Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: NTT DATA CEO Abhijit Dubey

I recently interviewed NTT DATA, Inc. CEO Abhijit Dubey on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today is the leader of a $30 billion business. Abhijit Dubey is the CEO of NTT Data Inc., one of the largest IT service providers in the world. Abhijit, thank you for joining us.

Abhijit: Well, thank you for having me, Adam. It's a pleasure.

Adam: Pleasure is mine. You're the CEO of a company that is a significant employer in 29 different countries. And you've lived in many of them. You've resided in four different continents. You grew up in India and studied mechanical engineering as an undergrad before moving to the U.S. to pursue a master's in industrial engineering and engineering management at Stanford. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What early experiences and lessons shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?

Abhijit: Of course, Adam. I've always reflected on my journey to date. Of course, at any point in time, we are all products of our experiences that have happened to date. What I reflect, I think of it in sort of four different stages of my life. Stage one is early childhood. small town in India called Jamshedpur. Small town in India meaning four million people. But of note is Jamshedpur is where the Hatha Group, which is another esteemed Indian conglomerate, was first started. and very humble beginnings, modest, lower middle class family, very happy, but a real focus on education. And there are two things that stood out for me in terms of lifelong learnings in my early childhood. One was hard work. I very distinctly remember at a very early age, my dad pulling my sister aside, who's older than myself, and effectively telling us that if you want a better opportunity for yourself, Remember, this was in the 70s and 80s in India, which was economically in a very different place than where it is today. So his message to us was, if you want a different opportunity set for yourself in the future, you really have to work hard to get into this premium engineering college in India, which was called the Indian Institute of Technology. And so there was a real premium on academics and sort of hard work Because at the time, about 4 million students applied every year to that university and about 2,000 actually got in. So it's probably the toughest acceptance rate of any college in the world. The other thing that stood out for me was my dad's unwavering commitment to integrity. There was a lot of the ecosystem around which was built around taking shortcuts and corruption and nepotism. And he always stood out as one that would never play that game. And so those are two learnings I took away from my early childhood, hard work and the highest integrity always. After that, I ended up qualifying and getting into the Indian Institute of Technology, which is where my father had guided us. Incidentally, my sister got in there as well before me, so it was a little bit hard to not follow her footsteps, if you may. And the first time I arrived there, it was a real wake-up call and an experience that I would describe as humility, because you suddenly meet 400 to 500 other colleagues like yourself who are 100 times smarter than you are. And it really brings you down to earth, if you may. So my second lesson or experience going through undergraduate program was one of humility. Then after that, I did a detour. Actually, the preferred model for all graduating students from that undergraduate was to go to the U.S. for a master's degree. I broke that mold because that was the first time a multinational corporation ever came to campus for recruiting directly from campus. And that was a company called Schlumberger in the oil field services business. And I was lucky enough to be one of the three that got recruited. And so I did a detour into the oil field business and industry for a few years, and I was based mostly in Africa, in Northern Africa. And that was the first time I ever left the country and I ever got on a plane. So my first year out of college was one where it was a new country, a new continent. I was based in Algeria, which is where they speak mostly Arabic and French, no English. So new language, new culture, completely new job that I had no qualification for effectively because I was out in the Saharan desert exploring for oil. and managing a crew. And so I always tell people that you can handle two new things when you take a new job. It's very hard to handle more than two new things or variables in a job. And this was like four or five new things all at once. It's a new country, new language, new culture, new job, et cetera. So that taught me resilience and an insatiable curiosity for learning and learning fast. And then after that, I ended up at Stanford, as you described, for a master's. And out of Stanford, I was the only one in my batch, I think, who did not do a startup back in 1999, which, if you remember, was the dot-com boom days, and broke the model and ended up joining a management consulting firm called McKinsey and Company. And what started off what I thought would be a one-year career ended up becoming a 20-plus-year career. And there were two things that stand out for me in that experience. One is this real notion of how you become a trusted counselor and how trust is the most important currency, both in our personal lives and our professional lives, but especially that really brought it to life in McKinsey. And the second thing is most of my clients were actually in Silicon Valley where I lived or in the high tech industry, which is where I specialized. But one fine day, I remember about 14 years ago, I got a call from our global head of technology media and telco practice who said, hey, there's a McKinsey team in Japan who has a client called NTT and they would like your help because I happen to know something about cloud and enterprise technology. And I ended up flying to Tokyo to help the team over a weekend. And that was the beginning of a lifelong relationship with the entity group. And so 10 years later, after advising them for 10 years, I left and ended up joining them here. And to me, that brought forward one unique learning, which is answer every call for help. Because I would never have at that point in time when I flew to Tokyo, which I did not have to do, I could very well have done one phone call with a team and left. but I felt it was incumbent on me to go help them. So answer every call for help, and look where it's gotten me here. So hopefully, four different stages in life, all with very different sets of experiences, and more importantly, lifelong learnings that I still carry through.

