GHC14: Winning at the Game of Office Politics - Part 2 Huma Hamid12:30 AM 0 comments

This is the second part of my first post here about winning at the game of office politics by Jo Miller. So, let's talk about it.

This third option which Jo presented to win at the game of office politics, is to Become positively politically savvy! 

Photo Credits: Winning at the Game of Office Politics @ GHC14 By Jo Miller

Jo asked all the participants to think about someone they know at work, and liked the way they played office politics. She asked the participants to list down their qualities and characteristics which made them likeable. At the end of the exercise, participants shared that the people they like the most at work are those:

• who are knowledgeable
• who are helpful to other colleagues
• who are convincing during an argument
• who are technical savvy
• who get things done
• who are visible through their team contributions
• who have built credibility among their peers

Jo then introduced a tool to be better at dealing with the office politics. It is called building organizational awareness, by keenly observing the communication and relationships that surround us in our organizations. At GHC, we learnt a new term!

Now let's talk about how to make this organizational awareness work. In order to build the organization awareness, we need to say goodbye to an official organizational chart and  build a shadow organizational map instead. 

Photo Credits: Winning at the Game of Office Politics @ GHC14 By Jo Miller

A shadow organizational map is build by identifying the people we consider as problem solvers. First, we need to draw a new organizational chart by putting these problem solvers at multiple levels, based on their influence and control over others and not the official title they posses. Second, we need to draw a solid line between people who enjoy good relationships with each other and a dotted line for the people with broken relationships with rest of the team. Third, we need to build arrows to represent flow of influence in each one of these relationships. Fourth, we need to put a circle around coalitions and also identity people who are either pushed aside or chose to stay aside on their isolated islands. Fifth, we need to list the factors which glu these people together. It could be going to the same school, previously working on a project together, similar interests or other common activities. It is not always a boy's club as we  mostly think it to be, sometimes it is just more than that. Multiple things can bind people together and we need to identify them. Sixth, we need to identify key influencers, who act as sponsors  or mentors for others with whom  they enjoy really good relationships. 

Photo Credits: Winning at the Game of Office Politics @ GHC14 By Jo Miller

Seventh, we need to add verticals to the shadow organizational maps to understand how its hierarchy works, based on relationships, influences and coalitions. Once, we know how a shadow organizational map is built and works in our teams, we can make them work for us. There are two ways this information can be gathered to map our shadow organizations. First is through face-to-face interactions, second is through virtual interactions. 

Photo Credits: Winning at the Game of Office Politics @ GHC14 By Jo Miller

Every organization has some unwritten, unspoken "rules of the game". In order to be successful, we need to identify some rules of the game in our organizations, so that we can ethically and effectively navigate through those.

Finally, Jo talked about the the three ways to generate quick wins at work. Those will be discussed in the next post. Till then, start building the shadow organizational maps to make yourself organizationally aware of your surroundings. Happy Reading!

Note: Contents of this post are derived from Jo Miller's presentation at GHC and owned by her. Please do not copy them. 

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GHC14: Winning at the Game of Office Politics - Part 1 Huma Hamid11:09 PM 0 comments

What is the biggest roadblock you have ever faced in your career advancement? 

Do you remember the time when you were going above and beyond, delivering more than expected but failed to get enough recognition, promotion, higher designation or a leadership position at your company? 

Photo Credits: Jo Miller @ http://www.womensleadershipcoaching.com/jomiller.htm

These were some really important questions Jo Miller asked her audience during a vibrant and thought provoking session on office politics, at the GHC. The response she received was convincing enough to reflect that the office politics was among the many factors which people think was impacting their career growth opportunities. Explaining the emerging leader's quandary, Jo explained that we cannot get a higher-level job without a leadership experience. But, we can also not get the leadership experience without the job. This sounds pretty challenging, so what do we do? Jo simplified the challenge by giving us the following three point agenda. 

