Divya Shridhar, an independent consultant who was formerly a rapidly-rising analytics and assurance manager with BT and Tech Mahindra, gives an interview about how to impress executives with insights gleaned from data, the ways she has overcome adversity in her personal life, and whether new technology will create new ways of finding revenue opportunities and cost savings.
Topical news items are also debated by the show’s three regular presenters, industry analyst Ed Finegold, senior risk executive Lee Scargall, and the Editor of Commsrisk, Eric Priezkalns.
Transcript (auto-generated)
Hello, you're watching the Communications Risk Show, and I'm your host, Eric Priezkalns. Each Wednesday, we talk about the risks faced by comms providers and their customers, and we stream live so you can join the conversation too. To use our real-time messaging system, just type into the window immediately beneath the live stream at tv.commsrisk.com. Messages are anonymous, so include your name if you want me to read it out. The show is also streamed live via LinkedIn. We'll be keeping an eye on all your comments over there. I'll read out as many as I can during the time. Now, sometimes career inspiration for any of us can be a little bit thin on the ground. So later this show, we're going to have a fantastic interview with Divya Shridhar, a very inspiring woman who's rapidly risen the ranks in the business assurance world. Before, she was forced to take a career break, but she's back, and we'll be talking to her about the benefits gained from data analysis, and she'll also be showing her tips for career success. But before we bring on Divya for the interview, let's open the show with some topical chat with my two favorite co-presenters in the world, Ed Finegold and Lee Scargall. Lee joins us from Bahrain. He's an executive and consultant who has managed risk on behalf of comms providers in the Middle East, Europe, Caribbean, and Asia. Ed joins us from Chicago. He's an industry analyst, widely published author, and a strategic advisor to tech and telecoms businesses. Now, guys, I don't know if you've been watching the news closely, but it's been extraordinary, the news coming out from around China, around Southeast Asia. Many hundreds of Chinese nationals recently been arrested in countries and extradited to mainland China to face charges related to scams conducted over the phone and conducted online. The numbers being arrested are staggering compared to what we see elsewhere. 1,207, alleged scammers were arrested by a militia army in a province of Myanmar that borders China, and they were handed over at the border on September the 6th. A separate joint operation between Myanmar's police and police from the Chinese province of Yunnan arrested 269 suspected phone scammers on September the 3rd. A Laos transferred 164 suspected online scammers to China on September the 11th. This is extraordinary amounts of law enforcement action compared to what we hear from other parts of the world. Lee, you've got experience of working in Myanmar. It's one of the many countries you've worked in. Does this number of arrests taking place within Myanmar, but focused on scammers who are targeting the Chinese market, does this number of arrests surprise you? It does, and it doesn't. If you just look at Myanmar, it's very isolated around the world, and that's because you've got the political situation there, and all of the sanctions that are placed on them by the various governments. It's very similar to the situation you have in North Korea. Diplomatic ties don't exist, there's trade and financial restrictions, so it's like a world within a world. It's completely isolated from the rest. And because no country has any reach back into Myanmar, then there's this feeling of invincibility. So it's the perfect place to conduct these types of fraudulent activities, because there's no repercussions. You don't have to be worried about being arrested and then extradited. But when you look at Myanmar, Myanmar's only friend in the world is China, which it has a land border with. And China actually imports a lot of oil and other natural resources, in particular from the northern part of the country. So they actually have pretty good relationships between these two countries. And this has enabled the Chinese to go in, have arrested the people committing these scams, and have been targeting mainland China. If these scammers were targeting people in Europe, then I'm pretty certain the outcome would be very different on that regard. But fraud is actually conducted on both ways. When I worked there, a lot of the SIM boxes were located right on the land border with China, and that's to the north. So it's pretty obvious a lot of these China's fraudsters, they kind of conduct this activity outside of Myanmar, but they kind of point these SIM boxes towards the antennas to pick up the stray signals. And then that would carry a lot of the, in fact, if you look at the traffic where it's coming from, we can actually see it was actually originated from China. Fascinating insights. Now Ed, I want to bring you in here. Research conducted by our former guest Satvik Prasad and his colleagues at North Carolina State University demonstrates that a significant portion of scam calls received by Americans are in Mandarin or other Chinese dialects. There's also plenty of anecdotal evidence that Chinese language scams are also targeting victims in Western countries like Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Regulators and authorities tend to present themselves as doing a good job by warning the public at