Adam: I love it. So many lessons that we can unpack. We could spend the entire conversation unpacking each of those lessons. Hard work, integrity, humility, pushing your comfort zone, not being afraid to do something different. Curiosity for learning, the most successful people, the most successful leaders, lifelong learners. There is no linear path to success. Being willing to take risks, recognizing that if you want to make it to the top, to get there, there isn't necessarily a formula that you're going to be able to follow. Something that you shared which I want to dive into. You mentioned that a key learning from your time at McKinsey was understanding how to become a trusted advisor. How can leaders build trust?

Abhijit: Well, number one, listen and listen actively. Because most of what you will learn about people is not based on what they said, but what they did not say. And you got to watch for all the cues that they're telling you about that. Number two, always follow through on your commitments. That's the only way to build trust. Number three, Be bold in your advice and in what you believe in and stand up for what you believe in. It's very easy to be in a consulting firm and tell clients what you think they want to hear as opposed to really tell your point of view and why it's your point of view and why that's the best for their business. And number four, always think what's best for the business and the individual. In this case, it was the executive that you're advising. And if you always take that lens of impact and what's best for the business without regards for all the other noise that may come in the process, people will eventually come to respect you. They may not in the initial stage. In fact, I've had many instances where clients got really mad at me. because I said something that either they didn't fundamentally believe in or was contrary to the direction that they were already embarking upon. But in due course of time, if I was right, not always I was right, if I was right, they always came back and said, those were the instances where they built a lot of respect and trust in me.

Adam: Abhijit, what I especially love about the advice that you shared is that when you follow that roadmap, listen, follow through on your commitments, stand up for what you believe in, share the advice that you genuinely believe is best for the business, best for the person who you're advising, you're going to resonate with the right kind of leader. If you're going to be a yes man, you're going to resonate with the wrong kind of leader, ineffective leaders, bad leaders, toxic leaders. are going to attract yes men. They're going to attract people who are going to tell them what they want to hear, not what they need to hear. But if you're someone who wants to stand up for what you know is right, the right leader is going to recognize that and you're going to stand out. And it's going to be in the best interest of everyone, in your best interest, in their best interest, in the organization's best interest.

Abhijit: Adam, you've articulated much better than I did.

Adam: I don't know about that, but I appreciate it. Something else you brought up, which I want to ask you more about. You mentioned that an early lesson from your dad, the importance of acting with integrity. As a leader, why do you believe integrity is so essential to success?

Abhijit: I think that sets the tone for the culture of the company. Values is the North Star by which people at how they show up every day, the mindset that they have. And that effectively is culture. And it starts at the top. And there's a direct correlation between integrity, I believe, and high performance. The unfortunate part of being in a 30-billion-dollar organization is that, unfortunately, there are ethics violations that happen more frequently than I would like or anybody would like. And I have a very simple rule. One strike and you're out. If there is an ethics violation, that means either the person is not ethical, i.e. there's a pattern, or even if there was a first time, that means there is lack of judgment, neither of which is acceptable to be in the business. So I have a very simple rule. So there is no gray area for me. It's either black or white. Now, I do believe that if there is a report of a violation, you give the benefit of the doubt to the person first until all the investigation is thorough and has been done the right way. But if the facts point to what they point to, then ethics violations and whoever is actually doing them have to be dealt with in the strongest way possible.

