional IT disaster recovery models have been constrained by the limitations of tape backup technology. For decades, companies backed up data to tape on their own premises on a weekly basis, with daily incremental backups to capture changes, and then rotated those copies through offsite storage. In case of disaster, the appropriate tapes would be delivered by truck to a disaster recovery facility, where the backed up data would be copied from them into an exact duplicate of the production data center infrastructure. If a company was lucky, this process could be completed in a few days. Longer recovery points and times and the cost of duplicate hardware were not the only drawbacks to this traditional approach.

Cloud backup and recovery provides same-day recovery, restoring business operations in hours as opposed to days or even weeks The model was strategically upside-down in that a company’s DR efforts could deliver only a speed of recovery that was tactically achievable rather than what was strategically necessary. Disk backup systems provided a significant advance over tape, enabling more frequent snapshots of ongoing operations and much shorter recovery times. Under such continuous use, disks are also much more reliable than tape. But disk storage systems, in particular high-end storage area networks required by the largest organisations, can be costly. And they are not portable like tape, requiring some other method of replicating backed-up data to an offsite location. This obstacle was overcome through the combination of several enabling technologies. First was advanced deduplication and compression that reduced the backup footprint, helping to contain storage hardware requirements. Next was the availability of high bandwidth networks that increased the practicality of transmitting these compressed backup files to remote backup facilities or service providers. Finally, virtualisation eliminated the need and cost to exactly replicate production data center hardware at the DR facility. Companies can now meet their backup and recovery requirements in a variety of physical-to-virtual, virtual-to-virtual, virtualto-physical and traditional physical-to-physical configurations. These technologies have now given rise to cloud backup and recovery: the provision of software, platforms and infrastructure as a service to enable an integrated backup and recovery process, accessible from anywhere, at any time, via any carrier. In a complete reversal of the old tape-based model, cloud backup and recovery enables a strategically-driven DR approach in which an organisation can set a minimum

acceptable time for accessing data and resuming operations following a disaster. For organisations seeking shorter recovery point and recovery time objectives, cloud backup and recovery fills the gap between the matter-of-minutes recovery delivered by costly, high-end SAN replication and the multi-day recovery achievable with tapes and trucks. Cloud backup and recovery provides same-day recovery, restoring business operations in hours as opposed to days or even weeks, with as little as 15 minutes of data loss all at a lower cost than tape-based processes. The death of tape is greatly exaggerated So has the cloud eliminated the need for tape, as some service providers claim? Not at all. Just ask the 150,000 or more Gmail customers who would have lost data were it not for tape. When Google’s February 2011 update of storage software went awry, it not only emptied users’ accounts but also rendered Google’s redundant cloud-based copies unavailable. Google was, however, able to restore users’ data from offline tape backups. Unfortunately, many customers of Amazon EC2 cloud services didn’t fare as well when a network change in April 2011 led to a failure that disabled some high-profile sites for days and left many customers with permanent data loss. Since tape is not mentioned in any media coverage of the failure, one can only assume that the same type of tape backup that saved Google customers’ data was not available at Amazon. Replication of backed up data to redundant, mirrored physical or virtual storage systems is a disaster recovery best practice, but only if the multiple backups are themselves not vulnerable to the same threat. As unlikely as the simultaneous failure of all backups may be, one important role for

February 2012

B EST OF B REED | s t o r a g e

Tape is clearly the most economical and possibly the technically superior choice for long-term storage and archiving, especially for organisations subject to any of the estimated 10,000 regulations covering data A hybrid solution retention, integrity and security. When tape As demonstrated in the Gmail recovery, is used for long-term storage, most problems secure offline storage is the minimum associated with it become nonrole that tape should play in issues. Tapes stored in environa hybrid backup and recovery mentally controlled vaults withsolution that combines on-site out being continually handled, disk backup, physical or virtual mounted, read and written to cloud-based storage and tape. of businesses deliver extremely high reliability. Tape can also remain an reported schedule For the quality and comeffective and economical backoverruns and 64% pleteness of their own service up choice for platforms hosting reported budget (if not for the customer’s own an organisation’s less-than-misoverruns on peace of mind) a service prosion-critical data. For lower tier migrating to new vider should offer the option data for which longer recovery storage technologies of tape backup as additional times are acceptable, tape can assurance that in the event of be a more affordable solution a disaster, the customer will than disk. A hybrid backup and achieve a complete recovery. recovery solution allows IT to devote the The choice and design of a backup and appropriate resources to different tiers of DR approach should always be driven by data, assuring that high priority data can an organisation’s actual recovery requirebe made available in the least amount of ments: How little data can we afford to lose time, while lower priority data is restored (recovery point) and how quickly must we as needed.

tape in the era of the cloud is as the ultimate backup for data that resides, well, who knows where?

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be back in business putting that data to work (recovery time). For some organisations, only the fastest SAN-based replication will suffice. Others will be well served by the latest cloud backup and recovery services. But in addition to achieving the fastest possible recovery, organisations also need effective redundancy in their backup program to assure that the data required for recovery is available when it’s needed. As the volume of backed-up data eventually grows, disk storage can become too costly to provide that redundancy. A hybrid solution that includes regular backup to tape can provide customers a cost-effective combination of today’s most advanced backup technologies with the proven longevity of tape stored securely offline. —Dick Fordham is Director of Corporate Strategy for Recovery Point, a leading provider of Disaster Recovery services. —This article has been reprinted with permission from CIO Update. To see more articles regarding IT management best practices, please visit www.cioupdate.com.

Thriving by Embracing Disruptive Practices Recognising the forces of change allows leaders to adjust their position to leverage what seems like chaos, but is actually a pattern in a bigger context By Donn DiNunno

hese are uncertain times, and changes bring both frustrations and opportunities to organisations that are working to sustain stability long enough to return value from the previous round of changes. It’s a delicate balance to hold on to in a chaotic environment, but one that can be sustained if, oddly, you’re willing to let go. There has been a lot written about disruptive technologies or revolutionary innovations (e.g., mass produced automobile, plastic,

February 2012

inexpensive laser printer, compact disks, the Internet, e-mail, digital cameras) that displace existing technologies and create new value networks at the expense of sustaining or evolutionary technological improvements. However, the IT revolution’s impact on business products, marketing vehicles, and customer demands has also had a powerful influence on IT practices. Ignoring these revolutionary changes while focusing on shorterterm evolutionary changes like cloud computing may leave many

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organisations and project management offices behind the times. Not because of failing to adopt technological advances, but by failing to align with and leverage emerging and revolutionary work practices. Here are some of the fundamental process and best practice changes that IT organisations must contend with to remain competitive and relevant to their customers: Requirements cannot be “captured” - The repeatable and defined process principle is flawed. There is no repeatable/defined organisational environment due to cost and schedule pressures coupled with quality and productivity requirements. Capturing these requirements and then delivering them is impossible when they are not well defined and keep changing. The changes affect the architecture, the solution, the process, and the skills needed to deliver a solution. Risks cannot be mitigated - In truth, even a few small unknowns can greatly influence an outcome. Knowing which uncertainties to avoid, manage, mitigate, transfer, or accept assumes knowledge that doesn’t exist. By the time a risk is identified to be proactively handled it is already an issue and the best reaction is to hope it will become overcome by events. Planning is a waste of time and resources - Planning becomes a casualty of a chaotic environment. Not only do plans change, but the plan becomes hard to follow, difficult to keep up to date, and expensive to enforce or verify in a changing environment. Frequently, the belief that time spent planning is time not spent getting things done is a valid complaint.Technology is a constraint - Once technology is adopted by an organisation, it often becomes a constraining structure that restricts the opportunity space of the user instead of extending human capabilities. The solution becomes difficult to change, and the investment becomes a commodity that must be replaced before it returns value. Value cannot be measured - The quest for proof of the value of IT investment is fruitless when an IT innovation must become ubiquitous to be of value. And as a commodity that is readily available to competitors, it is no longer a competitive advantage. Users are doing things today that would not have been attempted before, but like inflation the measure of performance is also raised for everyone. And besides, tracking performance is demoralising to the workforce being monitored as well as to the control analysts who have to collect

data while the auditors’ findings reveal little that isn’t known already about what needs to be corrected. If such changing conditions are here to stay what happens to any semblance of governance, controls, manager assurance, demand management, or predictive analytics? Loosening up on rules doesn’t mean abandoning them altogether. New road conditions ahead -New operating practices are needed to survive in this chaos. Fortunately, past best practices are not entirely obsolete. Activities such as market research, innovation, architecture, project management, engineering and organisational change management are still required. But virtual teams, teleworking, social media, agile organisations, collaborative cultures, participative management, and practices that embrace change are the disruptive influences that must become embedded into the fabric of leading organisations. These revolutionary changes are a result of a surge in individual freedom; not necessarily because more opportunities are available, but because people of all ages are seeking something better, or at least something different. There is a general unease and a feeling of discontent or of being offcentered and a willingness to do something about it. Loyalty to one company and working towards a career is no longer an expectation. The blurring or industry boundaries has diluted brands, and the ups and downs of the market has eroded consumer confidence. Recognising the chaotic forces in the organisation is the first step toward adopting and adapting best practices that balance the forces of change against the value of sustaining existing approaches. Looking for new approaches and abandoning successful ones when they become easy for competitors to imitate is the strategy for sustaining success. For example, perhaps the eight hour workday and getting paid for punching the clock is no longer an effective means of compensation. Replace salaries with a pay-for-services approach based on a work breakdown structure (WBS) cost loaded and assigned to a virtual team. Individuals charge time to deliverables, but when estimated cost is exceeded pay is suspended until a newly negotiated WBS is established based on evaluated outcomes. The necessary changes are as tailorable as there are different organisations. If planning is too detailed then accept less formal plans. If the

photo by photos.com

Even a few small unknowns can greatly influence an outcome

February 2012

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1 Modernise leadership and governance boards to stay attuned to organisation is risk averse then find ways to allow more risky but parallel endeavors that diversify and balance scenarios. If measurement flexible work practices. 2 Change the corporate culture to the kind of place people want is costly then raise measurement up a notch and eliminate measures that are stable and no longer valuable for decision-making. to work. 3 Loosen up rules to motivate individuals and strengthen the relaFinding the right balance is easier said than done. Root cause analysis is an effective tool for exploring the alternatives to embed tionship between employees and their immediate supervisors to and leverage changed practices. build up workforce longevity. 4 Empower workers with a clear sense of mission. The revolution reveals itself - What might the new practices look like? 5 Become more adaptable, agile, responsive to shifting circumstances. Planning is replaced with self-directed teams who propose what needs 6 Support a well trained workforce. to be done, and timebox what has not been done. Risk 7 Get closer to customers (e.g., focus groups, cross-selling, management is replaced with scenario discussions that focus on what is important as opposed to urgent. Measatisfaction surveys, targeted marketing, transaction analysurement is limited to collective outcomes. Technology sis, customer maps). cost reductions is applied as flexibly as is practical, but how work gets The balancing rule is to ignore the hype that precedes that enterprises can evolutionary change and listen to that inner voice of done is not enforced, and CIOs won’t be put in a position realise by Integrating reason that looks at the broader value chain. When a of selling technology to the organisation. Assurance is Communities Into lowered in constructing products and when validating a pendulum swings back the world is always in a slightly Customer Support result. Solution acceptance comes earlier as customers different position, but recognising the forces of change take ownership in shaping the solution. allows leading managers and organisations to adjust Targeted training will be a key factor in keeping staff their position to leverage what seems like chaos, but is and in establishing a workforce that can survive the actually a pattern in a bigger context. chaos. It is ironic that when so many people are looking for work that employers in most fields face increasingly severe —Dr. Donn DiNunno is Quality Director at EM&I, whose consultants specialise in shortages of qualified, willing workers. The shortfall is most obvious the areas of strategy, governance and engineering. in the 18-24 age range -- the population group most expected to fill —This article has been reprinted with permission from CIO Update. To see the entry level jobs. more articles regarding IT management best practices, please visit www. Getting the chaos under control requires a multi-layered approach: cioupdate.com.

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ion ial ct ec se Sp ship er ad le

“I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.” —Mahatma Gandhi

February 2012

Introduction

CIO&LEADER This special section

on leadership has been designed keeping in mind the evolving role of CIOs. The objective is to provide an eclectic mix of leadership articles and opinions from top consultants and gurus as well as create a platform for peer learning. Here is a brief description of each sub-section that will give you an idea of what to expect each month from CIO&Leader:

26 My Story

The article/interview will track the leadership journey of a CIO/CXO to the top. It will also provide insights into how top leaders think about leadership

top down

This feature focusses on how CIOs run IT organisations in their company as if they were CEOs. It will comment on whether IT should have a separate P&L, expectation management of different LoB heads, HR policies within IT, operational issues, etc. This section will provide insights into the challenges of putting a price on IT services, issues of changing user mindset, squeezing more value out of IT, justifying RoI on IT, attracting and retaining talent, and competing against external vendors

Leading edge An opinion piece on leadership penned by leadership gurus. Plus, an insightful article from a leading consulting firm

ME & MY MENTEE

Cross leveraging our strong traction in the IT Manager community, this section will have interviews/features about IT Managers and CIOs talking about their expectations, working styles and aspirations. In this section, a Mentor and a Mentee will identify each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s strengths and weaknesses, opine on each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s style of functioning, discuss the biggest lessons learnt from each other, talk about memorable projects and shared interests

SHELF LIFE

A one-page review of a book on leadership

February 2012

The best advice I ever got Featuring a top CIO/Technology Company Head and the best guidance/ recommendation he received with respect to his personal or professional growth. The advice could relate to dealing with people, managing personal finance, and balancing work and life

Top Down

Subramanya c

CTO, Hinduja Global Solutions

Go Beyond Being a CIO

Subramanya C from Hinduja Global Solutions talks to CIO&Leader about what it takes to be the 'Tech CEO' of the IT department A CIO in today's enterprise cannot be an isolated unit. He has to take the onus of running a lean IT organisation and servicing the organisation in more than one way. This is even more important in an ITeS company like mine wherein a CIO has to realise that his role is crucial in driving the organisation. For a CIO, the important thing to remember is never to fall into the trap of restricting business practices. There are times when technology decision-makers are afraid or hesitant of change. However, it should be the other way round. For a technology leader, it is very important to go out of the comfort zone and try new things that can challenge him. One thing that I do is to participate more in the business side of things. Participating in discussions with the board and helping the organisation realise the value of IT as an enabler and game changer is very important. For someone to run his department as a separate P&L

unit, he cannot restrict himself to providing only technology solutions. I, therefore, get involved in business as much as possible and play an active role in making decisions that will have an impact on my business. It is important for me to define the roadmap looking ahead so that I can innovate and offer my customers better solutions. There are challenges too donning the hat of a business unit head. One of the most important steps of becoming a 'Tech CEO' is to accept the fact that most of the time you will be out of your comfort zone, while trying to understand the business and playing around in an area where you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know much. However, one has to leave the core area of expertise and face new challenges. Without this, there is no evolution or growth â&#x20AC;&#x201C; both of which are extremely important from a leadership perspective. If we talk about expectations, things have changed. There was a time when CIOs needed to provide RoI studies before making a decision to purchase a particular technology â&#x20AC;&#x201C; in most cases an ERP. Today enterprises are dependent on so much technology that they themselves understand the need for technology. In fact today a lot of requests for technology implementations come from the business side. This gives the CIO a chance to offload core technology work to juniors and participate in strategic conversations with other C-Level executives.

February 2012

My Story

V S Parthasarathy

Leaders Zap, not Sap

In a candid interview with CIO&Leader, V S Parthasarathy, Group CIO, Mahindra & Mahindra talks about his view on leadership and what it takes to create a vision for the future

S Parthasarathy serves as Group Chief Information Officer and Executive Vice President of Finance M&A at Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. Parthasarathy has varied experience in corporate finance, international operations, mergers & acquisitions and business planning. He has been with Farm Equipment Sector of M&M for almost 8 years and led various critical corporate functions. Before M&M, he worked with Xerox India for 14 years. What in your view is being a leader all about? The key thing about being a leader is creating a vision for the future. If you have it in you to excite people, they will follow willingly. The other thing about leadership is setting goals that will take the company or the unit or even yourself to the next level. Leadership is not about doing — it is about enabling others to do. It is about creating the right environment for others to achieve. So here we have spoken about creating vision and goals. However, giving people an environment that empowers them to willingly follow your vision is of the utmost importance. It is not about monitoring or forcing something down people’s throats. It is about expressing what you want done and

February 2012

letting them figure out how by giving them the right environment. Leadership is like the two banks of a river. The river flows and if it isn’t for the banks, it dissipates. As Rabindranath Tagore said, “Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit.” How does one create this vision that you are referring to? Leadership is about leading from the front. It’s about showcasing what’s important. If I am saying that the customer is important — leadership lies in demonstrating the same. Leadership is also about making yourself quickly dispensable. If you don’t create tomorrow’s leaders from today’s pool of talent, you will be at a stage when you will start becoming a burden on the entire system. Your inability to move will become the bottleneck in the system and will choke the entire pipeline. This is all on the front of drive and goal. The other aspect is what people really mean to you. The key thing is how much time you spend on people development and empathy. If I take care of my people, my people take care of my customers and everyone together

takes care of my value creation. None of these happen automatically. My biggest achievement is not what I did in the past, but how many MDs and CEOs I have helped create. That’s my legacy. The other dimension is ethics. Being fair and being perceived as fair are equally important. This is the difference between being a manager and a leader. This is about standing for something important. A leader will always say something that can help pull you up — not push you down. The zap factor is important. A good leader can zap you in such a way where you come out thinking you can conquer the world. A traditional manager will sap you and drain your energy. What was the point in your career that transformed you from a technologist to a technology leader? I had the privilege of coming into a technology area through general management. My first tryst with IT was when we thought we would open a new business channel for Xerox — a BPO for Xerox worldwide. We were one of the first companies to implement ERP using a Cobol base. So I had the good fortune of being able to move into it. But you may also ask the question a little differently. When did

V S Par t hasar at hy| In t ervie w

5points 1

The key thing about being a leader is creating a vision for the future

Leadership is not about doing – it is about enabling others to do

Giving people an environment that empowers them to willingly follow your vision is of utmost importance

If I take care of my people, my people take care of my customers and everyone together takes care of my value creation

I move from being a chartered accountant to a general manager? So the key thing is that people either have a natural aptitude, and some people strive towards the opportunities that are dealt to them. So if you don’t take the effort to cross over you will always remain a functional head. For example, when I was first asked in Mahindra and Mahindra to make a strategy for international operations it was for the tractor line of business. They were looking

photo by Jiten Gandhi

My biggest achievement is not what I did in the past, but how many MDs and CEOs I have helped create

for a person to head it. I took a few interviews of candidates but my bosses asked me if I could do it considering I knew the intricacies of the business. And I said why not — I will. If they could trust me I would do my best. But there is always a huge risk when you decide to leave your comfort zone. In my case from a functional head to a creator of profit. When the opportunity comes you have to take the risk. The fear that you will

drown in between will exist but you must have the strength to give it your all. Aptitude is not accepting restrictions on what you are being dealt and wanting more. One has to have a solution mindset and it has to come from within. How does one develop this? Well if you have a role model in mind — you have a direction and a path that you want to take. In addition to this, the only thing that remains is luck!

