Why IT professionalism matters to BCS CEO Rashik Parmar
hello there and welcome to CIO UK leadership live I'm Doug drinkwater the editor of CI UK and for this session I'm joined by rishik Palmer who's the chief executive officer at BTS The chartered Institute of I.T rishik thanks for joining me this afternoon glad to be here fantastic so if you've had a long and illustrious career over four decades I believe working at IBM most recently is VP of Technology also a visiting professor at Imperial College and obviously advising clients for your time at Big Blue on everything from cloud computing to digital transformation where I'd like to go today in our conversation I'd like to speak a bit about your career in I.T the new role at BTS I believe you start on the first of October we really diving into the role of BCS within the industry and if time allows we'll look a bit on Tech for social good and the importance of diverse workforces which I know is something close to your heart but also close to what BTS is trying to do with some a bit of research and as always with the CIO UK leadership live we'll try and ask some questions at the end to find out who the real sheep farmer is towards the end and I think we've got some nice uh slightly Off the Wall questions uh to keep it nice and Light first of all I've given you a very small part of history of what you've achieved in your career but just talk us for a bit around your career so far um and did you foresee a question I always like actually is did you foresee being here did you have a North star this is where you wanted to go or did your career unfold in a different way I suspect it may be a bit of both um so really I never expected to be in this role today um in fact um getting to be an IBM fellow and IBM distinction engineer if you'd have asked me at the start of the career would I would I make that I said absolutely not and um you know it I think what I've tried to do throughout my career is a very simple thing which is try to be the best I can be at this moment see what opens up as opportunities and pick the one that looks most interesting and aligned to what I'm trying to do so so that's been the the kind of um Mantra if you like I've been I've been working towards and my early career I was I joined IBM at the Heyday just before the PC was launched which was phenomenal and actually going through that whole excitement of launching the PC getting in everybody's houses and that was amazing and then going through the absolute low time of IBM when uh you know there was a huge amount of layoffs it was a really difficult period and then the recovery and and so on so so over the over the time at IBM I've got I've been blessed by having a great set of experiences and I've always tried to balance my my role in deep technology try and pick technology areas and and stay close to those right so PC to start with networking large systems um and a lot of it around systems management and then Technologies and disciplines and so on and then in the in the later half getting into cloud cloud computing some of the AI work as well so I've tried to have a good spread and as I left IBM in July last year and I referred it was transition because I said I was going to transition I don't he ever stopped working I think it was transitioned into something else so in theory I retired from IBM and this BCS opportunity kind of unfolded in ways that I didn't expect and and so here I am and and I think it's a fabulous opportunity for us and I'm really excited about what we can do with the BCS yeah fantastic so just from the BCS role in particular I know you've got some objectives that you're looking to achieve this talk goes through those in terms of and where you want to get to I guess where's the where's the kind of north star that you're aiming towards yeah and so you know with the BCS um professionalism is really really important in the industry and and I always refer to the industry as as relatively uh immature okay and and why do I say that so it has been around for 70 years and we've transformed life in ways that you wouldn't imagine but we're still at this infancy if I look at the OPEC report that's published uh last year it said 46 of jobs as we know them and will be significantly transformed through digitization in the next uh in the next uh 10 years and and my own calculation says that's about three-quarter trillion dollars will shift because of that digitization and so we've got to Steward that digitization in a in an appropriate way right at the same time there are significant crisis that mankind faces sustainability is one of those um pandemic is another one obviously and and those those kind of Crisis those you know societal issues demand that technology is applied in a meaningful way to the into society and and so I think BCS has an important role to play and help Steward the professional to make good use of that technology and and that's why the BCS has a big linkage with the responsible Computing I I need responsible Computing when I was at IBM and and so the BCS is one of the founding members and so we think about how do we how do we make that happen and the third aspect is you know as you think about what it means to be a professional professionals that we rely on need to have competence in a way which makes sure that they can achieve the outcomes that they're committing to they need to be accountable so they need to be accountable for small results because some of the technology we build now can actually seriously hurt people to the point where you know people can dive the technology is built not built in the right way so they need to be accountable for that we need our I.T professionals to be ethical and fundamentally they need to be much more inclusive because if we
