'Companies want transformation CEOs, not celebrities'

BENGALURU: New digital technologies are fundamentally disrupting industries, and that in turn is compelling companies to hire newer kinds of talent that can handle this disruption and build a digital DNA for the organization. Michael Cullen, global practice managing partner – global technology & services, and Graham Kittle, managing partner, Asia Pacific-technology & services, of Heidrick & Struggles, one of the top executive search firms in the world, talk to TOI about the emerging changes.Excerpts:
With technology disrupting businesses today, is there a big change in the nature of top talent that companies look for?
Kittle: There is a shift from domain expertise; companies are now looking for transformation executives. Where once the brief was, we need someone with a particular professional services experience that delivered these types of programmes and so forth, we are now seeing, for instance, product people being brought into the services organization with competencies around mobility and transformation. I had a conversation with a bank earlier this year. They said, you know the maverick who you brought to us three years ago, the business wouldn’t have accepted him then, but we really wish we had that maverick because he would have brought a step change in the traditional thinking.
Cullen: It’s less now about the exact experience, and more about the ability to change with the changing technologies. The evolution of technology is pretty incredible and the skills needed for CEOs, whether it’s a product or services company, really revolves around how technology is moving off premises and into the cloud and how do you adapt to that. Hiring in some cases is pausing as companies try to get the right person. They’d rather not get the wrong person and lose two years. The number of people who’ve transformed a company from on-premise solutions to a true SaaS (software-as-a-service) model is small. You’re trying to recruit from a small population.
What are the typical characteristics of a transformation executive?
Kittle: Their job is to get stuff done and often under the radar. This is not a celebrity CEO, the headline-grabbing CEO. They are known usually for being grounded and have a servant leader approach, usually very close to the people, humble, listen to employees, no ego. Mostly the prerequisite is they have enough knowledge of digital, but usually it means the ability to get stuff done through leveraging digital technologies, being heavy on analytics and big data.
Do you see demands from Indian companies for transformation-focused leaders to the same degree as that of their global peers?
Cullen: Even more so. Personally, when I started working with EMC in India, it was much more of back office work, and now we are seeing the turn happen – businesses here are starting to lead as opposed to be followers. It’s becoming the front office.
Kittle: Earlier it used to be, `bring us the executive’. Now, it is `bring us the leadership consulting, help us onboard the executives and integrate them into the organization, bring other talent’. Indian companies are moving away from a capacity mindset. When the disruption is real, there’s no breathe-easy moment. The new model is constant change.
In new digital technologies, how do you rate the quality of Indian talent?
Kittle: India has in many ways been responsible for supplying talent that has accelerated the move to agile (method of software development that is today all the rage). It’s that tech background with agile-first mentality that is coming out of India globally. So, those that can make the transition from a tech leader to a business leader, with all of that agile thinking and agile-first, they are very much needed in the leadership team. It’s a little bit of the revenge of the nerds.