Leadership Imperatives- Mr.

Sridhar Chunduri- Chief Technology Officer, Wells Fargo

The next speaker in the PGPX Speaker Series Session is a leader in the world of
Information Technology. The Class of 2016~17 was privileged to host Mr. Sridhar
Chunduri, Chief Technology Officer at Wells Fargo India. Mr Sridhar chose the topic
of Leadership Imperatives to speak on the much sought after and precious
commodity in a well delivery session which had many in the audience eager to hear
more.
Mr. Sridhar manages infrastructure demand management and governance for the
Indian and Manila entities. Upon joining Well Fargo, in 2011, Sridhar managed a 750member strong delivery team in India to develop software for Wells Fargo
Community Bank Technology group, before taking over as CTO in August 2015.
Sridhar is also industry advisory board member for Aurora Group of Educational
institutions and Centre for Management Studies, NALSAR University. He has a
Masters in Engineering from Mumbai University and Masters in Business
Administration from California State University.
The class got an insight into the working of Wells Fargo, among the big 4 banks in
the United States and the worlds largest bank by market capitalization. We were
privy to a technology leaders perspective in the world of banking, a nuanced
mindset which requires special care to the security aspects of the nature of the
industry.
Mr. Sridhar set the stage for the evenings discussion with a conversation around
leadership deficit which is reflecting in the failure of many executive transitions
around the world. He was unequivocally of the belief that leadership skills were
perhaps the most sought after traits but less commonly seen among other top
desired skills like problem solving, leadership skills and communication skills. For
this young but experienced batch, which is keen to succeed in the world of business
and otherwise, this was a moment of reflection on the kind of professional character
and outlook we would need to imbibe.
Mr. Sridhar also guided the audience on tips to create a strong leadership identity.
His approach is to first understand influence and identity, establish an identity,
strengthening it and then sustaining throughout ones career journey. One
particularly strong message which has remained in the minds of many of us is the
phrase Become it so you neither have to make it or fake it. Another strong seed
of thought which was embedded was the continuum of thinking between rule book
based protocols and excellence in managing exceptions. Mr. Sridhar also provided
great nuggets of wisdom based on his broad and deep experience with multiple
stakeholders during his distinguished career with Wells Fargo and earlier as well. A
smaller crowd also managed to spend quality time with him to discuss further his
ideas on leadership, banking and the broader world in general. We are indeed
thankful to Mr. Sridhar for an excellent glimpse into leadership development from a
rigorous practitioner of the subject.