Photo Credits: Winning at the Game of Office Politics @ GHC14 By Jo Miller

In order to take charge of our career advancements, we need to acknowledge the fact that office politics has a role to play in impacting our ability to climb up the leader, and we cannot afford to ignore it. But the real question is, do we actually like playing the game of office politics or do we even consider it to be a fair thing to do? I think it was a very reasonable question to ask, because I myself did not consider it to be ethical or even closer to being fair. But I was not alone to feel that way. Jo shared some relevant studies (Ruderman and Ohlott, 2002) which showed that many women managers find engaging in office politics to be difficult and painful and some even view it as evil. There is a level of negativity and discomfort associated with it, and most of us chose not to be part of it. However ignoring office politics can be deadly for our careers. Erin Burt has placed it on the fourth position while counting the seven deadliest career killers. Jo shared another study by Leslie and Gentry about the people who are politically savvy, having following attributes. 

Photo Credits: Winning at the Game of Office Politics @ GHC14 By Jo Miller

Jo rightly identified that people like us can think of only two ways to deal with office politics. We either tend to ignore it or see ourselves turning into someone we don't like. But there is a third option too.

Photo Credits: Winning at the Game of Office Politics @ GHC14 By Jo Miller

Let's cover that in the second part of this post. Happy reading!

About Jo Miller:

Presenter, Jo Miller is the creator and CEO of Women’s Leadership Coaching Inc. and founding editor of BeLeaderly.com. Through these initiatives, Jo helps emerging women leaders create a roadmap for their career advancement. Jo is not only an amazing presenter, but also a leading authority on women's leadership. She delivers more than 60 speaking presentations annually to audiences of up to 1200. She has extensively traveled in Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle East to deliver keynotes and teach workshops for conferences, professional associations, and corporate women's initiatives. You can follow her on Twitter @ Jo_Miller. I am greatly inspired by her ideas and her coaching initiatives for women leaders. I have been following Jo for a couple of years now, but this was my very first time meeting this amazing and really inspiring leadership coach, in person. Thanks to GHC!

Note: Contents of this post are derived from Jo Miller's presentation at GHC and owned by her. Please do not copy them. 

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GHC14: Keynote - Dr. Arati Prabhakar, Director - DARPA Huma Hamid7:20 PM 0 comments

The final day at GHC14 has already started, and here goes the last keynote by Dr. Arati Prabhakar, Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Dr. Prabhakar has spent her career investing in world-class engineers and scientists to create new technologies and businesses. 1986, she has served in multiple roles at DAPRA. n 1993, President Clinton appointed her director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, where she led the 3,000-person organization in its work with companies across multiple industries. I was not really sure what to expect at her session, but seems like it turned to be the most inspiring and informative keynote session I have covered for the GHC14 so far. Dr. Prabhakar is not only an inspiring woman in technology, but she is undoubtedly a remarkable leader too. Working in a challenging environment like DARPA, she made her way through and successfully climbed the executive leader. In her session she mostly talked about the undergoing research activities at DARPA. I was genuinely impressed and I am glad that I went to her keynote session!

Photo Courtesy: http://ws-dl.blogspot.com/2014/10/2014-10-16-grace-hopper-celebration-of.html 

"I can't be President since I am a naturalized citizen, but I figured everything else was fair game." – Dr. Prabhakar

Dr. Prabhakar started her keynote by remembering Grace Hopper's amazing contribution and talent to shape the times she lived in and how we can shape ours too. She then shared a video of Jan Scheuermann, who was paralyzed from the neck down, was able to use a robotic arm as her limb, which she could control through her thoughts. Read more about this scientific miracle and watch out the amazing video here. The prosthetic arm was designed by the John Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) and funded by the DARPA. This was just one of the many examples, where the research at DARPA under Dr. Prabhakar is making a phenomenal difference in technology. 

Photo Credits: http://www.livescience.com/25600-quadriplegic-mind-controlled-prosthetic.html

DARPA was started in 1985 as a response to the Sputnik1 event in 1957. The mission was to make United States technologically capable enough to prevent technological surprises like the launch of Sputnik. DARPA has this focus for the past six decades now. Another focus was to build precision capabilities, which not only helped us in war times, but also helped in business and corporate sectors to improv our existing technological capabilities. DARPA has been building technologies mainly to support America’s national security, however these were equally useful in other sectors. DARPA mainly has two eco-systems, the first is related to military and the second is related to supporting universities, commercial, and research labs activities.

