Career Track

How long at current company: Almost two and a half years

Most important career influencer: I’ve been fortunate to have worked with some of the most outstanding managers throughout my career. Each manager had a different style of working; however I found there were consistent traits such as the focus on execution, forward thinking, clarity of vision, honest leadership and continuously stretching one’s team and expanding their horizons.

Decisions I wish I could do over: I can’t think of any such decisions. However I treat ups and downs as part of the journey and don’t allow myself to linger on either for too long. At the same time, such events have helped me become a better professional.

Vision

The next big thing for my industry will be:

The banking industry is changing faster than expected. While there are many innovations taking place especially in the banking technology space, I think a lot of development is taking place in micro-banking. Mobile banking is the only way through which this aspect of banking can be increasingly tapped. Other areas such as peer-to-peer lending are expected to bring about a drastic change in banking

Advice for future CIOs:

With the assumption that most future CIOs will come with a technology background, my foremost advice to them is to master the business and the industry they are working in. This will ensure that they can guide their teams to deliver better value to business instead of just being a support function. Additionally, a future CIO must work on one’s leadership and team-building skills.
Putting forth ideas through story telling and analogies is something that future CIOs need to learn. Though objectivity must be maintained at all times, putting thoughts forth through only objective points will not cut the ice every time.
Lastly, a CIO would need to spend considerable time to learn about new technologies and how these technologies can be used to give the business an added advantage

On the Job

Top three initiatives:

• Action-oriented Business Intelligence
  
• Business process management
  
• Leveraging Web 2.0 technologies

How I measure IT effectiveness:

There are various reports and dashboards that focus on three key aspects—day-to-day operations (business as usual), incremental growth (maintenance) and business transformation (strategic initiatives). However these address only the ‘objective’ part of the business. There are also perceptions that need to be measured, managed and then addressed. CSAT and informal reviews with businesses help in doing this. The third aspect is measuring effectiveness vis-à-vis peers in the industry. Benchmarking surveys done by third party analyst firms are also useful on this front

CIO Unplugged

Leisure activities: I have a 2 year-old daughter. For the last two years, she has been the focus of my attention post office hours. When time permits, I enjoy watching world cinema. Music is also a passion. I enjoy listening to almost all kinds of music such as Hindustani classical, ghazals, rock, blues, jazz, Sufi, Dadra and Thumri. I mostly read non-fiction books

Best book read recently: Three books that I read recently stand out. The first two are A Thousand Splendid Suns and A Concise Guide to Macroeconomics. The third one is a book I keep going back to, i.e. The New CIO Leader

If I weren't a CIO… I would be in the education sector. I enjoy teaching and don’t miss opportunities to conduct trainings. I would like to create and run a machinery of thousands of primary and secondary schools all over India. However it would need to be very effective and efficient in terms of providing high-quality education at a very low cost