February 2012

Leading edge

Teresa Amabile The Author is Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

How leaders kill meaning at work

Most executives don’t act as though progress matters. You can do better

As a senior executive, you may think you know what Job Number 1 is: developing a killer strategy. In fact, this is only Job 1a. You have a second, equally important task. Call it Job 1b: enabling the ongoing engagement and everyday progress of the people in the trenches of your organisation who strive to execute that strategy. A multiyear research project whose results we described in our recent book, The Progress Principle, found that of all the events that can deeply engage people in their jobs, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work. Even incremental steps forward—small wins—boost what we call “inner work life”: the constant flow of emotions, motivations, and perceptions that constitute a person’s

February 2012

reactions to the events of the work day. Beyond affecting the well-being of employees, inner work life affects the bottom line. People are more creative, productive, committed, and collegial in their jobs when they have positive inner work lives. But it’s not just any sort of progress in work that matters. The first, and fundamental, requirement is that the work be meaningful to the people doing it. In our book and a recent Harvard Business Review article, we argue that managers at all levels routinely—and unwittingly— undermine the meaningfulness of work for their direct subordinates through everyday words and actions. These include dismissing the importance of subordinates’ work or ideas, destroying a sense of ownership by

switching people off project teams before work is finalised, shifting goals so frequently that people despair that their work will ever see the light of day, and neglecting to keep subordinates up to date on changing priorities for customers. But what about a company’s most senior leaders? What is their role in making—or killing—meaning at work? To be sure, as a high-level leader, you have fewer opportunities to directly affect the inner work lives of employees than do frontline supervisors. Yet your smallest actions pack a wallop because what you say and do is intensely observed by people down the line. A sense of purpose in the work, and consistent action to reinforce it, has to come from the top.

T e r e s a Am a b i l e | L e a d i n g e d g e

Our survey showed that most executives don’t understand the power of progress in meaningful work. And the traps revealed by the diaries suggest that most executives don’t act as though progress matters. You can do better.

ILLUSTRATION BY prince antony

Trap 1: Mediocrity signals

Four traps To better understand the role of upper-level managers, we recently dug back into our data: nearly 12,000 daily electronic diaries from dozens of professionals working on important innovation projects at seven North American companies. We selected those entries in which diarists mentioned upper- or top-level managers—868 narratives in all. Qualitative analysis of the narratives highlighted four traps that lie in wait for senior executives. Most of these pitfalls showed up in several companies. Six of the seven suffered from one or more of the traps, and in only a single company did leaders avoid them. The existence of this outlier suggests that it is possible for senior executives to sus-

tain meaning consistently, but that’s difficult and requires vigilance. This article should help you determine whether you risk falling into some of these traps yourself—and unknowingly dragging your organisation into the abyss with you. We also offer a few thoughts on avoiding the problems, advice inspired by the actions and words of a senior leader at the one company that did so. We are convinced that executives who sidestep these traps reduce their risk of inadvertently draining meaning from the work of the people in their organisations. Those leaders also will boost the odds of tapping into the motivational power of progress—something surprisingly few do.

Most likely, your company aspires to greatness, articulating a high purpose for the organisation in its corporate mission statement. But are you inadvertently signaling the opposite through your words and actions? We saw this dynamic repeatedly at a well-known consumer products company we’ll call Karpenter Corporation, which was experiencing a rapid deterioration in the inner work lives of its employees as a result of the actions of a new top-management team. Within three years of our studying Karpenter, it had become unprofitable and was acquired by a smaller rival. Karpenter’s top-management team espoused a vision of entrepreneurial crossfunctional business teams. In theory, each team would operate autonomously, managing its share of the company’s resources to back its own new-product innovations. During the year we collected data from Karpenter teams, the annual report was full of references to the company’s innovation focus; in the first five sentences, “innovation” appeared three times. In practice, however, those top managers were so focused on cost savings that they repeatedly negated the teams’ autonomy, dictated cost reduction goals that had to be met before any other priorities were, and—as a result—drove new-product innovation into the ground. This unintended, de facto hypocrisy took its toll, as a diary excerpt from a longtime Karpenter product engineer emphasises:

February 2012

L e a d i n g e d g e | T e r e s a Am a b i l e

Today I found out that our team will be concentrating on [cost savings] for the next several months instead of any new products. It is getting very difficult to concentrate on removing pennies from the standard cost of an item. That is the only place that we have control over. Most of the time, quality suffers. It seems that our competition is putting out new products at a faster rate. We are no longer the leader in innovation. We are the followers. This employee’s work had begun to lose its meaning, and he wasn’t alone. Many of the other 65 Karpenter professionals in our study felt that they were doing mediocre work for a mediocre company—one for which they

This company’s leaders also inadvertently signaled that, despite their rhetoric about being innovative and cutting edge, they were really more comfortable being ordinary.

Trap 2: Strategic ‘attention deficit disorder’ As an experienced leader, you probably scan your company’s external environment constantly for guidance in making your next strategic moves. What are competitors planning? Where are new ones popping up? What’s happening in the global economy, and what might the implications be for financing or future market priorities? You are probably brimming with ideas on where you’d like to take the

“Our survey shows that most executives don’t understand the power of progress in meaningful work.” had previously felt fierce pride. By the end of our time collecting data at Karpenter, many of these employees were completely disengaged. Some of the very best had left. The mediocrity trap was not unique to Karpenter. We saw it revealed in different guises in several of the companies we studied. At a chemicals firm, it stemmed from the top managers’ risk aversion. Consider these words from one researcher there: A proposal for liquid/medical filtration using our new technology was tabled for the second time by the Gate 1 committee (five directors that screen new ideas). Although we had plenty of info for this stage of the game, the committee is uncomfortable with the risk and liability. The team, and myself, are frustrated about hurdles that we don’t know how to answer.

February 2012

company next. All of that is good, in theory. In practice, we see too many top managers start and abandon initiatives so frequently that they appear to display a kind of attention deficit disorder (ADD) when it comes to strategy and tactics. They don’t allow sufficient time to discover whether initiatives are working, and they communicate insufficient rationales to their employees when they make strategic shifts. Karpenter’s strategic ADD seemed to stem from its leaders’ short attention span, perhaps fueled by the CEO’s desire to embrace the latest management trends. The problem was evident in decisions at the level of product lines and extended all the way up to corporate strategy. If you blinked, you could miss the next strategic shift. In one employee’s words: A quarterly product review was held with

members of the [top team] and the general manager and president. Primary outcome from the meeting was a change in direction away from spray jet mops to revitalisation of existing window squeegees. Four priorities were defined for product development, none of which were identified as priorities at our last quarterly update. The needle still points north, but we’ve turned the compass again. At another company we studied, strategic ADD appeared to stem from a top team warring with itself. Corporate executives spent many months trying to nail down a new market strategy. Meanwhile, different vice presidents were pushing in different directions, rendering each of the leaders incapable of giving consistent direction to their people. This wreaked havoc in the trenches. One diarist, a project manager, felt that rather than committing herself to doing something great for particular customers, she needed to hedge her bets: The VP gave us his opinion of which target candidates [ for new products] may fit with overall company strategy—but, in reality, neither he nor anyone in our management structure knows what the strategy is. It makes this project a real balancing act—we need to go forward, but need to weigh commitments very carefully. If high-level leaders don’t appear to have their act together on exactly where the organisation should be heading, it’s awfully difficult for the troops to maintain a strong sense of purpose.

Trap 3: Corporate Keystone Kops In the early decades of cinema, a popular series of silent-film comedies featured the Keystone Kops—fictional policemen so incompetent that they ran around in circles, mistakenly bashed each other on the head, and fumbled one case after another. The title of that series became synonymous with miscoordination. Our research found that many executives who think everything is going smoothly in the everyday workings of their organisations are blithely unaware that they preside over their own corporate version of the Keystone Kops. Some contribute to the farce through their actions, others by failing to act. At Karpenter, for example, top managers set up overly complex matrix reporting structures, repeatedly failed to hold support

T e r e s a Am a b i l e | L e a d i n g e d g e

When coordination and support are absent within an organisation, people stop believing that they can produce something of high quality functions (such as purchasing and sales) accountable for coordinated action, and displayed a chronic indecisiveness that bred rushed analyses. In the words of one diarist: Last-minute changes continue on [an important customer’s] assortments. Rather than think through the whole process and logically decide which assortments we want to show [the customer], we are instead using a shotgun approach of trying multiple assortments until we find one that works. In the meantime, we are expending a lot of time and effort on potential assortments only to find out later that an assortment has been dropped. Although Karpenter’s example was egregious, the company was far from alone in creating chaotic situations for its workers. When coordination and support are absent within an organisation, people stop believing that they can produce something of high quality. This makes it extremely difficult to maintain a sense of purpose.

Trap 4: Misbegotten ‘big, hairy, audacious goals’ Management gurus Jim Collins and Jerry Porras encourage organisations to develop a “big, hairy, audacious goal” (BHAG)—a bold strategic vision statement that has powerful emotional appeal. BHAGs help infuse work with meaning by articulating the goals of the organisation in a way that connects emotionally with peoples’ values. At some companies, however, such statements are grandiose, containing little relevance or meaning for people in the trenches. They can be so extreme as to seem unattainable and so vague as to seem empty. The result is a meaning vacuum. Cynicism rises and drive plummets. Although we saw this trap clearly in only one of the seven companies we studied, we think it is sufficiently seductive

and dangerous to warrant consideration. That company, a chemicals firm, set a BHAG that all projects had to be innovative blockbusters that would yield a minimum of $100 million in revenue annually, within five years of a project’s initiation. This goal did not infuse the work with meaning, because it had little to do with the day-to-day activities of people in the organisation. It did not articulate milestones toward the goal; it did not provide for a range of experiments and outcomes to meet it; worst of all, it did not connect with anything the employees valued. Most of them wanted to provide something of value to their customers; an aggressive revenue target told them only about the value to the organisation, not to the customer. Far from what Collins and Porras intended, this misbegotten BHAG was helping to destroy the employees’ sense of purpose.

Avoiding the traps Spotting the traps from the executive suite is difficult enough; sidestepping them is harder still—and wasn’t the focus of our research. Nonetheless, it’s instructive to look at the one company in our study that avoided the traps, a creator of coated fabrics for weatherproof clothing and other applications. We recently interviewed its head, whom we’ll call Mark Hamilton. That conversation generated a few ideas that we hope will spark a lively discussion in your own C-suite. For example: When you communicate with employees, do you provide strategic clarity that’s consistent with your organisation’s capabilities and an understanding of where it can add the most value? Hamilton and his top team believed that innovating in processes, rather than products, was the key to creating the right combination of quality and value for customers. So he talked about process

innovation at every all-company meeting, and he steadfastly supported it throughout the organisation. This consistency helped everyone understand the strategy and even become jazzed about it. Can you keep sight of the individual employee’s perspective? The best executives we studied internalise their early experiences and use them as reference points for gauging the signals that their own behavior will send to the troops. “Try hard to remember when you were working in the trenches,” Hamilton says. “If somebody asked you to do a bunch of work on something they hadn’t thought through, how meaningful could it be for you? How committed could you be?” Do you have any early-warning systems that indicate when your view from the top doesn’t match the reality on the ground? Regular audits to gauge the effectiveness of coordination and support processes in areas such as marketing, sales, and purchasing can highlight pain points that demand senior management’s attention because they are starting to sap meaning from your people’s work. In Hamilton’s view, senior executives bear the responsibility for identifying and clearing away systemic impediments that prevent quality work from getting done. Hamilton’s company was doing very well. But we believe that senior executives can provide a sense of purpose and progress even in bad economic times. Consider the situation that then–newly appointed Xerox head Anne Mulcahy faced in 2000, when the company verged on bankruptcy. Mulcahy refused her advisers’ recommendation to file for bankruptcy because of the demoralising signal it would send to frontline employees. “What we have going for us,” she said, “is that our people believe we are in a war that we can win.”7 She was right, and her conviction helped carry Xerox through four years of arduous struggle to later success. As an executive, you are in a better position than anyone to identify and articulate the higher purpose of what people do within your organisation. Make that purpose real, support its achievement through consistent everyday actions, and you will create the meaning that motivates people toward greatness. Along the way, you may find greater meaning in your own work as a leader. This article has been sourced from the McKinsey Quarterly.

February 2012

The best advice I ever got

Take Risks to Receive Rewards All our lives we make decisions about different things like what clothes to wear, what college to go to, what car to buy, what food to cook, what movie to watch and so on. We make these decisions based either on our own knowledge or based on someone else’s advice. Everyone has family members, friends and colleagues. They often influence our decisions due to the fact that they know more about certain things than we do. Besides that, we often read and listen to what other people say about various things on TV and radio in a form of advertising and that also influences our decisions. Advice that we get can be either good or bad (truthful or untruthful) and may lead to certain consequences either good or bad depending on what decision you will make based on someone else’s advice. You can choose to take it into consideration or not, but there are times when you have to make a certain decision, so some advice can only help. Different people live different lives and choose different things to do in life, different clothes to wear, etc., but when it comes to one single most important decision in their life, many people agree that there are only a few pieces of advice that matter the most and are usually provided by the closest friends and/or family members and sometimes even from your boss. Best career advice from my boss is that you have to take risks to receive rewards. To enjoy life in the moment and not worry so much about all that work you need to get done. In other words, don’t be a workaholic. Take breaks; worrying does you no good.

