Women who lead Technology and Transformation

There is a?question on the minds of most women professionals - 'will being a mother hamper my career'???

Asha took two 18 months' breaks without blinking an eyelid. And her successful career breaks the notion around the above question.??

In the ClariTea Chat with Asha Poulose Johnson, VP and Global CIO Data Analytics at GE Healthcare, we found fun yet invigorating insights on her transformational leadership roles in GE.????

Her philosophy elucidated how she applied her research and data-driven passion to business solutions.????

???Focus on solving problems by leveraging data and technology.??

???Here are 3 ideas worth sharing:

?She is a mother of two teenage girls and has a thriving career.?What did she do to balance motherhood with her career? Asha shared some significant learnings from her life:?

• Mindset: - Our career is a part of our life, not the other way round. Motherhood or parenthood is a big part of everybody’s life, whoever chooses to be a parent. Need to give it the full time and attention.
• Learn and Evolve: - You can't plan everything and figure out how much time to dedicate to motherhood and to your career. It is how you blend both instead of balancing them. Try to focus on what's more important at any point in time.???
• Creating Ecosystem: - Not only at home but also at the office. Have a mentor who can guide you to pace your career.????

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Early days, at GE Research, Asha remembered the struggle with digitizing the inspection form of GE power. She shared what is required while building a product.???

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• Identify your user: - You need to know your end users and the amount of technology they can consume, before building your product.??
• Efficient Process and User Experience: - Processes drive the business outcome.?Use technology to make them more efficient.?

Focus on intuitive user experience and do not make it daunting for people.???

??Moving further, Asha shared her Global leadership endeavor in process development for the aviation sector. She did reverse thinking as “outcomes first & technology later.” Here are her best three learnings:??

• Business first - Keep business first. Understand how businesses make revenue and build solutions accordingly to support that.???
• Lead beyond technology - Build cross-country, business-enhancing support teams. Focus on the end-user. Optimize processes with or without technology.??
• Modernize legacy - Innovate processes for better outcomes. Succeed and scale up. Enhance capabilities globally to speed up the business.????

Business outcomes come out of business processes.???

Asha came out of her comfort zone & went out of IT. Speaking about her leadership role at Six Sigma in GE, she shared three amazing learnings. And an exciting story about solving one of the problems of Air India.???

• Leave your comfort zone: - Take a break from work if it turns monotonous, and go after new opportunities.??
• Understand the organization: - Connect at a deeper level. Use Lean Sigma for process improvisation and coaching teams. Address inefficiencies.???
• Leverage the business strategy: - understand markets, customers, their sensitivities. Make an impact and increase your visibility. Sell solutions, not products.

Someone from the audience asked - 'what takes priority in a volatile risk environment: process or security?'? Asha gave three approaches in response:? ?

• Security is part of the process: - Make policies and regulations a part of the process.???
• Create a balance: - Cruise between risk-taking ability and your appetite for business risk-reward equation.??
• Follow the basics: - Follow the fundamentals and choose what’s right.???

Going over another audience’s query to know 'how the CIO role has changed during the past decade', Asha delved into three prominent aspects:?

• Evolution of IT: - From cost function to equal part of cost and growth and revenue function.??
• Strategic player: - Drives productive and constructive benefits through a continuum of innovations and transformations.???
• Duality of the role: - With an inherent appetite for risk and growth, CIOs manage internal and external customers for reliability and desired outcomes.???

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Approach businesspeople with conviction and without hesitation. Sometimes outcomes may be much bigger than the cost involved. Listen to how coming out of her comfort zone made a difference.????

The correct analysis of available data is always an advantage. Asha shared two crucial factors to identify small data to big data for various analysis models:

• Identify the problem: - Ask- ‘what business problem you have to solve?’???
• Data Selection: - Problem that you are trying to solve will dictate what data you need to use to solve the problem.???

Asha reflected upon her past CIO roles for the steam segment of GE Power, and how she generated the leads from the companies facing the emission problem. She?shared three wisdom nuggets with other aspiring professionals:???

• Find out opportunities: - Accept challenges. Collect data and use a customer database to identify the prospects.??
• Leverage Govt regulations: - ?

1. Identify and localize vulnerable customers. ?
2. Sensitize them about their obligations.?
3. Demonstrate success.?
4. Build trust.?
5. Generate business.???

• Use your competitive edge: - Bring in technology. Innovate, and create native solutions to empower your clients and generate business revenue.

Asha shared an interesting example where she used satellite data of pollution levels to identify the power plants requiring GE Technology. Listen about this interesting case study here.????

Get right what data is vital and in what way it is essential.?And then model it accordingly.?????

Moving forward, Asha talked about?disruption and managing transition at GE Digital.? She shared the three most relevant aspects in this regard:?

• How to do effective transition: - When companies transform, keep the employees in the center of the whole spectrum.?
• Look beyond your earlier responsibility: - Find your new goals and look beyond with a fresh perspective.??
• Become a people leader: - Find solutions collectively with your teams.???

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Let's move onto the current role of Asha. 'As VP and Global CIO of Data Analytics with GE Healthcare, how is she helping the business use data at all levels - strategy, planning and operations?'

• Right strategy first: - Strategy building to meet customer expectations for scale and speed.??

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• Global perspective: - Learn from the network. Partner with peer CIOs. Drive data usage globally to enhance customer experience.??
• Managing data: - As an asset; catalogue and democratize data within the limits of regional regulations.???

To conclude, it was an impactful session about thinking big and coming out of comfort zones. Leveraging data to solve business problems and manage the transformations. Most importantly, how to be the best professional as well as the best mother - pacing things as per your priorities and comfort.??

Have you faced difficulty in shaping your career, balancing your personal priorities? Do share with us how you overcame it.??

Here's the video of the ClariTea Chat between Jagdish and Asha.??

???Here is the link to the complete ClariTea Chat episode.

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