How high is the “Wall”? Solutions….
Life journey is unpredictable, and that's what I am sure keeps us all going. We hear this more often — Change is constant. What is the…
Life journey is unpredictable, and that's what I am sure keeps us all going. We hear this more often — Change is constant. What is the most relevant outcome of this? You all agree that our mind-set shift to embrace change is the most valuable outcome . So, easy to say than getting it done, you say! That's true. Ask a marathon runner, “what’s your wall and can you overcome it?” Ask a golfer, everyday is a new day “what’s your plan to excel?” Now, ask a leader or a professional in the digital era, who believe they adapted to constant change, “how high is the wall and what would you do differently to succeed?”. My blog here is trying to share interesting experiences recognizing this, and then exploring ways to disrupt, innovate, find solutions to break the barriers. Transformation is not easy unless we know deeply the challenges to change and sensitive to know that “we are hitting the wall and how high it is”. It's been a forcing function for me to challenge the status quo, strategize, and move forward to an outcome which has well defined purpose.
Many historical moments in 2019, but one that motivates and challenges me to the gut is sub-2 hour full marathon run by Eliud Kipchoge! We are born to Run, there is no doubt about it. Homo Sapiens overcame Neanderthal with sheer endurance and less of power play. Homo Sapiens intelligently forced an antelope to death by pushing them for a running race. In modern era, Tarahumara tribes in Mexico, named as Running men, have really demonstrated, humans have no limits when it comes to running long distances. 400+ miles in 50 hours non-stop running, barefoot in many cases, unknown trails, no water stations or medical facilities waiting and no anticipation of any medals at the end. Why do they do this and most importantly how ? Christopher McDougall is one of my favorite author. His best seller, Born to Run demonstrates why this hidden tribe, super athletes are the best in the world. It just reiterated my love to run. Now, Why do we hit walls or bonking doing a simple 26.2 mile marathon run in a well defined controlled environment. Walls in a marathon run is the most painful moment which typically observed around mile 20 depending upon various factors including BMI, Oxygen intake, energy burn rate from our storage cells and most importantly, our anticipation of the pain. Unlike any other species in known history, humans have the most complex body-mind conflict. Body built for performance but mind built for efficiency. The wall here is “how do I know when I will hit this pain point, what should I do differently to overcome it”. There is lot of learning from this to our day to day challenges and opportunities as well. In my case, even with so many full marathon completions, have struggled to overcome this wall and it leaves a painful memory after the completion of the run. I had this unique mind-set to sign up for marathons and just run, with very minimal planning or practice but was able to get through no matter what!
As a preparation for my first Major World marathon recently, the 2019 November NY Marathon, I took a step back, went deeper into understanding my body complex, strategize my practice sessions and defined a solid execution plan for the real run. Every practice run included very detail on what to eat every day, what not to eat, tracking intake of calories during runs, the pace mapped to it and calculations of the burn rate and importantly, focus on the real outcome and managing the body-mind conflicts. Above all, just like Tarahumara tribes, created lots of unknown trials, hill runs, bare-foot runs and these jolts to body-mind brought different perspective! Nov3rd 2019 NY Marathon was the best run of my life, enjoyed every moment of it with 50 thousand runners, toughest of all Major marathons in the world, 5 Bridge crossings including toughest Queensboro bridge, 20 mile passed by and no sign of any fatigue or “Wall just disappeared”, met my well defined outcomes. Now, post that run, few weeks later did a 28 mile practice run easily and feels like I can hit a 50 miler before I hit 50!
As Christopher beautifully summarizes “We are Born to Run! You don’t stop running because you are old, you are old because you stopped running”…I am aiming to be a 6 Star Finisher, to be among 6400 runners in world by 2022!
Now, another instance of hitting a wall and what we learn from it. Imagine a 4 foot metal stick which has 71mm width head to hit a 1.68inch diameter weighing 63 grams ball so that it lands say 120 yards closer to or inside a 4.25 inch diameter hole, in open outdoor environment with all kinds of obstacles surrounding and possible wind, moisture and sandy bunkers. This is game of Golf, which is my favorite sport of life and as Bobby Jones said “Golf is a game played on a 5 inch course — the distance between your ears.” A game which is a great teacher, a leadership development program and teaches the art of laser focus execution maintaining core values of respect, courtesy, integrity, authenticity and most importantly, overcoming failure to succeed. One name many attest to this game of golf is Tiger Woods. One of the instance where Tiger demonstrated leadership to overcome his challenge during the game was at 1999 Phoenix open. Analyzed the situation of where his ball was lying, discussed the Rule 13.2 of Golf, took help from the fans, got them move the boulder which was blocking his shot and ended up making a birdie on the hole! We all know his return to the glory after all the challenges he has been through.
Jordan Spieth, my favorite young player, Master’s Champion at age 21, Open Champion at age 23 and unbeatable for his tenacity, focus and execution. 2017 British Open is one of the masterpiece of leadership from Jordan and his Caddie on hole 13th, 5 hole come back to win the championship. This is edged in my memory forever — you have challenges, analyze the situation, collect all data points, discuss with your team, debate, define the path forward, take risk, commit and execute! Today, same Jordon is going through challenging phase of his career, struggling to make the cut and sometimes it feels, he lost the touch of golf. He has hit a wall, he feels the pain, being the elite and suddenly a drought for W. How is he planning to overcome this wall ? As Spieth reminds us, always make adjustments to your game, practice it, trust it and when you do this consistently, it will all come back stronger! The guru of the game Jack Nicklaus says “He’s going to be just fine; a competitor is a competitor and a winner is a winner and he’s both”. I am sure Jordan will break through the wall soon, will celebrate the day it happens!