large about common scams, including things like dishonest auto warranty offers, but their warnings tend to focus on just a few of the most common scams in the country's national language at any point in time. Do you believe the authorities in countries like the USA and other Western countries are doing enough to tackle scams aimed at speakers of minority languages, or should they be making more effort to tackle scams in languages like Chinese? Yeah, I mean, I think the, we discussed before the show that the effort probably needs to run, but let's talk a second about why, right? So if you go back to the English and Chinese part, there's a lot of logic there, right? You're casting an awfully wide net if you're conducting your scams in English and Chinese. We know from discussions that English language speaking countries tend to be targeted more by the same groups, you know, such as, you know, illegal call centers or calling other English language speaking countries, right? We know those things. So it makes sense that if you're sort of going by the 80-20 rule, which is often an approach, right? Saying, hey, let's get the most that we can with, you know, from the basic effort that we can put down, that you're going to go after those too. But Eric, as you and I discussed that now the, maybe the math has changed because as we see more deliberate attempts to use things like generative AI and voice synth, you know, to perpetrate schemes probably even within communities where they become very believable and they're within the language of that community, even if that community is in a country like the United States, but let's say they speak Polish, right? Or something like here in Chicago, something to that effect, that those kinds of scams probably are going to rise and become very dangerous. And for that reason, you can't, there isn't a way to really to hide behind the defense of saying, well, we've got most of our bases covered with English and Chinese, probably not anymore. That's probably already changed. And so if you're already or not adjusting for that, then you're playing catch up, just leapfrog it, you know, consider the new playing field, unfortunately. Yeah. I mean, this is a great point because when you think about say some of the scams that we're familiar with in the English language speaking world, a lot of them now are being delivered with synthesized voices. So there isn't a human being, it's probably somebody who's created some texts, maybe with the help of software as well, helping them to create the text and they pumped it into a synthesizer and that's what you're listening to. So surely this model is very easily adapted to other languages too over time. And if there's a over-reliance upon the idea of warning people, informing people, well, how far are you going to go in terms of protecting language groups that may at the moment now be in a beneficial place because they're being targeted less, but in future, well, they'll be to some extent more naive about the phone calls they receive because they won't be that experience of the scams taking place, the news about the scams taking place and being warned about the scams. I think it's a very concerning thing. And I think we're really falling a long way behind in terms of technology for doing this. Lee, I mean, go ahead, go ahead, Ed. No, I was going to say, I think it'll happen in plain sight as well, just in the sense that the marketer, marketers, sellers, retailers also want to use a high level of personalization, AI assisted to sell more, sell better, create a more loyal experience. And that will also happen with using more local dialects and native languages and things like that. And then the scams can hide within that communication and be very hard to discern from what the marketing is. And that's where I think it starts to become dangerous. And that's, it's inevitable within the next few years. So I'm sorry, please. No, I wanted to bring in Lee here. No one wants to hear my American accent anymore. That's not true. I wanted to bring Lee here again, again, thinking about your experience in Myanmar, experience all around the world, Lee. We had on the show a few weeks ago, the regulator from Anatel, the Brazilian regulator, and they were very straightforward about the fact that Brazilian Portuguese is not a widely spoken language all around the world. And so they weren't so concerned about scam calls from other parts of the world coming in and attacking Brazilians, because why would there be somebody in another country phoning into Brazil to scam Brazilians? Do you see a similar pattern in terms of, you know, there's quite a variety of languages in the different places you've served, Myanmar, the Middle East and whatever. Do you see a pattern, a similar pattern in terms of some language groups are currently more protected because their language is not spoken so widely outside of their country? Well, I mean, talking, I'm in Bahrain right now, and you know, where they speak Arabic, but a lot of the scams coming in from overseas, the primary language they use is actually English targeting locals as well. But I think maybe that's because the English language is quite ubiquitous. So that confirms the point then that we're not seeing so much targeting of people, you know, people are going for the big languages where there's the easiest way to adapt it right now, but we never seem to be conscious that it's only a matter of time before they're going to adapt and change. Anyway, let's move on with the first of our sponsored features. Each week, we have two sponsored features. And the first