Adam: You hire people across many, many, many different countries. You have a significant presence globally. You're one of the leading IT companies in the world. What are the keys to leading a global business?

Abhijit: Yeah. So we operate in 57 countries. We trade in about 190. So we have a very, very global presence. The tricky part is The cultural difference, and I don't mean the culture as in every country is different, but the cultural difference of a very global company. And how do you really get them, 150,000 colleagues in my company and our company, all of them on the same cultural fabric, if you may. And the key to leading a global company is one, you've got to have a clarity of purpose and mission. Why do we exist as a company? What are our values? You've got to have clarity on strategic direction. And you have to be able to explain the what of the strategy, but more importantly, the why of the strategy. Why are we doing things the way we are doing them? And we are at a very unique time because we are actually merging a lot of different companies into this big company. And mergers are always even more trickier. So we are merging and transforming at the same time. And so we have to be able to explain to all our colleagues across the world What is it that we're trying to do? Why is it that we are trying to do it? And how is it that we're going to do it? So the number one is clarity of purpose, vision, values, strategic direction. More importantly, the why and the how of the strategic direction. Number two is communications. The communication has to be at multiple levels. And in all of them, I have one simple rule, which is it's got to be radically transparent. There is no one who gains from hearing a abridged version of the story and the narrative. I think we all as a company have to be fully cognizant, appreciative, and bought in to the collective narrative of the company. Personally, the way I do communications across the company is I've got many different levels that the executive team but then there is the group of what I call the 30 which is a performance leadership team then there is a much broader group of 150 leaders in the company which is a senior leadership team and then. These are all employees, and I personally try to get my personal message out to the entire company in whatever forums I can. I also do a lot of small group sessions. So every country that I visit, I actually do a session with 10 to 15 middle management and or individual contributors in the country. And so it's an opportunity for me to learn, and I call them exchange sessions, where I learn and they learn from me. And so this notion of cascading communications across the company, but very frequent, but with a very consistent narrative and story of who we are, what are we trying to do, why are we trying to do it, and what's the direction that we're headed is really, really important. The third is to really celebrate successes. So every milestone, every success along the trajectory of the journey that we have outlined, making sure that we celebrate that in a very visible way that is visible to all is very important. And then fourth is setting up the, obviously the organization structure and the operating model to be able to operate globally effectively, but in a very collaborative way. So I would say those are the main ingredients of how to run a global business. And then fifth, So on a personal level, managing global time zones, it's a very difficult thing. So I'm quite lucky that I'm actually in London. Cause it's probably the best time zone to be in, to manage the whole world, because we have businesses from everywhere from Australia to the West coast of the U S and just the management of that is a little bit easier being in London than let's say being anywhere else in the world. So that makes it easier.

Adam: As you're providing insights into how to lead a global business, you're also providing insights into how you approach leadership, starting with your focus on setting the tone, your focus on vision, working not only with your immediate team, but working with people across the organization, with small groups who don't report to you, What do you believe are the key characteristics of a great leader and what can anyone do to become a better leader?

Abhijit: I think there's no single profile of a great leader. Every leader has their own sort of distinguished set of characteristics, I would think. I personally think the ones that have been important to me in leadership position have been the clarity of strategic direction, the courage to make the bold decisions, the ability to allocate resources and investments that effectively align to the strategy. And when I say resources, I mean both dollars, but also talent. And I think the latter is actually way more important than the dollars themselves. You've got to make sure that your best talent is allocated to the areas that will materially move the needle for the company. This notion of active listening is really important, leader, because you always want to listen and learn from what people are trying to tell you, even if they're not telling you directly. So I have this favorite question I ask of everybody when I do the CEO exchange sessions is, what are you afraid that I don't know that you think I should know? And you get some incredible responses back from people. That frankly is the most illuminating answers about the state of affairs in the company that I get. And finally, a lot of it has to do with communications. I think as a leader, you have to be able to be a very, very good communicator inside the organization and outside the organization.

