Leadership and Ownership with Oindrila Majumdar

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Leadership Journey's podcast by TIAA Global Capabilities. For the very first episode, we have the EVP and CEO of TIAA Global Capabilities. It's on your imagination, Dahl. On your welcome with the show? Very happy to be here.

[00:00:38] So under the first episode that we're talking about is obviously our leadership and ownership. But before we speak about all those things, I actually want to go back to your childhood. To influences in childhood, I think you would want to calculate if I'm not wrong.

[00:00:51] You spend your growing up here's there and your formative here's there. So what are some of the values that really shape you while you were growing up? Were you always a leader when you went school, when you went college?

[00:01:01] How did that team I would love to learn your thoughts? You know that question sort of takes me back to my childhood and when I think back of some of my experiences and how they shaped me.

[00:01:15] The first thought that comes to my mind is that I've spent most of my childhood with my grandparents because my parents were moving around the country. And from them, I learnt about nurturing, caring empathy. And that I think is intrinsic to who I am as a person.

[00:01:38] If I think about my mother, she was far less demonstrative. Quite strict. But she always encouraged me to learn and have an opinion about things. And she taught me that it was okay to have an opinion and to speak up and be transparent.

[00:02:00] And this is I'm talking about her 50 years ago. 50 years ago. So I was certainly not born. Yes, that's right. This was way before your time. And it didn't matter that I was just really a small child.

[00:02:17] She used to ask me about my opinions about the things that I had read, I'd seen. And that gave me a lot of confidence. Right. As I said, I was okay to have an opinion.

[00:02:27] And in those days there were some set concepts about what a girl child would go up to. Do we? But she had no bias whatsoever. That was the other thing that I think I invited as a young person that bias has been placed.

[00:02:46] I love that. That's a great line right there. And that's obviously being an intrinsic part of who I became leader as leader. If I now move to my father, he's an engineer. He's very much an engineer even today in his very late years, in his heart.

[00:03:04] And from him I learned about planning and maniacal focus on execution. Right. Because great at his work. And those values have been quite in value rules for me. Right. My leadership journey. And I think the last one that I'd like to mention are my two arms. Okay.

[00:03:26] Both my role models. Right. Because they started their careers quite late. They got married, they were raising children and they both of them decided to go back to learning. And to start their careers, late in their lives. They were successful.

[00:03:46] And from them that I learned that as long as you are able to balance and prolong it as you can actually aspire for everything. Right. And there's really no limit. So those are my very early childhood influences. That's really amazing.

[00:04:08] Because usually when I will be discussed in fluency, we usually use sector okay. You know, our parent probably like a mother father. But love how you're getting all of those perspectives and that you're really taking the best out of all these people.

[00:04:19] So be the execution, be perfection, resilience. But talking about resilience, you know, it's one thing which always comes to mind when somebody is going up. When they have the initial jobs, right when you're starting out like, you know, many other fresher, there are any challenges that you face.

[00:04:34] Because let's admit it. It's a difficult world out there, right? And especially if, you know, you've done college and then you go out to the big back world as it were.

[00:04:41] So tell me about some of your trials that you faced in your initial jobs and how do you overcome them? Because to have that vision, well, you're just a fresher while just starting out, how do you sort of overcome that? That is an interesting question because I think,

[00:04:55] and I wouldn't necessarily call them trials, they were challenges. Right. And one came pretty early in my career. Okay. Literally with my first job. Okay. So I actually started my career as a software developer in a startup. Now mind you, those terms did not exist. Yes, I sure.

[00:05:14] You were basically a programmer in a small far. Right. Who was setting up, but I realized that I was bad at it. And I didn't enjoy it. Right. Now I saw that problem. I changed that, I went into banking, which I was always interested in,

[00:05:37] but which I then grew to love. Right. And I became good at it. So if that's as I solved the problem, but it's not about the solution that stayed with me. What I learned from that was that you need to fail fast. Okay.

[00:05:55] And you need to have an alternative plan. Right. And I think that has been one of the things that I'm always in very conscious of, that it's OK to make a mistake. Right.