one is from the PRISM Fraud Intelligence Team at Symmetry Solutions. Each week, they provide us with an interesting fact about fraud that's taking place. Now, we know phone scams have been around for a good long time, at least 30 years now, and the industry still lacks an impactful solution for this ever growing, ever evolving problem. Telephone scams can cost operators in excess of $100,000 per incident. The team at Symmetry Solutions has seen a And Telcos are not the only businesses hit by international revenue share frauds. There's been a wide variety of victims, including taxi companies, app developers, and call centers. The PRISM Fraud Intelligence Database provides users with constantly updated information which can be deployed as an early warning system for fraud attacks. That means your fraud management team will know about fraudulent calls as soon as an attack begins, enabling the rapid blocking of traffic and prevention of losses. So to learn more about how to protect yourself and your customers from crime, speak to the PRISM Fraud Intelligence Team at Symmetry. The URL is symmetriesolutions.co.uk. Now back to the chat. So from time to time, guys, the U.S. Department of Justice will issue a press release highlighting how they've extradited a fraudster based in another country. For example, Liverpool lad Joseph O'Connor, a.k.a. Plugwalk Joe, was extradited from Spain in April. He got stuck in Spain, the lad, because he took a fancy holiday and then COVID happened. And then he was stuck in Spain because of COVID. And then he got stuck in Spain because he got arrested and was eventually extradited to the USA for his involvement in sim swapping activities, leading to a five year prison sentence. Now, that's news because the way we deal with with crimes like this in countries like the USA is that one person gets extradited. We make a big deal. Meanwhile, in China, they've got thousands being taken across the border to deal with this. Lee, do we need more international cooperation amongst law enforcement agencies to tackle the problem of frauds that are conducted remotely? And should Western countries be doing more to follow the Chinese example of seeking to effectively fast track a process for punishing fraudsters? Well, I think only a fraudster would be saying no to that. But yeah, look, the answer is yes, we definitely need more. And this is the reason why fraud and cybercrime is being committed from these foreign countries. It's because they're exploiting the gaps in the international law enforcement. Now, there is some work that's being done primarily at the UN level, right through they have a cyber, cybercrime treaty, that was actually first proposed back in May of 21. Now, member states that they're trying to work on a global legal framework for international cooperation on preventing and investigating crime, right, and then prosecuting the criminal criminals. But, you know, as yet, it hasn't been adopted, right. And, you know, I'm not even sure how effective it will be, right. So if you just take a look at the the Russian war in Ukraine, right? What's the UN done about that? They've done nothing, right? So what are they going to do about this? So... Don't get me started, Lee. Don't get me started on the United Nations. Maybe Ed will speak up for the United Nations and defend them. Or maybe not. I don't know. But the United Nations is doing nothing here. The United Nations is all happy clappy, let's all live in world in peace. And it's the politically fashionable agenda. It's the politically fashionable agenda, which is not to say it's wrong. But now there's the political fashionable agenda, more people should be online, and we need greater diversity, and children should have access in schools. And I agree with all of that. But all of those things get massively undermined if everybody who you get online is then being targeted by criminals and scammers and exploited. You're going to start driving people back offline, again, if you don't do something about that problem. So the fact that there's no interest in law enforcement should be seen as a as a complementary to the other goals that they have. We can't just assume that the world is just full of nice people. And then when we get everybody online, it'll all work out. We need to have an agenda that's about protecting people. And they talk about protecting people online from cyberstalking and cyberbullying. Again, the nice fashionable topics. Why are we? Why are they not talking about big, organized crime? Why is that not a fashionable topic? So Ed, I want to bring you in here. Maybe you want to defend the United Nations, or maybe you agree with me that the United Nations can't do it. And if the United Nations can't do it, who can do it? I like that neighborhood in New York. I did consider living in that part of town at one time. I do. It's nice and relaxed over there. They got some nice diners, you know, over in Turtle Bay over there. It's nice. Let's keep all those UN diplomats happy, you know? Here's that. Well, here was my takeaway, right? So having been to, you know, a number of like Mobile World Congresses and, you know, other events where you have UN presence in the technology business, and they're trying to put their, you know, foot forward, they've been, you know, pushing their sustainability goals and agenda for a long time. And I was struck by how much of the, like, public discourse sustainability themes consume in Europe in a way that they do not in the U.S. That very much stood out to me. And so we've talked about this in other guises on the show, I guess, or other areas