The Great Intolerance Debate

If one follows the high decibel debate on Indian primetime TV news these days, one can’t help but infer that India is in serious crisis for its ideological intolerance

Awards are being returned by the prominent intellectuals, historians, filmmakers, scientists and who not. Some have even been blamed to return the awards that did not genuinely belong to them. It is has been a chain reaction in response to some reprehensible acts of violence and killings. I am sure there are intellectuals who are genuinely feeling outraged and there are ones who are questioning the timing and calling it a selective outrage.

Why now, why only now? What has changed so drastically? When exactly that change happened? The political dispensation changed 17 months back. “Tell me the exact date and time that India became intolerant” – the anchor kept harping during one of his debate. He did not get the reply on timing but the respondent finally summarized it “the space for certain ideologies have been shrinking and it is reaching a break point”. It could be an accurate explanation. So what are these ideologies and why they think they are under attack?

1.      The “Invasion Theory” of Nation building

I was watching a video from Jaipur literary fest – “We as a country have been invaded, colonized but we have always embraced them. Thank god that Mughals came to India and we got Chicken Tikka. Thank god that the British came to India and we got the railways. And the speaker goes on”. This summarizes the invasion theory of development and there are many eminent takers for the ideology. This fundamentally relies on the self-deprecating view while looking at the invaders as their benefactors. The proponents of this ideology have been at the helm of affairs at various academic universities. They proudly called themselves as the Marxist/socialist historians and claimed disproportionately larger intellectual space, more than their political firepower. As per a prominent historian “In the 1980s Marxism occupied a dominant place in the best institutes of historical research in India” It was true for larger part of Indian history post-independence – a historian meant a Marxist.

So what has changed?

ICHR dissolves advisory panel comprising Romila Thapar & Irfan Habib

There are many data points like above across various cultural and academic organizations.

The esteemed ideologues of the Indian histories are under attack. Their invasion theory is under scrutiny; their self-deprecating view is being questioned. There are alternate ideologies jostling for the public space, the audience and the sponsorship. So some historians are under increasing pressure, they are being blamed (rightly or wrongly) for endorsing the history to suite their ideologies.

2.      Strong nation state = weak democracy

India as a country has always been celebrated for its “soft power”. On the other hand, the stronger state has always been feared as a danger to democratic liberal values. They will become fascist, it will be bad for the citizens and diversity will be under threat. There has been fear for a strong nation that can muzzle the voices of its citizen. This also partly stems from the Marxist ideology and related to the first point above. This has given rise to a battery of ideologues that openly challenge the nation state under the garb of freedom of expression, communal harmony, diverse values or whatever. This has also given rise to a large number of NGOs that started playing active roles in the ideological space. These non-state actors with time started playing bigger roles in setting the agenda at the national level. The media “as a pillar of democracy” makes sure that the Govt. is within its limited boundaries. A strong state is feared by all the ideologues.

So what has changed?

Well the state is asserting more. The changed dispensation has opened a direct attack on the NGOs it thinks inimical. Thousands of licenses have been cancelled and many of the prominent ones who could once influence the policies and direction (for right or the wrong reasons) are without any sponsorship. Many are targeted as being called anti-nationals and forced to shut their shop. This is also building up the intolerance debate.

If one has to conclude – after 17 months of change in political dispensation, it is an overdue tectonic adjustment in the ideological space in India. Along with the rights and lefts there is an emergence of a nationalist ideology that is pushing the Rights to more right and Lefts to more left. When the dust will settle hopefully the tolerance and intolerance will be re-defined in Indian cultural context and most will tolerate them.

Has selling IT solutions in banks changed with time?

It may appear that the new opportunities for core banking solutions are dwindling rapidly as most of the banks have adopted and already completed their first wave of technology transformation. Almost no bank is without core IT system, centralization, internets, channels etc. There could be various degree of maturity but no successful bank today is devoid of basic IT solution for its customers.

Selling core banking was probably easier when the banks did not have these systems. There was hardly a debate that any growing bank needed a centralized, 24X7, scalable and configurable new-age solution to stay in business. It was not a matter of choice; there was urgency on part of the bank. The IT departments in the bank drove these initiatives – got the RPFs, invited the core banking vendors, went through a selection process and the deal was done once selected. The key success factor for the sale team was to be in synch-up with these bank and their requirements who are contemplating such transformation. But that was more than ten years back.

So what changes now? According to me the analogy could be – the difference between selling food to ‘hungry’ and those who are ‘well fed’. Both still need food and opportunity may be still the same but the sales effort and orientation for two situations would vary considerably.

Who to sell in bank – Are we still selling to ‘IT’?

With advancement of technology, the role of CIO and IT department in the bank has reduced in decisions making for banking solutions. Technology has been demystified to some extent and even the business can understand it better. Increasingly the business heads in the bank decide on the technology priority of what to buy, when, at which cost and ROI and a business case. So the value proposition of the IT solution has be to be directly linked to the business performance in more direct way. Does your solution increase my revenue by 10% or help me get 10,000 new customers? The sales lever has to change from efficiency and FTE reduction (cost drivers) to new business growth (revenue drivers).

This means that the sales team’s new touch point is business heads in the banks – connecting with business is more difficult as one need to understand their business and KPIs really well.

Whose job is it to sell – do we leave it to ‘sales’?

A structured sales team is best equipped to handle a centralized turnkey outsourcing deals. Such deals though very important – will decrease with time. In a highly matrix client organization or when it comes to mining existing clients – the professional sales pitch is least effective. Each person interacting with the bank in ongoing projects; whether from delivery, consulting, support or training is a sales agent. It is not uncommon therefore in many IT service organizations that everyone above a level of seniority having any direct interface with client have an explicit sales target.