February 2012

Manikkam VS Head IT, Henkel CAC

The most important work behavior is having a great attitude, which would encourage people to work with you, and which would help you to succeed. I started my career in the Finance department. After working with my boss Uday Thakurdesai for 12 years, in the year 1992 he suggested me to look into the aspect of setting an IT department which was quite new during that period and non-existent in my earlier company. Since I did not have any background in IT, I was reluctant to take up the job. However, my boss encouraged me to take the risk. He said, "I am pushing you in the river, either you swim across to safety or get drowned." It was a big challenge for me. I learnt all

about IT operations, read books, attended classes, spoke to people and did a computer management course. I was able to setup an IT dept in my company with 7-10 software programmers working under me and also successfully installed the MRP system with Sybase and UNIX. Hence, I would like to state that due to my boss’s advice, I am what I am today — a successful IT person with good knowledge on computer operation and also able to guide people down below on various technical aspect of IT operations. I am also being recognised and rewarded for my various IT implementations and have been able to take a place in the IT world and grow to great heights. —As told to Varun Aggarwal

me And my Mentee

MENTOR

Arun Gupta

Group CTO, Shoppers Stop

MENTEE

Krishnakumar Avanoor General Manager – IT Shoppers Stop

Focus on Issues, Not Personalities

What do you look for in a mentor/mentee? Gupta The primary factor is someone who is willing to explore new opportunities and willing to work towards it. S/he should demonstrate awareness and acknowledgement of learning required towards improvement of skills. If s/he is interested in development, I am always happy to help them uncover the path towards success. Avnoor An ideal mentor is one who believes in my capabilities and a subject matter expert who can guide and articulate solutions. How do you identify and prioritise areas where you think your mentee needs to focus on for further professional development? Gupta Identification and prioritisation is a gradual process. It is not a diagnostic process like a blood test which unearths clear attributes that require mediation. Soft skills and behavioral change is a combination of multiple traits that need to be worked upon. Sometimes it is about what a person should stop doing rather than start doing. What a mentor gives is not always what the mentee takes away. Professional development is then based on visibly demonstrating those behaviors that matter in the eyes of others. It takes a while before people recognize the change and thus continuous feedback is important to measure progress. Do you think your mentor spends enough time with you? How do you think your mentor

could contribute more towards your professional growth? Avnoor Yes. A mentor who is committed to the process is a must. There is no quick fix solution; both parties have to spend quality time. Honest and timely feedback is critical in the process. How do you think your mentee can take on more responsibilities and take more/bigger decisions? Gupta I believe that the mentor has to give the freedom to fail to the mentee. Micro-managing every task or incessant feedback will create a scenario where the mentee will stop thinking and start depending on the mentor for every little step. If success is achieved, it calls for celebration; the lack of success is not failure, it is a lesson to be imbibed and not repeat the same mistakes again. Krishnakumar has over the years changed for the better, bringing a new perspective to situations and always taking on new challenges. I am extremely happy with the progress and consider him an asset to the team. Are there any conflicts between you and your mentee/mentor? If so, how do you resolve them? If not, what do you think is the secret of your smooth working relationship? Gupta Every relationship has conflicts; we have had conflicts and overcome them by focusing on the issue rather than personalities. Sometimes the conflict has

February 2012

m e A n d my M e n t e e | a r u n g u p t a & K r is h n a k u m a r A v a n o o r

“There are no hidden agendas, we work with a clearly defined goal and objective.” also been with respect to other team members we have similarly worked towards addressing them, a few times as a tripartite meeting. The secret of our smooth working relationship is the acknowledgement on both sides of ability, capability and the need to progress that is mutual. There are no hidden agendas, we work with a clearly defined goal and objective. Avnoor We have very cordial and informal relation. Critical and key issues are discussed and decisions are taken after mutual consultation. What are the two or three key things you have learned from your mentee/mentor? Gupta Krishnakumar is very diligent and explores multiple facets that continuously surprise me. His interest is wide and varied and he is extremely focused on new technologies. Every discussion brings new opportunities for me to learn something. So whenever we explore new technologies, he is my first choice in the team to review fit to our enterprise. Avnoor Effective communication, especially communicating bad news, is very important during crisis management; Keeping solutions simple especially the usability of the applications are very important for the overall success of any IT project; Managing user perceptions and improving soft skills is important for career growth. What are the challenges and constraints for a mentor/CIO to devote more time and effort for the development of their immediate juniors? Gupta I believe that time will always have to be found based on pri-

February 2012

“Critical and key issues are discussed and decisions are taken after mutual consultation.” orities. Pressure will always be there, the mentor has to consciously invest the time. The mentor should never brush off any conversation or get into a discussion with other things occupying him/her (multi-tasking); mentoring requires full attention and being present to the discussion. It is more about listening rather than finding solutions to every problem. Development is however the responsibility of the mentee. If s/ he does not take action then there is no progress. I believe that it is a waste of time if the mentee is not interested in changing self but always finds others responsible for his/her challenges. Please share your views on the role you think a CIO can play in mentoring IT managers and take them to the next level. Gupta The CIO as the senior most leader of the IT team is always looked upon by the team as someone to emulate. S/he needs to lead by example and be available for discussion and coaching to the team. The wealth of experience can benefit the team and s/he should be generous in giving. If the CIO is insecure in his/her position, even this is visible to the team and this may lead to the good people leaving. What are your views on the need for a mentor for IT managers in realising their full potential? Avnoor Mentoring dramatically increases one’s own chance for success. It is crucial for business and career success. Having a mentor helps to improve one’s reach and business contacts and contribute to conceptual and technical knowledge. —As told to Sanjay Gupta

OPINION

David Lim

Creating a Winning Culture

There are many qualities and skills that a leader needs to learn to become a great leader. Some of them are rather underrated A month ago, we concluded a global poll of 1000 people of whom 20 percent were C-suite executives, 20 percent vice-presidents and 60 percent mid-level professionals. We polled them on what they believed to be the five most underrated leadership skills. So here were the five skills we identified as being underrated: Negotiating skills Managing expectations and performance Creating a winning culture at work Winning buy-in Strategy implementation Now guess which leadership skill topped the poll easily, winning more than half (53 percent) the votes? If you guessed creating a winning culture, you were right. It was followed by, at a distant second place with 22 per cent, managing expectations and performance. We talk about culture in the workplace all the time. So, what is it that makes it so powerful and effective? There are essentially three reasons why creating a culture that works for your organisation is critical. And I will share what I believe makes a winning culture in a typical office context.

1 Cultures Drive Behaviour Contrary to popular belief, we become influenced by our peers far more than we would like to think. Cialdini’s work at Arizona University shows that far from being the individual we think we are, we are heavily influenced by what others think and do. This boils down to our innate need to be accepted into a ‘tribe’ or, in this instance, workplace. Having a culture that rewards the right behaviour or approves it, is a powerful motivator. No one likes to be the odd one out.

Cultures also can motivate us to work harder, especially when everyone else is doing so. A long-standing joke shared by my clients at Accenture is that when a member of the team is seen leaving the office at 7pm, he or she is often met with the comment, “So, having an early day, are we?” The Accenture culture upholds excellence and hard work.

2 It is free

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Lim, Founder, Everest Motivation Team, is a leadership and negotiation coach, best-selling author and two-time Mt Everest expedition leader. He can be reached at his blog http://theasiannegotiator. wordpress.com, or david@everestmotivation.com

Like it or not, most cultures that are allowed to develop organically cost no direct fee to the company, but can create immensely profitable attitudes that emerge from the culture. This could be a culture of work excellence or a culture of punctuality. No contrived incentives plan can be as powerful as creating the right kind of culture in the workplace. My good friend and fellow professional speaker, Ron Kaufman, was best-known as being an expert in customer service. However, as he elevated his expertise and know-how in this area, his company created its proprietary ‘Up! Your Service’ methodology. It is now creating impact in the area of service culture leadership, a subtle but massively different kind of solution. While customer service training only gets you so far in terms of skills and mindset, creating a culture that makes people want to go the extra mile in servicing their peers, colleagues and customers is a mighty powerful thing.

3 You rarely have to police a culture Once set up right, there is no need for guidelines, irksome office rules and constant reminders to let a culture do its work. You just need to follow certain behaviours and reinforce the key culture messages to keep the cul-

February 2012

OP I N I ON | D a v i d Lim

a) Assess: Look around your workplace and ask yourself if there is a definitive workplace culture. If you do not see one, that could actually be good news, as you may be able to start one. But if you do not start one, one may develop anyway, and it may be one you won’t like. Assess your group’s goals, values and specific observable behaviours that support the team reaching its goal with a set of values you can be comfortable with. A highly driven sales team, for example, may be tempted to champion less than ethical practices and turn a blind eye to corrupting influences in order to reach their goals. Certainly, it is a winning team mindset. But do they also embrace values that work for everyone?

c) Celebrate: Take time off with your team after an office win to remind them implicitly or explicitly to keep doing those things that bring victory. Many people I know have left good jobs because the management kept forgetting and failing to recognise those attitudes that brought past success. If any of you are interested in getting the rest of the results of the global poll we did, contact me and I hope this will help you develop your own winning culture. DAVID LIM IS A LEADERSHIP AND NEGOTIATION COACH AND CAN BE FOUND ON HIS BLOG http://theasiannegotiator.wordpress.com, OR subscribe to his free e-newsletter at david@everestmotivation.com

image BY photos.com

ture ticking along. Like a large stone ball, it takes a while to get moving but once it does, the amount of energy to keep it going will be minimal. So, how do you get around to creating such a winning culture? A culture is based on a combination of shared values, supportive behaviours and a range of outcomes defined by the group embracing the said culture. A winning culture is one, which aims to beat the competition, champion its product and cause and attract more likeminded people to its ranks.

b) Identify: Many people and teams operate on a heliotropic basis – they gravitate, like sunflowers towards the sun, to actions, behaviours and people that they admire. You can identify people in your workplace who are glittering examples of such behaviours. These are your culture champions. Nurture and encourage them to keep repeating those winning habits. These can be as simple as helpfulness, going the extra mile for colleagues, speaking up at meetings and being punctual. Eventually, these habits will spread to others. If you think you can win faster by getting people to set ambitious goals for themselves, then ask yourself if your system supports such champions in terms of recognition and rewards. Often it is not even monetary rewards but a kind word by yourself or your peers, that works wonders. One of my leadership heroes, Sir Chris Bonington, who has led countless mountaineering expeditions, related a striking example of a winning culture. As a guest member of the 1985 Norwegian expedition to Mt Everest, he could observe first hand the attitudes displayed by members of this national team that was attempting the peak for the first time for their country. Each member was interviewed about their respective ambitions and interests. One, in particular, was interesting. When asked if summitting Mt Everest was important to him, he said: “Yes, it is very important for me to be able to get to the top.” Then he paused, and said, “But more importantly, that one of us gets to the top!” So even in the short time frame of a two-month long expedition that took a year to plan, a culture of encouraging other teammates to be as, if not more successful than themselves, created a superbly harmonious and collegial atmosphere. Many of that team succeeded in reaching the top, and more than 25 years later, they are all still on exceedingly good terms with each other.

Many people and teams operate on a heliotropic basis – they gravitate, like sunflowers towards the sun, to actions, behaviours and people that they admire

February 2012

SHELF LIFE

“The most important thing for a leader is to respond to people's hierarchy of needs — from the basic to the spiritual.” — Deepak Chopra

The Soul of Leadership

At the heart of this book is the idea that leadership emanates from the core of our being By Sanjay Gupta

“In eight areas of your life you have the power to be guided by your soul,” says Deepak Chopra in this slim but significant book: “Thoughts, emotions, perception, personal relationships, social role, environment, speech and the body.” The bottomline is that in all of them our behaviour affects the people we lead. If we evolve, so will they, he avers. And that's the basic premise on which Chopra builds his concept of leadership that is soul-driven rather than one that exploits people or their insecurities. Given that the very term 'soul' is attributed more to religiosity than spirituality, it might put off readers not in a mood for religious sermons or some such. But Chopra clarifies what he means by this word within the first few pages. “When I talk about the soul, I'm not referring to the soul as defined by any particular religion...I believe the soul is an expression of an underlying universal field of consciousness,” he says. Equating the soul with 'awareness', Chopra writes that at the soul level you are seamlessly connected with everything in the universe, to the

silent domain from which all matter and energy spring. In keeping with this explanation, the book often dips into the realm of spirituality or philosophy of the Paulo Coelho kind. At the same time, however, it does detail the principles of leading from the soul and provides useful tips to any leader willing to look beyond personal aggrandisement or material gains. For one, Chopra hands the reader a sort of map by spelling out L-EA-D-E-R-S, with each letter of the acronym unravelling what it means to lead from the soul (L = look and listen; E = emotional bonding; A = awareness; D = doing; E = empowerment; R = responsibility; and S = synchronicity). Recognising the two overriding themes in our lives as 'needs' and 'responses', he says, “As a leader [of a group], if you are aware of the hierarchy of needs [referring to Maslow] and their responses, you will be able to continue to respond effectively as the group's needs move up the scale from basic to increasingly spiritual.” At times, the book tends to get a bit heavy and repetitive. But thankfully,

ABOUT THE author As a global leader and pioneer in the field of mind-body medicine, Deepak Chopra transforms the way the world views physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social wellness. He is a prolific author of over 65 books with nineteen New York Times best sellers in both the fiction and non fiction categories.

Chopra has peppered it with some interesting anecdotes and titbits. He points out that the word 'inspiration' is derived from the same Latin root as 'to breathe' and 'spirit': “When you inspire others, you motivate them to breathe together in the same atmosphere.” Tales such as the one from his own childhood in Jabalpur in a newly-independent India, in which Nehru, passing by in his motorcade in front of his house, tossed his lapel rose towards his mother (who thus acquired a special status in the neighbourhood), make for interesting reading. Then there are the inspiring stories of two entrepreneurs-leaders who created and nurtured two completely different but similarly 'soul-connected' organisations (Jeremy Moon of Icebreaker and Renata Black of Seven Bar Foundation). The Soul of Leadership could be dismissed by some who cannot bring themselves to believe the ideas of universal connectedness, but it will be lapped up by the many who are hungering for something far beyond the clinically logical or transactional.

February 2012

Imaging by Anil t

C O V E R S T O R Y | w o m e n l e a d ers h i p

February 2012

w o m e n l e a d ers h i p | C O V E R S T O R Y

Their Rightful Place

Under the Sun...

Organisations have begun to adapt their work ethos for women but more light needs to be shone on multiple issues By Anuradha Das Mathur

nytime is the right time to talk about ‘women

and leadership’. But the fact that this month marks Women’s Day, makes it all the more fitting that we dedicate this issue of CIO&Leader to the rise of women...and more often, the lack of it. My gut tells me that we are closing in on the “tipping point” on this one. The attitude of women has been among the most dramatic changes of the past decade. How they think — about work, family, motherhood, success, work-life balance, division of roles and much more — has undergone a shift so fundamental that almost nothing else has kept pace. Neither men nor the social fabric; neither infrastructure nor corporate structures; neither families nor other support systems. Everyone is struggling to make sense of the change. The simple fact is this: women make up half the world’s population. And despite huge strides, they are still way behind in contributing to wealth creation in the traditional economic sense of the word. Simplistically, more often than not, this is on account of choices they have to make between motherhood and work, family and career, etc. Several of the successful women one interviews on this issue say that they have never looked for “special” treatment as women. They do what everyone else does and get their due. My question is with regard to “what everyone else does”— the current norm of work ethos. It is designed to respond to men and their situations. If we are committed to promoting the deserved participation of women at work, acceptable terms of work ethos need to alter or expand. Working from home, flexi-hours, crèches — they need to be viewed as important tools for a balanced work environment, not as “favourable” to women. And their impact needs to be measured to see if they need to be supplemented or replaced by other approaches.

My favourite example to explain what I mean is around western/European menu cards. As an Asian vegetarian, till 10-12 years ago, I had to find some way to carve out a meal for myself from a menu that was decidedly nonvegetarian and suited to the European palate. As Asia and its needs have been recognised, and its importance appreciated, menu cards the world over have vegetarian and Asian options. Not equal, but certainly a start. Women don’t need to try and fit the age-old work norm. We need to define an extended ethos that works as well for women as it does for men. Only then will corporations and the world be able to benefit from the latent but obvious potential of women. Fortunately, the conversation has changed to reflect this. I was chosen a couple of years ago to go to the US on a programme for 25 emerging women leaders under 40. I met a large number of women in politics, government and business and was struck by the fact that the issue of women in the workforce has taken centre-stage, and conversation is around ‘How do we leverage the strengths that evident differences between men and women bring to the table’? How do we facilitate ‘equality of options’ and not equality interpreted as ‘sameness’? How do we enhance the menu options for women to get to leadership positions but not necessarily in the same way as men? The collection of articles in our cover story hopes to capture facts and opinion in equal measure. We intend that it brings the issue onto your radar — it is as much for men as for women to think about and action. Would you make a start, as you read this, by examining how your organisation scores on diversity — women colleagues, women in top management, women on your Board? Only then will the ‘woman half’ of the world find its rightful place under the sun...

February 2012

Women Leaders:

Why So Few? A significant number of women achieve academic success but very few get to the point of realising their full potential. Why? By Sanjay Gupta

henever one thinks of women leaders, a handful of names come to the mind: Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Meg Whitman, Indra Nooyi, Carly Fiorina, Sonia Gandhi, among others. The names vary, depending on the context in which they are taken and the perspective of the person doing the recall. But the point worth noting is that, despite the fact that examples of brilliant women leaders have existed throughout recorded history, they are way too few compared to instances of men leaders. And this observation is true irrespective of the field chosen – be it politics, business, or indeed technology. A world that has been primarily ruled and dominated by men (despite women being one half of the population) may not see anything wrong with that. But a modern, globalised society that upholds the ideals of equality and fairness knows this is not right, just not right. The disproporCompanies in india tionately low representation of women is reported utilisation no longer acceptable – not only to women of telecommuting themselves but an increasing number of programme in a men as well. At least that is what has come catalyst survey across consistently in our interaction with leaders across segments in India, most notably in business and technology. In our view, this is one of the most glaring issues in leadership and, therefore, we at CIO&Leader chose to do a cover story on women and leadership in

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one of our inaugural issues. Now, we can either talk about the symptoms or try and find the cause. We have tried to take the latter approach, as we believe that sustainable solutions will come only when we address the cause. So, why do we see only a few women leaders around us when there is an ocean of talented women out there? Is it because of education? Is it because of the environment at the workplace? Is it really true that women prefer to give up careers in favour of family as they go up the corporate ladder? Or, are there other factors, perhaps a combination of factors, leading to the situation? Let us examine these questions in a little more detail before we dare to take any overarching view on the question of women and leadership.