on the show, where it's like, whenever you have this thing that has its own, this political agenda that has its life of its own, right, it may or may not pull some of these other issues along in its wake, you know, positively or not. And I guess when I look at the pretty icons that are in the sustainability chart from the UN, and they have different colors and icons, everything else, and it's all things like fresh water and freedoms and things like that. And there isn't like a bust organized criminals there, right? Like, no, oh, no, no, no, that's aggressive. You know what I mean? Like, it's almost, it's not the right tune, or not the right key, or something in a weird way, but completely driven by the agenda as opposed to necessarily being driven by the problem. And again, like, I don't know, maybe it's our fault that we haven't, you know, done enough to connect the dots to show why there's a relationship between trafficking, organized crime and SIM swaps. There is a relationship between all those things. And we, you know, so, right, so again, I'm not going to blame us. I'd like the UN to do a better job of connecting those kinds of dots as well and other organizations. I don't know who the ultimate solver is, but we should keep trying to educate about those connections. Okay, all right. Well, I mean, you've made a point there, which opens into a whole can of worms, which is, if the telecoms industry doesn't do a better job of stopping scams, doesn't do a better job of weeding out scams, doesn't do a better job of blocking bad actors, then we are now arguably encouraging human trafficking. Because if the calls can be made, and we're not stopping the calls, then the other major resource that the organized criminals needs is the human being who's on the line trying to trick some granny somewhere or other into that. And, you know, the UN is reporting that human trafficking is becoming a problem in Southeast Asia, as a result of this demand for people to sit in these call centers and engage in it. So you could argue our failure as an industry is leading to much severe harm that we don't even think about in terms of those terms. And it's really stupid too, right? Like this is where I get frustrated, and I will not get carried away here. But what's stupid is that it's things like SMS infrastructure being attacked, when the, you know, security experts for the better part of 10 years have been saying, hey, this infrastructure is not secure for this purpose, it's going to be attacked. And yet it's the core of so many of these scams that we're talking about. It's the core of SIM swaps. It's the core of these, you know, fraudulent password resets that lead to crypto theft, like you want to talk about to all sorts of account takeovers and other types of scams. Right? And it's aggravating, because that aspect of it is just dumb. Hey, we said this was going to happen. Oh, it's happening. And then there's not action. And that's, I think, the root of what gets so aggravating about these issues. Well, I'm going to aggravate you some more, Ed, with the next question. Please. But so it's, it's a long one. So just bear with me as I read it out. Okay. But I think it's a good question. When it comes to phone and online scams, the most high profile law enforcement body in the USA is the REACT Task Force in Santa Clara County, California, a specialist group involving California police officers and US federal agents. Now, they tend to garner a lot of publicity for going after the SIM swappers who steal huge amounts from cryptocurrency wallets. And they, for example, were involved in assisting the investigation of Joseph O'Connor, the guy who we talked about being extradited. There's a big difference between a criminal who effectively commits a small number of very big crimes, like a SIM swapper who bribes call center staff, takes control of somebody's phone account because they know it's a cryptocurrency investor, then drains the cryptocurrency account. And the kind of scammer who commits a very large number of relatively small crimes, such as making millions of illegal robocalls. Ed, my question for you, do you believe the US legal system will ever go after the foreign-based robocallers of the latter type in the way that they go after the cryptocurrency stealing SIM swappers? Is there an inherent bias that means the US legal system punishes those who steal from the rich, but does not punish those who harass and cheat the majority of the population? I think there probably is that bias. It would be hard to argue against it. And there's probably a lot of academics that have written really good books in history and sociology, you know, studies about that. So I think instinctively, I tend to think that you're right, obviously, that bias exists. And there's like uneven justice between rich and poor in the United States and probably elsewhere. But I think there's a, this is even a special category because of crypto and because of the community around crypto. And not just people that necessarily invest in crypto, that can be anybody, but people who are invested in seeing crypto markets succeed, right, have like that greater strategic stake in the, in the bigger concept, or that this, I forget what they call it, like the digital asset markets, and they have a stake in being part of the founding of that is a big deal, right, to them. And so that's where I could see that we know there's an overwhelming number of scams, we knew that the law enforcement resources necessary have been limited, right, or applied to them in limited ways, or maybe they just are finite, however you