Ok. Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining this session. I am Visha Suman. I'm a partner at Khan, a management consulting firm.Uh I've been in the tech space for pretty much my entire career started off uh as a software engineer, post MB A did multiple roles within the tech space and eventually joined Kani and now I'm a partner in the Digital Transformation Practice. Here. My career gave me the opportunity to work extensively with uh clients across United States, UK, Europe, India, Japan, Middle East and Australia. And as I progressed in my career from being a software engineer to a strategic advisor, working with global science. Now there are three lessons that I learned that I wanted to share in the study today. The first one is the art of storytelling, which I think is the most critical aspect to bridge the gap between business and technology. So the business is the one that asks the question and in most cases, the technologist would find the solution or the answer. And it's the storyteller's role to convey the story behind the solution or the answer that allows the two girls to come to the second lesson is um I would say on emotional maturity, the ability to respond versus, yeah, particularly when you're working in a multicultural and a diverse team set up.

Um It's important to collaborate and in order to collaborate well with different cultures, what you need is the ability to actively think and then respond personally active. And the last piece and then I'll hand it to my friend. The last piece for today is around connection, intelligence.

So how do you build relations? It's not about network. It's about building lasting relations to meaningful engagement. And those relations are not just limited to your clients or partners, but also internally within your form. Because at the end of the day, it's these relations and network and the intelligence that you develop with that network that allows you to grow in your own personal career. So with that, let me hand it over to Nadia to share a bit about her story as well. And then we'll go into the details.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much Vic and hi everyone. I'm Nerese. I'm a manager also at the management consulting firm Kearney. I'm based out in New York City and I'm part of what we call the Digital Transformation Group within Kearney. Um And yeah, I'm very excited and grateful with this opportunity to join the Women Tech Conference and also to have this fireside chat with, with all of you and, and with Vicia who is um both my colleague and my mentor. Um So I really hope that you enjoy uh our chat. And also as via uh said, we look forward to your questions. So please uh write your questions through the chat function and we'll try to get to all of them. Uh So yeah, excited for, for your questions as well and, and to share perhaps a bit of my background and also some key learnings that I gained through, through my journey so far. And yeah, also following the technology and and business construct that we have here as a theme in the fireside chat. Um So I started on the technology side. So I studied uh mechanical engineering in undergrad. I was at that time more interested in the physical technology side uh as well as uh biotechnology. So I did some research in bioengineering at that point.

And uh my key learning at at that time is that basically you have to take a very proactive approach to, to learning about technology about uh engineering. And I think this applies to anything as well. So studying uh as you know, is not the same, same as learning and wanted to encourage you to, to take this proactive approach to learning and then I moved to the business side. So I started my career in management consulting uh at Kerney, I started in, in Spain and had the opportunity to work around Europe across different countries. And this is when I started getting a business sense uh for the first time and it was really eye opening for me, I think to uh understand or see for the first time the link between engineering and technology with, with business and uh the learning I wanted to share with you from, from that phases that um understanding that a lot of the business problems are also technology problems or can be solved through tech technology and vice versa.

Um So I would really encourage you to really try to understand both views or both angles, the business and technology angle of, of the same problem. And yeah, since, since then I've been doing, I, I would say a mix of both technology and, and business work, went back to study and study my MB A then briefly worked in a health tech start up um and came back to, to consulting in King um uh in this last phase. Basically, I think my, my key learning has been that if you have a limited background in, in something, it could be a specific business area or a technology area, it's, it's really ok, you don't have to know about everything. Um But still if you have a strong interest in, in something and you can connect people or look for experts, uh I think that will uh bring you far away.

Yeah. NIA you raised an important point around most of the business problems can now be so solved through technology as well. So there's uh the dialogue that's needed. I still remember my first project when I started my career as a software engineer, the, the project leader.

And it was, I was brand new out of college. My first coding uh assignment uh the, the first meeting, the, the project manager asked me go and read this company's uh PNL one. So, and I was like a hardcore engine. I said, sure. So I went and read the, the balance sheet and the annual report. I don't know what I'm doing because this was for a very specific, this was a uh an investment banking capital management firm and it was a very specific mutual fund reconciliation program that I had to quote something on it. And he asked me all kinds of questions about the business. I could answer half of it probably. And then I asked him like, why are you asking me these questions? It's not related to the code? I'm writing at all. So what he said and that stayed with me is at the end of the day, you're writing the code for a business. And if you don't understand how that business makes money, you would never understand how your code is going to impact that business. And that stayed with me. Like, why am I doing what I'm doing even as a technology person, right? If you understand, why are you writing that particular code or solving the problem?

How does that impact and what happened eventually with that mindset is even if you're doing a production support role, you would realize for a technologist, it's, it's not a good role, right? You don't want to do that, you want to be in the development phase. But the criticality of something going down in production and the impact on the business is far, far, uh uh difficult to, to relate to and connect with. So I've always had that mindset and I keep telling people as well that you need to, even as a technologist, you have to understand how the business works, whatever business you're in your company, if it's not in a client service set up, if you're in a product company, you need to understand how your company is making money and how, what you're doing impacts the the business eventually.

And if you look at it from the other side, so this is the technologies trying to understand the business. Uh Most of the business leaders now the CXO fleet are expected to know about digital and technology. They're all digital leaders now. So they are trying to understand and relate to technologies to all the the discussions and the trainings are to help them understand what it is. Cybersecurity is one such example. Uh I do a lot of work in developing cyber strategy. And one of the pieces there is to help the business leaders understand the impact of uh the hardcore technology aspect of cybersecurity, the products and solutions out there because there's a big implication to you as a business if you don't do it, right. So there's a little bit of learning on the business side where you can play a role in being able to translate it very easily in simple terms of why you are using the technology, what can it do as an impact to the business? And if you don't do it, what's the risk of not doing it? And that is what helped me bridge that gap in, in talking to the technology leaders as well as the business leaders with the same. Oh Lydia in your career, since you've moved from like Spain and now in us. And I know you've done work in Mexico, Canada uh uh Europe as well beforehand. As you think about working with diverse team. How did you engage and manage uh your relations with the team?