Getting educated The beginnings of recorded human history were marked by the single biggest factor of brute force. Those with the muscle and the power to fight won battles and reigned over the goods – cattle, farms, precious metals... Even in agrarian and industrial societies, the power-driven paradigm – attributed to and demonstrated mostly by men rather than women – carried on the male momentum. However, in a post-agricultural and post-industrial world that is increasingly dependent on information, and communication and managerial skills, the balance has begun to tilt. More and more women are getting educated and acquiring the requisite skills for employment beyond the 'muscular' work that dominated the past. As a result, the gap between the number of men and women in educational institutions is reducing – stunningly, in some cases, to the extent where women students outnumber men. According to an article published in The Atlantic, for instance, for every two men in the US who got a college degree in 2010, three women did the same. The situation is certainly not as optimistic in all countries, but there are encouraging signs — at least in most developed and several developing nations. With education as a focus area, the Indian government, too, has been trying to improve women's enrolment at

w o m e n l e a d ers h i p | C O V E R S T O R Y

various levels. As per data from the Department of School Education & Literacy, from 13.8 million boys and 5.4 million girls enrolled at the primary level in 1950-51, the number rose to 69.7 million boys and 61.1 million girls in 2004-05. In upper primary, the enrolment increased from 2.6 million boys and 0.5 million girls to 28.5 million boys and 22.7 million girls – which means, of the total, 44 percent of girls were enrolled in upper primary. Curiously, this proportion of girls in education is either maintained at the same level or even improves when we go to the higher levels of education. So, in 2009-10 the percentage of female undergraduates in science was 41 percent of the total enrolment. This figure for postgraduates in science was slightly better, at 45 percent for girls, in the same year. These statistics imply that when it comes to different levels of education, females are just about to catch up with their male counterparts. Most of us can recall the headlines from newspapers after school board exams: 'Girls perform better than boys yet again.' Or, 'Girls outdo boys in Maths and Science in Class XII.' But what happens thereafter?

Entering the workforce When it comes to the workforce, however, the picture begins to change drastically. Participation of women in the labour force in India stands at a lowly 34 percent – the lowest among the so-called BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) economies. A UN report says that in 2010, women’s labour force participation rates remained below 30 percent in Northern Africa and Western Asia; below 40 percent in Southern Asia; and below 50 percent in the Caribbean and Central America. The gap between participation rates of women and men has narrowed slightly in the last 20 years but remains considerable. Obviously, this gap comes in the way of women's visibility in the workplace even at initial levels. This is particularly acute in a field such as technology which, traditionally, fewer women have opted as their chosen domain of work — despite improving enrolments in science courses and several scientific studies disproving the myth of women not 'suited to' maths and science.

Career growth There are no easily available statistics available on the proportion of middle-level women employees and managers in Indian organisations. But the proportion of women who join various organisations comes down as they move to middle, senior and board positions. There are several — and, often, complex — reasons for this. One of the commonly cited points is that women in India tend to give up their jobs and careers much more readily and in greater proportion to, say, women in the US or advanced economies. But is it really true? And even if it were true, the root causes remain to be determined: Is it the traditional mindset or are there other factors?

What is not under debate, however, is that women have to do much more work than men. According to a UN report titled The World's Women 2010, the total work burden — considering paid as well as unpaid work — is higher for women than men in all regions of the world. In many countries, employed women spend an inordinate amount of time on this “double burden,” as they typically continue to assume most of the responsibility for domestic work. Certainly, this factor impedes women's career growth in varying measures.

Reaching the top But the contrast in men and women in the context of the organisation becomes most visible when we look at top management and leadership positions. Globally, women occupy just 17 percent of the positions when it comes to representation in parliaments or ministries. Among the CEOs of the top 500 corporations in the world, only 13 are women. The situation is even more stark in India. Data from Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), a pro-democracy organisation, reveals that India ranks 98th in the world in representation of women in government. According to a joint corporate survey by the Forum for Women in Leadership (WILL Forum India) and consulting firm KPMG, as of 2009, women in India accounted for a mere 4.8 percent of the total population of directors and 2.5 percent of the total segment of independent directors among the companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange. Again, there's no specific data on the number of senior women executives in the technology function in India. But in our experience at CIO&Leader, what is unambiguous is that while there are some obvious names or visible women CEOs and CIOs, the number is not reflective of the women talent that exists across the hierarchy in most organisations.

Dwindling numbers Clearly, the proportion of women making it as leaders in government, business and technology is much, much lower in the context of either their education levels or the initial number of women entering the workforce. In the corporate environment, it is not that companies do not realise the importance or need to include more women at middle and senior levels, but somehow the results are not showing. According to a report by Catalyst, a nonprofit that aims to expand opportunities for women and business, 68 percent of companies in India have formal strategies for women’s advancement in place—yet these programmes lack elements crucial to their success, including metrics and indicators to measure their impact, hold managers accountable, and engage men in advancing women to leadership. In a press statement on the report, Nancy Carter, senior VP of research at Catalyst and a visiting scholar

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at INSEAD, notes, “Programmes and policies alone are not enough—accountability matters too. For these programmes to be effective, it’s necessary to connect goals with results.” For instance, while three-fourths of the companies surveyed by Catalyst had flexible work programmes, only 11 percent among them reported greater than 25 percent utilisation of telecommuting. And only 7 percent reported greater than 25 percent utilisation of reduced work/part-time work programmes. Clearly, a gap between intent and results. The WILL Forum-KPMG survey also throws some light on why fewer women make it to the top. Only 43 percent of the respondents strongly agreed with the view that men and women actually have equal opportunities to grow in their careers and/or rise to positions of top leadership in the corporate sector. It is also quite possible that a vicious cycle of old attitudes and fixed mindsets impedes women's chances of playing leading roles in business or technology. This is what psychologists call 'the stereotype threat.' If women

Consider some key findings of a study, Off-ramps and On-ramps: Keeping Women on the Road to Success, released jointly by the Center for Work-Life Policy (CWLP) and Harvard Business Review in 2005 (off-ramp implies a break in work). According to Sylvia Ann Hewlett, President of CWLP and a co-author of the report, “Many talented, committed women take off-ramps but an overwhelming majority [93 percent] can’t wait to get back in.” However, according to the report, many find this more difficult than they anticipated. Only 74 percent succeed in rejoining the workforce and only 40 percent return to full-time jobs. But there's a more telling aspect of the report that sheds light on the women-friendly policies and culture (or lack of them) at organisations: 95 percent of the offrampers would not consider going back to their previous employers. One of the key reasons why many women who take a break to look after children or elders choose not to return to work even if given a chance is the lack of an institutional support infrastructure – especially in a country such as India where nuclear families and dualearning households are new (but rapidly growing) phenomena.

Many women take off-ramps but an overwhelming majority can’t wait to get back in are traditionally perceived as 'weak in maths and science' or 'lacking business acumen,' – even though scientific studies may have discredited such perceptions or shining examples may exist of inspiring businesswomen and scientists/technologists – it creates a negative and persistent downward spiral for them. Another reason often given for few women middle managers moving on to executive positions is the discouraging odds in their performance appraisals. A Wall Street Journal blog quotes Vikram Malhotra, McKinsey's chairman of the Americas, as saying: “Middle-management women get promoted on performance, while middlemanagement men get promoted on potential.” This implies that some women may have to work even harder than their male counterparts to get promoted to the same positions. But that's just one aspect of promotions. It is believed that most women themselves opt out of promotions and stick to middle management in order to achieve better work-life balance. Or they take a mid-career break so as to spend more time with their family. However, there are many complex factors at play here and some of the old popular perceptions are giving way to on-ground research and new thinking.

February 2012

Extent, not intent

Several organisations across the world are demonstrating and focusing on women's contribution to all hues of society, including growth, development and wealth creation (see snapshot on Page 66). So even though a number of factors are holding women back from realising their full potential as leaders, things are bound to change for the better. Signs of these changes are already visible – one of the most prominent being the rising levels of overall education and the growing acceptance of women at the workplace. In fact, there are organisations that are following global best practices in hiring and nurturing a diversified workforce (including a higher proportion of women) or going a step ahead and introducing pioneering employeefriendly policies. IBM, for instance, goes beyond hiring and retaining women talent and professes to extend efforts “to building the women leadership pipeline.” (The company recently appointed a woman, Virginia Rometty, as the CEO.) Consulting firm Deloitte is said to have initiated a programme, called Mass Career Customisation, which allows employees to adjust their hours depending on their life stage. Such initiatives, coupled with women's own resolve to keep the transformation, is undoubtedly a change for the better. It's not a question of if, but when; not intent, but extent.

Fixing the

Real Issues

The time is ripe to address the core issues affecting women's leadership growth — rather than worry about 'fixing the women'

vivah Wittenberg-Cox is CEO 20-first, a con-

sultancy that works with progressive companies interested in diversifying their leadership teams and optimising both halves of the talent pool and both halves of the market — the female and male halves. 20-first works with CEOs, executive committees and managers to build gender ‘bilingual’ organisations. The firm’s renowned Building Gender Balanced Businesses programmes and suite of online tools help companies harness the talent and market opportunities of the 21st century. Avivah is also author of the best selling books How Women Mean Business: A Step by Step Guide to Profiting from Gender Balanced Business [Wiley 2010] and Why Women Mean Business: Understanding the Emergence of Our Next Economic Revolution [Wiley 2008, co-authored with Alison Maitland]. Here we present a selection of Avivah's blogs that talk about why we must change the old question of 'fixing the women' to one that deals with fixing the companies that fail to adapt to women's styles; the need to make executive committees more gender balanced; and her impressions of what Indian organisations are doing to promote women leaders.

From 'Fixing Women' to 21st Century Companies

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox CEO, 20-first

All around the world, companies are launching gender initiatives. But the attempts of many of these firms are well-meaning, but inefficient. Our own report, the 20-first Womenomics 101 Survey, showed that almost 70 percent of the top companies in Europe don’t have any women on their Executive Committee. The reason for this glacial pace of change is that they are trying to apply a band-aid to an issue that calls for a systemic review of the business model.

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The problem is with the single-model career path and relentless up-or-out cultures that are common in many highly homogeneous business models. These companies won’t become more gender balanced until their model evolves into something more gender bilingual. The problem is that the people at the top, who have risen through the old system, have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. They have absolutely no incentive to change the system. The idea of adapting the model that has benefited them to accommodate a greater number of women is laughable. At least while they can still find men (and a minority of women who adapt to the masculine norms) ready to do what they did, they see no reason to change things.

We are “prisoners of a paradigm” All this, however, is unconscious. We are all, for the moment, what Professor Gary Hamel calls the “unwitting prisoners of a paradigm.” Most of these senior managers may truly believe that women aren’t making it to the top because of something they lack such as time, competence, and style. They are still asking a 20th century question: “What is wrong with these women that they are not making it to the top?” We would suggest that the 21st century question is: “What is wrong with this company if we are not able to promote the majority of our high-potential talent to the key positions and what is that doing to the quality of our talent?” These two questions yield very different answers – and lead to very different solutions.

‘Fixing the women’ The first step most companies take, even before thinking about the issue, is to look at what other companies are doing, and then craft ‘action plans’ to do at least as much. This trend is exacerbated by rating agencies and various accreditation or award bodies who evaluate these initiatives based on a list of criteria that usually involve a list of what they like to call ‘best practices.’ In the past decade in North America, and now rolling around the world in an American-led wave, you can see the results. Company after company and almost all the professional services firms are creating women’s networks, mentoring programmes for women, and coaching and leadership training for women. All are fine programmes, and the delight of consulting firms like mine. They are popular with most women, happy to have some developmental focus. Having run many of these for a number of years myself, I companies in Asia and know just how empowering and energis68 percent in Europe ing they can be. have no women at all The only problem is that I’m not at all on their Executive convinced they work. Or at least not in Committees isolation. The focus on women in compa-

82%

February 2012

nies leads to a host of unintended consequences. And the intended consequences (usually more women in leadership) have not been proven. These ‘fix the women’ strategies unconsciously encourage women to conform more closely to the dominant masculine norm and culture. Women are very ready to agree that they don’t do enough networking and self-marketing. And the senior men who are invited to introduce these sessions as ‘supporters’ and ‘champions’ are perfectly content to acknowledge that women need a little extra help in order to be truly ready in some distant future for leadership roles. That way, companies discover, everyone is happy. The women are happy as they have a sense that they are overcoming handicaps. The men are happy because it confirms that women have handicaps.

Questions to ask I would pose some other questions to the leaders of the companies launching these approaches. Here are a few: Do you really want to encourage half your workforce to spend time learning and adopting the communication styles preferred by men? Have you carried out client and customer satisfaction surveys to see how appreciated are the different talent on your staffs? Are you promoting to the top positions the people that your customers and peers evaluate as top performers or those that today’s managers prefer for their availability and expressed ambition? All the literature on career management is still about managing in a traditional, 20th century pyramid-style organisation, with everything it implies about the unwritten rules of the game, and the predominance of ambition and internal competition. Before we transform the new, still-different culture of female talent into pseudo-male behaviours, it might be worth understanding the consequences of our actions.

Time is running out We are at precisely the point in history where companies are dreaming of new leadership competencies, new collaborative cultures and newly innovative minds. But the lag time in embedding these new ideas into the corporate DNA risks costing us the opportunity of a whole half of the talent pool whose authentic styles seem naturally aligned with these new needs. In the course of researching for my new book, How Women Mean Business: A Step by Step Guide to Profiting from Gender Balanced Business (Wiley, Spring 2010), I have interviewed many progressive male CEOs who have started transforming their companies in order to attract and retain the best talent, female and male. For example, Damien O’Brien, CEO of the executive search firm Egon Zehnder International, is clear about

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the importance of gender balance. “More and more clients around the world just expect us to field gender balanced teams,” he says. “If they look at our website and see a lot of grey-haired, white males, a lot of them would not find that very exciting on many dimensions.” However, such leaders who are clear about the need for change are rare. The critical challenge for the majority of companies is to refrain from ‘fix the women’ policies and to start embracing their differences. With their different and complementary skills and perspectives, women may be the solution to companies adapting to 21st century talent and market realities.

Introducing 20-first's Womenomics 101 Survey That is why we have launched a new annual report: 20-first’s Womenomics 101 Survey. To get down to basics.

Getting Real about Gender Balance

The core metric: Executive Committee gender balance

Potential vs Reality

Business leaders, economists and the media are contributing to a growing chorus: acknowledging the economic opportunities in improving the gender balance in business. But there remains a wide gap between recognising the benefits and actually implementing the reality.

Potential first

Not yet, is the short answer. Products and services still don’t fully understand or respond to the women that women have become. And employers have not adapted their cultures and systems to the massive arrival of women in their talent pools. There has been a lot of attention over the past 5 years on the gender balance of corporate boards. It’s time to move beyond this level. The real indicator is the gender balance on the Executive Committee – the core metric of competitiveness.

Every year, this will list the top 101 Fortune Global Companies in each key region and reveal the gender balance of their top teams, providing a crucial snapshot of their true success in this area.

“The critical challenge for companies is to refrain from ‘fix the women’ policies and to start embracing their differences”

Recently, the argument that women represent a huge business opportunity in terms of talent and markets is heating up. Newsweek ran a cover story (Sept 21, 2009) called The Real Emerging Market that states that “in the last few months, economists, consultants, and other business types have begun to track the rise of a new emerging market, one that may end up being the largest and most powerful of all: women.” Goldman Sachs published a report in August 2009 called The Power of the Purse. It says that “over the next five years, the combined impact of growing gender equality and the emerging middle class will be seen most clearly in China and Russia, and to a lesser extent in Vietnam, Mexico, Brazil and Indonesia.” Then Harvard Business Review chimes in with a feature on The Female Economy reminding us, in case we haven’t heard it enough, that “women now drive the female economy… control about $20 trillion in annual consumer spending, and that figure could climb as high as $28 trillion in the next five years. In aggregate, women represent a growth market bigger than China and India combined — more than twice as big, in fact.”

Now, the reality (and how to measure it) So have companies acknowledged this shift… and its implications for their customers, products, services and images?

Why this metric? The focus on the boardroom has been helpful in raising the visibility of the gender issue. It was an easy-to-understand and easy-to-measure reading of gender balance (or the lack thereof) in business. Yet it is not the best indicator of how gender balanced a company actually is in 2009. Nor of how gender balanced they will manage to become tomorrow. As companies have discovered, it is much easier to appoint a woman or two onto a corporate board than it is to actually groom a woman for power and have her progress through the traditional, internal route to the Executive Committee. Boards are oversight bodies. They do not actually run companies. So getting more gender balance at board level does not have a very direct impact on the gender balance of the organization as a whole. It’s time to look deeper into companies, and find metrics that distinguish those serious about gender balance from the rest. That’s what Womenomics 101 proposes to do every year from now on.

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How Women Mean Business

Key findings US Leads: The US is ahead, with just over half of the companies surveyed having one or two women at this level. The American companies with the highest number of women on their executive boards are: Kraft Foods, WellPoint, Macy’s, Allstate, Pfizer, and Wells Fargo. Europe and Asia Lag: Both Europe and Asia have barely embarked on the gender journey. 82 percent of companies in Asia and 68 percent of companies in Europe have no women at all on their Executive Committees. Women promote women: Only a dozen companies out of 303 achieved a critical mass percentage of 30 percent women on their Executive Committees, which studies have shown is significant if companies want to create more effective leadership teams. They are all US-based and three of them are run by women CEOs – WellPoint, Kraft Foods, and Archer Daniels Midland. Lack of Women in Operational Roles: The majority of women promoted to the Executive Committees of the surveyed companies are in support roles (76 percent in the US).