In all those years, DARPA’s focus and roles had not changed much, but the world we live in has changed significantly and so do our technological capabilities. National security has become bigger and more complex than before due to so many global factors than before. Due to several factors, challenges related to the world’s national security are also amplified. To deal with these challenges, we need to build more advance and complex technologies. Not only there are challenges at the global level, but also there are new challenges in space orbits. More nations have joined the space orbits now. We now need miniature systems that can be launched from any military base within 24 hours.  

Another research area where DARPA is focusing currently is biotechnology.  We have capabilities to build massive systems, which can impact our lives. DARPA is working on a number of research projects trying to find solutions to outpace the spread of infectious diseases like Ebola, and also creating diagnosis and rapid therapies to treat them. DARPA is currently working on Ebola cure right now, and also trying to reduce the vaccines’ activation time from weeks to hours.

Third and the last research area Dr. Prabhakar talked about, was mastering the information explosion. Due to tremendous advancements in computing and internet technologies, data is being produced at an exponential rate. Information hold by this massive data is also very critical. DARPA is trying to solve the challenge of extracting useful information out of this data and also ensuring that information they extract is reliable. This has also increased the threat of cyber attacks breaching data security and privacy. DARPA is trying to quickly patch and prey these challenging scenarios by building tools, which can run analytics faster than the growth of data and attack surface. Dr. Prabhakar’s team is also working on a project named Cyber Grand Challenge where machines are generating malicious attacks at great speed, and defensive capabilities are being built to match that. DARPA has worked with law enforcement agencies to use these analytics to stop human trafficking especially at the Texas-Mexico border.

Dr. Prabhakar closed her keynote by saying that through her speech, she wanted to give a flavor to the women in computing, of what they are doing at DARPA and how important it is to build technologies for protect America’s national security. Later, while answering to some of the questions asked by the audience, Dr. Prabhakar shared that students who want to join DARPA can work on the research projects funded by DARPA in collaboration with several universities. Also, that DARPA is big organization who is always looking for fresh blood with strong technical and leadership skills who can build solutions to impact humanity. Other than technical staff, veterans are also encouraged to apply. In response to a question related to dealing with office politics at state agencies, Dr. Prabhakar said that she never faced such an issue throughout her career. She always tried to build a working culture based on supporting each other, and there has never been any place for office politics.    

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GHC14: Satya Nadella in Conversation with Maria Klawe Huma Hamid10:32 PM 1 comments

Satya Nadella needs no introduction, he is the current Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft and already known for his proven track record of successful leadership as the Executive Vice President of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise group. His hard-core engineering background, business vision and the ability to bring people together just made him that perfect candidate who could lead Microsoft and take a forward through such a fiercely competitive industry. 

His presence at the Grace Hopper Celebrations of Women in Computing Conference (GHC) speaks volumes about how seriously the GHC is being taken by the computing industry. Last year Sheryl Sandberg, the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook was present at the GHC13 for a similar conversation session with Maria Klawe. The recent gender diversity reports shared by many tech-giant companies, including Google, Facebook, Yahoo, LinkedIn and Twitter did not reflect encouraging numbers and none of these companies were able to show their female workforce percentages even in 40's. Therefore, with Mr. Nadella's presence at the conference, I was expecting that attendees would try to seek his response on this pressing issue, and also would like to know what role he could play as Microsoft's CEO in changing these numbers. 

I was very excited to cover this keynote session and arrived at the convention center almost 45 minutes earlier than the session's starts time. But as I got there, a huge crowd was already waiting for the conference room's doors to be opened. Majority of people waiting there were actually Microsoft employees, wearing similar shirts, ready to cheer their CEO at the GHC. After a wait for almost 20 minutes, doors were opened and everybody just rushed inside hoping to grab seats in the front rows. I got a good spot, reasonably close enough to see him live and take my notes.

