{"id":28758,"date":"2019-09-05T13:01:19","date_gmt":"2019-09-05T12:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/?p=28758"},"modified":"2019-09-10T14:36:38","modified_gmt":"2019-09-10T13:36:38","slug":"get-to-know-indi-siriniwasa-vp-sub-saharan-africa-at-trend-micro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/2019\/09\/05\/get-to-know-indi-siriniwasa-vp-sub-saharan-africa-at-trend-micro\/","title":{"rendered":"Get to Know: Indi Siriniwasa, Vice President Sub-Saharan Africa at Trend Micro"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Describe your current job role and the parts that are\nsomewhat challenging?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My current job role is Vice President for Sub-Saharan Africa\nwhich means I am the Business Unit lead for the entire region. I moved to\nAfrica just over a year-and-a-half ago from a role within Trend Micro in\nAustralia. I am based in South Africa and there are a lot of similarities\nbetween Australia and South Africa, culturally and business wise. I haven\u2019t\nexperienced many challenges integrating into the new region; it has been really\ngood. Over the span of my career, I have worked in more than 10 countries on\nfour continents. This has allowed me to understand different cultures and\ncross-cultural dynamics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From a business point of view, there are a few challenges we\nsee across the countries in the region. The different countries across\nSub-Saharan Africa have different economies, business dynamics and even\nbusiness flow.  As an example, South African\nbusiness growth has slowed over the last year where others are growing. From\nour point of view, cybersecurity is still seen as an important business\ninvestment and as countries regulate more across the continent it is becoming\neven more important. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kenya, Ethiopia and Nigeria are great places to do business\nand are territories I really enjoy working in; as are the Indian Ocean Islands\nwhere we are seeing a lot of traction and interest as a business. As a whole,\nAfrica is a great place to do business in, even with constant changes in the\npolitical and economic landscape. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Business on the continent has been good to us, but to\nsucceed you need to understand that the business flow in each country is very\ndifferent. The biggest challenge with Africa is that the business mechanics can\nchange at any time, it is not a predictable flow of business like a western\neconomy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you look back at your career what has been the most\nmemorable achievement?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Career wise what really drives me is business transformation\n\u2013 this is what I love and keeps me doing what I do. My most memorable\nachievement in my Trend Micro career to date is moving the needle in the\nAustralian business. I was able to put the mechanics in place to move it from\nnumber four in the market back into the number one position for security in the\nregion. I achieved this by growing the staff and the revenue \u2013 driving the\nright behaviours with the right people. I am enjoying building the Trend Micro\nSub-Saharan business in the same way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am a big supporter of gender balancing in business and by\nthe time I left the Australian office I had transformed the business to a 50-50\nsplit between male and female in the leadership team and over 36% of the\noverall workforce was female. Looking at our South African office, I have\ndriven the same model and we are making big strides in getting the gender\nbalance right with close to a 50% female workforce in this team. The rest of\nthe industry in Africa is a little different, it is still very much a male\ndominated industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What made you think of a career in technology?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like gadgets. As a kid, I loved making things. I studied\nelectronics and electrical engineering. I was an engineer for a long time, and\nit was great. So yes, that\u2019s it, I like gadgets and that is what led me to\nIT.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What style of management philosophy do you employ at your\ncurrent position?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Definitely not command and control. I don\u2019t like central command\npositions where everyone has to report to a single point in a business. I like\ndistributed leadership. I am really not a fan of the \u2018boss\u2019 mentality and\nprefer frameworks over structures and prefer to empower people to think outside\nof the box. Frameworks allow people to think whereas structures keep people\npenned in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sure, frameworks can be frustrating at times as there aren\u2019t\nalways the structures to adhere to. Frameworks give people the freedom to\nthink, do and create so it\u2019s a trade-off. There are always people who need more\nstructure but it\u2019s a balance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is your style as a team leader?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like to hire people who are better than me in terms of the\njob role they need to do. I am not selling or doing marketing, I am here to run\nthe business and so I want to have the experts in place that are known for\ntheir skills sets and more importantly for their attitude. Skills I can train\nbut attitude I can\u2019t, I always look at the attitude and heart of the person\nfirst and then skills. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t always read a resume; I prefer to get to know\nsomeone in their first interview (I usually conduct three interviews) and get\nto understand the fabric of the person. I look to my team to then come in and interview\nthe person for their ability and whether they are a good fit for the position.