Inspired Execution

Narrator: Inspired Execution, hosted by Datastax Chairman and CEO Chet Kapoor, follows the journeys of leaders from the world's largest enterprises and fastest-growing startups.

Narrator: Dilip Venkatachari, CIO at U.S. Bank, is a technology executive, entrepreneur, and board member. He has a diverse set of experiences, from starting two companies of his own to leading at large enterprises like Goldman Sachs and McKinsey. Today, Dilip shares how focusing on people and purpose has helped him navigate many different roles, why the meaning of customer-centricity evolves as a company scales, how simplification helps with execution, and the power of persuasion.

Chet Kapoor: Dilip, it is awesome to have you on the podcast. Welcome.

Dilip Venkatachari: Thanks for having me here.

Chet: You've had a fascinating career. You've been a technology executive, an entrepreneur, you've done so much with data over the years. You've been a board member of several companies, and now most recently at U.S. Bank for a few years. Tell us a little bit about your journey.

Dilip: I think the best way I'd describe it, is I've had a very varied set of experiences. I'm very fortunate for that. Started off my career at a very different place from where I am right now. I was doing research in hardware, interprocess communication, all of the things, deep in Silicon. And that was my first job, building systems for telecom companies. From there, after business school, went totally in a different direction. Started working at Goldman Sachs, working as a sales and trading person at McKinsey. Worked with terrific people. But what was interesting across all of them was everyone was quite different.

Dilip: You tend to learn a lot. And just very opportunistically had a situation where I had an opportunity to become an entrepreneur and did that a couple of times. And that was my first entry into financial services. And after that, have been in financial services one way or the other, at PayPal, at Google, and in my current role. But across the board, it is quite interestingly diverse, and I'm very, very fortunate for that.

Chet: It's interesting. I had a chance to go and spend some time at Google for three years, and I've done mostly what one would say smaller companies or mid-size companies. And a lot of people ask the question, what's the difference? And my take generally is, am I enjoying the mission, and am I having an impact. Is there some more stark contrast that you have had between doing this at a top-five bank in the U.S. versus being at Google versus running your own company?

Dilip: I think ultimately, in terms of the job itself, it doesn't really matter whether five-person startup, a midsize company, or a large company. Because you still have to enjoy what you're doing. You still have to have a reason you're doing it. There's got to be some end purpose in this whole thing. And you’ve got to enjoy the people that you're working with - the combination. So I think that combination doesn't change. But what I've found interesting is, partly because I've been in the same set of industries throughout, I've just seen the change in size basically meant you could do more, it’s just a different scale. But what you do or how you do it is rather all the same. It doesn't really, really change, but you just get to do it at different scales.

Dilip: Yes, there are some slightly different, large entities. You tend to have a lot more communication, a lot more coordination in a large enterprise versus where things are a lot simpler in a single product company where you can be very crisp and clear on, here are the three things I'm going to do, much harder to do that. But ultimately they're very, very similar in construct. And I think enjoying the ride along the way, as opposed to waiting for the destinations, is what makes it most interesting.

Chet: Now that you've done both. You've been the creator of products and you've been the consumer of products and services right across the board. What would be your advice to entrepreneurs?

Dilip: What matters are two things. Fundamentally that you've got to fixate less on the mission, but more on the journey. What I mean by that is, how you get to the end goal, what way you're doing, it's just a series of steps. As opposed to worrying about, am I going to make this product launch in time, or is this going to get to a particular valuation or a revenue target?

Dilip: If you just picked interim points and enjoyed the journey along the way, it actually tends to have a better outcome. Just the most critical thing, be clear on what you're doing and believe and enjoy the path you're on. I think the rest of it comes a lot easier once you have those things. Chet, does that relate to what you've been through?