Photo Credits:  http://ws-dl.blogspot.com/2014/10/2014-10-16-grace-hopper-celebration-of.html

Maria Klawe was already there to lead the session. Since, she is also on Microsoft's board of directors, and they both already knew each other, Maria took the opportunity to fill this session with her light jokes. Overall it was a good conversion, which brought forward a number of good points related to the issues faced by women in technology and Satya's take on solving those. However, I strongly felt that Satya may be a good engineer and a business visionary, but he lacked understanding of the issues related to women workforce in technology. Overall it was a tremendous experience to be listening to him. Here are a few glimpses of this really interesting conversation between Satya and Maria.

Maria started the session by sharing that Satya Nadella is actually the first ever male pulmonary keynote speaker at the GHC, and since he is here so, Microsoft should take this opportunity to hire more female engineers, currently present at the GHC through their career fair. Maria expressed her love and adoration for Satya, because he is a man with strong values and that she is really happy to see Satya as the new CEO of Microsoft. 

Maria asked Satya that what made him want to come and speak here at GHC, to which 

Satya replied by saying that he was impressed by the fact that the GHC has gone double in numbers in a couple of years. Also, one of his friends who was already here at the GHC earlier, highly recommended him attending the conference, so he wanted to come and experience it by himself and see what it means to stand out in an energetic crowd like this.  

Maria asked Satya about his perspective on the future of technology, to which he responded by saying that the world is moving forward at a great pace, our businesses, economies and lives are driven and impacted by technology. Now is the best time to make a global impact and those who work in technology can actually amplify that impact. He gave examples of mobile and cloud computing, which move as a person moves around. It is like moving with so much power and intelligence in your hands. Being in computing gives us opportunity and power to tackle the hardest problems today's world is facing. It is like a rich canvas we get to shape and paint to benefit the humanity. 

In response to this, Maria lightly joked and asked Satya what devices he takes with him while traveling. Satya replied that he travels with his Surface Pro 3 and Nokia 920 (both Microsoft devices). 

Maria then asked Satya that in the presence of big tech giants like Google, Apple and Facebook, what's Microsoft's way forward? Satya replied to this tough question by saying that it is in Microsoft's DNA to build products which empower individuals and business alike. Microsoft offers a platform-based approach and builds an complete eco system for its users, individual and business alike. These solutions offer better productivity and create the broadest of opportunities for them. This is Microsoft's strength and neither anyway can take this strength away nor claim the 100% share.  

In response to a question asked by Maria about the role of women engineers at Microsoft, Satya responded that women at Microsoft enjoy a number of leadership positions. They are part of technology leadership, business development and human resource teams. These females are making a huge difference in the company and he expect one of these females to be sitting in his chair one day. 

When Maria asked if Microsoft has the female talent required to make this possible, and also why Microsoft hires less female engineers than male. Satya replied to that question by sharing that Microsoft has almost 17% female work force, which is almost equal to what its competitors like Google and Facebook has, and it is also industry's average. To him the bigger issue is to figure out that how to make sure that capable female engineers get the right representation and opportunities specially in the development jobs (which is the core job at Microsoft). It is more important to build a culture where women can perform their best. At this point Maria mentioned that the Harvey Mudd College has almost 40% female students in their Computer Science course, which is the highest number of female students in a CS course as compared to other colleges, and Microsoft hires the biggest number of those female graduates. 

Maria then asked Satya that to narrow the gap of gender representation at Microsoft, if he is given one hour to inspire the women in technology, how would he go about it. Satya said that he thinks that success starts by being confident and comfortable in your own skin, and let your passions shine through. Every person has some super power, you need to explore and exercise that power to be successful. Also, every experience in our lives also teach us something new and different, and that's how we grow to become better and successful. 

Maria thanked Microsoft, Google and Facebook for their sponsorship to the student scholarships which made up to 400 students attend GHC this year and then asked Satya that what Microsoft is doing to encourage women in technology. Satya shared a number of scholarship programs sponsored by Microsoft including STEM, Youth Spark and others, which promote and encourage female participation. To make these programs better and more useful, he is happy to work with other CEOs. 

