Himanshu’s Honest Hour

Disruptive at the core. Fueled by passionate people. Built for the community. 

When I started as Visible’s Chief Technology Officer well over a year ago, I knew I was in for an exciting journey. Knowing Visible fell under the Verizon umbrella, I was enthralled by the startup mentality within a larger company culture. I had an instinctual, yet hopeful, feeling that I could apply my years of technology expertise from working with the likes of Microsoft, Amazon and others, to create something unique within telecom. Visible was creating a new wireless model that would disrupt an industry that’s been relatively unchanged for over 100 years, and I wanted to be part of that movement. Especially because it meant joining a team of passionate people that were driven by positively impacting the community. 

One year in, I can firmly say that the team at Visible is unlike any other. Everyday, our people show up for one another and for the community, and I am tremendously grateful for this. Heart, gratitude, grace, work ethic; These are qualities that, as a leader, you cannot teach, but you hope for. At Visible, our people drive us, and I’d like to do my part in recognizing them. 

Today, I’m thrilled to launch what we are calling Himanshu’s #HonestHour. Through this social series, I aim to spotlight the faces, hearts, and minds behind #TeamVisible -- those working day in, and day out, to create change by building a better wireless service. Visible is a company committed to our communities, and this starts with our people. I truly believe that everyone has their story to tell, and that each #TeamVisible member contributes to the greater good of the company; we’re all one piece of the puzzle. And everyone’s experiences will advance us all.

As part of this series, each month, I will spotlight a #TeamVisible member by asking the same three questions: What did you know you’d find at Visible? What did you find that was unexpected? And lastly, but most importantly, what have you learned? 

In doing so, I hope to not only highlight and celebrate our hardworking employees, but to share insightful excerpts that may inspire leaders of other small, digital tech companies. I also hope to shed a light on the community-minded culture the brand has cultivated. 

To kick off the series, I reflected on these three questions myself. I’ve shared my take, below. I hope you enjoy my insights and I look forward to sharing more from many colleagues across the organization! 

What did you know you’d find at Visible? 

When I joined Visible, I knew the company was a startup within the larger Verizon organization. I also knew that Visible was attempting to break the telecom status quo and really focus on being a startup as an all digital company. Given that understanding, I thought I'd find a general type of “chaos” attributed to startups. I also thought I'd find that the larger Verizon company would provide a decoupled way of managing the business and related product feature builds and launches, giving autonomy. Last but not least, I knew I would find a solid engineering culture and developing technologist skill sets which are crucial for this kind of role.

What did you find that was unexpected? 

While the “chaos” was expected -- and welcomed, as I enjoy the brainstorming and fast pace that comes with start-up life -- for me, the ways of working were a bit unexpected. Our parent company is a Fortune 15 company, which means that we have access to some of the best resources and talent in the world. It also means that we have additional stakeholders to work with in terms of strategy development and planning. We have a strong engineering culture at Visible and we’ve fine-tuned our ways of working to create a really positive hybrid culture with the wider Verizon engineering team.

What have you learned?

The job of transforming a telecommunication industry through a brand like Visible does contain some challenges. Specifically the current operating model and gaining alignment across various stakeholders within Visible and within the Verizon GTS structures. We have been able, however, to leverage some frameworks - like one I developed when I was at Amazon - which I later iterated over the last seven plus years of increasing leadership positions. These frameworks helped bring our execution up to speed, further bolstered our team's skills and our engineering values as well as simultaneously improving our platform. At the same time, I also learned that the challenges experienced here at Visible were much more complex than you would find in a typical start up with limited resources.

Himanshu’s #HonestHour #Telecommunications #Innovation #TeamVisible