build Technologies and we build Technologies using a homogeneous mail team they won't understand many of the topics and issues that others faced and if we want the technology to be good for mankind then mankind needs to be representing those projects and that's why I'm so passionate about the whole inclusiveness agenda and so from a BCS perspective we're looking at a range of initiatives to unlock the potential of the 66 000 members increase their competence increase their accountability through our range of mechanisms help them become much more ethical by giving them the kind of ethical guidelines and structures and best practices and then using our kind of convening power to be able to create a much more inclusive Works officer right from Age 2 to 18 so we pry that whole school's curriculum to accreditation universities right through to ensuring that in the workforce we're much more inclusive yeah absolutely so I mean I guess you'd argue then that the role of BTS and Industry is if anything it's it's never been more important given the fact that tech for social good and and to your point around some of the newer Technologies being introduced have a massive impact on humanity and actually this the planet as a whole I know you're doing some work on sustainability at the moment I guess what do you say to that BSS has a more a bigger you know role really within the industry as a whole to to drive some of these initiatives absolutely and you know when you look at ID professionals um they're all looking for the best practices they're looking for you know learning they're working for mentorship they're looking for career development structure looking for for guidance because there's a plethora of stuff out there but he's bewildering you don't know where to start you don't know what's real what's not real so by curating some of that CPD content we can help our professionals get better um by providing mentorship from your accredited professionals by having people who are chartered I.T professionals by having fellows meant to you you know you're getting advice from the best and they care about you and your future and you're not tied to whatever your employer says or you know what your mate says or whatever you've got some really clear support in helping you progress and be the best you can be I think that's needed now more than ever you know there's 2.9 Million so 1.9 million I.T Professionals in the UK and and of those I wonder how many of them think about their career in this kind of way or are they just doing what what's almost referred to as working from paycheck to paycheck right what I'd like is help people to go from paycheck to paycheck to working from Project to project and ultimately to work from Adventure to Adventure because Computing can help you create tremendous capability and those Adventures can transform people's lives and and really make things which are absolutely phenomenal if you look at the uh the work that we did just for example with coding black females they they identified as 20 000 black women missing from the workforce yeah because they haven't had the opportunity they've not had the support they don't see somebody like them in the I.T profession and so the role that the BCS has to play is to make those Role Models very evident and Inspire those young girls to go and follow those kind of computing careers yeah and so actually there's a great report that with with CBF and it's something that we've spoken to a dozen black women in technology since and that mentorship is absolutely invaluable especially if you have any Ambitions of moving into more senior which I think was one of the findings of the report that actually a lot of black women in technology are failing to to make that to make that move I'll come on to a bit on diversity in a minute though but I do want to just go back to your point around stewardship and uh also accreditation right because I think we you mentioned the layoffs at IBM a while ago we're seeing obviously that mass scale at the moment in Silicon Valley um it's interesting wasn't it because you can argue that certification is important accreditation is important but at the same time to your point about diversity actually as an industry there's an argument for have you got the right aptitude have you got the right kind of um ability to be work part of a team because the tech skills can kind of be be taught so what's your view on that because I guess in some cases you do need accreditation you do need formal qualifications but in some other cases actually you can cross-train or you can upscale in into this industry so yeah so look I I always think of a professional as having three core capabilities they have the technology expertise around a set of Technology segments that are relevant and current and important for your employer they need to have a technique set of expertise so how I do devops how do um you know security analytics how do I do performance engineering how do I do you know systems uh Assurance or how do I do performance engineering testing stuff so it's a set of disciplines or techniques that they need to know but they have to work as part of a team so they need to have those pure communication skills leadership skills written skills um negotiating skills right and if you don't have those then you can sit in a corner on your own but you ain't going to be part of a team and and there's very few projects now which is just a one-person project most projects require a team and so you need those skills and so when you look at the certifications that we have we recognize that so we think about you know a chartered I.T professional needs to have the
