Being Women – the Balancing Act is a series of Candid discussions focussing on the Women of today, who beautifully juggles work and family.AIMAnalytics India Magazine: As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? What was your childhood dream?
NPNidhi Pratapneni: As a child, I think everyone’s influenced by what their parents say and do. My father was in the police service for many many years. So I had this vision of joining the police service, wearing a uniform. As the time to decide came closer and closer, my father sort of brought home the reality and frustrations he faced at work. And I said, “Well, OK, maybe we should look for something else.”
AIM: Who is the one woman who inspired you? Why?
NP: My mother has been an inspiration to me. As you asked this question, I thought of many powerful women I could name — maybe Indra Nooyi. But actually, it has been my mother all along. She has been a working woman. She had a double promotion in school, she went to Allahabad University and then to Roorkee. She was one of the first women studying Chemical Engineering there. She’s also someone who didn’t get into the IAS because she didn’t know where Fiji was! At least that’s why she thinks she didn’t get through. After she retired she reads all these old texts by Ibn Battuta and other travelers. She has constantly been learning, that’s what has really inspired me. Well if she’s been able to do that and she’s still doing it, there’s no reason for me to hold back in any way.
AIM: What defines you as a leader?
NP: I feel leadership has become a much maligned word. Everybody has their own style and I would say the style that defines me is the one where I believe in being very open and frank with people. I want to convey to them that I’m accessible for whatever it is they want to talk about. My principles are that I’m an enabler in making my organisation and my people successful. That summarises my mantra. When I’m not good at a particular thing, I need to build a strong team where I can leverage on their strengths and figure out what it is that complements mine. Creating an ecosystem where we all have our strengths, you have yours, you have certain passions, go pursue them because in the end the whole ecosystem will benefit. So it is not just the “My way or the highway”.
AIM: What are the challenges that you faced being a woman in tech?
NP: I’m not sure, I think one faces challenges and just goes through them. Perhaps if nothing stands out for me, there wasn’t a really huge challenge. Otherwise it has been a matter of pursuing and staying persistent. There are always setbacks .When you moved back from the US to India, you think that everyone will welcome you with open arms. But that wasn’t the case for me. That was a setback, figuring out now that I’m here and my classmates are doing great things… where do I find my foothold ? What do I do? So I think that was a challenge.
Because people asked me how many people did you lead in the US? But in US managers don’t lead more than 10 people. To come back and face these questions from headhunters was challenging. So looking back I don’t think that was a challenge but it was a tough period that I had to work through and then the normal ebbs and flows of raising the kids and building your career in parallel. The whole, I call it the GMS — the Guilty Mom Syndrome! PMS, GMS you know! It characterises women quite well.
AIM: How do your peers react to a woman leader?
NP: I feel that I’ve been very lucky. I’ve had people who have been very helpful very respectful. Part of it probably comes from the places you’ve been to, and they acknowledge that. If somebody has worked in XYZ places or been to certain institutions there must be something to her, which is a stereotype that has worked in my favor. It works against people in some situations. Having worked in MNCs all through, having been able to find certain people who’ve been there to guide me and to advise me. I can think that way so there are probably subliminal things that go on. There is society that we are in, part of it is an acceptance we as women can also go through.
If some woman from the US were to come in my place, perhaps she would feel that there are sub-texts within the ecosystem that I don’t feel, because I grew up in this world. But otherwise I found a lot of acceptance. I do feel that where women would want to project themselves in forums like you offer as a magazine. In other forums that women won’t step forward and take those opportunities and to some extent they are not even invited as much as they should be. I was just thinking maybe we should do some statistics on how many panel discussions happen and how many women panelists are on there ? and I’ve been to a forum organised by NASSCOM in Hyderabad which was only for women. And sometimes you ask yourself the question why should it be an only women’s only forum ?
When what you are talking about is Big data. Now what is it about big data that makes it a women-only forum ? But people then feel that a lot more women do participate at those events. Even though there’s nothing that is going to be discussed that is pertaining to gender. So maybe some of those are needed. Maybe there is an explicit need to also project women in those panel discussions as presenting a different perspective , to say that there are women who have a seat at the table and at those in the audience find that very normal and think of themselves in being those roles.
AIM: Equal pay for equal work, where does the tech industry stand on this?
NP: I think there are two aspects, there is a tech industry that is a lot of MNCs, those who are more forward-thinking and who feel that there is a definite commitment towards gender issues. And then there are many other smaller shops where there is scope for discrimination. There isn’t much vigilance to ensure what is happening. When I talk about MNCs and that kind of environment. There is definitely a commitment to give that equal pay for equal work it doesn’t always happen and there are many nuances as to why its not happening.
Part of it is , that women also will not negotiate that much, and this is something that I personally learnt later in my career. That it’s OK to have those discussions around compensation when you are being made an offer. I feel it is still harder even now to do that negotiation while I’m in a role because I’m in it. Whatever I need to work through and the system should give me what I deserve. But at the point at which you are being made an offer and you need to negotiate, many women will not do that. There is a sense that “my husband is the primary earner and whatever I’m getting is over and above that, why fight for it”?