Where the World's Top Companies Stand

20-first's Global Gender Balance Scorecard 2011 In this 3rd annual survey, the 20-first Global Gender Balance Scorecard looks at a single measure of progress:

February 2012

the gender balance of the Executive Committees of the TOP 100 companies in three key regions of the globe. Most of the world’s top companies have embraced the idea that corporate governance through all-male boards is a thing of the past. Our 2011 survey finds that 74 percent of companies in the US and 68 percent in Europe now have at least two women at board level, as many have progressed beyond the token “one.” However, as 20-first has long argued, boards are not the best metric for evaluating the actual gender balance inside companies. Instead, the gender balance of the Executive Committee is a much better indicator of progress, as it looks at the executive team actually running the business. If we look at Executive Committees of these top companies, the data shows that companies have not achieved the same progress as they have in balancing their boards. 59 percent of US companies have at least two women on their Executive Committee. Europe is far behind with 20 percent and Asia lags with only 4 percent. Globally, 90 percent of Executive Committee positions in our survey sample are filled by men, with only 10 percent by women. * Our 2011 Global Gender Balance Scorecard evaluates where companies are in balancing their Executive Committees. The scorecard segments companies into one of 6 categories: Asleep, Token, Starting Smart, Progressing, Critical Mass,and Balanced. The full report below describes what the top companies have achieved to date on their gender balance journey.

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Key findings US Leads. The US leads the way with 59 percent of companies having at least two women on their Executive Committees. However, upon closer inspection the picture is not quite so rosy. Of the 1,227 Executive Committee members of America’s Top 100 companies, only 205 (or 17 percent)are women and 1022 (or 83 percent) are men. The majority of these female Executive Committee members are in staff or support positions (145, or 12 percent of total)such as HR, Communications or Legal, whereas only 60 women (or 5 percent of total) are in line or operational roles. Europe Struggles. With only 20 percent of companies having at least two women on their Executive Committees, the overall picture shows that European companies are still struggling to make progress in gender balancing their top teams. Of the 938 Executive Committee members of Europe’s Top 100 companies, only 78 (or 8 percent) are women and 860 (or 92 percent) are men. Again most of these women (56, or 6 percent of total) are in staff or support roles. Only 22 women (or 2 percent of total) are in line or operational roles. Asia Lags. With only 4 percent of companies having at least two women on their Executive Committee, the overall picture is one of significant imbalance. Indeed,compared to the 926 men (98 percent) on Executive Committees in Asia, there are only 14 women in staff roles (1.5 percent of total) and a mere 6 women in line or operational roles (0,6 percent of total).

Indian Women Mean Business

“India has the chance to learn from what other companies in the West have done on gender balance” inspiring sight. Cherie Blair’s graciousness, goodwill and modesty (‘this is the first conference I’ve ever organised!’) as well as her connections drew a stellar programme of major Indian role models: a huge cross-section of people from corporate leaders and movie stars to the sheriff as well as the mayor of Mumbai (both women).

Traffic, Mumbai-style It is appropriate to end 2009’s blogs with a look at India. A huge and rising power, India is a record-breaker across the board, and the global crisis has only accelerated the shift eastwards. India’s size and the speed of its economic growth are breathtaking. The pace of change can –- literally –- be heard via the incessant car horns that blast throughout the day and night here in Mumbai. Loud and chaotic, the traffic is a visual symbol of the story. From carts to Rolls-Royces, a dozen epochs are trying to negotiate the run-down roads all together. Noticeable to a gender balance obsessive like me, is the relative absence of women at the wheel. But judging by the conference I just attended here, this will change as fast as the rest. Participating in the launch of a conference called Women Mean Business, the brainchild of The Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, was a myriad of contrasting personalities. The appetite and energy unleashed by one of the first such conferences in India was palpable. A huge yet bursting ballroom packed with several hundred women (and hundreds more who had to be turned away for lack of room) listening and sharing is a hugely

Kiran Bedi, police officer and former head of India’s largest prison Kiran Bedi, police officer and former head of Mumbai’s largest prison, set the tone. A tiny woman with immense energy and charisma, she is India’s first and highest ranking female police officer (and a former tennis champion). A believer in ‘positive aggression’, she exhorted the crowd to decide what they wanted and to go after it. ‘Change the status quo of what is irrelevant.’ She herself had transformed Indiai’s largest prison, with no money and no resources -– just a massive shift in approach, highly emblematic of the kind of paradigm shifts that women often bring to their leadership roles. She knew she would never be able to manage 10,000 violent male criminals on her own. So she opened her jail to a myriad of NGOs with whom she partnered, enrolled the detainees in a transformative vision of rehabilitation and got them all to…meditate! The turnaround has been phenomenal. ‘A believer in “positive aggression”, Kiran Bedi exhorted the crowd to decide what they wanted and to go after it. “Change the status quo of what is irrelevant.”

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Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Managing Director of Biocon Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, the Managing Director of Biocon, also illustrates this shift to new management approaches. She founded one of India’s first biotech companies back in the 70’s, long before the industry became fashionable. She had wanted to be a brewer like her father, but after studying in Australia, she found that women were not welcomed into management in the brewing industry in India. So she turned an obstacle into opportunity, and set off into the uncharted territory of biotech. She started off with a team of 80 percent women scientists who were attracted to her as a female role model, while most men were not convinced that biotech was a safe career bet. Some 30 years later, she runs one of the world’s big biotech companies with 4,000 employees, 40 percent of them women, and some $500 million in turnover. ‘I went from using yeast in beer, to yeast in insulin,’ she laughs. ‘My vision was to keep Indian scientific expertise in India, and to move the country from imitation to innovation. I’ve accomplished both.’ I had the pleasure of chairing a panel discussion that included several other powerhouse women:

educating its daughters, the elite offer them top-flight global education.

Meritocracy at ICICI But there are signs of change. Except on the crowded roads, things are moving fast in India, and this conference begins the laudable effort of showcasing what is working. KV Kamath, the Chairman of the Board of ICICI, says he has simply ‘unshackled’ women, removing all the obstacles that are in their way. As for the rest, he says, ‘they take care of themselves.’ He has 12 women on the 20-person board that he chairs. ‘I don’t see them as women,’ he insists, ‘I see them as talented executives.’ Balanced recruitment for men and women at Britannia Vinita Bali at Britannia has done a bit more. While swearing that she is simply being gender neutral, she has clearly and unequivocally introduced a mandatory 50/50 male/female candidate slate for every job. That makes the choice, she says, truly gender neutral. She says she communicates a lot, explaining the rules of the game, and standing firm. She says once the rules are clear, they don’t cause dissent. What she really seeks to establish is a ‘clear, transparent meritocracy’ where everyone knows the rules of the game –- and the playing field becomes truly level for all.

Naina Lal Kidwai, the head of HSBC in India One of the many women who happen to work in finance in India. (The conference was opened by Chanda Kochhar, the head of ICICI, India’s second largest bank).

Vinita Bali, the CEO of Britannia One of India’s leading food companies, she successfully steered the company into a health and nutrition strategy, adding vitamin elements to its products, pushing the company to its highest ever growth rate (22 percent).

Nandita Gurjar, the head of HR for Infosys

50%

of all job roles in britannia industires are mandated to be filled by women

Infosys has now partnered with Cherie Blair’s Foundation to do more, muchneeded research on women in business in India.

India’s gender balance record

Corporate India has been more traditional in terms of gender balance than one would have thought given women’s long-standing role in Indian politics. Yet Grant Thornton has done research showing that 15 percent of the country’s senior executives are women, not far from the US figure of 20 percent. Many of the country’s leading businesswomen are the daughters or wives in large family business empires. And while the country as a whole may not be good at

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India can leapfrog ahead in gender balance The challenge is to bring the men along too, convinced and convincing about the need for change in this area. Above all, they need to be convinced of the business benefit of gender balance; and the quicker the better. Very few men were present at the conference in Mumbai. But let’s not wait to get the guys to see the light. India has the chance to learn from what other companies in the West have done on gender balance and avoid costly and less than effective ‘fix the women’ programmes. In doing so, it could jump straight to management gender bilingualism focused on the economic opportunities of balance. Given the level of energy and ideas unleashed by this first women’s conference, India would have a lot to gain. The playing field, like the roads in India, will need a few more conferences like this one. The transformation ahead is a massive one.

—For more information about Avivah Wittenberg-Cox and 20-first, visit 20-first.com and WHYandHOWWomenMeanBusiness.com.

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A Huge Untapped

Potential Companies around the world are recognising the true value of including, mentoring and promoting more women By Ester Martinez & Gyanendra Kashyap

he working-age population in the 15 to 64

age group in India is expected to reach 915 million by 2020 and to a staggering 1 billion by 2030. More importantly, half of them would still be under the age of 28 in 2030. This broadly constitutes India’s much trumpeted demographic dividend, which is often lauded as its competitive advantage over the long run. The demographic dividend story may be a good selling point for investments, but seen through statistics and the reality of women at work, it paints a contrasting picture. Statistics from the National Sample Survey Organisation show that while labour force participation rates have fallen for both men and women, the decline in the rate is much sharper for women in the 15 to 59 age group. In the five years up to 2010, the work participation rate of women has been on a decline, coming down by 6 percent since 2004-05. Interestingly, in the decade from 2000 to 2010, the population of women aged 15 years or more increased by 86.5 million but only 8.9 percent of them joined the labour force. It is ironic that during a period of economic growth, the dependency ratio has increased instead of decreasing. Women form close to one-half of the human resources of the country and the sheer decline in their work participation undermines India’s demographic dividend theory. Most organisations in India are under-utilising and, in some cases, downright ignoring the other half of the talent pool: women make up 42 percent of college graduates in India; Census 2011 pegs the effective literacy rate for

females at 65 percent. As talent becomes the most valuable resource for businesses, it makes sense to invest in women and leverage on the “gender dividend.” With less than 25 percent of women in India as a part of the workforce (compared to 50 percent of men), they represent a huge untapped potential. Reports from research bodies and media corroborate that women representation in the IT/ITeS workforce ranges from 24 to 26 percent at entry levels and gradually declines as one moves to middle, senior and board levels. For new-age private-sector banks, women at the entry level form roughly 20 percent of the workforce. As per a UN report, India’s annual GDP growth could jump 4 percent if women participation rates were raised to 70 percent, closer to that in many developed nations. Efforts by companies in attracting and retaining women take a beating when one looks at the recent NSSO figures that point to the declining participation ratio of women. While the data can be looked at from a positive perspective to conclude that the decline in women's participation in the workforce is primarily due to women choosing to educate themselves for longer periods instead of joining the workforce at the very first opportunity, other corollaries can neither be overlooked nor ignored. In India, it is quite intriguing that despite increasing levels of higher education in women and the talent crunch across industries, the women participation ratio in total workforce has declined. A number of socio-cultural and labour market factors could also be responsible for the decline in women's participation. Organisations have begun building a business case for ‘gender dividend’ by creating equal opportunities by widening the talent pool. The last generation of workplace innovations introduced policies to support women with young children, internal networks to help women navigate their careers, and flexible work options which broke down structural barriers holding women back from entering the workforce. While these must continue, a flexible and innovative workplace which appreciates the needs of women employees would go a long way in creating a nurturing ecosystem—in which talent can thrive and the organisation can reap the benefits of demographic as well as gender dividend.

Most organisations in India are under-utilising or downright ignoring the other half of the talent pool

—Ester Martinez is Managing Editor at People Matters. She can be reached at ester.martinez@peoplematters.in. Gyanendra Kashyap is Research Editor at People Matters. The complete article is available at www.peoplematters.in.

February 2012

How Talented

Women Thrive A new approach to leadership can help women become more self-confident and effective business leaders By Joanna Barsh, Susie Cranston, and Rebecca A. Craske

omen start careers in business and other professions with the same level of intelligence, education, and commitment as men. Yet comparatively few reach the top echelons. This gap matters not only because the familiar glass ceiling is unfair, but also because the world has an increasingly urgent need for more leaders. All men and women with the brains, the desire, and the perseverance to lead should be encouraged to fulfill their potential and leave their mark. With all this in mind, the McKinsey Leadership Project — an initiative to help professional women at McKinsey and elsewhere — set out four years ago to learn what drives McKinsey Leadership model comprising five broad and interrelated dimensions

Preconditions: Intelligence Tolerance for change Desire to lead Communication skills

Meaning Happiness signature strengths purpose

Engaging Voice Onership Risk Taking Adactability

Managing energy

Your Personal And Professional Context

Connecting Network Design Sponsership Reciprocity Inclusiveness

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Minimising Depletion Restoration

Positive framing Self-awareness Learned Optmism Moving On

Impact Presence Resilience Belonging

and sustains successful female leaders. We wanted to help younger women navigate the paths to leadership and, at the same time, to learn how organisations could get the best out of this talented group. To that end, we interviewed more than 85 women globally (and a few good men) who are successful in diverse fields. Some lead 10,000 people or more, others 5 or even fewer. While the specifics of their lives vary, each one shares the goal of making a difference in the wider world. All were willing to discuss their personal experiences and to provide insights into what it takes to stay the leadership course. We have also studied the academic literature; consulted experts in leadership, psychology, organisational behaviour, and biology; and sifted through the experiences of hundreds of colleagues at McKinsey. From the interviews and other research, we have distilled a leadership model comprising five broad and interrelated dimensions (exhibit): meaning, or finding your strengths and putting them to work in the service of an inspiring purpose; managing energy, or knowing where your energy comes from, where it goes, and what you can do to manage it; positive framing, or adopting a more constructive way to view your world, expand your horizons, and gain the resilience to move ahead even when bad things happen; connecting, or identifying who can help you grow, building stronger relationships, and increasing your sense of belonging; and engaging, or finding your voice, becoming self-reliant and confident by accepting opportunities, and collaborating with others We call this model centered leadership. As the name implies, it’s about having a well of physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual strength that drives personal achievement and, in turn, inspires others to follow. Centered leadership also works for men, though we have found that the model resonates particularly well with women because we have built it on a foundation of research into their specific needs and experiences. Centered leadership emphasises the role of positive emo-

w o m e n l e a d ers h i p | C O V E R S T O R Y

tions. A few characteristics particularly distinguish women from their male counterparts in the workplace. First, women can more often opt out of it than men can. Second, their double burden — motherhood and management — drains energy in a particularly challenging way. Third, they tend to experience emotional ups and downs more often and more intensely than most men do. Given these potentially negative emotions, centered leadership consciously draws on positive psychology, a discipline that seeks to identify what makes healthy people thrive.

Meaning ‘To love what you do and feel that it matters—how could anything be more fun?’ Meaning is the motivation that moves us. Without meaning, work is a slog between weekends. With meaning, any job can become a calling. It starts with happiness. Positive psychologists (including Tal Ben-Shahar, Jonathan Haidt, and Martin Seligman) have defined a progression of happiness that leads from pleasure to engagement to meaning. Katharine Graham, the first female CEO of a Fortune 500 enterprise (the Washington Post Company), said, “To love what you do and feel that it matters — how could anything be more fun?” Why is meaning important for leaders? Studies have shown that among professionals, it translates into greater job satisfaction, higher productivity, lower turnover, and increased loyalty. The benefits also include feelings of transcendence — in other words, contributing to something bigger than yourself generates a deeper sense of meaning, thereby creating a virtuous cycle. Shelly Lazarus, the chairman and CEO of the advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, described how she “just followed [her] heart, doing the things that [she] loved to do.” This sense of meaning inspired her, early in her career, to jump from Clairol to Ogilvy. Lazarus commented that everyone she knew thought that her decision to go from the client side to the agency side was a strategic move. But “it wasn’t really like that,” she says. “I just loved the interaction with the agency because that was the moment I could see where the ideas came to life.” People seeking to define what is meaningful can start, as one interviewee put it, by “being honest with yourself about what you’re good at and what you enjoy doing.” Building these signature strengths into everyday activities at work makes you happier, in part by making these activities more meaningful. Although there is no simple formula for matching your strengths to any single function, you can look for patterns in jobs that have and haven’t worked out and talk with others about your experiences. The connection between signature strengths and work can change because priorities do; sometimes, for example,

a job is better than a calling, especially for young mothers. Our interviews show that this ebb and flow is natural and that the key to success is being aware of the shifts — and making conscious choices about them — in the context of bigger goals, personal or professional.

Managing energy Actively managing energy levels is crucial to leaders. Today’s executives work hard: 60 percent of the senior executives toil more than 50 hours a week, and 10 percent more than 80 hours a week. What’s more, many women come home from work only to sign onto a “second shift” — 92 percent of them still manage all household tasks, such as meal preparation and child care. We’ve found that work–life balance is a myth—so the only hope women have is to balance their energy flows. This means basing your priorities on the activities that energise you, both at work and at home, and actively managing your resources to avoid dipping into reserves. Burnout is a reality for men and women alike, but for women who can opt out, so too is throwing in the towel.

Centered leadership draws on positive psychology, a discipline that seeks to identify what makes healthy people thrive But work doesn’t have to be exhausting. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, a founder of positive psychology, studied thousands of people, from sculptors to factory workers. He found that those who frequently experienced what he called “flow”— a sense of being so engaged by activities that you don’t notice the passage of time — were more productive and derived greater satisfaction from their work than those who did not. Further, it energised them. Zia Mody, a top litigator in India, described how she gained energy from a life that most people would see as exhausting. Even when her three daughters were young, she put in 16-hour days to prepare her cases. A woman among thousands of men at court, she lit up as she told us, “I love it! I love winning. I love being in court. . . . It excites me — I cannot tell you how much.” One useful tactic is to identify the conditions and situations that replenish your energy and those that sap it. Self-awareness lets you deliberately incorporate restorative elements into your day. It can also help you to space out your energy-sapping tasks throughout the day, instead of bundling them all into a single morning or afternoon. A particularly useful tip, we have found, is to give yourself

February 2012

C O V E R S T O R Y | w o m e n l e a d ers h i p

time during the day to focus without distractions such as blinking lights and buzzing phones. Your productivity will benefit several times over.

should also undertake some activity that will restore both your energy and your faith in yourself.