What is the “ wall” in our digital era ? We are incumbent, we own the market, we know our customers better than anyone, we thrive.. Oh but wait, we need to change dramatically now to adapt to new industry and customer needs, that’s transformational journey and the barriers to disrupt are way too many! This in essence is the challenge facing many industries and especially, Networking Software and Hardware industry. Current generation customer mindset shift is fueled by disruptive innovators who are proving anything is possible! SpaceX is one of my favorite, which clearly proven anything is possible, paved a path to un-imaginable frontiers. With such disruptions in complex world of space technology, it’s natural for our customers to expect us to innovate much faster! Future prediction is simple, any industry can be disrupted, displaced and potentially could disappear.
It’s that time of the year, where industry leaders in various domain assemble to explore the future of Mobile networking industry — MWC Barcelona. It brings back some of the memorable time we had 5 years ago! One of the industry trends in 2015 was building wireless broadband services like Wi-Fi Hotspots, reduce subscription churn to incumbent cable broadband services via Wi-Fi technology and drive stickiness. We embarked on an journey not just being equipment supplier but business outcome, value driven solution provider. This was a disruptive approach to give best user experience, reduce the customers opex spend and enable them to innovate on top of our platform. Our goal was to enable our customers to “Chase Money to Make Money” and at the same time “ Save Money to Make money”. Mobility iQ solution delivered in 2015 as a true Software as a Service model. It provided actionable valuable network and business insights to our customers about their customer behavior as well as network behavior. Offering this pay as you grow model to our customers, in-turn enabling us to drive recurring revenue, was the most rewarding and memorable experience. The barriers to breakthrough were many — our customer readiness and acceptance of cloud based delivery model, sales force transitioning to value based selling from traditional perpetual device sales, services engine trying to explore what additional values they can add, Finance and operations team figuring out software supply chain constructs and ensure we are profitable, pricing strategy focussed around value and less on features, governance on data privacy, scalable platform and architecture which should be ready to be re-written as the need be, and finally, passionate agile nimble teams to embark on disruptive journey.
With laser focus purpose driven execution, had the opportunity to experience successful launch of this solution at 2015 MWC Barcelona and ensured it can scale to the most dense and hostile radio frequency environment possible as we provided the value to the 100K+ visitors ! The ups and downs of the journey, taught few things — focus on end user experience and outcomes, value before feature delivery, equip your sales engine and partners and most importantly, build a culture for innovative change and learn from your failures! In golf terminology — it is mindset shift to clearly articulate the expectations, take risks to attack the flag and be the change!
As we move forward into the next decade, CxO’s are challenged to keep up with the demands of business needs, technology transforming very quickly, and above all, they have to continue to generate new revenue streams still running the floor efficiently and securely. Especially in the field of Networking Software industry, large Enterprise customers need to evolve quickly to newer architecture and equipment suppliers have to deliver value based solutions rather than traditional products. Unfortunately, the walls are very high not only to the suppliers of new technology but also customers ready to consume it. Of many trends in this space, a common theme is around “how can we transform the complex network, managed by large IT staff, to a model where network becomes enabler of business applications driven by end customer needs”. This is where Software Defined Network solutions enables, with a purely “Controller-led” paradigm to drive operational simplicity, agility to business priorities and at the same time, flexibility to consume services on-prem or from cloud, software as a service model.
We have been transforming to deliver this architecture by empowering our customers through Intent Based Networking journey. The mindset shift for the teams is around delivering a “Solution” which is outcome driven leveraging the best of individual “Product” capabilities. Dramatic transitions becomes essential as one has to be in the shoes of the customer to really understand the problem statements and ensure “value” of the solution delivered before anything else. Each individual team member has to become responsible to the outcome and march cohesively towards a common goal. The tool kit that has helped me to overcome these transformational barriers is Design Thinking methodology. Next, emphasize and rallying the teams around User experience led delivery model with constant closure of feedback loops with field tests. Focus on high value customer use cases rather than “next big thing” in the market splashes and instrument to generate valuable insights of the usage of the solution. One of innovative solutions in this domain that has tremendously enabled customers is turning up their networks with least amount of time and money —Network Plug and Play solutions. The concept is simple to consume and most importantly drives tangible business outcome to customers. Expanding that further into a full Software Defined Network Architecture solution for full Orchestration, Management and Analytics with Security. Its utmost important that every individual within the team and external teams “drink their wine — they use the solution built” on a day to day basis. This builds deeper commitments, passion and most importantly, opportunity to be in customer shoes. The focus always has to shift in driving outcomes rather than getting excited on complex networking platforms and infrastructures, which are critical but its means to end. And above all, enabling sales engines creatively, for customer insight driven sales model via Solution Telemetry rather just traditional blind quota driven approaches. These shifts in the industry is becoming natural and decades ahead of us would drive monumental changes! Exciting transformations happening across the industry in this domain and will come back to share more on this from my experience!
In conclusion, each day we encounter unpredictable life journey and many times every wall seems high. Applying valuable learnings from various sports, work or from home, I am sure we can all overcome the barriers and explore opportunities to disrupt, innovate and contribute!
Mahatma Gandhi said it all “Find Purpose. The Means will Follow”
The question I want to leave with is — What is your experience to overcome unique obstacles and what were the learnings from it ?