Chet: I say it differently to people. You will not remember your bank balance. You might, for sure. But that's not what you will have fond memories of. What you'll have fond memories of is who you did it with and how you did it. And I think at least in the parts that I have actually worked with, those are the things that people remember the most, and those are the things that people have the thirst for the most. When you think about what was the best job in my life, you think about the hardships you went through with your colleagues to achieve the result required. It's the journey. And that seems like a consistent theme, at least for me, which is why I keep going back to being an entrepreneur and trying to run companies.

Dilip: Couldn't agree with you more because also one other way to look at this, is if you go back in your career and look at the people you've worked with, more likely than not, you've worked for the same set of people again and again. And that's because you've said, look, I've enjoyed working with these people, let me try and pull them along for the next ride as well. It's not just that you know them, they'll do a good job, but you also believe that the time together, it'll make the journey more fun. And so I think that's an easy way of validating what we just talked about.

Chet: The very essence of a company to me is smart people solving hard problems having fun. And if you can replicate that, you can rinse and repeat that as often as possible. That works out really well. We have something called inspired leadership at DataStax that every DataStaxer has to do. And one of the leadership principles is, operate at all levels.

Chet: Leaders have to stay connected to the details, willing to roll up their sleeves and to do what it takes to help the team succeed. Do you find that it is different when you're doing a startup where you're doing windows and you're carrying water and dishes from what you have to do as a CIO or for a large bank?

Dilip: I think there are similarities and differences. The similarities are the emphasis on execution. I mean, you can have all the strategies in the world. Strategies and ideas are only as good as how they're executed. So what really matters is execution and the follow-through on the detail. So when you peel the back, the trick there is I think to simplify. Now, cut through the clutter and essentially simplify and focus on just a few things that you need to get done. Not the large number of things that need to get done, but what are the top three items. And simply, systematically go in a work away at it. And I think whether it's a large company or a startup, these are the same things.

Dilip: What gets complex in a large organization is this notion of customer-centricity that everyone always has to be in. All the best companies in the world tend to be customer-obsessed in whatever way they are. But as you translate that in companies with very many different kinds of products and services, one of the challenges they face, was trying to say, what exactly does it mean to be customer-centric? Are you talking about the retail customer? Are you talking about the corporate customer? By the way, they may have differing and frankly, sometimes contradictory wants and needs. And how do you balance those things?

Dilip: So figuring out how you structure teams so that teams do not have to make those trade-offs but can be focused on a defined customer is actually the most critical thing, I think. I think if you simplify the problem, simplify the organization, to saying this set of people will focus on this customer and make that clear. Then the chances of success can dramatically go up.

Chet: I love the comparison. In a startup, it's super clear. And a large company, you have to make sure it's really clear. It might be clear or it might not be, but make it really clear. How do you create a culture of constant change? Because if I take your customer-centricity and... The needs are changing. The pandemic brought a bunch of behavior change for me as an individual who banks, as an example. And so that'll continue and we will go into a new normal after another 6, 9, 12 months, whatever it might be. How do you make sure that your teams actually understand that change is going to be a constant?

Dilip: This is probably the most difficult one for all of us. The most critical one is to make sure you fixate. It's almost like when you first learn to ride a bicycle, the first thing you learn... Or even drive a car. You learn not to focus on the thing 10 feet away in front of you, but maybe a quarter-mile in front of you, to maintain the wheel in the right direction.

Dilip: The same way, focusing on the mission, being very clear, what you're trying to get done. But not in the, “what am I going to get done this week,” but having the broader kind of impact. And “what is the mission? What am I really trying to do from a customer standpoint?” Clear. Essentially gives you the room to make all these changes, because what you understand... Take a very simple example. Before the pandemic, less than half of all the consumers in the U.S. were accessing their financial institutions through digital means, mobile, online, whatever. After the pandemic, for all the reasons you had imagined, it moved up to the mid-seventies or so – a huge increase.