When we are OK mostly, so it needs to be driven from both dimensions. I think women should be more empowered to ask and organisations need to develop systems where they are tracking it, analysing it. Whether people in the same role are getting the same or not. If they are not it’s still OK I mean..one can’t even push through and say equal work-equal pay when the woman might not be as good as a performer as the man right. So all of this needs to be done but not at the cost of making excuses to somebody’s performance, it has to be merit based I feel.
AIM: What are the issues women face when coming back from maternity ?
NP: That’s a big one, I’m almost 13 years past that time, but I think it is very very relevant. It’s not something I went through over here; my personal experiences are from the US. For a woman who wants to work, one she has to overcome that guilty mom syndrome and how do you overcome it ? You need the support of your workplace that you’ve been part of and you need support from your social ecosystem, your families and friends. Your family should be supportive that this is something that you need to be doing. You don’t want the guilt to be multiplied two or three times when you decide you want to get back. Your husband has to be quite supportive as well and you know as far as the organisation is concerned is what role do you come back in? What are you comfortable with?
There are policies that do get made, at the same time there has to be a very individual conversation on what’s right for this particular person. There are discussions one is part of to say that OK. This person’s raise is scaled down because she was on maternity leave for some time. In those conversations one needs to actively educate people to say, during that period the person is an earning team member and to what extent to scale down the raise whether you do that or not becomes something where you need to drill that education into both male and female managers. That becomes a challenge, so there are lot of dynamics at play. It’ll be a while before we get it perfect. I think there are some women who have had a great experience coming back from maternity. And possibly in organisations it is to showcase those women and those learnings for others to make it a great transition back to the workplace.
AIM: Work or family — what is important in the eyes of the society today?
NP: For both men and women, working or otherwise, the priority has become work as well as family. It’s just that society becomes a little more preachy when it comes to women. People will appreciate women who achieve things, who win acclaim. When it’s your friend’s daughter who is featured in a newspaper, the father may go, “Oh look she’s in the newspaper and she’s done all this great stuff”. But when it comes to his own daughter or daughter-in-law it might be, “Well you just had a child.
You need to give the child four or five years”. I don’t think people realise that people are being hypocritical; so how do you educate them? It will be a while because you need the support of the same people who seem to be pulling you back. So it’s a tough dynamic. Women need to realise that perhaps they can’t be perfect at both. You can’t give your 100% to both. “Do you do a 50-50 or do you do a 70-30 at one time and then switch it around to 30-70 at another time?” Those are ways that one needs to decide for one self. So its each person has to chart their own course and what works for them.
AIM: How did you balance family and work?
NP: It’s been great to have my husband, who was in the business school with me. He understands a lot of the challenges that people face in organisations. And sometimes he’s able to add his own perspective, of how I am navigating or not standing up and saying no to certain things. It’s been a great partnership. Even on the work aspect I get a lot of advice on that front and on the family side it’s been either my in-laws, who have been with me for quite some time or my parents who have been always been there when I was in Gurgaon. They were there to step in whenever I needed it. So leveraging the family support system has worked very well.
AIM: An instance or experience which motivated you to push the barriers
NP: I’m not sure which barriers but there was an instance which was a turning point for me. This was when I was working in India, I had moved back. I was doing the work of three people. I was managing a team of 20 people — two of the other leaders had moved out so I was managing Asia and Europe and also the role of the person who was supposed to supervise both of those, because he had moved to an external role. So I killed myself doing it. Enjoyed it a lot and I felt that people should be taking notice that I’m doing this. I am doing the work of three people and managing things, addressing any fires that come up without much of an issue. And when it came to the next stage of saying OK then what do I get for it? It was pretty much nothing.
Because somebody else was being brought into lead the team and this certain person was a professor who had managed teams at all. So I’m like here I am who’s been through this business all through and now you want someone else to come lead the team. Where does that leave me? So kudos to the person who did come in though, because after I finished my transition I sat him down and said, “Look I’ve told you about all the team members now you need to listen to my story.” And then I shared with him my struggles, my frustrations and he was very very supportive and he said you know thank you for letting me know and I will figure out why things didn’t work out and get back to you.
He became my partner and actually coached me and told me, “Look here are the three things that I’ve heard…” And in the end I was the one who took the leadership to say, “OK…they want to see ABC things here’s what I am going to do.” Because nobody was telling me what to do and then you realise that there are seniors and leaders out there and yes while they are great in their own roles, but often times they are so busy they have no clue. It’s great for you to take your destiny in your own hands and say “OK…here are the seven things that you agree with them or not”. Once you have the agreement in support then you can really chart your course and say that OK after three months I have done all of this, now do you have any hesitation?