want to put it. And so the reason I think you end up with focus here is just because of that relationship, because it's yes, there are billionaire stakeholders who are interested in seeing not only their own crypto wallets protected, but the whole system protected from organized crime, because they under, you know, I think because they have that vested interest. And because they probably, if you've worked in finance, like you have experience dealing with bank robbery is something you need to protect against in your business. Right? It's not foreign to you. I'm going to give them that much. How's that? No, it makes perfect sense what you're saying. Now I'm going to, I'm going to, now Lee always hates it when I give him a question I haven't had a chance for him to prepare, but he's a smart guy. So I don't feel bad whenever I ask him a question he hasn't had a chance to prepare. We're talking here about law enforcement. We talked to you about the United Nations. We talk about priorities too. And you've worked in all sorts of countries around the world. So you've had exposure to differences in terms of the priorities set in law enforcement in different parts of the world. Is it a common bias that we're not seeing enough law enforcement effort on protecting, shall we say, the little guy from the scams, the auto warranty scams, the Wangiri attacks, the little things that just grind away a lot of little people. Are we not paying, is it that law enforcement has never really gotten too interested in these scams and they only get interested in the big shakedowns, the big opportunity to take down the crime syndicate that's using some dark net network or something. Is that part of the problem that law enforcement in a way has a bias towards big, sexy crimes and not the little crimes that in the end plague more people and maybe in the end make more money for criminals? Yeah, I think that comes down to, it's just a matter of priority really, Eric, right? I mean, the police, they have so much crime to deal with and we see it. We see lots of credit card fraud. We report it. We have to go down. We file a police complaint. And two years later, you'll get a phone call from the police saying, oh yeah, can you give us some more information on this? So I think we just have to be fair to the police here. They just focus on the high value stuff. That's the thing that the people are gonna go after. This low priority Wangiri, if everybody was to report a Wangiri, imagine how many police reports would be filed, right? I mean, it would just be a mess. But that's the problem is it's reacting to crime. It's not preventing crime. Is there anywhere in the world in your experience that has a different emphasis than just reacting to the crime and is actually saying, well, we need to get ahead of the crime here and stop the crime before people are being hit? Because you're right, reporting each Wangiri call would be ridiculous. And at the same time, if a country is being plagued, if thousands of people are losing money, there should at least be some layer of the government that's taking an interest in how we're more effective at proactively preventing the crime from occurring. So isn't it we're doing it rightly? No, I don't think they are. I think everybody's reactive in this particular area. I can't think of any country which is proactive. I think if you look at things like the GSMA and also RAG as well, I think they are bodies which get together and really they're the ones who are driving these initiatives to kind of close this stuff down. But when it comes down to police forces around the world, no, they're not. I mean, my experience is it's just always reactive. Can I shift blame for a second? May I? So I want to blame telecoms and banks. Well, while we're shifting blame, can I, I want to blame telecoms and banks for a minute. And the reason I say that is because I agree with Lee that a lot of cases, law enforcement agencies are probably not equipped or maybe across the world are inconsistently equipped to deal with some of the issues we're talking about. But a lot of them are things that when we talk to experts, but I talked to both of you even in the past, the issues of data sharing come up a lot. And like, I don't know that we've taken a modern data sharing and data analysis type of approach to this problem on a global level. And I think the parties that should be held accountable and are probably best positioned to make something like that happen from a data sharing and processing and expertise point of view are probably banks and telecoms. They're used to working across various types of jurisdictions, either nationally or internationally even, right? They have the kinds of relationships, right? So, and then that way they also have the ability to work with law enforcement locally, which they also have to do, by the way, in a lot of cases, right? And so there's a little bit of a backbone or infrastructure maybe for doing that. And I think that's where, like, if you shifted the blame on the liability or highlighted that a little bit to understand that like people are being victimized because of the poor actions or inactions of these parties, let's not brush this under the rug. Let's take some kind of proactive action, right? Like, I think that's what it would take to spur that. But I don't think that we can blame government and law enforcement who are like, huh, what? You know, how, like Lee said, how many Wangiri police reports might it take? It's more what you're saying, Eric, with yeah, if you want to get the prevention, right? A couple of comments I just want to