Navigating conflict in large-scale orgs w/ competing priorities w/ Ritu Bhargava #147
The Engineering Leadership Podcast
Introduction
This chapter discusses the challenges of managing conflicts in large-scale organizations with competing priorities and features a conversation with Ritu Bargava, the chief product officer of SAP Customer Experience, who shares strategies for gaining buy-in, addressing conflicts, and generating curiosity as an engineering leader.
In this episode, Ritu Bhargava, Chief Product Officer, CX/CRM @ SAP, joins us to discuss collaboration, relationship building, and navigating conflicts in large-scale organizations with competing priorities. We cover Ritu’s philosophy regarding building bridges between people, how to gain buy-in toward your priorities, unlocking support from fellow exec leaders, and how to address conflicts & competing interests across a massive org. Ritu also shares her strategies for minimizing ego & generating curiosity as an eng leader, her most valuable prioritization tool & how it works for SAP, and identifying / managing conflicts before they become an issue.
ABOUT RITU BHARGAVA
Ritu Bhargava (@ritubhargava) is the Chief Product Officer of SAP Customer Experience (CX). In her role, she heads product, engineering, user experience, strategy, and operations for the entire CX portfolio and recently has been appointed to the Qualtrics Board of Directors.
Before joining SAP at the end of 2021, Ritu held various technology leadership positions and most recently came from Salesforce as the Senior Vice President of Engineering for Sales Cloud, Salesforce’s flagship product suite. Having started her career as an SAP developer, Ritu went on to work at Oracle for ten years and was responsible for financial applications in various roles. With extensive experience in enterprise applications and the CX space, Ritu brings a strong market focus, both from a business and engineering perspective. Ritu holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Psychology from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University, and an M.B.A. in Finance and IT from the University of Lincolnshire, U.K. She recently joined the Qualtrics Board of Directors and co-chairs the West Coast Advisory Board for Asian University for Women. AUW is a Bangladesh-based nonprofit dedicated to women’s education and leadership development. She also enjoys supporting cricketing initiatives in America, having played on the U.S.A. Women’s Cricket team.
"If we were to rely purely on just having to re-org for every business requirement that we need to deliver to or a customer need that we need to execute to, we would endlessly be re-orging and it's just not possible, which means that we have to and we must operate in matrix words, which also then further means that we have to be okay with working with each other in a way that is not just, 'Hey, if I don't report to you or you're not on my team is only when I will make you successful.'
- Ritu Bhargava
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SHOW NOTES:
- How to maximize time & attention of senior leaders at massive scale (2:13)
- Tactics for building bridges across a large-scale organization (4:52)
- Gaining buy-in toward prioritizing dependencies over feature work (7:23)
- How to unlock greater support / influence from another exec leader (9:01)
- Frameworks for better communicating intentions & removing misconceptions (12:05)
- Strategies for approaching progress updates in a massive scope (14:14)
- Cultivate positive relationships with peers by navigating conflicts (17:08)
- Acting with compromise & humility while working toward a shared goal (18:55)
- Questions to ask to minimize ego & generate curiosity around learning (20:46)
- Examples of navigating conflicting priorities within a large-scale org (21:55)
- Ritu’s prioritization tool: vision, values, themes, and KPIs (23:41)
- How to address conflicts between cross-functional partners (26:06)
- Tips for managing conflicts before they happen (28:38)
- Why you should identify how much time to invest in a decision (31:35)
- Rapid fire questions (34:04)
LINKS AND RESOURCES
- Mindset: The New Psychology of Success - After decades of research, world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., discovered a simple but groundbreaking idea: the power of mindset. In this brilliant book, she shows how success in school, work, sports, the arts, and almost every area of human endeavor can be dramatically influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities.
- The Light We Carry - There may be no tidy solutions or pithy answers to life’s big challenges, but Michelle Obama believes that we can all locate and lean on a set of tools to help us better navigate change and remain steady within flux. In The Light We Carry, she opens a frank and honest dialogue with readers, considering the questions many of us wrestle with.
This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:
Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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