And so I was able to move on to next level. So I feel that was an instance where I pushed the barriers. I had conversations which were very tough. It was tough for me to hear the feedback as well and tough for me to make to have conversations where I put myself ahead of everyone else. But it did work out and it was a huge positive and I think that’s one of the advice I gave to many people that I mentor or speak to. You build the things that you want to do and that’s because that’s where your passions will lie.
AIM: What is your support system?
NP: My family…my parents, my in-laws my husband. My children now that they are much older, are able to take care of a lot of things themselves. But I think on the professional front a huge support system has been a lot of the people I worked with and my peers and seniors over the years. So while this is not something one is proud of, I have worked in several different companies and in each company you find people who you respect and it’s great that one is able to reach out to them to advice later on. So for example when I was in Dunnhumby, there were a lot of youngsters in my team and now they are in senior positions and I look to reaching out to them to either get advice or if there are people who worked with them, for talent and hiring and bouncing those questions off of them.
In Dell there were several others of that nature. The one person who many many people in Bengaluru know is Pankaj Rai and coming across him and just understanding the way he just advises people, gets them to think of larger scheme of things was very beneficial to me. I think that carried through and then you find that as you do this you build your network. As youngsters you’re told that networking is a bad thing, this guy is networking and oh he’s doing something he shouldn’t do. But when you build it gradually as a natural course then you realise that network does play a role. For example in Dell – this manager came up to me and said I’m looking for somebody to head my social media team and would you want to do that ? And I was working with Pankaj at that time and I said that I have no social media experience if I were apply to a job nobody would give me this job. Here is someone who is willing to take me on because of what they’ve seen me do and so I said let me just jump at it, otherwise it’s not an opportunity that’s going to come to me again. So that was a byproduct that network and support system that I have built.
AIM: What do corporates lack while implementing gender diversity ?
NP: I think many corporates have started moving ahead beyond the numbers. Some might still be in a position where it’s merely looking at number of women in organisation. So you should be achieving those numbers but with an insistence that you are not compromising on quality. Then when you go beyond that, it is how inclusive are you making your workforce. When you are driving gender diversity programmes, who is taking the lead on those and who is part of that conversation? If men are not a part of that conversation, then we are really doing a great disservice and then we are not moving that conversation as fast as it could progress. I think it’s the responsibility of the women as well to also educate their peers. If it is a senior woman leader who is talking about her experiences and her challenges, if the male manager isn’t there, who will benefit from it?
AIM: Saree or suit ? What empowers you more in the boardroom?
NP: I’ve started wearing sarees to office very recently — only in the last 3-4 years. I am comfortable in them, but at the same time, if I need to dress for an event I think wearing a saree would distract from the conversation? Because, if there are people who are not used to seeing me in a saree. I would want my message to go across rather than people thinking, why is she wearing a saree today. I’ve been comfortable in suits. They will not raise that many eyebrows but for a woman who’s used to wearing sarees all the time if she suddenly shows up in a suit, it will be a different thing.
AIM: Your advice to other women in tech ?
NP: I would say women in tech is a phrase that shouldn’t put you off, don’t feel inhibited by it. Because tech is increasingly becoming a space that is valuing the arts as well. It’s great that we have reached this stage so I would say this message is not for women in tech, it’s for women in any discipline which will find a role in analytics, because when you talk about business decisions, business decisions impact the factors that play into how a consumer thinks, how a consumer behaves. Many of these are aspects of sociology of behavioral sciences as well.
The second piece I’d like to say is that learning is constant. My generation grew up at a time when studying ABCD things start working and that’s a new chapter. We constantly have to tell ourselves that we need to learn and keep ourselves up-to-date on what’s happening in terms of cutting-edge trends and technology. So I would like to encourage women to have that mindset that learning is constant. There was a recent statistic shared by Coursera, that of the people who take their courses, the percentage of women taking them is much lower than the percentage of men. So that is a dynamic where I think when women move into a phase where they have to juggle that work, family and everything. The ability to take time out to invest in yourself, to invest in learning then women tend to hesitate or tend to say that how do I make it happen and they really aren’t able to jump in.
They can’t do the things they want to do , that might be even required from their workplace. So I would say one figure out how to do that learning if there is a way within your organisations to do it in a more structured way, where it’s part of your work and its required of you perhaps you might be forced to do it. You might go ahead and do it but, that’s something that is paramount in age, to keep adding to your skillset, to figure out which best way you can find to be able to do that.
AIM: Your advice to corporates on how to retain women employees
NP: A lot of attrition takes place when women need to focus on their family. Either when their children are very young or during the phase where they are in school, where they need more help. It’s a matter of encouraging those one-on-one discussions with women. I’m not sure that it is happening; and if there can be concerted efforts around doing that. Identify those who are in the fragile phase, and have specific conversations that say that “This is why we are having a conversation. What is it that will make you more comfortable in terms of being able to balance work and other priorities that you may have and can we structure something for you?” It’s harder to do in certain startups. In environments it might not make sense but in many other companies there is a greater willingness to do it. But how you make that connect to realise it for your women employees is a bit of a question mark and I would encourage those one-on-one conversations than customising things for women.
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