Adam: What are some of the most interesting answers you've received from that question? What are you afraid that I should know that I don't know?

Abhijit: There are two types of responses you get. One that make you think and say, wow, I had no idea that this was the situation or this is the state or this is a huge problem that I wasn't even aware of. The second one is generally along the lines of, We've been trying to do this for so long and it still hasn't landed the way it was intended to land where it really matters in frontline execution. And I call that the last mile execution problem. A lot of us as leaders can be very clear about the direction we're headed, but translating that into action at the front end, whether it's our salespeople selling to our clients or our delivery people delivering to our clients, that frontline individual at the edge, understanding clearly the direction of where we're headed, why we're headed, and executing to that. That last-mile execution is a huge problem in my mind. And so most large companies have that problem. And so it generally is in those two dimensions. One is new learning about a major problem or an issue that I had never heard of from my leadership teams. Or second, it's we've been working on this for a while, but it still hasn't landed in the way it was supposed to land.

Adam: Great leaders ask great questions. Great leaders are great listeners. Great leaders, to your point, are great communicators. You have an undergraduate degree from one of the best schools in the world. You have a master's degree from one of the best schools in the world. Both of those degrees are highly technical, quantitative degrees. You don't have degrees in communications or in any kind of soft skill. How did you become a great communicator and how can anyone become a better communicator?

Abhijit: I would say the engineer in me is the one that really helps the communication part. It's very counterintuitive, but in engineering, you're taught very clearly how to structure a problem and how to solve the problem and how to articulate that answer back if asked. So if you're doing a thesis, you have to be able to articulate it. And I found that to be the fundamental basis of any communication happens. It just happens to be in a different context. It's in a business context. But the way the brain works in terms of problem solving is effectively how it translates into communications. The other thing I would say is that I was very lucky to have been schooled in communications at probably one of the best institutions in the world to learn that, which is McKinsey.

Adam: For anyone listening to this conversation, any tips in particular on things that they can do, steps they can take, frameworks that they can use to become better communicators?

Abhijit: Yes. So one is what we call the pyramid principle, which is you always start with your upline message first, and then you dive into, okay, why is that? What are the reasons or the logic that explain that message? So that's number one. Number two, clarity of communications only comes from clarity of thought. So you have to be first very, very mindful and thoughtful and put in the effort required to say actually exactly what is it that is the problem or the opportunity? And what is the message that I want to convey to my audience? Number three is really think audience back. You really have to understand who you are talking to and what messages are you trying to land with them. And number four is you've got to inject as much anecdotes, examples, personal stories, and learnings from the ecosystem around you to be able to effectively communicate. And then if you can inject a little bit of humor, that always helps, or analogies, always helps. people really understand analogies.

Adam: Great advice. Something else that you shared, which stood out, the importance of allocating resources, not only capital, but human capital, hiring an essential part of your success as an organization, not only bringing in the right people, but once you hire them, putting them in the right positions within your company. What do you look for in the people who you hire? What are your best tips on the topic of hiring once you bring people into your organization? What are your best tips on figuring out how to place them in the right roles so that they're ultimately utilized as effectively as possible?

Abhijit: When I'm hiring for leaders in our company or anywhere, I look for three things. Intrinsics, experience, attitude. And intrinsics is, do you have the skills, whether it's problem-solving skills, communication skills, leadership skills, et cetera? Experience is, what is the body of experience that you bring to the table that will effectively help us in our company? And number three is attitude, which probably is the most important one. What is the mindset that you bring to the table? And so when I'm meeting people or prospecting talent around, I'm always recruiting for talent. I always meet people. I have a rule that I meet two to three leaders in the ecosystem every week just to keep my own personal pipeline of interesting leaders of the future. But when you're trying to do that, I always keep those three sort of lenses in mind. And to me, of the three, attitude is number one, intrinsics is number two, and experience is number three. which is counter-intuitive to what most people would hire for. They would hire for, have you done X and Y before? Because that X and Y can really be helpful to what we're trying to do.