Dilip: But if you thought about that as a problem you're solving for online versus the branch or anything else. It'd be a crazy time, how do I prioritize? How do I make these decisions? But if you kept thinking only of your customer and say, “Look, I have delivered these financial services to the customer?” Naturally, when the customer changes, you'll say, “Oops, now they're coming through a different way, I have to provide a different set of services.” And so it makes it a lot easier, I mean, that's one.

Dilip: The other one is the more difficult one for people who have been in industries that have not changed. It is the willingness to fail. I mean, we talk a lot about this in Silicon Valley, but it's not easy making people who have been told throughout that failure is not tolerated. To tell them to launch an MVP, their question is, why would I do that? MVP is not a success. You told me that I have to get to this revenue and if I don't have a clear path for the next five years, the chances of failure are high and why would I take the path? And so trying to provide room, the space for people to take risks is the bigger issue.

Dilip: It's not just, how do you tell them, okay, it's okay to fail. More people don't take you seriously when you say that. They're saying, okay, this guy's got some management book in terms of me giving out some ideas, but watch, my next review is not going to be good. And so how do you persuade people, act it out, make decisions and acknowledge your own failures. Say oops, I made a mistake, I think we should have done something different. And then they feed along the way. And I think those two ends probably make a lot of the difference.

Chet: What has been your proudest accomplishment?

Dilip: I think the most interesting one, if I thought about it, was the first time as an entrepreneur. Where I had no experience building a business. It was basically three of us starting a company. We broadly knew an idea that we had, but we couldn't persuade anybody. We couldn't persuade engineers to show up. And importantly, we couldn't persuade a single investor. Their entire question was, but you've never done this before. How the heck would I take a chance on you? And I have no idea what you're saying. So getting through that, getting through all that fear of uncertainty and trying to create the product and get it to customers, get them to validate it… huge learning.

Dilip: And it took us a year. Thankfully, some of the problems of not getting investment turned out to be very good because, by the time we had an acquisition offer, all of us were deep in debt. But we had no external capital. And that worked out very well. But, just that I thought was... Starting from scratch with a team that had no prior experience and going through and creating a company that had multiple acquisition offers in a year, was an interesting validations point, but a lot of fun along the way.

Chet: That is awesome. I think 10 out of 10 entrepreneurs would be happy to take that. Getting that done in a year with no investment is awesome. What is one personal challenge you've had to overcome?

Dilip: I think the one common theme everywhere, whether it's at a large place or a tiny startup, is the need to persuade people. Oftentimes you forget, you think about, here are the five things I've got to do. But the bigger elephant in the room, the bigger thing that we don't sometimes think about is, all of this is not the what, but the how. And how do you make sure... Everything is a change of some kind or the other. You're changing their customer into a new product, a new way of buying things.

Dilip: You're changing your own employees, their ideas, their views of what they were trying to do, or some such. So the need to persuade to bring people along, as opposed to assuming that they're bought in with you, is I think one of the biggest challenges. And it seems like an obvious thing when you sit back and think about it. But when you're in the trenches, you're sometimes going to keep in that mind and say, look, the way this is going to work is you're able to persuade the person. Don't push, but have the pull happen. That's, I think, the biggest challenge.

Chet: Who inspires you?

Dilip: I think it's very simple. And I have a very simple... Simplicity and scale are the two things that matter. So from an inspiration... For a very different set of reasons than what traditionally people take Gandhi as an example. It's not because of just the philosophy or the nonviolence. It's the fact that the team was simple, but it was scalable across to a whole country. Being able to persuade a lot of people for change. Because the notion of how to do it was a change from any prior approach. And doing that with just a repetitive simple message, but using all the tools to persuade a large number of people, was... I think, quite inspiring.

Chet: What advice would you share with a younger version of yourself?

Dilip: I'd just say two things. Enjoy the journey. Just spend more time with your fellow travelers. And second, trust your intuition, trust your gut. Don't necessarily overanalyze. If something seems right, it probably is. Just go get it done and then come back and figure it out.