Connecting Positive framing The frames people use to view the world and process experiences can make a critical difference to professional outcomes. Many studies suggest that optimists see life more realistically than pessimists do, a frame of mind that can be crucial to making the right business decisions. That insight may be particularly critical for women, who are twice as likely to become depressed, according to one study. Optimists, research shows, are not afraid to frame the world as it actually is — they are confident that they can manage its challenges and move their teams quickly to action. By contrast, pessimists are more likely to feel helpless and to get stuck in downward spirals that lead to energy-depleting rumination. Martin Seligman, a psychologist who was an early proponent of positive psychology, found, for example, that optimists are better able to deal with the news that they have cancer. Confident that they can handle the prognosis, they immediately start to gather facts and dive into treatment plans; pessimists, on the other hand, become paralysed with fear. Seligman also shows optimism can be learned, an insight that underlies positive framing. Positive framing and positive thinking, we would emphasise, are two different notions. The latter tries to replace adversity with positive beliefs. The former accepts the facts of adversity and counters them with action. Talking yourself into a view contrary to the facts has a temporary effect at best. The experience of Andrea Jung, the chairman and CEO of Avon, suggests how useful positive framing can be. In late 2005, Jung recalls, she found her company in a decline that temporary factors could not explain. Recognising that she was the leader who had created the strategies and the team responsible for the downturn, she listened to the counsel of her executive coach and promptly “fired herself” on a Friday night. The following Monday, Andrea showed up at work as the “new” turnaround CEO. She proved herself to be a “glass half full” optimist, and the recovery plan her management or fewer team adopted after a quick diagnoadministrators and sis led to a steady improvement and managers in india a return to growth. are women If a meeting goes badly, for example, you should limit your thoughts about it to its temporary and specific impact and keep them impersonal. It helps to talk with trusted colleagues about the reasons for the poor meeting and ways to do better next time. These discussions should take place quickly enough for you to make a specific plan and act on it. You

03%

February 2012

People with strong networks and good mentors enjoy more promotions, higher pay, and greater career satisfaction. They feel a sense of belonging, which makes their lives meaningful. As Mark Hunter and Herminia Ibarra have noted in the Harvard Business Review, what differentiates a leader from a manager “is the ability to figure out where to go and to enlist the people and groups necessary to get there.” Yet not all networks are equal. Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist who studies social belonging and rejection, believes that men tend to build broader, shallower networks than women do and that the networks of men give them a wider range of resources for gaining knowledge and professional opportunities. This theory is a matter of substantial debate among academics. Our experience with hundreds of women at McKinsey, however, offers additional evidence that women’s networks tend to be narrower but deeper than men’s. The experience of Dame Stella Rimington, who in the late 1960s joined MI5, the UK’s domestic intelligence organisation, offers an example of the power of broad networks to get things done. Rimington, later the agency’s director general, says “women were definitely second-class citizens” in those days. They weren’t allowed to do fieldwork, for example, yet “many of the women were completely indistinguishable from the men: they had the same kind of education.” She continues: “So we women — there were quite a few of us by then — we sort of ganged up and did a kind of round-robin thing and said, ‘Why is it that we have a completely different career than men who are exactly like us?’ And for the first time, the powers that be started to scratch their heads because they suddenly had to find an answer. . . . And in the end, of course, they decided that they would have to promote a few women.” She later concluded that “no one of us would have asked that question on her own. We were supporting each other, and there was power in the many.” The leaders we interviewed also talked about the importance of having individual relationships with senior colleagues willing to go beyond the role of mentor —someone willing to stick out his or her own neck to create opportunity for a protégée. Such a person is what Ruth Porat, a vice chairwoman at Morgan Stanley, called a “sponsor.” A number of studies have shown women who promote their own interests vigorously are seen as aggressive, uncooperative, and selfish. An equal number of studies show the failure of women to promote their own interests results in a lack of female leaders. Until one of these conditions changes, sponsors, we believe, are the key to helping women gain access to opportunities they merit and need to develop. Porat explained how a managing director took a chance on her when she was a second-year associate, asking her to present to a client’s board of directors. “The consumer client

w o m e n l e a d ers h i p | C O V E R S T O R Y

A number of studies have shown women who promote their own interests vigorously are seen as aggressive, uncooperative, and selfish wanted a woman to be present. I had never been in a boardroom, let alone presented in a boardroom. ‘Sink or swim,’ he told me. ‘You’re in.’ I still remember to this day a mistake I made and that it was, overall, a good presentation. He took a real chance on me.” One surprising thing we learned as a result of talking with female leaders was that they often fail to reciprocate and find expectations that they should do so distasteful. A senior partner at McKinsey noted men naturally understand that you must “give before you get,” but women don’t. This tendency combined with the sometimes awkward sexual politics, real or perceived, between senior men and younger women, makes it harder for women to find sponsors. Yet women can learn reciprocity. To start, it’s important to assess your comfort level with the people you know through work, as well as how influential they are professionally. Most women we’ve worked with typically find that the colleagues they are close to are not influential—and vice versa. Explicit planning and some risk taking are needed to change this. One approach is to provide and ask for help on a regular basis. Finding ways to forge connections through interests outside of work is another. Over and over, we heard, “Make it personal,” in the sense that others will get along with you more easily if they see your human side. You can express this in all kinds of ways at work, without inappropriately blending your professional and personal lives. The female leaders we interviewed acted on this insight both to find sponsors and to build networks.

Engaging Many people think that hard work will eventually be noticed and rewarded. That can indeed happen—but usually doesn’t. Women, our interviewees repeatedly told us, need to “create their own luck.” To engage with opportunities by taking ownership of them, you must first find your own voice, literally. Julie Daum, a prominent Spencer Stuart recruiter who specialises in board placements, told us that even senior women on boards still lose out by not speaking up: they hang back if they think that they have nothing new to say or that their ideas fall short of profound. One senior woman we interviewed told us how she learned to join in: “Every Monday, we had a senior-management meeting. In the beginning, I just listened. I learned from the guys because they were all there. And after a while I started to speak up. You did the work, so you’ve got to talk about it. And I did.”

Women who want to grow as leaders should also take ownership of their professional development. Mary Ma, Lenovo’s former CFO, said she drew inspiration from using the Japanese auto industry as a metaphor, reshaping herself to become more competitive by identifying what she had to change and then actually changing it. As Ma noted, she didn’t complain to her boss or to her colleagues but rather looked inward to see how she could be a more effective leader. Instead of waiting for someone to tell her what to do, she took a systematic approach to self-improvement. Engagement is equally about risk taking. The women we interviewed accept risk as a part of opportunity. Some have the confidence and courage to dive in; others use analytic problem solving to assess risks and then proceed to action. Shona Brown, Google’s senior vice president of business operations, described how she handles opportunities and the risks that accompany them. “I’ll use a skiing analogy because I like to jump off cliffs,” she says. “But I generally jump off cliffs from which I’m relatively confident I’m going to land—or if I don’t, it’s not dangerous.” Brown said she enjoys risk. “I like to be at that point where you’re about to jump. Your stomach is kind of going ‘woo’! It’s not so simple that you’re sure you’ll succeed. But you’re not in a life-threatening situation.” Our interviews have shown us that to embrace opportunity, people must often take sharp detours and that the risks of unexpected changes commonly seem more obvious than the benefits. Reaching out to others — not to avoid making decisions yourself but to learn the best outcome from change can often help you see opportunities in the right frame and decide whether to go for them. Within McKinsey and in the corporate world, our work on centered leadership continues. To understand how men and women practice it across tenures, industries, and regions, we are interviewing and launching large-scale surveys — again, with female and male respondents. Our research is exploring the hypothesis that today’s leaders can become even more effective through the model of centered leadership: a shared purpose with deep meaning for the people involved, explicit awareness and management of energy, positive framing, strong informal and formal networks, and the collaborative creation of opportunities. In time, we hope to help increase the number of female leaders significantly by giving them the tools to build leadership skills for any playing field.

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C O V E R S T O R Y | w o m e n l e a d ers h i p

Straight Talk Candid views from four top corporate women on issues related to leadership Whether men or women, there are good as well as bad professionals – just as there are brilliant ones on both sides. In my own experience I have not felt any difference between men and women leaders in terms of professional competence. However, women tend to have a higher priority for the family as they usually have more caring responsibilities. And contrary to what many people believe, as children grow up they need you even more. How women are able to balance the two also depends on the kind of organisation they work for. Fortunately, men are now increasingly supportive – and there may come a time when women won't have to give up their careers because of work-life issues and we'll see more women leaders emerge.

Preet Dhupar, CFO, BBC Worldwide

When it comes to women leaders, I feel they are more honest and have the capability to handle multiple tasks. This trait to handle multiple things is not limited to Indian women. Even in other countries where it is not the primary responsibility of women to manage home, they are able to balance both home and office. These traits come naturally to women. Besides, women are more articulate than men, a characteristic which is very important in the field of IT.

Vandana Avantsa, CIO, Motherson Sumi

The biggest challenge and difference between men and women leaders is that women have to create acceptance within the organisation. There could be cases wherein subordinates don’t take women in leadership positions seriously. To manage this issue, women need to be both aggressive and understanding at the same time. Aggressive so that their peers and team members don’t take them for granted and understanding so that they are able to relate to the issues of their colleagues. Women leaders are also different from men leaders when it comes to balancing the roles at home and office. While at office, a woman could be strong and dynamic but at home she has to bow down as she transforms into a wife, daughter or mother.

Puneet Kaur Kohli, Director - IT, Infrastructure & Service Operations, Motricity

February 2012

I think the key differentiators for women leaders include soft skills, an inclusive leadership style, higher EQ, steady performance, ethical conduct and corporate governance practices. As a woman leader, I personally face no challenges but, generally speaking, women have to face the challenges of traditional mindsets and resistance to change, besides social and cultural biases in some industries. The view of most women leaders is that the business case for women in leadership is not recognised and therefore there is a lack of proactive action for their professional development. Also, there is a need to have more women in senior leadership positions at board and CEO levels to drive change. Mentoring for women professionals by top executives and diversity programmes initiated by organisations would go a long way in bridging the leadership gap for women.

Urmil Khurana, Regional Director – Finance, South Asia, Starwood Asia Pacific Hotels & Resorts

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Making a

Difference

We present a few organisations that are doing their bit in driving positive change for women in various ways

e at CIO&Leader believe that creating an ecosystem or environment where women can realise their full potential – on a global scale and in a significant measure – is a huge undertaking. One that requires the dedicated efforts of a number of individuals and organisations rather than any single entity. There are hundreds or, perhaps, thousands, of others all over the world. So this selection is certainly not exhaustive – but it is our sincere hope that the stories you see here will encourage you and your organisation to BYOD – Bring Your Own 'Device' – for unleashing the connected, collective power of women Goldman Sachs: With the belief that investing in education for women has a significant multiplier effect, leading to more productive workers, healthier and better-educated families, and ultimately to more prosperous communities, the leading global investment banking, securities and investment management firm kick-started 10,000 Women. It is a five-year initiative to provide a business and management education to underserved female entrepreneurs in developing and emerging markets. The program is designed to drive greater shared economic growth, leading to stronger healthcare, education and greater prosperity in the communities where it operates.

February 2012

The Center for Talent Innovation: A non-profit "think tank" based in New York City, has emerged as a thought leader in diversity and talent management, driving ground breaking research and seeding programs and practices that attract, retain and accelerate the new streams of talent around the world. CTI's flagship project is the Task Force for Talent Innovation (formerly the Hidden Brain Drain Task Force) -- a private sector task force focused on helping corporations leverage their talent across the divides of gender, generation and culture. The 71 global corporations and organisations that constitute the Task Force-representing 4 million employees and operating in 190 countries around the world--are united by understanding that the full utilisation of the talent pool is at the heart of competitive advantage and economic success. The think tank’s founding president is Sylvia Ann Hewlett. She is the author of nine Harvard Business Review articles and 11 critically acclaimed nonfiction books including OffRamps and On-Ramps.

w o m e n l e a d ers h i p | C O V E R S T O R Y

The Cherie Blair Foundation: The Foundation was set up in September 2008 in response to Cherie’s experiences meeting women around the world and the realisation that, with the right support, women can overcome the challenges they face and play an important part in the economies and societies in which they work and live. The foundation feels women who are financially independent have greater control over their own and their children’s lives. Economic security gives women a more influential voice in tackling injustice and discrimination in their communities and wider society. Yet women entrepreneurs around the world still lack the business skills, technology, networks and access to finance they need to be successful in the long term. The Foundation provides support in these four key areas so that women can grow their businesses and create employment opportunities. Working in partnership with local organisations, the Foundation develops programmes that build confidence, capability and capital in women. Given that women tend to invest 90 percent of their income back into their families, investing in women isn’t just good ethics, it’s sound economics.

20-first: One of the world’s leading gender consultancies, 20-first works with organisations that seek to move from 20th century mindsets, management styles and marketing approaches into more progressive 21st century forms – and to stay first at the game. Thus it’s name. 20-first works with progressive global companies around the world interested in responding to both halves of the market and optimising both halves of the talent pool – the male and female halves. 20-first works with CEOs, executive committees and managers to build gender ‘bilingual’ organisations. The firm’s renowned ‘Building Gender Balanced Businesses’ programmes and suite of online tools help companies harness the talent and market opportunities of the 21st century. Avivah WittenbergCox is CEO of the consultancy 20-first. She is author of HOW Women Mean Business, A Step by Step Guide to Profiting from Gender Balanced Business and co-author of WHY Women Mean Business: Understanding the Emergence of Our Next Economic Revolution.

Catalyst: Founded in 1962, Catalyst is the leading nonprofit membership organization expanding opportunities for women and business. With offices in the US, Canada, Europe, and India, we count as members more than 500 companies, firms, business schools, and associations from around the world, employing millions of women. Our global lens and regional reach allow us to provide our members, the media, and the public with information and counsel on creating workplaces that enable women and their employers to succeed. Catalyst’s work is rooted in its research. It studies women and men across levels, functions, and geographies to learn about women’s experiences in business, barriers to their career advancement, and individual and organisational strategies leading to success. Its reports, often cited in international media, reveal the challenges and opportunities for organisations and women at work globally. It has an extensive compendium of diversity and inclusion practices that provides models for change.

Women in Technology International: Carolyn Leighton founded Women in Technology International (WITI) to help women advance by providing access to - and support from - other professional women working in all sectors of technology. WITI started in 1989 as The International Network of Women in Technology and, in 2001, evolved into The WITI Professional Association, the world's leading trade association for tech-savvy women. Today, WITI is the premier global organisation empowering women in business and technology to achieve unimagined possibilities. With a global network of smart, talented women and a market reach exceeding two million, WITI has powerful programmes and partnerships that provide connections, resources, opportunities and a supportive environment of women committed to helping each other. Along with its professional association of networks throughout the US and worldwide, including Hong Kong, Great Britain, Australia, and Mexico, WITI delivers value for individuals that work for a company, the government or academia, as well as small business owners.