Unlike the profession sales team, the employee driven sales priority and order is different – first sell yourself, then your team, then unit and then organization. It is self-balancing and would ensure the health of the organization.

How to sell – Are we waiting for the ‘RFPs’?

I go back to the examples of selling food to hungry. There will be no explicit ask for food if the person is not hungry. They may still need some nutrients and vitamins but it is something that they themselves may not know. Hence the shift would be required in sales approach to ‘first diagnose and then sell’. There may be fewer and fewer RFP coming up from banks by themselves.

There is an opportunity however to really partner with the existing clients - diagnose what they need, understand their problem areas, bottlenecks and create a demand in most symbiotic way.  

When to sell – Are we waiting for the next big ‘release’?

CIOs and IT heads that have somehow survived through some of these banking transformation projects dread it not to repeat them again. The big transformation is scary for everyone. So the next big release that the product team is working on will not appeal them anymore. Agility is the need of the business – something they can do it 3 months and get explicit results? Do we have point solutions that can be easily deployed without being asked to change the whole engine?  

The sales team will have lesser opportunities to sell big deals – which had a set template. The smaller deals need lot of context, knowledge and effort.

What are we selling –Is it the ‘solution’ that we have or the bank’s needs?

As long as the needs of the banks were similar a standard IT solution could be implemented most uniformly. As the business of each bank is eventually different their next wave of needs would be lot more differentiated. It would be highly contextual and require lot more problem solving than before. This may require out-of-box approach in proposing solutions that truly helps them achieve the business outcome. This would require strengthening the engagement function before the direct sales can kick-in.

To summarize - the opportunities for the core banking solutions may be as much as or even more. The sales process has to align with the line function in banks – i.e. the core business of the bank. Business in the bank surely will never be out of business.

Is the transition of white collar IT jobs to manufacturing factories complete?

         Those of us who have worked in a steel factory would remember the familiar scenes at the beginning of the factory shifts. Thousands of factory workers entering the factory premises within few minutes, the security personnel checking everyone has a helmet, gate pass before allowing them in. There would be a bigger rush at the time of shift end when people would be more eager to come out faster. So are these sights also getting familiar at the glass façade IT companies with white collar workers? Well there are no sirens yet to denote the shift end or beginning and some companies do have flexi-timing!

It is not coincidental that many IT companies have started using the term ‘factory’ more often – solution factory, SAP factory, design factory, test factory etc. etc. By factory they mean, they have industrialized the function, just like assembly line in a manufacturing industry. They can scale it to large volumes without impacting the quality. So they relate ‘factory’ to maturity of process and the ones they have demystified to repeatable work by defining the standard processes. They do capacity planning & demand management like manufacturing companies – count people as inventories instead. The non-utilized resources are considered highly perishable inventories.

          But those who left the dust and heat of the factories to get into a glass covered fancy world of IT – the term ‘factory’ my not be all that fascinating. In fact it could be derogatory. It reduces a professional to a non-descript somewhat as bad as, if not worse than mechanical processes. It takes away the creativity and innovations. It forces one to adhere to the processes defined for efficiency and effectiveness rather than any lateral thinking. Few would argue that a larger number of people in Indian IT industry do not work in these factories.

WHY DO IT COMPANIES CREATE THE FACTORIES?

           The main reason behind these factories is efficiency and scale at low cost. It adds to the execution capability of the organization. Some of the facilities are dedicated /captive to specific client teams – what is generally called offshore development centers. This whole concept was supposed to be a game changer in IT industry few years back. The traditional work of application maintenance (and some development) can be best offshored in this model. It was started by pure play Indian IT companies and global MNC companies caught up even faster. In fact the MNC IT companies use Indian development capabilities predominantly in this factory model.

           There are already various reports signifying that the offshoring based traditional IT work might be saturating for various reasons. The factories become commodity as they fast replicate and the margin reduces as the industry catches up. So the meteoric growth in the Indian IT industry fueled by this ‘factory’ model may well be things of the past.

 Are the IT factories bad for employees?

               There are two kinds of workforce essentially in IT – those who like to change a business and those who like to run with it. There could be of course small proportion of people who are indifferent or like both. Those who like to change the business – they like ambiguity, space to exercise their creativity, excitement of doing something new. They are ok with the risk associated but the idea of doing something with predictable output & result is anathema to them. So the caution is for the people with “change the business” mindset getting caught into these factories which are disguised by fancy names at times. The other way misfit is equally worse – though it could be more challenging than suffocating.

                Many IT companies have acknowledged this difference explicitly by separating the two types of work – change & run. Some call the change function as consulting, advisory or program or engagement management functions. They have separated the P&L, annual budgets, responsibilities and skill requirements of people performing these activities. The change function requires client problem solving, domain knowledge and consulting. The aspirations for all IT companies would continue to be strengthening the capabilities on ‘change’ function.

HOW THESE FACTORIES WILL ADAPT THEMSELVES

               The widespread usage of the factories only indicates that the Indian IT like manufacturing industry is maturing. The period of super-growth will slowly transition to sustainable and eventually the growth rate corresponding to the country GDP growth. There will always be a need for these factories to do things at scale in a cost effective way. But the key to sustainable growth will be to have something like an ‘R&D’ centers in the manufacturing companies. The execution capability per se will not be viable – it would be the problem solving and business adaptation capability for the client that would the key. So the factories will sustain/grow only if they add a strong consulting capability for the client context.