Interview with Suman Bose, MD & CEO, Siemens Industry Software India

I steal a glance at my watch and it shows 1:30 PM, 30 minutes more than the allotted time and the actual interview is yet to begin. Last 90 minutes have been spent in an animated conversation on the subject of internships where Mr. Bose discusses the issue threadbare, as if it were his own business problem, offering remarkable insights. Maybe that is what sets great business leaders apart – they love solving problems.

“To bring a culture of meaningful internships in India, you have to make it the CEOs’ problem – that is when it will get the attention it deserves and not be done as a CSR activity. Tell a CEO how much business he loses because he does not have the right person in the right place due to lack of internships in his organization and that is when the whole organization will start taking internships seriously.”, says Suman while recalling an example from his student life when Head of a large Global Multinational in India sat him down and gave a presentation on what makes his company a great business, only because he felt that one day Suman would make it to the top of an organization and that organization could well be a potential customer for his company.

But often big companies worry about the reliability of an online platform like Internshala, I ask wanting to make most of this free consulting session. “Think of how dating websites solved an exact same problem in a different setting“, pat comes the reply. I want the discussion to continue but it is time to go back to the actual interview.

So what kind of a student were you back in college, I ask. Were there any signs of leader to be?

The whole undergraduate journey at the University of Roorkee was a big intellectual discovery phase for me. I soon figured that I was not cut out to be an Engineer (he did graduate with 1st class though) and I was more interested in sociology, economics & took many courses in these subjects. I also got very interested in mainstream politics outside college (1989 was a tumultuous phase of Indian politics) but moved out of it once I realized that it was not my cup of tea.

I got converted from being an idealist to a realist. I accepted the fact that there are only a few things that I can manage or change. On the career front, I was still pretty clueless on what I wanted to do. But yes, on leadership front I was always very active in organizing various events and being part of different student bodies.

At XLRI (he worked for 4 years in-between), I went to learn Finance and ended up discovering my fascination for technology and became clear that this was the area I wanted to make my career in (his career since then has been in sales & marketing for technology firms).

Where did you do your internship(s) and what did you learn from it that you still remember?

In the 2nd year of my engineering, I interned at a power utility company. I learned two most valuable life lessons there –

1. The real world is all about grunt work. The proverb ‘Success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration‘ is 100% true.

2. I learned not to judge people by how they look at first. I had this sort of unimpressive, introvert Associate Plant Manager as my mentor and I did not think of him very highly. Until one day when we sat down after work and he opened up. I found out that he was a President’s Gold Medalist from IIT Delhi and had 6-7 patents against his name and was a seabed of knowledge in IT. That was a moment of realization.

At XLRI, I interned with Asian Paints in the new product launch team and it was a wonderful experience. Lots of hard work, travel, dealer interaction and a couple of presentations to the CEO – it was fun. Asian Paints as a company was a hot bed of innovation; despite being an FMCG company, they used to look at interesting ideas taking shape in completely unrelated fields, say Finance, and would analyze their applicability at Asian Paints. This internship taught me that every idea in the world, however crazy, has a place and merits a discussion.

Students in Core Engineering sector (Electrical, Mechanical etc.) often rue the lack of internship opportunities available to them compared to, say, in IT sector. What is your take on that? How is the internship culture at Siemens?

This is an interesting problem. Because on one hand, students feel that there are not enough opportunities available with core sector and on the other hand companies feel that students, especially from tier-1 campuses, do not stay with them for long as careers in engineering are not perceived to be as glamorous as in IT or Management sector. This makes it difficult for companies to invest in an internship program because the cost of training an intern in a heavy engineering company is quite high (given the machinery and set up costs) compared to that at a software company like Google. And if interns do not convert into full-time employees, it is difficult to justify the investment in training them. Plus the short duration of internships in India (2 months) makes it difficult to get a meaningful project done – the ideal duration should be 6 months.

Having said that, I believe in the concept of internships and I think the onus is on the industry to re-establish the connection with students and get them excited about a career in Engineering. At Siemens, globally we have very good internship programs in place but in India, we can do lot more in this direction. We are actively working on that.

 As a business leader, what traits do you look for in a young recruit while grooming him or her into managerial/leadership roles?

In the beginning of my career I used to place a lot of premium on talent/IQ, but over time I have learned that humility or adaptability is far more valuable than raw talent or intelligence. While tracking the career progressions of my colleagues & mentees, I often find what I call burnout points or inflection points beyond which a person’s professional growth plateaus out. Only about 20% of the people reinvent themselves at these points (say a programmer getting into a product management role) and jump on to the next level of career growth. This process of reinventing requires a lot of sacrifices, faith, and courage and there is no definite formula to identify such individuals early on.

Finally in your 17+ years of journey as a leader, are there any universal principles or traits that have stood the test of time and you would like to share with our young readers?

Firstly, mistakes can be your burden or your assets depending on how you look at them. Be candid about your mistakes, own them, and be prepared to cut your losses.

Secondly, deal with success and hurt with equanimity. Remember, this too shall pass.

Finally, have a value system and do not compromise with it.

As the conversation comes to an end, I step out of the corner office with Mr. Bose’s final note – Have a value system and do not compromise with it – still ringing in my ears. While there are multiple lessons to be learned from Mr. Bose’s journey to the top, but this one particular advice is something that I hope all of us remember and follow in our own lives.

Image credit: http://www.lpu.in/PressReleaseNew/News/c0c425c1-9919-4d28-a7b7-985884248a4d_8.jpg