technical skills they also need to have a deep set of technique skills they also need to have those personal skills so when you're a chartered ID professional that should stand for something and it does stand for something in Industry if you become a fellow of the BCS you know that's that's something that's prestigious and you you should be proud of the fact that you've got there and and yeah I see that on LinkedIn every day these days you know that people just made fellow and they're they're celebrating that they've got to follow on how that's going to help them unlock their career it basically means that once you've got that Fellowship your CV goes above somebody else's on the interest for that that recruiter right you're getting into a point where you can you know your values is is a little bit higher and your chances success a little bit more and and at the moment as you say when the marketplace is so tough and you've got so many layoffs if you're not relevant you're not stage relevant because you followed your citp or your your fpcs right you're more likely not to to stay in employment right so I would argue that the the the mentoring the CPD helps people become more relevant stay current and be more valuable in the marketplace yeah absolutely just under in terms of recruitment processes at the moment I mean what's your take on what given the the mass layouts we're seeing what what can organizations do to actually improve the quality of people that they're that they're attracting but also to that point around diversity you know making sure I think that the black women in Tech was a good example of I think there's 0.7 of um the population working in Black uh women work in technology compared to I think 1.8 of the population has a higher than 3.2 percent black people in the I.T industry so I guess the question is how does as in recruitment how do we level it up a little bit to make sure that this is a career um for anyone who chose to desire and has the interest and hopefully some ability to go with that so Doug you know starts really a simple level which is when you're producing your uh job application job adverts have you thought about the language they're using so that attracts the right people right all too often I read these adverts I think there's only going to be match up for males applying for these because of the language you've used right so it starts very simply let's get the language in a way which makes it inclusive and then um you know within IBM we were doing Blind uh interviews a supply and severe analysis right so when you look at the CVS often there's about everybody has this bias you look at the name and you you instantly review the CV based on that name so we take the names off you just read the content right and that again gives you a letter level of inclusiveness which makes a huge difference and then it comes back to how are you projecting yourself in the marketplace um think about how you're kind of adverts go out there with pictures of individuals are those pictures the right pictures are they are you representing yourself as inclusive um and then when it comes to presenting role models and and showcasing your capabilities are you showcasing the right kind of Role Models right are you are you are you making yourself look like an attacker base people will go people have huge Choice out there although we've got lots of layoffs the marketplace is still very buoyant right it's still an employer's market so employees market and um you can choose your place to go and work and as as you think about where to work people are choosing based on things like how inclusive the space what kind of benefits am I going to get am I going to get that nurturing and CPD to to progress that is does the purpose aligned with my personal purpose right those kind of things are much more important now so you've got to Showcase those in a way which attracts the right colleagues to work in the team and helps you realize a potential of the business yeah absolutely and I think that Peter around mentoring is and role modeling is so important I think we've seen some bad examples of it haven't we done yes I mean the one that brings to mind is is gchq advertising for people to move into security and the imagery would stop photography you know it was it was a clearly a model rather than someone actually working as an architect for example but um no some valid points I guess the valid points are and I've spoken to many cios that say that diverse teams are the best teams so even if you're a cold-hearted and have no interest in this you should want to do it because you get a better performing team but also I know you've spoken a bit around uh which is a key Point around as we look at emerging Technologies in particular AI you know to a point around four but like to run a table or four white men around a table um you know the input the output is going to equal input right so you need those diverse voices absolutely and you know so if I look at projects um and I've been very fortunate to talk to people in all kinds of Industries uh tied to the Online safety Bill and yet we care very deeply about that from a from a BCS perspective we have to protect young people and and you might say well that's really hard and you know with the social media and so on there are techniques that it can apply here and we I don't think we've done enough to Showcase that some of the the techniques that can be applied to to help reduce the potential for harm we've followed the money largely and we've gone for things that allow those algorithms to maximize the the outcomes that that the the organizations have so it starts with actually setting the right kind of objectives and and you know we don't nobody wants governance nobody wants you know regulation but I don't think we've got a choice here unless the IT industry steps up and and and becomes the grown-up in the room in these things we're going to be forced with that and that's part of the reason that I've championed responsible Computing that's why I want to be able to take the best practices for what does responsible status use really look like and how do we how do we showcase some of those best practices around responsible data use what does what does ethical AI really look like you know IBM's done a lot of work in that space out of Microsoft and Google and so on but they've all got slightly different views let's pull our knowledge and expertise let's use the platform of the BCS to integrate that and part of the reason we have the fellows technical Advisory Group in the BCS is to bring together all those voices the academic voices the voices from the the people like the Googles and Microsoft so on and then the voices of people like the cios and the CIO teams who are having to apply that in their business right because the last thing that any CIO CTO wants is to be on the nine o'clock news or 10 o'clock news because they've had a breach or they've had an ethical use of AI or they've yeah you can see the list of