Episode 44 - Technology Transformations with Sri Koneru

State of the CIO

Sri Koneru is the Global Technology leader with Worldwide Operations experience in Fortune 100 companies His industry and functional expertise includes retail, energy, and utilities, manufacturing, and technology. He is a motivated and customer-centric senior technology leader and business strategist with a track record of transforming organizations to deliver sustainable results and propel digital innovation. I champion cutting-edge technologies that increase customer engagement, grow the business, expand operational capabilities, improve efficiency and reduce costs.

Show Notes:

• [01:08] Sri shares his career journey. He got an engineering degree and he knew he wanted to learn as much as he could.
• [02:20] It is all about people and relationships. Work gets down through relationships.
• [03:18] He was good in math and logic growing up so naturally, he leaned towards technology so that really paved his path into technology.
• [04:13] Technology is a part of every business model. You have to have some technical knowledge.
• [05:10] You can never go wrong looking at how you can transform your customer experiences.
• [05:51] At the end of the day, the customer is king.
• [06:13] The other thing you can never go wrong with in your transformation efforts is employee experience. Enhancing the employee experience and helps them provide a better customer experience.
• [07:45] Understanding what are customer friction points and pain points are and doing that in the context of customer journey mapping.
• [08:35] You have to do step zero before you get to step four. Sometimes in the digital transformation world, we try to go to step four first.
• [10:06] When you are talking about customer journey mapping sometimes you have to unlearn what you have learned over the last 20 years and outsiders can enable you to do that.
• [11:34] As an IT leader you want to know the details of the business process and business capabilities. IT leaders have to be business leaders first.
• [12:41] Sri shares about Winnebago Industries and who they are. They are known for continuous innovation, quality, and service.
• [14:32] The pandemic has taught us to get more in touch with our soul and our purpose. We are all recognizing as humans that there is a lot more to do than work.
• [17:29] Sri shares his advice for himself at the beginning of his career. Never lose the curiosity to learn. Have the curiosity to learn about the business you are in. Curiosity should not have an expiration date.
• [19:00] Have the passion, have the curiosity, but also know that you don’t have to put a timeline to that progression.
• [20:18] Sri shares his best worst boss story.
• [21:07] The best bosses give your honest, timely, and open feedback, but they also have your back.
• [22:29] Having a support system was crucial to him during his worst boss story.
• [24:12] It is not competition anymore, it is cooperation. We can provide more value and faster value if we can create those partnerships across ecosystems.

Links and Resources:

• State of the CIO Podcast Website
• State of the CIO Podcast on Apple Podcasts
• Dan on LinkedIn
• Sri on LinkedIn
• Minnesota Technology Association