Maria asked Satya a question posted on Twitter by a female who wanted to know that she being the only female engineer on her team, what should she do to effectively stand out in as a great engineer and not just as a female. Satya went back to his earlier point about having super powers. He said that it is your ability to make an impact by brining a different perspective needed to create great products. You may have to try over and over again and it may not work for the first time, but you should not give up. It should be your confidence which will propel you through and you will be successful eventually. Maria added to this response by saying that success is only possible through persistence.  

Maria then asked another question posted via Twitter, that how can a working mother, who has to take a break to take care of her family or leave for a maternity leave, can make her way forward and come back to work without losing her grounds. Satya replied that this is one of the fundamental challenges which most of the mid career women are facing, when they want to take a break from work to take care of their families. He said that he had thought a lot about this issue and tried to understand this better. To him it seems like it is only possible because women make more tradeoffs between their careers and lives. We should build a supporting culture at companies, where women can come back to work easily, and this can be done by having bootcamps for them. Maria strongly disagreed with his answer, by saying that bootcamp creates a negative impression, she would prefer saying something more like a re-entry, welcoming, nurturing experience when a woman gets back to work.  

Maria asked Satya about his thoughts on the news about Mongo-DB's CEO resignation from the job to take care of his family, since Satya has a family too, how he and his wife manages a work life balance. Satya said that he thinks that this entire notion about work-life balance is a tough one. He likes to spend time with his children, he wants to live those moments spent with them, as they give him harmony. 

At this point, Maria shared her experience about taking a job as a vice president of a company, while her daughter was only 11 years old. But she still regret that decision, as she felt that due to her commitments at job, she was not able to spent enough time with her daughter. She made a tradeoff, so had Satya ever took a job where he had to think about making this kind of tradeoff between work and family. Satya said that what really matters to him are the people who are the closest. He and his wife made a few choices in life and made them work. So, it is a matter of preferences and what you chose in life.  

Maria asked Satya's perspective on career growth. He had a bachelors degree from India, Masters in CS and MBA degrees from the US at the age of 28, had he ever thought about becoming Microsoft's CEO? Satya's first response to that question was NO! He later added that he came to the US like many other students from India to study and make their lives. He was lucky enough to be part of an industry which offers equal opportunities to all the people who want to succeed. Also, he was lucky to come to a country like the US which is a land of opportunities for people like him who want to make their dreams come true.  He is the best example of someone who had benefited greatly from it. Maria added that the US offers opportunities only to those who work hard enough and she thinks that Satya has worked hard enough to get where he is now. Satya added that he has learnt from many people in his life, including some very strong female leaders who helped him do better. 

Maria asked if Satya has ever seeked an advice from CEO's of other tech companies like Tim Cook, Alan Page or Mark Zuckerberg? Satya responded that he actually did, and these CEOs are usually very liberal in sharing their thoughts. He personally thinks that Marissa Mayer, the Yahoo's CEO is very impressive with all the changes she is making at Yahoo. He is also inspired by the women CEOs in India's banking sector, where 7 out of 14 banks have female CEOs.  

Maria then asked Satya to share his advice for the women who are not too comfortable while asking for a pay raise. Satya responded to that question by saying that they should wait to be recognized by the HR, because their best work will eventually bring them a reward and recognition. In response to this, Maria disagreed and that she did similar mistakes in her career where she would never ask for a pay raise. Her advice to all the females would be to gain enough knowledge about the pay they actually deserve and should learn to negotiate that. 

Lastly, Maria asked Satya to give some advice to female students that how can they do better at interviews. Satya replied that doing what you are really passionate about and loving your work is the only way forward. 

Maria thanked Satya for his presence at the GHC and for his openness while answering her questions.

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GHC14: Keynote - Dr. Shafi Goldwasser Huma Hamid12:20 PM 0 comments

First day, first session and first keynote by Shafi Goldwasser, winner of the 2012 ACM Turing Award. Shafi Goldwasser is the RSA Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. She is also a professor of computer science and applied mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. I am really excited to be present at her session and blogging about it live from the Phoenix Convention Center, Phoenix, AZ. 