[00:06:07] But we always have to be conscious that there can be mistakes in the need to plan. Right. Later on, there was another incident or situation, which also gave me a lifelong lesson. Okay. And this is an important one, especially for those who come into financial services,

[00:06:26] because more often than not, you are involved in functions and processes, which have some sort of financial input. Absolutely. And very early on in my career, when I just started managing team, I entrusted a team member with some work, and an error occurred due to negligence.

[00:06:45] And there was some financial impact. Now the incident itself wasn't large. But what I realized was that I had delegated without governments. Okay. That's an interesting phase. What do you mean by the delegating with governments? So, you know, you can't do everything yourself.

[00:07:01] You are managing a team, you get work done, through team members, and therefore you have to delegate your responsibilities. What do you delegate though? You have to have some sort of a framework, which allows you to keep track of how they're delivering, what they're doing. Absolutely.

[00:07:18] And I don't mean governance in the form of micro-managing. Yeah, yeah. Over control, something like that. What I mean is create a framework of some sort of a regular review, or some authorization metrics, if you will, because you are managing money, but have that governance in place.

[00:07:43] And that also has been one of, I think, the court tenants of my leadership style, which is state with me, delegate with governments. delegate with governments. I think this is such an important point because usually when I've seen people like, you know, when they're sort of,

[00:07:58] you know, delegating, there's being a manager's a total different skills type, right? Like the skills that you require to be a manager, to have their authority, but at the same time getting the job done, and reviewing the work, it's a tricky scenario.

[00:08:09] But I love this phase, which is why I think delegating with governments is great. But I actually want to speak to you now about, like, you know, within TI, globally, right? Because you right now, you see you, right?

[00:08:20] But before that, you've had, you know, very influential and very important parts, you know, you occupy that within the company. So I really want to know what are some of the principles and you spoke about one framework, any other mental models or any other

[00:08:34] values that really help you reach the top and really stay there, right? Because people don't realize that being at the top, it's such a difficult journey, not just reaching there, but even being there. Right? It can be lonely, it can be, you can have so many thousand tribulations.

[00:08:46] But what are some of the principles that have stayed on while you've been at the company? There are many, and I obviously mentioned some of them, you know, empathy or planning, execution or delegation governments, all that we just talked about.

[00:09:02] And it is true what you say, getting there is probably easier than staying there. Right. Right. But I would add one more aspect about leadership, and that is the ability to take calculated risks. Mm-hmm.

[00:09:18] You cannot really want a business without taking some risks at some point in time. So how do you do that? Because sometimes you have to take decisions in completely ambiguous situations, where you do not have enough information to take the risk. So how I would recommend,

[00:09:40] folks to think about that, is to become aware of the risk and potential impact if something were to go wrong. So basically go into it with your eyes open, within a pre-seation of the risk that you're going to have to manage, if this went south. Right.

[00:09:56] You are just then better prepared. And while I can't, of course, what any specific risk incidents from my present and past employees, I'd like to take the example of my own career. Because those are personal risks that I have.

[00:10:11] And you manage your career, just have to manage every other thing in life. Yeah. If you look at my background, I have constantly moved domains and industries, functions, roles. And every time I've had to roll up my sleeves, unlearn and relearn. And in many of those cases,

[00:10:33] I have taken risk because I did not know fully what I was getting into. But for me, those were calculated risk because the roles were somewhat linked to one another. They were ultimately all within different domains of financial services. So I wasn't really completely blanks related.

[00:10:54] I rented those roles. And I had a plan of research and the fact that I would go into full scale, learning in the initial stages, which sort of hedged those. So that is how I would encourage people to think. But absolutely as a leader,

[00:11:10] be prepared to face risks and sometimes exactly. Yeah. You know, you mentioned risk when one thing that really comes to mind, and I was also watching this reading about this, this is term call expected value. When you're sort of taking a risk,

[00:11:25] you need to know what your expected value is, so that you can sort of hedge those risks. And you can actually, you know, gain benefits as well. So it's using probabilities and sticks. So that's a very interesting concept. But, you know, the way I like it,

[00:11:36] you're also being very creative with your risk. You know, you're within the boundaries of it. You're also playing around with that. So regarding work, right? Regarding work, of course, it's changing and how global companies are really shifting the way. They're they operating, right?