Adam: You shared a lot there. You shared a great framework. But what I actually like most about what you shared is that you're personally invested in this process. You personally own this process. You take the time every week to go out and meet different leaders, build your own network of people who When you need to hire someone, you have a Rolodex that you can tap into and know exactly who the right person is for that role. And if you want to be organizationally in your hiring process, it starts at the top. It starts with the leader of your organization being personally invested, taking charge, much in the way that you do.

Abhijit: I think you're 100% right. I think a company is only as successful as the talent it has and the context that that talent has been put into. And the second part is important. You can hire the best talent, but if you don't put them in the right context to be successful, they will never be successful. And so personally, investing in that is really important for me because that's the best way I understand both aspects of that. What is the best talent out there in the industry that we can tap into? even if there's no immediate opportunity, but also making sure that the context that they will come in to is set up for their success, which by definition means then the company's success.

Adam: A huge area of focus of NTT data is innovation. You allocate $3.6 billion of your annual budget toward investing in innovation, significant number. What are your best tips for leaders across organizations of all sizes on how to foster innovation?

Abhijit: There are many forms of innovation, so let's start with that. One is breakthrough innovation. Second is, it's a big bet, but it's not going to change the entire industry. It's going to change the nature of our company. And third is the micro innovations that should not be undermined, which can happen in everyday work. It's the every individual can actually innovate what and how they are doing every day. And so you've got to foster all three at the same time. Now, the $3.6 billion that you mentioned, Adam, is more towards, I would say, the first and second category. It's the breakthrough innovation that's going to change entire industries. It's going to be like a massive new technology or something that's going to come out. The second bucket, which is sort of this innovation within the context of our business, What I found to be the most successful is, and this is perhaps a little bit counterintuitive to what many others would say, what I found to be the most successful is actually create a dedicated startup team within your organization to do that, which is appropriately resourced and empowered to go drive that innovation. And I have this notion of there's a customer one, there's a customer five, there's a customer 10, and there's a customer 50. and that correlates to a certain scale of the business. At some point between customer 10 and customer 50, we will decide to bring that startup into our business. But until then, you let the startup operate as a startup, which means that you fund them like a venture capitalist would do, but also hold them rigorously accountable for the markers of success rather than the financial ones. Because when you're starting to start new stuff, the financial stuff will come much later. But you have to be very clear on what the markers of success look like to get to your customer 10 and your customer 15 and your customer 20. So that's one thing that I found to be more successful than others on that second bucket of innovation. On the third bucket of innovation, that's just culture. You've got to promote the culture of innovation. You've got to empower individuals and reward and recognize. And recognition is more important than rewards in my mind. When there are stories of individuals taking the initiative and innovating what they do and how they do it in their everyday jobs.

Adam: Abhijit, what can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful personally and professionally?

Abhijit: I'm a big believer in the power of human potential, Adam. I believe anybody and everybody can be a leader. A few things that I would say keep in mind for success. Number one, there is no substitute for hard work. I tell my kids hard work beats talent when talent stops working hard. I'm sure you've heard that as well before. It's a revelation for my kids, but I think they're starting to get it. So there's no substitute for hard work. And the results will follow. The second is what I said. Answer every call for help. If anybody is asking you for help, help them. You have no idea how that will pay back in spades in due course of time. Third is a career journey is serendipity. You cannot plan it. A lot of us think that we can plan the next five years of our journey. I think it's very difficult. If you look back, once you've been in the industry or have worked for almost 30, 50 years, whatever the number is, when you look back and you look at the inflection points on your journey, I think most of them were serendipity. They were not planned. At least that's been my experience to date. And so you cannot plan it, which means all you can do is give it your best shot every time. Then the fourth thing I would say is trust is the most important currency. Build trust with everybody, all stakeholders, and everybody. As a leader, always be authentic. Always be authentic to who you are and yourself.

Adam: Abhijit, thank you for all the great advice and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors.

Abhijit: Thank you very much for having me. I really enjoyed this conversation, Adam.

Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

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