anxieties are there we want to be able to provide practical guidance to help them in this really difficult time yeah ability machine I mean I guess to turn on his head a little bit the flip side you could say of the technology advances uh it's not this ethics or trust or governance as you mentioned but I was on a actually a BTS uh event the other day it was around digital inclusion or digital exclusion and I guess there is that danger isn't there that as the industry as a whole advances many people and I guess we largely associate that with the elderly but not entirely it could be people from poor social economic backgrounds they get left behind in all of this don't they absolutely and we're trying to partner with um uh with different cities on looking at how we can contribute to that agenda um so some very early conversations with um Bradford city council you know Bradford is the youngest City in the UK and they have phenomenal issues with how do they help their young people find a future for themselves and in there there's a number a whole bunch of amazingly talented young people they don't have any access to role models for digital careers so how do we how do we expose them to some of that how do we help them progress and and part of the reason that we're helping create um we're hoping to launch a BCS Foundation is to be able to provide us kind of a bursary scheme because a lot of those people don't have access to a laptop they don't have access to the internet and and so they're kind of rely on what they can have in school or or on public spaces and so they can't progress a career being Pace that we we want to and so how do we help provide that kind of support through the BCS and that's that we are a charity so we should be doing some of the rechargeable things and the digital divide is a specialist group that we have within within the BCS and what they've done is packaged up a set of best practices for how people been helping um because I'm in early conversations with some of the community foundations um again often you find the Community Foundation is a space that has access to the people that can really make a difference um you know they're struggling with technology it's not necessarily the elderly it could be somebody who has um ended up not being able to work because of a disability um over an illness somebody who's a carer who hasn't had the opportunity to access those Technologies but has that ability right it could be somebody who is um you know in in a in a vulnerable space because of the the environment the home environment that they have and those that the foundations have access to those people and they can you know through the digital divide community that we have we can tap into some of the expertise and and package some of the best practices to help them with with simple things like how do I go and do my online Form application for this benefit because they don't know how to do that right there's some very fundamental they they're being excluded from access to Services that's provided because they can't use the technology and you can't phone anybody you can't go ask for help you've got to get on this bit of technology so how can the BCS members through the volunteering help then that's part of the things that we're trying to do here yeah absolutely and I think that's what's quite exciting actually is that it seems there's a greater awareness in Industry brought a great collaboration you know I don't know like the digital poverty Alliance and others that are doing this and obviously this has been on the political radar for some time I think since France this morning's inclusion tragedies almost 10 years ago so I think it's finally there some joining the dots I think uh Freddie Craig one of our uh community members which would probably say of how you bring this all all together um actually almost out of time but I guess where next do you think we're going to see in the industry as a whole where do you think the industry is going and crucially what's that mean for you in the world of BTS so I I still see as I said the I.T industry in its infancy [Music] um there are a phenomenal number of problems out there we could we could address right whether it comes to providing sufficient water coping with climate change helping make um Healthcare more affordable reducing the amount of weight you know the problems are endless so how do we Steward technology in a way to address some of those societal issues and really make the world that we want to be part of that's that's where I'm I'm trying to position the BCS I think BCS has got a lot to do there we see the technology moving a tremendous Pace things like chat GPT complexity.ai and Quantum which is just around the Horizon right so there's a whole bunch of these
Technologies and we don't know what's going to happen with things like uh you know VR and AR and um how we would really Leverage The 5G and iot capabilities to to Really transform some of the uh aspects in life and I net it down into a couple of simple things right um and I documented the three laws of digitization right the first law says whatever can be digitized somebody will find a way of doing it right so that's that's kind of obvious second law says when it gets digitized its value tends to become free and that's a scary thing that's what people try and avoid but you know it's it well what I say to people is be digital or be digital because somebody's going to do it to you if you don't do it to yourselves and then you've got to Camp through that and say well so where's the value and the Third Law of digitization says the value comes from using the new data to create new value right and that's what you've got to do you've got to look for that new data and use that as a way of finding that new value and so I think there's a there's a new set of skills that are coming forward and I summarize the skills in in five animals right so there's a there's a um the the data gatherers they're the squirrels they look at how do we gather that data there's the owls or the wise ones who look at how does data transform business process parts of daily life there's the