\nIt might sound strange but I very seldom hire on \u2018skills\u2019, because we can get qualifications\nfor people later, successful businesses are built on people with the right\nattitude and the right heart. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do you think will be the hot technology talking\npoint of 2019?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is so much new innovation happening around us. Who\nwould have thought that flying taxis would be a thing? Its already a big thing\nin Melbourne and they hope to have flying taxis by 2020. Phones are changing\nall the time and so is the market share between all the phone providers which\nis definitely something to watch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google is emerging as a massive data player, against the\nlikes of AWS and Microsoft, so Google\u2019s Cloud Play is definitely something to\nwatch as that is going to change the landscape again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Personally, I love cars, the technology in cars is going to\ncontinue to change and become more advanced, and while electric cars are\nincredible, I love the roar of a V8 \u2013 there isn\u2019t anything quite like it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are your personal interests and where do you like to\nspend most of your time after work?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love sport and used to play semi-professional rugby but\nnow I am a couch rugby player. I enjoy cycling and participated in the London\nto Paris and 94.7 Cycle Challenge in 2018. Being in Africa and being based in South\nAfrica is brilliant as I love spending time in nature, and I get to see a lot\nof wildlife. I have already been to the Kruger National Park five times.  I have been to the Masai Mara, Lamu and Mount\nKenya National Parks in Kenya. Skiing is also a passion of mine, as well as\nscuba diving so I will be doing more of that in 2020. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I enjoy cooking cuisines from around the world and it allows\nme to be creative, so I cook as much as possible.  My team are the lucky beneficiaries of my cooking\nendeavours or the guinea pigs, I am not sure how they would classify it. I have\na nice collection of whiskeys and wines from around the world. Life in Africa\nis just fantastic, there is so much to do and experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you cope with stress and demands of your career?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My first thing is that you can only worry about the things\nyou can control \u2013 if I can\u2019t control it, I can\u2019t worry about it. That takes\naway the majority of known stress from people because if you have no influence\nor control over a situation you shouldn\u2019t be stressing about it. I am also a\ngreat believer in a philosophy of \u2018action-in-inaction\u2019 where you take the\nknowledge you have accumulated over the years and use it as a mechanism to\nself-reflect on certain things. It gives you the ability to forecast some of\nthe things you know will happen in time, and then it gears yourself to respond\naccordingly. There really is no point in stressing over the things you can\u2019t\ncontrol. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an example, I don\u2019t stress over numbers.  If you ask my boss, he would say that I don\u2019t\nstress over the numbers. I am rather focussed on the people I work with and the\nculture.  Once you get the people aspect\nright, the numbers will happen. I want the team to be aligned to our business\ngoals but importantly that as people they are also happy. I have to create the\nright environment for them to be happy.  They need to have the right skills and goals\nsets and be happy in their personal environment, which then in turn makes the\nnumbers happen. People\u2019s wellbeing is important to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What gives you great job satisfaction?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A happy place. An environment that breeds job satisfaction and\nwhere people can be happy. When I have these things in place the numbers\nhappen. Sure, you can do numbers with unhappy people, you can drive metrics and\ndrive people hard to maximise profit and cut costs. But then you will see staff\nturnover increase, your business will get a bad reputation in the industry and\nno one will want to work for you. I prefer to start with the positive footing\nfirst.  Yes, this might slow growth\ninitially, but it is the Trend Micro way \u2013 we are here for the long haul and we\nwant to have the right people, right culture, right brand, right image and the\nright name and do the right thing in business. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Describe your current job role and the parts that are somewhat challenging? My current job role is Vice President for Sub-Saharan Africa which means I am the Business Unit lead for the entire region. I moved to Africa just over a year-and-a-half ago from a role within Trend Micro in Australia. I am based in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":28759,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1949,6,9056,9059,13],"tags":[619,3816,388,10923,6369,5284,297,5185,10926,10924,176,10927,685,453,409],"class_list":["post-28758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-enterprise-security","category-get-to-know","category-insights","category-regions","category-south-africa","category-top-stories","tag-aws","tag-business-transformation","tag-cybersecurity","tag-google-cloud-play","tag-indi-siriniwasa","tag-indian-ocean-islands","tag-kenya","tag-kruger-national-park","tag-lamu","tag-london-to-paris-94-7-cycle-challenge","tag-microsoft","tag-mount-kenya-national-park","tag-nigeria","tag-south-africa","tag-trend-micro"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28758"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28761,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28758\/revisions\/28761"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}