share here now. One of them from an anonymous viewer saying the finance sector does a better job than the telecom sector in terms of informing the law enforcement bodies about their priorities. So I think that's an interesting point. I think there may be some truth to that as well. And a shout out to Hugh Roberts, who says, hello. Hello, Hugh, thank you for watching the show. We'd love to have you on the show some point in the future. And now we're going to take an ad break. So back to the script. And as always, this is a feature from our sponsors, OneRoot, experts in co-authentication, fraud prevention, and geolocation. They always take us on a weekly trip around the world via the phones in our pockets. This week, Alyssa Giles of OneRoot is our tour guide, and she's going to take us to Egypt. Producer James, roll VT. Hi everybody from OneRoot, I'm Alyssa Giles, and this is the world in your phone. Let's talk about Egypt. Egypt is the most populous country in the Arab world and the third most populous country in Africa behind Nigeria and Ethiopia. But did you know that in March, 2023, Telecom Egypt announced that it's working with IBM to adopt intelligent automation technologies to implement an umbrella solution for all of its operating support systems on mobile, fixed, and core networks. This will reportedly offer the Egyptian operator a holistic view of its entire IT environment and help it innovate quickly, reduce operational costs, minimize the time required to troubleshoot and resolve network-related incidents. A few other interesting facts that I found about Egypt include that almost all of Egypt's population lives in a narrow strip of fertile land just along the Nile River, which represents only about 5% of Egypt's land area. Egypt is also home to the only remaining original ancient wonder of the world. This, of course, you guessed it, is the Great Pyramids of Giza. Another fun fact is that Facebook is extremely popular in Egypt with five million users residing there. When most people think of Egypt, they think of desert. But did you know that the clear waters make it one of the best scuba diving destinations on Earth? Be sure to subscribe to OneRoute on YouTube where you can catch up on the world in your phone and watch OneRoute Roundup, the show that spotlights individuals and companies making a positive difference in the telecom industry. I'll leave you with one last fun fact about Egypt. It is the third sunniest place in the world. Now, Eric, back to you in more of your awesome communications risk show. Thank you, Alyssa. And now we go from one bright woman to another bright woman. Divya Shridhar is an independent consultant who has a series of increasingly senior management roles in the business assurance team of BT Group, ultimately taking responsibility for assuring all of their enterprise customers. She moved to the UK from India, where she'd been working as a software developer for Tech Mahindra. And having climbed the corporate ladder so rapidly, it came as a shock to many when she needed to take a prolonged break from work for the sake of her health. Now she's back and more energetic than ever. We couldn't find time in her busy schedule for her to appear live, but in this pre-recorded interview, Divya talked about what it takes to succeed in business and how she banks back from adversity. So without any further ado, producer James, roll VT. Hello, Divya. It's great to have you on the show today. I'm so glad we've got the opportunity to have this interview with you. You have, I think your career has been extraordinary in many respects. You rapidly climbed the career ladder in an arena which isn't always associated with a rapid rise, let's be frank about that. For the benefit of the audience and to help kind of create some structure to our conversation we're gonna have today, can you pinpoint the reasons why you received this quick series of promotions you obtained first at Tech Mahindra, then at BT? Is it because you saw yourself using technology differently to some of your peers, or was it more related to the way you explained the benefits of what you were doing to your bosses, to the executives you worked with? Well, thank you very much, Eric. Absolutely stoked to be here. You know, I've always looked forward to speaking at RAG events and comms risk shows, so it feels quite fortuitous to be able to do this talk with you just as I'm starting my career back after an extended period of absence. Good question to start with really putting me on the spot there, but I think I would say it's a bit of both. Let me explain this by taking you very quickly through my career graph. So I studied to be a software engineer. I joined Tech Mahindra, which is a leading IT services consultancy right after university. And I joined in the capacity of a coder developing websites and mobile apps. And like any fresh-faced graduate in your first year of working, you're supposed to keep your head down, you know, do what you're told, but I'm told that I had a very annoying habit of asking way too many questions about the code, about the technology, like why are we developing this? Who are we developing it for? What value does it bring? Who are the consumers, et cetera, et cetera. And that was because I've always been quite curious about the impact that technology or any piece of code will have on the person using it, right? And I must say that I have been very fortunate to be around leaders and mentors in the company who looked beyond this annoyance and taught me very early on the ethics of design thinking. So to answer the first part of your question, I