Another paid PR release pretending to be media coverage. This time one full page of coverage in economic times (Rs 5 crores I believe). The front page article is announcement of a succession plan. The last page has an interview and announcement of an organisational rejig.
The Emperor is changing his clothes is the summary of the org rejig. But the Emperor is naked below his clothes. And now the emperor has a skin lesion – it is a symptom of a cancer that is fast metastasising. To hide i,t a band aid is being applied. But how will that stop the spread of cancer
Hard times need hard decisions. Not PR. If a pigeon shuts its eyes, the cat will not go away.
The concept of an organisational rejig is an old trick to keep everyone busy. Head hunters find it hard to deal with the endless files of IT leaders wanting to shift to ai companies. Unfortunately an AI company looks for PhDs, not sales or admin people masquerading as tech. A waiters performance cannot be independent of that of the cook. If the food is bad or there is no cook at all – there may be no role left for the waiter other than to placate customers walking out. Bringing in more customers will not help. Or marketing with focus will not help. In fact it is not about marketing at all.
And you don’t become an ai company by marketing better. In fact you don’t even try becoming an ai company – because you niether have the capital nor the people. Nor the ability to get the capital or the people. By playing musical chairs, the chairs won’t ring in the cash – irrespective of who occupies them.
Take cybersecurity as an example. The real issue is that you need to vacate the external business and make it integral to all your business. You can’t be providing a usd 1 million cybersecurity service to a 100m client. There is no sure way to prevent a cyber attack on a client. A cyber attack caused by a cybersecurity failure will jeopardise the 100m. Cross selling doesn’t always make sense. Vacating the business is important. Yet cybersecurity has to be integral to everything. Internal first. Apple new iphone development data was stolen from Tata Electronics and put up on the dark web. Just one marquee demonstration of TCS cybersecurity capability (or lack of it)
The matrix structures work for Big4 and for the big consulting majors. They are not relevant to the ai companies. No ai company is structured by geography, technology and industry. These are structures which were relevant in 1990. Now geography is history. You can’t structure by industry when you have niether industry specific products not industry domain experts is just English. Not strategy.
Finally a technology company is about technology. And that need technologists. They usually carry a PhD tag.
Where are the PhDs ??
Ai cos are not run by sales people, admin experts or MBAs. They went out of business a long time ago. Would Aarti Subramaniam get a job in a ai company – at any level.