[00:11:49] Because there are more, like, you know, people are hiring freelancers. For example, right? That's one big trend that's happened. But how do you act, yeah, global capabilities? What do you want to steal the organization where, of course, you want to keep, you know, the heft

[00:12:02] of let's say in an in-zero big organization. But at the same time, be agile, be a great place to work. So how is that happening and how are you making sure that that's happening from the top? That, of course, is a very, you know, very, very topical question

[00:12:14] today. Yes. It's the pandemic. Absolutely. And the reference freelancers that geek economy, which is sort of slowly making itself felt in India. We've not typically been that in the past in my career. But now that is an emerging trend. Absolutely. At TIA Global Capabilities, we are very conscious

[00:12:34] that we want to label our associates to have the right work life integration. OK. Now I will use the word integration very intentionally. OK? Because I think the word work life balance today seems to indicate to me that there are two different things,

[00:12:54] completely different things that one is trying to balance out against one another. And the pandemic really brought our work spaces into our homes. The word balance really went out of the window. Yeah. You couldn't balance in such a situation. So you integrate and the world integrated.

[00:13:14] And in that spirit, we give the flexibility to our employees to work a few days from the office and a few days from how or remotely. Just to ensure that they have the opportunity to have cost collaborate and interact with their own colleagues. That's also very important.

[00:13:32] And making the culture, to ensure that it's rights. But at the same time, they have the opportunity to prioritize their personal topics that they need to. We just want all our associates to bring their best selves to work. I'm sure. I'm sure.

[00:13:50] This has become such an important and interesting topic, really, which is now companies are really using this to... It's almost like a competitive advantage where you would obviously want your associates and who I was working there to be in a good environment

[00:14:01] and to ensure that you know, why the committee working actually fling happy while they're doing the work. I shouldn't be too much of pressure. But at the same time again, I'm really big at being there and working with your teams or not. But speak about competition, right?

[00:14:14] Like it's always very interesting to look at this question because how do you look at these competitive advantages? Like how do you want to make sure that the TIA global capabilities might come to talent when it comes to the culture?

[00:14:27] How do you sort of, is it's compression something you think about or how do you sort of navigate this? Because you always sort of look there and you know, oh they're doing such a great job or we want to be better than them.

[00:14:36] But what's your framework when it comes to competition and competitive advantages? That can be a pre-vast question to answer. We've got benchmark constantly with what the industry is doing and what the competition is doing, but peer companies are doing. Right. But I truly feel that TIA global capabilities

[00:14:58] is already a differentiated workplace. And I'll expand on that a little bit because it lies in our culture which really believes in empowering our associates to create value and innovate for best results. We're always focused on our clients and associates, certainly.

[00:15:19] And we've received a lot of accolades over the last 12 months which are in recognition of the infrastructure that we've created. Internally, we foster a lot of collaboration. And what do I mean by that? It's, you know, various teams like business operations or finance

[00:15:39] or HR coming together with their technology colleagues and innovating, improving processes, upgrading systems and really uping the anti-on overall operation efficiency. You've had some great results. Sure. To foster this kind of an environment, we've also curated flagship learning programs.

[00:16:03] Over the premier institutes like IIT in U.P.S. and DERADU, IAC Bangalore. We also regularly conduct hackathons. We have fin tech collaboration days. Everything that needs to be done really to keep that innovation fire burning.

[00:16:24] And now we are actually also setting up some very interesting functions in India. These functions would not rarely anti-IIT global capabilities. And these are an eclectic bunch of functions but all of them are business facing. So marketing operations, client experience design, sales and distribution support, climate risk, actuarial.

[00:16:48] There's a long list of them. Very, very exciting times. And what that will do for us is that we will now become a true microcosm of the firm in India with every function being present.

[00:17:01] And by the way, it takes, it has taken some of our peers about nine to ten years to get here. And we are doing it in the past six to seven years. To set up some of these functions.