did start using technology differently by making my code custom-built for the users using it, by sometimes even thinking of myself in their shoes and understanding the usage patterns, and not just following, you know, coding instructions given on a piece of page as a requirements sheet. And I would say this massively helped me in my career growth in the tech sector. This takes me to the second phase of my career where I made the bold decision to move closer to business-facing roles and use my technology background as almost a strength. I was first in BT's customer experience teams resolving customer incidents and then moved to business assurance. And in all these roles, what turned out to be my USP and strength was my ability to translate really complex technical solutions, because I come from a technical background. In terms of growth and promotion, I have to say it goes down to the leaders I worked with who placed their beliefs in my potential and gave me sometimes outstanding opportunities, even when I didn't necessarily have the experience to do those roles. I guess in summary, design thinking skills, translating tech with a business frame of reference and basically leaders taking a huge leap of faith on me. So I think that's where I am. Well, they made the right decision, clearly, in your case, Divya. And, you know, the word that comes to mind when I think about what you've just said there is empathy, the ability to empathize with others. It's sometimes a skill that isn't always appreciated and valued in business. We put the blinkers on. We want people to be specialists. We focus on this kind of narrow range and narrow focus, and we want to reward them for being narrow. But actually, if you can empathize with a customer, if you can empathize with the person you're speaking to, if you can empathize with the goals of your boss and the objectives they have, if you've got that empathy, there's a lot of power in that that can be unlocked. And I think that's really important in terms of the kind of work that you've been doing, because if you don't have empathy, then you don't understand from somebody else's perspective what is wrong, what is going wrong. Because it may seem as though everything is going perfectly right from one perspective. Of course, it may be going horribly wrong from a different perspective. Now, in terms of like challenges, in 2021, you became responsible for assuring the revenues that BT generated from all its enterprise customers. Now, that's a vast portfolio, very varied businesses, very different requirements that those businesses have. But you weren't able to continue in that role. For those viewers who don't know your personal story, could you please tell us about the adversity you faced that forced you to step away from your career? Sure. Yeah, being the head of Enterprise Business Assurance was the most fantastic opportunity. It was a brief one for me, but I would say it was by far the most challenging role that I've undertaken, because it forced me out of my comfort zone. I was no longer the producer of tech and data, but I was more of the consumer of the data. So I had to like pretty much think differently. And also I moved away from the comfortable data operations to more of business planning strategy, working with stakeholders in finance and regulatory. So while this was all happening, I unfortunately got diagnosed with a curable form of cancer while performing this role. And after probably spending about close to a year in this role, I decided to take a step back to focus on my health, ongoing treatments, surgeries, etc. I am very happy to report that I'm back after a two year hiatus in remission and now raring to get back into the work industry. That's so pleasing to hear Divya. I have to say, you know, it came as a shock to those of us who know you to hear about the story. And if anything, the bigger shock was the fact that you'd had it for a while and you continued working because the association is that you immediately leave work, whatever. It says a lot about your character as a person that you continue to work for a good while. And therefore, it became even a bigger shock to discover that you'd need to step away from work. But we're so pleased that you're back. We're so pleased that you're in remission now. And of course, your skills are now back on the market so people can utilize that now. So you're in remission. Wonderful news. Many people will be watching the show, will be glad to hear about the fact that you're resuming your career. Because as I say, it was a shock to hear after such a rapid rise that you were stepping away. You're offering your services now as an independent consultant because you have the skills, because being independent gives you some additional options for how you manage your time and balance work with being healthy. Speaking to you before this interview, I was amazed at how much you still have this passion, though, to get back into the world of work. What is it that inspires you about the work you do? I'm joining back the industry in a different capacity, actually going back to my roots, I would say. And I'm coming back as a digital and data consultant. And the short answer of what inspires me about this work, especially the data work, is the huge relevance and dynamicity of data careers in this digital world. I mean, if I think about it, there is unprecedented volume of information generated every day. And to be able to pretty much use every ounce of that data and convert them into insight is extremely hard, but it feels very exciting and rewarding for me. And you've known