Straight Talk Special Issue: Financial Services - 19

Learning to love
change
What we do now is very
complex - Since 2009, LSEG has
completed and integrated 23
acquisitions, which requires a
diﬀerent kind of IT professional.
These days, when I hire, I look
for people who love change and
see it as an opportunity to
learn new and important skills.
And I've realized over the years
that not everybody feels this
way about change.
I try to ﬁnd people who
embrace change because they
always want to work on that
next project or task that will
make things better. I look for
people who are inspired but not
careless: You need to have a
good execution capability that
dots all the I's, and crosses all
the T's. You'd better have
integrated and institutionalized
the last thing you did, because if
not, you're just creating a
mound of complexity and
potential fragility.
At the same time, you have to
be willing to learn, because if
you believe you're a know-it-all
in the midst of growing
complexity, that's a dangerous
place to be. You have to respect
people who've been doing this
for a while. You have to listen
and learn, understand the
constraints, understand what is
working, what may not be
working, and wait to do things
until you have enough
conﬁdence that what you're
going to do won't hurt anything.
I call it "sitting on my hands" for
a period of time.

capabilities in diﬀerent cultures
around the world, we may have
to approach our jobs diﬀerently.
First and foremost, you have to
appreciate the cultural
sensitivities. What works in
Chennai may not work in Sri
Lanka. To bring out the best in
people, you have to understand
what's desirable and acceptable
behavior in the culture you are
now working with. This is part
of the continuous learning
process that reduces any
potential resistance and enables
change to be successful.
We also have to be asking
ourselves what innovative
moves and investments we
need to make to stay ahead of
the competition and how we
can fund them. With constraints
on spending, the funding of
those initiatives may have to
come from reducing the cost of
supporting the current
environment, which may entail
stopping some existing services
and initiatives that may not be
as important as the newer ones.
This is especially true for us,
because the LSE Group is
diﬀerent from other "market
infrastructures," in that we're
not solely vertically integrated.
We have embarked upon an
"open access" strategy for
market infrastructure, which
means that clients can do
business with us in either a

"bundled" (that is, vertically
integrated) or "unbundled"
fashion. Our competitors,
companies such as CME and ICE
in the US, typically operate in a
vertically integrated fashion only,
thereby requiring that clients use
their respective vertically
integrated stacks.
Our three major
businesses-index and analytics,
clearing businesses, and stock
exchanges-comprise the LSEG
today, in conjunction with a
technology business that enables
those businesses. The IT
operating model used to support
LSEG, consists of CIOs that
interface with each of the major
businesses; a shared services
group providing application
support; infrastructure services;
property; procurement; HR and
ﬁnance. We also have capabilities
that include a ﬁrm-wide PMO,
CTO, CISO, and our LSEG
Technologies unit, which
provides strategic software
services. I may be the ringleader
of all this but it's the team who
makes it work.

Because we're now truly global
and are tapping into staﬀ and

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