[00:17:12] And we are doing it in about six to seven years. Which speaks volumes about the talent and the culture that we have. And when all of these functions are set up, I'm personally extremely excited about the power of collaboration

[00:17:27] and the unlocking of value that can happen front to back. Because everybody is together, co-located, and talking to one another and looking at things holistically. It's just an exciting place to be in. I think that's really exciting and thank you so much for that.

[00:17:40] Because I also got a substantial of what you folks are doing and how it only is like how you're differentiating yourself. But I also want to speak with technology, right? Because you know, you've reviewed one another. Technology is really, it's been an enabler, but it's been a disruptor,

[00:17:55] like you know, it's changed so many things. But I want to know from your perspective, at the global capabilities, how you have vision technology, right? Because people obviously there's the whole conversation about AI and Chaggy, P.T., which is an entire podcast on its own.

[00:18:10] But I want to know from you as to how you leveraging technology because again, it's perhaps the long term, right? You use tech today so that you can have a better life tomorrow. But how's that happening? Was in the film?

[00:18:21] Happening in various ways that the power of technology today is in its old pervasiveness, right? Of course, in our workplaces. But also in our lives. I mean, if you look around whether it's telecom or banking, retail, automotive fashion, travel, security,

[00:18:44] you can no longer imagine a world where platforms are not an e-book by technology. Of course, some of us have seen that world, which is a separate discussion. Right? But we are, two more is here. And we cannot ignore that trend anymore.

[00:19:05] The other few trends which have emerged in the last few years is the enormous increase in computing power, which has really catapulted the rate of acceleration in technical transformation to a stage where, sometimes, you are the mind boggles.

[00:19:28] And then there is the emergence of data as the new oil, that's what we speak. And the amount of effort that's going into structuring of data, simplification of data, mining of data to further businesses and deliver that every day. And then the third aspect, I think,

[00:19:48] is the emergence of threat actors and cybersecurity in the virtual world that we now operate in. Unfortunately, we always seen a step ahead of us and the whole world and the whole technology world, so to speak, is preparing to ensure that we are well covered.

[00:20:12] Now, at Ti global capabilities in India, we are well positioned to integrate all of these trends and move forward without a agenda. For example, we are building very large cyber and data capabilities. And we had an aggressive transformation program globally, which is pushing our cloud adoption rates.

[00:20:43] We are very fast integrating emerging technology like local, local, artificial intelligence, pushing learning into our programs and applications. And we are really leveraging every technical avenue possible to improve our client and associate experience in a digitally enabled data powered and secure by design way.

[00:21:11] That's the strategy we've got on. Well, thank you so much for mentioning those benchmarks and those best practices really for Ti global capabilities, very seems to me like a compelling place to work. But how can people find you like,

[00:21:23] where can people apply to be a part of the Ti global capabilities to our community? Well, we are hiring. OK, wow, that's good. Visit our career page at Ti India. You will also find us on LinkedIn. On LinkedIn, OK, great, lovely.

[00:21:42] On the other hand, we have to create conversations so far, but I have to ask you one question, which is about leadership and I already tap on this opportunity to ship is who is, and this can be a cross-mdust share across domains.

[00:21:54] Who's your best example of your favorite leader of all time? And what advice would you give to people who are just starting on does leadership and your frameworks and any other caution perhaps? So these two questions like who's your idol across domains

[00:22:08] and what do you like to say to the young folks as well? Well, I don't have one, I tell. There are many leaders that I have come across during my journey and they are not necessarily public figures. Oh, I'm just... Because the learning that I've had from them

[00:22:25] has been quite exemplary. And there are various aspects of leaders that you invite even if you're not thinking of them at all as role models at that point in time. You realize later that you revive some of those aspects of the leadership.

[00:22:44] So I will take names, but I will end with this as one looks for a role model. It's important to invite what you like, but it's also important to understand what you do not like. And what you do not want to be a part of your leadership,

[00:23:01] make up, so to speak. So that would be my parting comments on this question. Lovely, lovely awesome. Thank you so much of this conversation, my brother, this is a great conversation. I learned so much about the IE Global People, the Teys and Genial Leadership in Genial.

[00:23:16] So thank you so much for sharing the ones of us. Dema, that's it for episode one of this podcast. Thank you so much for listening and watching.