February 2012

Illustration by anil t

HORIZONS

Feature Inside

Techs Driving IT into Transition

Here are some technology and cultural hot spots to pay attention to as we move through this year and beyond By Dennis Drogseth

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t a recent round table in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, EMA solicited inputs from a number of local IT managers, executives and professionals on topics of interest. While the range was wide and varied -- from end-to-end e-mail and mobility, to APM and service management, to change, configuration and asset management -- the No. 1 outstanding request was what might be summarised as the transformation of IT towards a more service centric organisation. In parallel, EMA asked its analysts for

te c h tren d s | N E X T H O R I Z O N S

their predictions about what 2012 might bring. The range of prognostications, while focusing more on “hot technologies,” was also directly relevant to this notion of “IT in transition,” in which cloud, analytics, information sharing, the spread and commoditisation of IT services through mobile access, heightened security challenges, are all coming into play. So based on all this collective wisdom here are some of the technology and cultural hot spots to pay attention to as we move through this year and beyond: Big Data (business and IT) - Business Intelligence (BI) is pushing out to just about every area of the enterprise, including IT. And with this comes challenges in how BI data is shared, including mobile access with its bandwidth challenges, as well as more complex policies for role-related access when roles are so diverse. The notion of an IT data warehouse dramatises this challenge within just IT and may ultimately (and inadvertently) set back in motion debates about a singular data warehouse or a data mart. When significantly more than 40 percent of respondents in a 2011 survey claimed they had a data warehouse as part of their service management strategy much of this turned out to be back end investments to shore up everything from CMDBs to advanced performance analytics for enriched capabilities in trending and analysis over time. So the truth is that while “Big Data” is by convention monolithic, its roles and deployments are becoming more varied as the need for more competitive business models fueled by more responsive and/or business-transforming IT services continues to accelerate. Advanced threat intelligence (also driving Big Data) - As targeted threats continue to increase in number and sophistication, the requirements for better information gathering and data-driven security become intensified. These requirements go far beyond looking at isolated denial of service or malware issues to broader situational analysis. As managing simple threats and Mission Impossible terrorist scenarios begin to blur, patterns of human behavior need to be linked more aggressively to technical patterns and behaviors. Advanced management analytics - The relationship between some of the “rocket

management, and service science” level performance manimpact management including agement capabilities far more data center consolidation and familiar to the operations bridge the move to virtualisation. than the enterprise marketing of all customer Melds - Capacity planning, team are another source or critiinteractions, threaten performance, and business cal advancement in 2012. These to undermine the impact are all beginning to interare too easily lumped into the customer's affinity sect in analytic “melds” across application performance manfor brands in 2012: domains with both real-time and agement (APM) market, which, Gartner historical/trending values. as it’s been reconstituted by Application-aware network some analysts, creates a kind management - This has been of inflated junk-food vision of around for a long time and cross-domain service managerarely gotten the respect it deserves. But in ment much like the giant Stay Puft marshtrue cross-domain service management, mallow man in Ghostbusters. the power of these many “application-aware A more effective way of breaking out these network management” solutions (typically analytics might be: leveraging flow, packet analysis and other User experience management (UEM) related technologies) can be as powerful - Along with application performance as some of the hotter top-down solutions issues, UEM provides the ultimate metrics getting most of the attention today. As I for service level management (SLM), as used to say when I ran the network managethey are by definition the most business ment practice, "the network is the ocean impactful (e.g., latency, consistency, accesupon which everything floats" and this sibility, relevance and all the aspects of user includes VMs. interaction with application services). UEM Predictive analytics in support of automacan also project outward into business tion - While automation deserves its own process impact, transaction to business heading, the relation between predictive outcomes, and other related business and analytics and automation technologies from user behaviors (e.g., which applications are workload automation (WLA) to IT process people really using to accomplish which automation (or run book) will continue business tasks?) to transform the automation landscape. Executive dashboards – These will begin Another, and not unrelated transformative to thrive in 2012, especially when service factor will continue to be service modeling models can assimilate all these analytics from the CMDB/CMS as modeled interde(including data warehouse analytics) in serpendencies and the policies around them vice context. will begin to advance in defining automaApplication discovery and dependency tion routines and associating them with mapping - This and discovery in general larger processes. are once again “hot” as the CMDB moves outward into a federated systems of optiCloud - The perverse catalyst, cloud commised sources for everything from clasputing is advancing more effective solusic configuration management, to active tions for dynamic insights across domains release and change management, to asset from APM to optimising the virtualised

75%

As targeted threats continue to increase in number and sophistication, the requirements for better data gathering and data-driven security become intensified. These requirements go far beyond looking at isolated malware issues to broader situational analysis

February 2012

N E X T H O R I Z O N S | te c h tren d s

ment to, inevitably, security. Mobility and infrastructure and network. Endpoint virthe “consumerisation of IT” will also require tualisation will continue to be another key new process and compliance guidelines as growth area. Cloud is also offering new well as ongoing technology innovation. opportunities for flexibility and scalability in terms of on-demand compute The Cultural transformation power for delivering everything of IT - As I believe most of from BI solutions to advanced you know all too well dramatic business service management technology advantages in service (BSM) capabilities. So, as venmanagement don’t occur just by of respondents dors become more cloud-savvy, installing pricy software, reading in a 2011 survey and infrastructure as a service the instruction manual, and then claimed they had a (IaaS) continues to mature, going off to celebrate with a beer data warehouse as watch for more and more ser(but wouldn't that be nice!). part of their service vice management solutions These initiatives require management strategy leveraging the scalability and cultural and process change, flexibility of cloud for their own which means that of course they computing needs. require your commitment and attention. Look for a growing Mobile - Workforce mobility focus on Lean IT, i.e., applying the rigors is no longer about just working at home, as and disciplines in terms of metrics from smartphone and tablet form factors are forcmanufacturing to IT governance. ing IT to adjust to a whole new array of presA related “hot area” is unified demand sures in everything from asset management, management (UDM) as IT professionals to performance and configuration manage-

40%

get saturated by fragmented and often effectively undocumented requirements, making daily life in IT more like trench warfare than running a business. And, of course, I have to stress the transformation of the CMDB towards a more federated, model-centric universe as in my view single biggest revolution in service management yet as the CMDB/CMS becomes redefined as primarily a system of reconciliation versus a single, physical data store. I’ll be writing more on this in my next column based on fresh (Q4 2011) dialogs and research. —Dennis Drogseth is VP of Boulder, Colo.based Enterprise Management Associates, an industry research firm focused on IT management. Dennis can be reached at ddrogseth@ enterprisemanagement.com. —This article has been reprinted with permission from CIO Update. To see more articles regarding IT management best practices, please visit www.cioupdate.com.

How to Manage the BYOD Quandary The IT consumerisation challenge can be a way to address the big picture tasks of IT operational strategy By John Lytle

mployees of large business enterprises are increasingly bringing iPads, iPhones, Android, and other devices to the office and using them for work-related purposes. This trend, the consumerisation of IT or the bring your own device (BYOD) phenomenon, has CIOs concerned, and rightly so. The proliferation of personal electronic devices in the workplace raises some immediate and urgent issues around corporate policy, infrastructure, and applications. While immediate action is essential, the best approach to BYOD may lie in the context of long-term strategy, one that turns the challenge into an opportunity to optimise the enterprise’s operational environment. CIOs need to recognise the changing nature of the workplace; specifically, the evolution of the mobile worker into the virtual worker,

February 2012

for whom location is irrelevant. Whereas once, new employees were issued a laptop, and more recently a Blackberry, today the expectation is ubiquitous wireless access to any information, from any location, at any time. While that expectation creates a challenge, the upside is to encourage and enable that desire to work, and to allow employees to be far more productive and valuable. Enterprise security, which is hard enough to get right without the added requirement of ubiquitous access, is probably the central overriding concern around the BYOD phenomenon. Corporate boards do not want critical IP being inadvertently made available to the wrong people. More specifically, no CXO wants to be on the front page of the Wall Street Journal explaining how their critical data got exposed. Recognising the potential risk, enterprises are investing significant

resources in this area. Initiatives around defense-in-depth, identity management and multi-factor authentication are receiving highly specialised and qualified resourcing. While the security challenge posed by BYOD can appear overwhelming, the key to success is to isolate and manage specific criteria such as identity, devices, and presence. For example: Identity - From a policy perspective, the employee’s role within the organisation, as well as the screening and oversight procedures associated with that role, dictates who is allowed access to what, in terms of applications, data, and network segmentation. Based on these criteria, user profiles can be defined. Devices - CIOs must understand and address the different ways that a corporate asset, a smart device owned by the employee, and a public device will be used. Specifically, how will data be used and transmitted on each type of device? For example, if a user at an internet cafe accesses corporate systems on a publicly used PC (not a company asset), the policy may be that they cannot edit or download documents. Further, when that user is finished, the public PC must have its browser cache wiped of all session files, etc. A corporate asset would be handled differently, with more privileges, while a BYOD device that meets certain minimum protection levels would have a third set of privileges. Presence - This involves managing the interplay between users, devices, and sessions. What is the employee’s user profile and what level of access is allowed? What kind of device is being used? Is the session being established within the secure network, or through an external connection? Another set of considerations revolves around the question of support. If they haven’t been already, CIOs will be tasked with providing mobile access to company information. Support of mobile devices is much more difficult with characterbased legacy applications rather than browser-based applications. Meanwhile, telling the folks in the boardroom that they can’t access sales figures on their “executive jewelry” devices isn’t a viable option.

Illustration by anil t

c ons u m erisation o f I T | N E X T H O R I Z O N S

CIOs are increasingly concerned about building their operational defense plan

The right approach A successful strategy focuses on simplification and standardisation; specifically, on reducing application access complexity to the lowest common denominator. For user devices, that lowest common denominator is a browser-based user interface be it Chrome, Firefox, IE, etc. This means that browser limiting applications may require the UI layer to be switched to a virtual Windows session simply to make the application available to any platform. In terms of implementation, simplification is again the watchword. Start small, with “super users” or subsets of users to run pilots. Use email access to any platform as a starting point, and Web enable everything. Another imperative is to rationalise the application development platform. Having fewer technologies in place for application development reduces costs in many ways, and significantly simplifies the user access issues. The consumerisation issue also affects infrastructure, and the

network’s perimeter security is a particularly critical concern. The influx of mobile devices could impact the entire network strategy. CIOs need to consider the question in the context of how to manage “data in motion.” CIOs are increasingly concerned about building their operational defense plan, about managing their legacy applications and rationalising their portfolios. They’re looking for a good understanding of overall staffing and support costs, and how to pull together their shared services and sourcing strategies. Ultimately, they need to understand what they’re spending and what they’re getting. In this larger context, the IT consumerisation challenge can be a way to address the big picture tasks of IT operational strategy. So, rather than a putting out the fire exercise, the imperative to effectively support mobile devices can become part of a strategic plan to transition the enterprise from where is now to where it needs to be.

—John Lytle is consulting director at Information Services Group (ISG) company Compass, a leading independent sourcing data and advisory firm. —This article has been reprinted with permission from CIO Update. To see more articles regarding IT management best practices, please visit www.cioupdate.com.

February 2012

N O H O L D S B A R R E D | P erson ' s N A M E

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Cyber weapons bigger issue than

Cyber warâ&#x20AC;? In an exclusive interaction with Varun Aggarwal, Eugene Kaspersky, Founder and CEO, Kaspersky Lab talks about the growing threat of a cyber war and the changing security landscape across the world

February 2012

What frustrates you the most in the work to keep cyber criminals at bay? Governments do not cooperate and this is the biggest frustrating point in cyber crime investigations. When we get into a successful investigation and start getting more and more data about the cyber criminals, it often happens that the criminal is in a country which refuses to cooperate and it gets impossible to arrest the cyber criminal. Sometimes, when FBI is involved in such investigations, they wait for the criminals to leave the country for vacation, considering they have enough money for international vacations. Then FBI arrests them while they are on their vacation abroad. The good news is that Interpol is now going to introduce the Internet division of Interpol in Singapore in 2014.

E u g ene K aspersk y | N O H O L D S B A R R E D

How do you see the state of security in India? Do you think India has the capability to launch a cyber offensive? Unfortunately, India needs to do a lot more to improve the awareness in the country about IT security. There are still a lot of big security incidents impacting India, the biggest one being Stuxnet that stuck very few countries including Iran, India, Indonesia and Russia. In terms of capability, India is certainly capable of building a Stuxnet like cyber weapon. However, cyber weapon is a bigger issue than cyber war. If this year we see another military attack like Stuxnet, we’ll see more such attacks. While I’m not sure about it, I can sense that’ll happen. It could be India against Pakistan. I’m afraid that countries that have close military conflicts will use cyber weapons to hurt each other because they can do this in a silent way. The victim, in such cases cannot ascertain who is behind the attack. We still can’t say for certain who was behind Stuxnet. While there are enough indications to suggest who was behind Stuxnet, there are no proofs to support that. How can the threat of cyber wars be mitigated? The discovery of the first state-sponsored malware programs – Stuxnet (2010) and Duqu (2011) – has demonstrated to us all the new capabilities that can be applied in conducting cyber-espionage, cyber-sabotage, and potentially even cyber-warfare via the Internet. The danger shows itself in the technical might of military software able to inflict damage on large industrial installations and a lot more besides, and also in the element of surprise: both Stuxnet and Duqu were found only by lucky accidents, but had both been operating long before their discovery. A degree of panic that began to be felt in 2010 due to the discovery of the Stuxnet worm led to several nation states deciding to equate use against them of cyber-weapons with real,

“traditional” acts of war with bombs and bullets. Then in 2011 practically all large countries of the world have showed their readiness for the creation and use of cyber-weapons - albeit off the record. All this testifies to the fact that we find ourselves at the dawn of a new era - the era of cyber-warfare. The best solution would be to create an International Cyber-Security Agency (ICSA), which would act as an independent global platform for international cooperation and treaties on non-usage of Cyber-Weapons, and cyber-security regulation for critical infrastructures. ICSA should also investigate incidents and combat Cyber-Terrorism. ICSA will not eliminate CyberWeapons completely, but it will improve the current situation a lot. The most vulnerable parties (i.e. developed countries with high Internet usage) will benefit from the existence of ICSA most, and should be the first ones to support it.

“Unfortunately, India needs to do a lot more to improve the awareness in the country about IT security.”

I was talking to government officials in London, Davos, Munich and US. At the moment, UN supports the idea of ICSA. We would be working with United Nations’ ITU department (the telecommunications arm of UN). I hope that we’ll have some progress this year. How do you see the evolution of cyber criminals? Most people today have multiple devices and in future, people will switch from computer to mobile phones. They are already doing this. Right now, however, there are lot less malware on the mobile compared to the desktop, but that’ll change very rapidly. In the future, consumers will get rid of desktops because for an ordinary consumer, they’ll only have devices such as tablets, mobile, PS3 etc. Computers would stay only at the enterprise level. Once this happens, cyber criminals will switch to two categories. One category will still infect Microsoft Windows and enterprise environment, while the other part of cyber criminals will infect only mobile devices. Whenever the source code of a malware is stolen or published, many variants of the same malware start to appear on the Internet. Hackers are often not able to write malware code themselves. So, they use the published source code and modify them a bit to launch attacks. What key difference do you see between hobbyist hackers of 20th century and hackvists of today’s time? Computer hooligans in the past used to spread malware just for fun. Hacktivists on the other hand, use malware as a tool to protest. Hacktivists do not develop their own malware. Instead they use open source tools such as Low Orbit Ion Cannon to attack the victims. The motivation is highly different and therefore, the behavior is also different.

DOSSIER Company: Kaspersky Lab Established: 1997 Headquarters: Moscow, Russia Revenues: $600 million (2011) employees: 2,400 in 29 countries

February 2012

Event

Unified Security CTO Forum hosted a conference to discuss the evolving security landscape in the enterprise Increasing usage of social networking and the concept of Bring Your Own Device requires a unified security approach for an enterprise

Delegates carefully listening to Jonathan Andresen while he talks about the growing threats in social media

Anuradha Das Mathur, Co-Founder and Director, 9.9 Media addressing queries from the delegates

n a world that is constantly changing and evolving at an unprecedented rate, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s difficult to keep pace, especially when it comes to selecting technologies that can help your enterprise move forward. Technologies like cloud computing and mobility have been around for some time now, but the real challenge is knowing how to secure these channels of information flow. Today, more CIOs are concerned with trying to implement the right technologies while making sure there is no loss of data or exercising control over their employeesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; devices.

February 2012

In light of these important challenges, CTO Forum in association with Blue Coat Security organised a conference where Jonathan Andresen, Director-Product Marketing,Asia Pacific, Blue Coat Systems and Sunil Dhaka, CISO, ICICI Bank talked about how organisations can secure

their environment in the cloud, and how they can exercise greater control over their data flowing over the mobile devices and roaming users. Jonathan Andresen, Director-Product Marketing,Asia Pacific, Blue Coat Systems opened the discussion by highlighting the fact that over 44 million people in India have a Facebook account and that is actually second largest for any country outside of US. A year ago, Facebook users from India were just

B l ue c o a t | E V E NT R E P O R T

half of this number. This number constitutes of over 54 percent of online Indian population. “Facebook is also becoming a platform,” he remarked. “All the content that we have on the Internet would soon be available on Facebook. Facebook is adding Skype, for example and soon people would be able to do everything they need to do on the Internet using just one url, that is Facebook.” Andresen opined that most companies select just one option when it comes to handling social networks. They either completely block social networking, losing out on potential opportunities to reach out to customers, do promotions. All Fortune 500 companies have well-defined Facebook marketing strategies. “The second option they choose is to allow all social networking sites, which can expose you to productivity loss and malware attacks. Over 40 percent of all malware attacks take place via social networking platforms,” Andresen said. Sunil Dhaka, CISO, ICICI Bank opined, “Rather than talking about what’s next, it is about how to enable business in most secure manner. Organisations would need to accept that access would need to be provided to business (as technologies such as social networking are business drivers), and enable access to Internet in the most secure manner.” Therefore, instead of blocking everything or allowing everything, you need to control it. “At Blue Coat we are not just controlling access to social networks but also securing them. For example, we can block all the gaming applications on Facebook while allowing everything else,” Andresen said. Hybrid security unifies all of your users and all of your locations with a similar type of security, similar policies and security for all users. Blue Coat offers security

One of the delegates interacting with Sunil Dhaka, CISO, ICICI Bank

The crowd was intrigued to learn about some of the techniques to manage multiple devices in an enterprise

Ambarish Deshapande, MD-India Sales, Blue Coat Systems interacting with Anuradha Das Mathur, Co-Founder and Director, 9.9 Media during the conference

appliances, security as a service over cloud and also hybrid security. According to Andresen, it is much more effective for you to have an appliance at the gateway in your major locations and use your cloud to protect mobile users and remote branches. Cautioning against a restricted access regime, Dhaka said, “No organisation is going to have the luxury of unlimited resources. Therefore, security teams would be hardpressed in administering and implementing security controls and organisations would need to handle and match the threats facing them with their existing teams.” Anuradha Das Mathur, Co-Founder and Director, 9.9 Media said, “For those who

haven’t already embarked on a journey to open up their doors to social media and mobile devices in a secure way, hybrid security represents a huge opportunity.” Talking further about the next wave in securing smartphone and tablet usage in enterprises, Dhaka said “While many organisations are already allowing employees to access corporate emails over their smartphones and tablets, in the next step, people would start asking their devices to be trusted devices in the corporate network and that’s where CIOs and CISOs need to step up to ensure that your mobile device management is up to the mark and keeps up to the challenge.”

