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Raghav Poojary: This is your fourth book and you chose digitization as your subject, what was the thought behind choosing such an important subject?
Abhijit Bhaduri: I have written two fictions Mediocre But Arrogant and Married But Available, I also wrote two anthologies, and a management book Don’t Hire The Best. Digital Tsunami happened in October. Digital Tsunami was driven by the fact that in my role as of CLO of Wipro, I got a chance to look at how businesses are changing because of the tech and I found that most of our clients belonging to different sectors were very comfortable in understanding how to bring in technology into their business. What most people miss out on unlike the analog world, in the digital world, the culture becomes extremely important for the corporates to be able to use the softer side of the digital world . Digital is not about technology, it’s about human beings. This was the central idea behind this book.
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Raghav Poojary: How did publishing your first book change your process of writing?
Abhijit Bhaduri: I have been writing for many years now. My foundation was built on the letters I would write to my grandparents where I would share about my school life and funny incidents of life. The first book Mediocre But Arrogant was written on a lark and I wanted to take on a challenge and do something I hadn’t done before. Writing fiction is dauntingly hard and I took seven years to finish the book. The book went through several iterations. But, the response to the book was very encouraging.
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Raghav Poojary: How do you balance readers demand and your thought process while penning the book?
Abhijit Bhaduri: There are two distinct phases when you start writing, you write about the idea that is brewing within. That is more of an inward-looking process. When you work with an editor, the editor actually is the first intermediary who gives you an understanding of what the readers expect and then you work on the book accordingly.
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Raghav Poojary: What does literary success mean to you?
Abhijit Bhaduri: I have a long way to go and consider myself as a beginner. I am experimenting and trying to find my style of writing.
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Raghav Poojary: What is the most difficult part of the writing process?
When you think of a book, it is a very quick process. Translating that into a book in terms of chapters is quite a challenge. While writing a fiction, it is written around a central idea and it takes time and efforts to discover the art of writing.
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Raghav Poojary: How one can build a digital transformation culture in the organization?
Abhijit Bhaduri: Digital world is based on the principal of boundarylessness. How do you seamlessly work with your internal team, as well as external help, consultants, vendors, and customers? Getting that process started is the first part of it. Once the vision of the future emerges, you must think how would your culture support these ideas. The third part is to put your process to the background and put experience for the consumer and employees. For example, How do you make the learning experience an outstanding experience for the learner, how do you make things personalized? Is the content going to be engaging? These are the questions that will change the entire game.
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Raghav Poojary: Your views on impact of digital disruption on future jobs?
Abhijit Bhaduri: Technology always makes your life simpler. The convergence of technologies is making life easier. This changes how we spend our time. In the job market, if a technology can solve a problem, you don’t need human beings for that. For example, in a school scenario, while content is freely available, you need to learn from a subject matter expert and improve your social skills. There are things which can be done only by human beings.
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Raghav Poojary: Your advice to CXO’s on driving habits that are hard to change?
Abhijit Bhaduri: The amount of effort and technology research that has gone in to finetune the product market. The external phase will continue to be driven by technology while the internal phase is reshaped by culture. It’s easy to outsource a job if you don’t have the requisite skill in your organization. This boundarylessness of work reshapes the power equation between the employer and employee. How do you keep the talent engaged, how do you motivate them periodically, how do you rethink predictability and the employment experience in a world that is so transient? These are the things my book talks about.
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Raghav Poojary: Our present government is driving Digital Transformation in a big way, what’s your take on its success?
Abhijit Bhaduri: For any country, just like for a business, you must do what is necessary to in terms of building the infrastructure. Along with that, the software aspect needs to be given as much importance. How do we teach such skills at school and colleges? How do we get them geared towards the pieces where there is a larger market? We need to create a million jobs every month, and 12 million jobs a year will need to be created based on the skills that are going to find market in the future and that is going to be a challenge. The opportunity to bring world class education and thinking is going to be the real opportunity we can leverage.
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Raghav Poojary: Your advice to young India?
Abhijit Bhaduri: For anyone who is going to enter the job market, they must keep reinventing themselves to stahttp://raghavpoojary.com/wp-admin/media-upload.php?post_id=165&type=image&TB_iframe=1y ahead of the competition. They must keep building their skills and agility and that’s the real opportunity as well as a challenge.
Interview with Abhijit Bhaduri
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