Photo Credits: http://ws-dl.blogspot.com/2014/10/2014-10-16-grace-hopper-celebration-of.html 

“Seeing young women at the Grace Hopper Conference this year reminds me of my first time attending a conference in 1982, while I was at UC Berkley. It is hard to imagine that 8K people, let alone women to be together to attend a conference, but I think GHC has come a long way.” said Dr. Shafi Goldwasser, the keynote speaker. I completely agree with Dr. Shafi that this huge number of almost 8K women computer scientists together under one roof is not only impressive, but also history in making.

In her keynote speech, Dr. Shafi’s talked about cryptography, with an emphasis on using cryptographic lens to analyze the theoretical side of computer science. This topic for keynote speech was a little surprising for me and I am not an expert in cryptography, so I had pay special attention to capture what Dr. Shafi shared during her keynote session at the GHC session. Historically, cryptography is deeply rooted into both Engineering and Computer Science studies. Initial research on cryptography by Claude Shannon and Alan Turing was mostly motivated and inspired by the war efforts. However, the modern cryptography is motivated by economics. It is not about fighting the bad guys, but purely focused on the correctness and privacy of computation. During her talk, Dr. Shafi discussed the three main things related to cryptography, which I am going to share here. According to Dr. Shafi, cryptography as an enabler of surprising abilities, a catalyst which leads to a series of intellectual leaps in theory of computation, and the future of modern cryptography. She shared the following surprising or Paradoxical Abilities for which cryptography has served as an enabler:

• Exchanging secret messages
• Contract signing
• Proving theorem
• Playing digital games without refries
• Private information retrieval
• One time program
• Computations on encrypted data
• Executing encrypted programs

She mentioned that even though the list looks pretty long, but it represents one unifying theme, the presence of an adversary. For readers who are new to cryptography, an adversary is a malicious entity whose aim is to prevent the users of the crypto-system from achieving their goal (primarily privacy, integrity, and availability of data). In cryptography this is an adversary, who actually determines the power of a cryptographic solution.

Dr. Shafi also shared the two ways a cryptographic expert would solve the cryptographic problems:

Axiom 1: Computationally distinguishability

Axiom 2: If you can simulate, might as well stay at home

Dr. Shafi highlighted that the modern cryptography is a driving force of innovation in many areas. Some of those areas are probabilistic proof systems, randomness, algorithmic coding theory and average case hardness. Now, it is possible to compute and verify results of a theorem without looking at the proofs. She also emphasized that given the number of research opportunities in modern cryptography, students pick their research areas based on their interests. Currently, cloud computing is facing  a number of challenges related to privacy and computing, therefore offers a lot of research areas to be explored. In cloud computing fairness, control and privacy of data are of tremendous importance. The biggest challenge faced by the cloud computing is to perform computations on encrypted data. For better computation, data needs not to be encrypted, but then it becomes a privacy issue. Therefore, verification of result without seeing proof and computation of result without seeing result becomes the hardest part. These two issues can be resolved using modern cryptography, where verification of result can be done without seeing a proof and thus, data privacy can stay intact. The technique where useful information can be extracted from encrypted data, without actually seeing it is called Functional Encryption. This is currently an active area of research in cryptography. Financial and healthcare industries are the best examples of sharing information with others for collective benefit, without losing individual advantage, is also an interesting research in cryptography. This is when a bank needs access to the information extracted by other banks for the great benefit of the financial industry, without actually looking at the actual data collected by them. The is called big data, which can be solved through crypto-box tools. 

So, the overall take away from Dr. Shafi's keynote was to think more ways where issues related to data privacy, efficiency of computation and correctness of big data can be resolves through the use of cryptographic lens. She also offers her help to students interested in research areas related to cryptography. 

At the end of the session, there were a few questions asked by the student. I was able to hear only one question. 

Question: How can a person with no or little background in cryptography can get into research areas mentioned by Dr. Shafi. 

Answer: Best sources are books and online courses of course. Read research papers, talk to other people in this field or just email her for more information. 

At the end of this session, I felt that how amazing it is to have women like Dr. Shafi doing ground breaking research work in their domains, which is not only an inspiration for other females engineers but also for male engineers in computing. Thank you Dr. Shadi for being so awesome!

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