“The operating review was four hours and it was theatre.”

Transcript

ClubCXO

You are the first internal appointment to this role in the company’s history. What does that change?

Rahul Menon

It changes what people expect me to already know, which is mostly an advantage and occasionally a trap. Nobody gives you the ninety-day grace period an external hire gets. On the other hand nobody has to explain the business to me.

ClubCXO

You handed delivery away almost immediately.

Rahul Menon

In the first fortnight, before I was ready and before the person taking it was ready. The alternative was two people doing one job badly for six months. Internal successors keep running their old job because they are good at it and because it is the part of the day that feels productive.

ClubCXO

The operating review. Why was it theatre?

Rahul Menon

Because everyone arrived with a conclusion. Four hours is long enough that you have to prepare, and preparation means resolving your own problems before you get in the room. So we had a monthly meeting where thirty senior people confirmed to each other that things were broadly fine. Ninety minutes is short enough that you bring the thing you have not solved.

ClubCXO

You cut a third of the engagements in the banking vertical and revenue fell.

Rahul Menon

For two quarters. I had said it would and I still found it uncomfortable, which taught me something about the difference between forecasting a decline and watching one. The accounts we exited were consuming our best engineers to defend revenue that was never going to grow. That is a real cost and it does not appear anywhere on a P&L.

ClubCXO

Where is the sector exposed?

Rahul Menon

In the middle. The very large integrators have scale and the specialists have depth. Firms our size have to pick one, and most of us are still pretending we do not have to. I do not think that pretence survives this decade.