algorithmic Geeks of foxes or Wolves who hunting packs and write that cunning bit of algorithmic code which does some magic things I know you can understand then there is a data engineers and they're the ones that we often ignore I refer to them as the how the um the Weaver Birds the small birds that build a big nest yeah they look at how do we create reliable or robust Dependable systems for the future and then there's the the ones that we often don't notice they're the Hawks they're the ones that are flying high above and they worry about the ethics the legality and privacy what we do so so for the future I see this this this kind of you know menagerie of five animals and five core skills that everybody needs to develop over a period or you need to certainly make sure you have access to those skills to be successful yeah I guess for shooting worth going next with that is I guess no one CIA or CTA will have necessarily those five skills that goes to the earlier point of building the right teams right exactly exactly it's a team sport and you've got to make sure you've got a balanced set escape and actually those those five animals are a good way of looking at do I have the keyboards I need for success in my team going forward yeah absolutely now we think um we always like to finish here on CI UK leadership live with a couple of Off the Wall questions a little bit out of the the ordinary um I'm going to start with what you're most proud of and that could be personal or professional what what kind of sticks with you so so I think my my proudest moment I've got a couple of private moments one is is actually achieving uh IBM fellow in in IBM um yeah there are there's only a hundred and something fellows in the whole of the history of IBM so to have done that living in Leeds um is quite a quite an achievement so I'm I'm absolutely you know amazed about that second thing was like I got a um a medal from uh from Prince William for um for the work that I did um it was for business and Innovation so it was recognized uh through an MB which is absolutely amazing so so I think you know I always try and do the best I can I don't look for these things but but actually getting those is is a great um it's a great honor to have yeah absolutely and then finally Richard I'm going to add kind of two questions in one what what do you kind of do in your spare time I know I'm going to prompt you in a couple of areas actually that I know you're uh I think you blog about tea and have also produced a book on happiness we probably haven't got time to go into the weeds or what that actually looks like but this took us for you what motivates you what keeps you going in your spare time so look I have a very simple motto for myself which is um try to create the world that you want to be part of and and that's that's kind of driven me and continues to drive me so I have a Sunday blog called Sunday sprinkles and and that really looks for little bite-sized you know sprinkles of of insight from from things I have and that's where my t-blog comes from so so one of the things I talked about was you know did you need a cup of mint tea because often you get caught up with a caffeine and all this kind of stuff but actually mint tea is really valuable because it's a good refreshing drink and it's good for the health and so on and the happiness book really came to me because um sadly I was faced with uh with bowel cancer many years ago and and and and and facing that kind of a um a personal life crisis uh you start to refle you do some introspection you start to reflect on your life and reflect on lots of things and I realized that um you know there's a need to help others and and share some of the insights right so so soon after my bowel cancer mother passed away and there's my other girls passed away and so we had this kind of but basically it's kind of sadness across whole family and I wanted to try and cheer people up so I thought let's write something on happiness each week and and um so for a year our blog done on happiness so just a small status update I wasn't going to take something that anybody else had produced I wanted to some have some original work did it for a whole year and at the end of it people liked it so I I wrote my 53rd blog post uh it was actually on Facebook post was well that's that's 53 done and I think um I hope you all liked it I think somebody else needs to be responsible for the happiness of the group I'm done with happiness right and uh and I got this message back saying you can't stop now you've got to keep going so so I took those messages of people in my Facebook group library then maybe others will as well and that's why I turned into book so that's that's how the book was published oh that's fantastic is it is there one piece of advice you'd leave people with in terms of I guess there's no silver bullets to that but what if you leave the audience with so I'll actually give them three very simple pieces of rice right the first one is learn to learn success in the world now is based on how fast and how effectively you can learn because things are moving so fast you can't learn everything so you've got to learn to learn second thing is always focus on your strengths people tell you you're not good at this ignore that focus on your strength make the strengths the best they can be and and by the way the weaknesses will improve because you [ __ ] certain strengths yeah and the third thing is do the things that get you out of bed rather than keep you awake at night so so if you focus on those three things you'll have a wonderful life wonderful career fantastic one uplifting note that to finish on the show you got some really good advice there it's like um a pleasure to talk to you and thanks so much for joining the tiuk um leadership live really interesting conversations here about your career and and what BCS is doing to support the industry and best of luck in the year ahead I should say thank you fantastic and of course thanks to you for tuning in today I hope you found that a valuable session to take away CIA UK I'm Doug greenwater thanks goodbye and we'll see you soon
2023-02-11 08:27