Yeah. So um I think in, in this global settings, right, when you have a, a global team. Um so basically, and this is based on both my experiences in studies uh abroad. Uh And, and also through work, as you are saying, vicia working in, in many European countries or in Mexico, Canada, us, et cetera. Uh the mindset, I, I always try to follow uh first of all, uh always staying curious. So I think that it's uh when you are in a multicultural team, uh it's really interesting and fun to, to work with uh um the, the different people and learn about their cultures and, and meet them. So that's, that's how I, I embrace these settings. And uh also I think that you can learn a lot about different ways of working as well as uh communicating. So I feel like personally, I uh working in, in different things has helped me improve the my communication skills and uh the clarity of my communication and, and also to value different perspectives and, and also different uh things in not only in work but also in life. Uh And I think uh also as part of embracing this, uh it, it really transforms how um you are viewing the world or, or your world and, and makes you more understanding and, and more empathetic of uh different people, different types of problems.

And that also gives you, gives you a tool to uh yeah, do do better work.

Yeah. And that's one of the premises for what I told earlier about connection and intelligence, right? So when you're working with different groups typically, and every time somebody asks me this question of how do you network? So I don't network, there is no concept of networking.

It and to me, it's a very, it gives a very negative connotation of network is OK. I have a question, I'll find somebody who, who got the answer and I get the answer. It's very transactional. You have to focus on building relations. And like you said, if you, if you understand, if you connect with people, that's how you build a relation. So it's been what 15 years for me almost in the career. And I'm still in touch with the um the friends I had when I did my first coding career and the mentor I had back then, the relations that you build and it's not just with clients in our setup, client relations is very important, but it's also with your prior colleagues, alumni, your teams today.

Because at the end of the day, if you want to progress in your career, it's this the strong strength of the relationship that helps you push forward sometimes. Uh I'm in a situation of, I don't know what I'm doing with my life and I go to talk to people to figure out uh and help me think through and analyze, OK, do this and don't do that and the strength uh even from you uh from your perspective as you are building the relation. Yes, you need some something from the other person. Uh whether it's a career advice or maybe some opportunities to work together. But it's also an ability to think about how can I help this person in what way? Uh And there are many ways and even if you are like uh lower in the ranks and you're connecting with somebody more senior, there's a lot of insight that you can share uh as a professional, as a career person to the person you're speaking with to try to find that emotional connect and meaningful engagement.

Don't limit it to holiday. Greetings is when I remember my connection, I sent them an email or when I need help, I ping them to try to find ways to become friends, uh, to find the coaches and advisor for life versus just thinking about it as a transactional activity. Anything you want to add Nadia?

No, I, I was actually curious about a point you, you raised earlier with about uh storytelling and I, I wanted to ask you about that on uh your story, on how to effectively become, become a storyteller as a technical professional. Because I guess that to your point now this, this also uh is really impactful for your relations.

Yeah. And uh, like I gave the example earlier of the first piece is to understand like the why behind whatever you're trying to tell me. And the second piece, it took me a while to get to that storytelling aspect. It's making it personal and genuine. So, yes, you need, uh you need to prepare yourself and figure out what you need to say. But connect with people engage and change your t or reading the room is what we call it, right? And particularly when in a consulting setup, when you're making a steer code recommendation and you, you can see hopefully when we go back to meeting in person, you can see and sense the room, right? The art of storytelling is to understand when to stop versus following a script of, I'll go from stage one to stage 2 to 3, stop on the fly. Figure out what needs to be done and find ways to engage the audience. Because the, the art of storytelling is uh one. If it's not simple enough, then they will, you lose the audience and doesn't matter if it's the CTO in the book, you have to keep it simple even if it's a technology story. So if, if a 10 year old child can, cannot understand what you're trying to say, there's something wrong with the story. Second is people should be, you're telling the story because you want them to listen. If they are not listening, you're not doing a good job.

So find ways to figure out like uh are they engaging with me? Are they listening? OK. What was the visual cues and getting? Maybe there was some confusion on point. A when I was speaking about this, do you address it in the session? Say, hey, I saw you were not very convinced about point A when we were discussing, let's talk about it and don't limit your storytelling to just that meeting that you have uh with the folks go prepared beforehand to understand how the person is thinking and afterwards connect to make sure the story has been heard and understood and absorbed.

So it's not just about the window when you're telling the story, it's the prep as well as the post telling the story. How do I engage and ensure the story is actively understood?

Perfect. Yeah. Well, when you were talking, uh I, I just remember about uh yeah, a recent project setting when, when we were working with a client and uh we were working with both the business side and, and the technology side and uh it was really the key to, to make uh uh the story very simple and showing the same problem uh that uh basically the technology people were seeing that it was a business problem, business problem.

We're seeing that it was a technology problem and, and then realizing and showing or uh telling the story very simply that it's the same problem seen from, from two different uh angles or it's, it's the same coin with, with uh two different side. I think that was critical for, for that simple and unclear storytelling.

Yeah, that's perfect. And I know we are pretty much on time now. So the folks will join if uh if you have any questions, we can take it now. Otherwise, uh feel free to get in touch with both of us. We are all both on linkedin and we'll be happy to engage further and connect with you on your storytelling journeys.