All Change Please!

The Wipro Express has arrived at the terminus. Today, Friday 29th July is my last day. I had a very interesting and useful chat with a friend of mine in London recently. She asked me what I had learnt, both professionally and personally from my time at Wipro, and what did I want to get out of my time at EMC.

My overall conclusion as regards Wipro is that whilst I am happy to be leaving, I am convinced that it was the right decision to leave Accenture to join them. I am of the opinion that what I have learnt in my 14 months in Wipro is greater than what I would have learnt if I had stayed another eleventh year in Accenture. Some of the specific highlights that stand out are a training course on how to read financial statements of companies allowing you to understand what services might be of benefit to them; a deep exposure to the Indian subcontinent and culture which was absolutely fascinating; and the opportunity to discover what I really like at work i.e. I now understand that the ideal role for me really is that of client partner. I learnt to be more realistic in terms of being able to establish company-wide best practices, and I was also particularly impressed with some of the Wipro guys in the Credit Suisse PB account team. So, with all of these wonderful things, the obvious question to ask is why on earth did I opt to leave?

I think the answer is fairly straight forward. In addition to an extremely attractive offer from EMC, I think I was frustrated by five key things....

1. Whilst I was genuinely impressed with certain individuals in each department I worked in or had contact with (both client facing and support), the company asks people to do too much. As a result there is a widespread acceptance of sloppy mistakes both in interactions with clients and in internal back office operations e.g. poorly thought through proposal documents, consistency incorrect bonus calculations, mobile phones being cut off without warning etc. It's definitely quantity over quality.
2. The combination of frequently poor quality communication (from the highest levels all the way down to interactions between team members), and the sense of lurching from one crisis to the next rather than actually having something of a plan that has a longer time horizon than the end of the current quarter.
3. The fact that all strings were pulled in Bangalore meaning that we in the local markets closest to the clients were merely executioners of orders from India. This point basically ensured that we non-Indians in Europe would always remain “outsiders” in one way or another.
4. The overriding impression that the company is highly transactional in nature – very few people were either prepared or allowed to take a step back, see the bigger picture and take the time to invest in the (internal and external) relationships required to be successful in a different way. I don’t leave with the impression that Wipro is a people focused company.
5. I think the final nail in the Wipro coffin for me was when I recently realised that if I looked at the senior management of the firm (the levels above my direct boss), then they were not the type of leaders that inspired me, nor were they the type of leader that I want to become.

My overall conclusion is that I think the journey up the value chain for Wipro will be a long one, although I genuinely wish them the very best of luck, especially my team who are now under new leadership.