Chet: That's awesome advice. The trust the gut part, Dilip, if I can double click on that, is I talk to a lot of folks about this. That there are many decisions that you will have to make that are matters of the heart. And make sure that you have alignment on what your heart is saying i.e., your gut is saying, with what your mind is saying as well, because your mind may be too logical about it. And over the long term in your heart or your gut might be the right one. Is that fair?

Dilip: Totally agree. And also, all of us tend to be very analytical. We live in a time where there's a lot of data. The problem with data is that it seems like you should use it to analyze it. But what's happening, is that data's actually seeping inside you and your muscle, your gut's getting built up with a set of... “This happens, this is the right decision.” And as long as you are in an area and you're doing things logically and coherently, your gut is probably right. And the amount of effort and time to second guess and third guess your decisions - not worth it. If you're doing it for the right reasons, your gut will tell you. And then you can always course correct.

Chet: That is awesome. Because I think this... The right reasons part, I think a lot of people forget. You cannot... For example, having been an entrepreneur, you would agree that, you don't start a company because you want to make a lot of money. You start a company because you can affect people and companies. You can change the trajectory of the companies and the people that are going to use your technology. A lot of people forget that.

Dilip: Absolutely. I think the notion... This again clicks back to don't plan on the outcome. You cannot. The outcome is a bunch of other things and other choices, other external events that'll make or break, including things like valuations, exits, all of those. All you can plan on is having the objective of doing what you're doing broadly and then enjoying the journey. And then automatically things will click into place. If you focus on near-term things like money or specific interim project goals, those don't end up in the right long-term place.

Chet: I'm going to go through some rapid-fire, quick response questions now with you. You hold many patents. What's your favorite invention of all times?`

Dilip: I think antibiotics. Simple, something that's very low cost, applicable across the world and you can just find specific point solutions. It's more the approach of antibiotics – hugely scalable.

Chet: You can have a dinner party with only three people - dead or alive - who would be on your invitee list?

Dilip: Very easy. I spend so much time at work. If I had this time, basically, the three people would be my family. My wife and kids.

Chet: What's your... And this is a very Silicon Valley way of asking the question. What's your superpower as a leader?

Dilip: What I'm fairly decent at doing is basically two things. The first is just cutting through the clutter and simplifying. And the second one is just systematically getting things done. Just doggedly go after something and get stuff done. So, I think those would be what I would say I'm decent at and focus on. And I think if you put a bunch of people that do just that, that collectively, would get you a long way.

Chet: For sure. Simplification, by the way, is I think one of the hardest things. Is getting to the essence of it. So that is great. One word or phrase that defines a great leader.

Dilip: Someone who's a missionary. Who's able to see ahead, but take people along.

Chet: What advice would you give to somebody coaching a team?

Dilip: To coaching a team? Basically, be patient. Essentially, listen more. Most times, the team themselves, once you have an open discussion going, the team will solve the problems themselves, just stay out of the way. Just bring a bunch of smart people together, set the path, and then stay out of the way.

Chet: That's a very unique perspective. I've not had a lot of leaders say, “My advice to all coaches would be to stay out of the way.” Because I think if you can successfully do that, you've not only tamed your mind, but you've also created an environment for people to succeed. That is awesome, awesome advice. Dilip, this has been phenomenal. Thank you very, very much for your time. Really appreciate it. And look forward to catching up with you soon.

Dilip: Chet, enjoyed the conversation. Look forward to us speaking another time. Thanks a ton for the opportunity.

Narrator: Whether you're leading a startup or a huge enterprise, it's important to have a sense of purpose and to enjoy the people you're working with. If you want to create a culture of change, encourage your team to take risks and always bring the focus back to the customer. Remember that strategies and ideas are only as good as how they're executed. Finally, trust your intuition and enjoy the journey.

Narrator: Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode of the Inspired Execution podcast. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the show and drop us any questions or feedback at inspiredexecution@datastax.com.