February 2012

TECH FOR

Illustration by shigil n

GOVERNANCE

40% Data Briefing

choices we make everyday are shaped by habits, not conscious decision-making

Building Security Portfolio Around Attack Scenarios A robust, cost-effective security portfolio based on attack analysis results in robust compliance over time

By Danny LiebermanÂ

February 2012

s ec u r i t y | T E C H F O R G O V E R N A N C E

In our experience, building a security portfolio on attack

scenarios has two clear benefits: A robust, cost-effective security portfolio based on attack analysis results in robust compliance over time. Executives related well to the concepts of threat modeling / attack analysis. Competing, understanding the value of their assets, taking risks and protecting themselves from attackers is really, at the end of the day why executives get the big bucks. There is a fundamental disconnect between IT operations (built on maintaining predictable business processes) and security operations (built on mitigating vulnerabilities). Business executives delegate information systems to IT and information security to security people on the tacit assumption that they are the experts in information systems and security. This is a necessary but not sufficient condition. In the current environment of rapidly evolving types of attacks (hacktivisim, nation-state attacks, credit card attacks mounted by organised crime, script kiddies, competitors and malicious insiders and more…), it is essential that IT and security communicate effectively regarding the types of attacks that their organisation may face and what is the potential business impact. If you have any doubt about the importance of IT and security talking to each other, consider that leading up to 9/11, the CIA had intelligence on Al Qaeda terrorists and the FBI investigated people taking flying lessons, but no one asked the question why Arabs were learning to fly planes but not land them. With this fundamental disconnect between two key maintainers of information protection, it is no wonder that organisations are having difficulty effectively protecting their assets – whether Web site availability for an online business, PHI for a healthcare organisation or intellectual property for an advanced technology firm. IT and security need a common language to execute their mission, and I submit that building the security portfolio around most likely threat scenarios from an attacker perspective is the best way to cross that valley of death. There seems to be a tacit assumption with many executives that regulatory compliance is already a common language of security for an organisation. Compliance is a good thing as it drives organisations to take action on vulnerabilities but compliance checklists like PCI DSS 2.0, the HIPAA security rule, NIST 800 etc, are a dangerous replacement for thinking through the most likely threats

to your business. Let me illustrate why compliance control policies are not the common language we need. PCI DSS 2.0 has an obsessive preoccupation with antivirus. It does not matter if you have a 16 quad-core Linux database server that is not attached to the Internet with no removable device nor Windows connectivity. PCI DSS 2.0 wants you to install ClamAV and open the server up to the Internet for the daily anti-virus signature updates. This is an example of a compliance control policy that is not rooted in a probable threat scenario that creates additional vulnerabilities for the business. Now, consider some deeper ramifications of compliance control policy-based security. When a QSA or HIPAA auditor records an encounter with a customer, he records the planning, penetration testing, controls, and follow-up, not under a threat scenario, but under a control item (like access control). The next auditor that reviews the compliance posture of the business needs to read about the planning, testing, controls, and follow-up and then reverse-engineer the process to arrive at which threats are exploiting which vulnerabilities. Other actors such as government agencies (DHS for example) and security researchers go through the same process. They all have their own methods of churning through the planning, test results, controls, and followup, to reverse-engineer the data in order to arrive at which threats are exploiting which vulnerabilities. This ongoing process of “reverse-engineering” is the root cause for a series of additional problems: Lack of overview of the the security threats and vulnerabilities that really count No sufficient connection to best practice security controls, no indication on which controls to follow or which have been followed No connection between controls and security events, except circumstantial No ability to detect and warn for negative interactions between countermeasures (for example – configuring a

February 2012

POINTS

there is a fundamental disconnect between IT operations and security operations it is essential that IT and security communicate effectively regarding the types of attacks that their organisation may face IT and security need a common language to execute their mission ompliance c control policies is not the common language we need The ongoing process of “reverseengineering” is the root cause for a series of additional problems

T E C H F O R G O V E R N A N C E | s ec u r i t y

follow-up for compliance.The threat scenarios are not firewall that blocks Internet access but also blocks oper“one size fits all”. ating system updates and enables malicious insiders or The threat scenarios for an AIDS testing lab using outsiders to back-door into the systems from inside the medical devices that automatically scan and analyse network and compromise firewalled services) the amount of blood samples, or an Army hospital using a networked No archiving or demoting of less important and solved malware detected brain scanning device to diagnose soldiers with head threat scenarios (since the data models are control based) in 2011. Malicious injuries, or an implanted cardiac device with mobile Lack of overview of security status of a particular busiSites Nearly Doubled, connectivity are all totally different. ness, only a series of historical observations disclosed or while Mobile Malware We evaluate the medical device or healthcare product not disclosed. Is Bank of America getting better at data Continues to Grow from an attacker point of view, then from the managesecurity or worse? ment team point of view, and then recommend specific An excess of event data that cannot possibly be read by cost-effective, security countermeasures to mitigate the the security and risk analyst at every encounter damage from the most likely attacks. Confidentiality and privacy borders are hard to define since the Threat scenarios consider asset values, vulnerabilities, threats and border definitions are networks, systems and applications not confipossible security countermeasures. Threat analysis as a methodology dentiality and privacy. does not look for ROI or ROSI (there is no ROI for security anyhow) but Threat scenarios as an alternative to compliance control policies considers the best and cheapest way to reduce asset value at risk. When we perform a software security assessment of a medical device or healthcare system, we think in terms of “threat scenarios” —This article is printed with prior permission from www.infosecisland.com. or “attack scenarios”, and the result of that thinking manifests itself For more features and opinions on information security and risk management, in planning, penetration testing, security countermeasures, and please refer to Infosec Island.

75mn

Encryption: A Buzzword, Not a Silver Bullet Consider four encryption components on the server side In order to determine how encryption fits into server data protection, consider four encryption components on the server side: passwords, tables, partitions and inter-tier socket communications. In these 4 components of a application / database server encryption policy, note that some countermeasures are required (for example oneway hashes of passwords, while other such as encrypting specify table columns may or may not be relevant to a particular application). 1 .Encrypted password storage You must encrypt passwords. It’s surprising to me how many Web sites don’t bother encrypting user passwords – a case in point is Universal Music Portugal, in which 160 e-mail addresses and clear-text passwords were dumped on the Internet. What is more surprising is the confusion between encryption and hashing. Don’t use AES for encrypting passwords in your MySQL or Oracle

February 2012

Illustration by shigil n

By Danny Lieberman

encr y p t i on | T E C H F O R G O V E R N A N C E

or MS SQL database. You’ll end up storing the AES key somewhere in the code and an attacker or malicious insider can read the key by opening up one of your application DLLs in Notepad++ and read that key in a jiffy and breach your entire MySQL database with a single SELECT statement. Database user passwords should be stored as MD5 hashes, so that a user (such as a DBA) who has been granted SELECT access to the table (typically called ‘users’) cannot determine the actual password. Make sure that different instances have different salts and include some additional information in the hash. If you use MD5 encryption for client authentication, make sure that the client hashes the password with MD5 before sending the data on the network. 2 .Encrypt specific database table columns The PostgreSQL 9.1 pgcrypto module allows certain fields to be stored encrypted. This is especially useful if some of the data is sensitive for example in the case of ePHI where the Web application needs to comply with the CFR 45 Appendix A Security rule. The client software provides the decryption key and the data is decrypted on the server and then sent to the client. In most cases the client (a database driver in an MVC application such as Ruby on Rails or CakePHP or ASP.NET MVC is also a server side resource and often lives on the same physical server as the database server. This is not a bad thing. 3 .Encrypt entire data partitions Encrypting entire data partitions has its place. On Linux, encryption can be layered on top of a file system using a ”loopback device”. This

allows an entire file system partition to be encrypted on disk, and decrypted by the operating system. Many operating systems support this functionality, including Windows. Encrypting entire partitions is a security countermeasure for physical attacks, where the entire computer is stolen. Research we did in 2007 indicated that almost 50 percent of large volume data breaches employed a physical attack vector (stealing a notebook at a hotel checkin desk, hijacking a truck transporting backup tapes to Iron Mountain and smash and grab jobs where thieves know the rent-a-cop walkaround schedule and break in and steal desktop computers. On the other hand, once the volume is mounted, the data is visible. 4 .Encrypt socket communications between server tiers SSL has it’s place, although SSL is not a silver bullet countermeasure for Microsoft Windows vulnerabilities and mobile medical devices vulnerabilities as I wrote here, here and here. SSL connections encrypt all data sent across the network: the password, the queries, and the data returned. In database clientserver connections, relational database systems such as PostgreSQL allow administrators to specify which hosts can use nonencrypted connections (host) and which require SSL-encrypted connections (hostssl). Also, clients can specify that they connect to servers only via SSL. Stunnel or SSH can also be used to encrypt transmissions. —This article is printed with prior permission from www.infosecisland.com. For more features and opinions on information security and risk management, please refer to Infosec Island.

February 2012

Thought Leaders Shree Parthasarathy |

Shree Parthasarathy is Senior Director, Enterprise Risk Services, Deloitte India

Managing Social Media Risks A robust risk management framework that can adapt to changing business environment is key to organisations looking to embrace social media

The use of Social Media tools is exploding in popularity across the real and virtual worlds. Facebook, Google+, Twitter, YouTube and other social networking tools are experiencing sustained growth rates way above anything seen in new technologies previously. Blogging has moved from a cult following to full acceptance and use by mainstream media; and Wikipedia now far outstrips any conventional encyclopedia in both its breadth and depth of information. One of the reasons for this is the Millennial Generation (or Gen Y). This generation has grown up with technology and is very comfortable with instant communication technologies, such as email, texting, IM, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter etc. which is made possible through use of the internet. The lack of this environment makes them uncomfortable since they feel more comfortable with communicating through this medium than face to face communication. We have also witnessed the unprecedented power of social media and its influence on geo-politics â&#x20AC;&#x201C; change

February 2012

of governments, in the recent past. As social media continue to transform the world, the other generations are playing catch up and the business community is starting to take notice. Corporations are now beginning to accept and understand that social media is not just a passing fad but a revolutionary phenomenon that will transform the way business is done in the global economy. This phenomenon can be equated to the rise of the Internet in the 1990 and how it has transformed and flattened our world. Used strategically, social media offers organisations an unprecedented opportunity to actively engage employees, customers, suppliers and other interested stakeholders and benefit from their collective ideas, knowledge and experiences. A recent University of Massachusetts study indicates that over 25 percent of Fortune 500 companies have public blogs, 35 percent have an active presence on Facebook / Twitter and that these numbers are growing at a rapid pace as organisations continue to embrace social media.

"Corporations are now beginning to accept and understand that social media is not just a passing fad but a revolutionary phenomenon"

Organisations typically adopt social media for the following purposes: Collaboration - Considering the fact that we live in a flat world, project teams are geographically dispersed and often work virtually over email and phone. Teams work efficiently and effectively in such scenarios, however they lack the social interaction which often results in lack of team bonding and team work. Hence there is an increasing adoption of virtual environments and social media in todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s corporate environment. The internal social networking sites bridge the gap created in the virtual environment and team members are now actual people with faces and real life rather than just an email or a voice on the conference call. Decision Making â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Considering the geographically distributed work force and inability for senior management to be communicating with all levels of employees through traditional means, social media can bridge the gap by providing employees anywhere in the world, the ability to communicate with the senior management and contribute

their ideas, thoughts and suggestions for improving the environment and also be able to participate in decision making. This creates an inclusive environment and gets everybody to contribute anonymously or otherwise Foster creativity, innovation and collaboration both through internal sources as well as external sources Enhance customer, employee, extended enterprise and stakeholder interactions Leverage additional channels to increase recruiting, brand awareness, sales and marketing, emergency management etc.

Social media risks As with any new technology / trend, social media also presents a unique set of challenges and risks to organisations. By combining new technologies and methods of engagement, social media can pose new risks to organisations and magnify existing ones. Some of the key risks that social media presents include: Amplification of existing information technology risks such as viruses, malware, privacy, security and unauthorised applications Reputational and brand impact because of disgruntled employees or customers going viral on social media resulting in Increased ability to perform social engineering Loss of intellectual property or enterprise information because of malicious intent or un-intentional disclosure of information Impact to productivity due to extended time spent by employee on social media tools during working hours While organisations can reap the benefits from the many opportunities that social media presents, they must do so in a risk intelligent manner that is aligned with strategy and appropriately manages the associated risks. Organisations could begin by asking the following questions: Is your organisation taking advantage of the unparalleled communi-

cation and stakeholder engagement opportunities presented by various social media platforms?” “Have strategies and policies that address the risks and opportunities posed by social media been developed and communicated?” “Are appropriate controls in place to manage your emerging risks created by social media (including reputation, security, privacy, disclosure and human resources)?” “Does your organisation have sufficient and appropriate resources, skills sets and capacity to monitor, assess and take advantage of the constantly evolving social media landscape?” “Are you aware of what customers, employees and competitors are saying about you online?” Once you have answers to the above set of questions, it becomes easier to determine if your organisation is ready to embrace social media in a more mainstream manner. Despite the many specific risks introduced by social media, organisations must also evaluate the growing risks of doing nothing – of not embracing social media. A prime example of the need for balance is human resources. While organisations initially worried about potential productivity losses, the new worry is that restricting social media access may deter candidates. Many organisations have embraced social media as one of the key channels to identify, attract and engage new talent. Organisations can adopt the following five step approach to better manage the risks posed by social media. 1 Develop a social media strategy that is aligned with your organisational objectives and goals and is consistent with your corporate strategy. 2 Define a governance structure for social media with clearly established roles and responsibilities. 3 Perform a risk assessment to identify risks inherent in the organisation’s social media strategy. 4 Develop and implement the key risk management practices such as

Illustration by shigil n

Shree Par t hasar at hy | T hough t Le aders

A recent University of Massachusetts study indicates over 25% of Fortune 500 companies have public blogs and 35% have an active presence on Facebook / Twitter. social media policy definition, communication and enforcement; periodic training and awareness to employees on risks of social media etc. 5 Implement a process to proactively manage what is being discussed about your organisation in the social media space. Risk management is a balancing act: Organisations must be positioned to quickly identify and capitalise on the emerging opportunities presented by social media while appropriately managing the associated risks. It is essential that organisations self-evaluate and understand their risk appetite before assessing the potential opportunities that social media presents. A robust risk management framework that can adapt to changing business environment is key to organisations looking to embrace social media and explore the endless opportunities that it presents

February 2012

VIEWPOINT ILLUSTRATION BY prince antony

KEN OESTREICH

The Growth of Data Growth My Digital Contrail

Although I’m not a Big Data aficionado, I’d recently been struck by a few statistics from the IDC Digital Universe study: It is estimated that in 2011, 1.8 Zettabytes of information was created, 75 percent of which comes from individuals. So, just where does all of this data come from? And the more I thought about it, the more I realised that each one of us kicks-off a near constant massive stream of data that gets stored somewhere, even if only transiently. In our seemingly innocuous day, we surely generate more data than we consume, some of which is captured by others, and only some which we might be privileged enough to retain. Thus I sat down to think about a typical “digital contrail” that I might generate. While I really can’t quantify exactly how much stored data is created from each transaction, simply ballparking the numbers would seem to support the Digital Universe claims.

Sources of my “Digital Contrail”

I make a cell phone call: Phone location tracking data (i.e. from towers) created and tracked by the carrier;

February 2012

phone log files; data created and stored by multiple mobile apps and their own hosting infrastructures I browse the web: Site tracking; clickstream storage; site analytics; Email storage, including replication on devices as well as replication in geographical-mirrored data centers. Driving my car: Location-based tracking by RFID tags at toll booths; unique instrumentation data Go to the bank: data streams initiated and stored from a simple ATM withdrawal; security analysis of banking transaction patterns; audit and verification trails for individual transactions; mirrored/backed-up data within the bank’s data center Go to the store: data streams initiated and stored from a simple credit card transaction; product inventory changes; buying patterns stored and allocated to individual affinity discount programs Browse an online store: All of the above, plus clickstream storage and analysis Plan some travel: Airline reservations & pricing systems; airline tracking databases; TSA flyer database updates At my home: Electricity usage via

About the author: Ken Oestreich is a marketing and product management veteran in the enterprise IT and data centre space, with a career spanning start-ups to established vendors.

smart metering data collection Using entertainment: Uploaded photography and video; sales pattern data and DRM data Go to the doctor’s office: Medical imaging, EMR data, reports, other records Somewhere in the background: With everything I do, there are surely security systems, kicking-off background data processes and analytics DB’s Also somewhere in the background: Every service is sourced from a data center, where all data (including device data) is surely replicated and backed-up, including log files. So, now I’ve convinced myself that “the data’s out there”. I’ve created scads of data in the past 24 hour stint and fortunately (or unfortunately) it’s all recorded in different repositories. But now I begin to wonder - what *if* some of these structured and unstructured data streams were re-constructed, mashed-up and analysed? That bit makes me both nervous (from a privacy and security perspective) and excited (from a Big Data and personalisation perspective).

YOUR CLOUD PRIVATE, PUBLIC OR HYBRID. OPTIMIZED FOR PERFORMANCE. With Riverbed, you’ll get breakthrough performance –whether yours is a private, public or a hybrid cloud environment. You’ll have greater flexibility to implement your cloud strategy and business goals. And you’ll have resilience when you need it the most. You’ll have your cloud on your terms. Go to: riverbed.com/hybridcloud For any queries, please contact marketingindia@riverbed.com