me for a couple of years now. I've always been a huge advocate of creative data solutions, even when we spoke about when I was in BT, we had a couple of rag presentations about it. But I would say in the last two years, I have developed even a higher appreciation of data, of how data and insights play a crucial role, especially in the transformation of medical field. And I do hope that my skills and passion get me to work on such projects that have an entirely different impact on the society as a whole. Have your ambitions changed then, as a result? Ambitions and goals have changed. Because, you know, you talk about the career, OK, so you were in management in a big company, you're now an independent consultant. You still want to use data, but is it the same end goals for data? Because obviously your skills are the same. But perhaps, I'm curious, is there any kind of different perspective here in terms of what you want to achieve? So overall, ambitions, goals haven't changed. I think it is pretty much the way I am. I've always been hardwired into sort of result orientedness and making an identity for myself, bringing a fresh perspective into the world, constant learning, continuous improvement. I think these are hardwired in me. And no matter what happens, those ambitions and goals for me wouldn't change. I would say what has changed is it's probably I've shifted gears in terms of how I get to those goals. As a result of illness, and probably not just illness, even everything that was happening in the world pre and post COVID, I think I behave with greater intention, knowing that there is limited nature of life. What do I mean by that? Previously, I would have been procrastinating about picking up any passion projects because, you know, work kind of took every priority out of me. But now I'm not going to put on hold any of my passion projects for a distant future. I'm becoming a lot more realistic now. And I'm planning them in a way that I can actually achieve my passion projects in realistic time scales in bite sized chunks, but not putting them away for a distant future. I want to enjoy every day and learn every day and pretty much understand the concept of scarcity of life. So it's a really good revelation and perspective. I think everybody has it, but kind of it hit me hard with it. I mean, time is the most finite resource. It's the most limited resource. You can never have enough time. And I imagine for someone like yourself, Divya, time is very challenging because there's many things you could be doing with your time. And sometimes it's difficult to prioritize. I'm not surprised with your energy and enthusiasm that when you were working at BT, that you would put so much energy, so much time into your role at BT, that maybe there wasn't time for other things. So it's great to hear that you're going to... I'm fascinated to find out. I wonder if we're going to find out some of these other things you're going to do too. Something I'll be looking forward to hearing about these other passion projects of yours. But let's talk about your skillset a little bit now, OK? Because data, you know, going back to your roots, getting value from data. For the benefit of the people who are watching the show, where does somebody with your type of skills have the greatest impact on a business or any organizations? In other words, what are the things that typically go wrong in telcos and other organizations where someone like you can come in and be very impactful very rapidly, taking responsibility for some area where processes can be improved, assurance can be improved, and there's tangible results for the businesses as a consequence of your work? Yeah, I mean, I think I have the benefit of having, you know, not only just being an advocate and skilled in data and analysis, but having worked in business assurance, especially in the strategy area. I understand business assurance strategy for telcos and any utility companies come within a comprehensive framework, you know, from point of identification of threats and risks within their end-to-end business processes, to kind of mitigating them, recovering any leakages that have happened with it, producing root cause analysis, presenting it to the board, making sure that you collaborate with the process owners and fixing them, and continuing this process all over again for all the new value propositions and products that the company is launching. So if I use another skin of data analytics, people like me and many others can get into, for instance, the nitty-gritty of a billing and revenue management system, use our data analysis and process understanding to start fleshing out these various risks and threats. It could be in the form of inaccurate customer bills, the delayed billing cycle impacting revenue collections, etc. And once we've identified these risks, we specially use this data to then create comprehensive controls. And those controls can not only be used to mitigate the current risks, but the future risks. And finally, when you see the output of those controls, I again use my data lens to create an assessment of how efficient is the process that we have just put controls on. Because if there is a repetitiveness to the output that you're getting from your controls, you're seeing the same failures again and again, you then get the data to produce an insight that says root cause analysis needs to happen, root cause fixes need to happen. You have failures that are pertinent, you're continuously just plugging the gap with the controls, but you're not putting any effort in fixing the process which is leaking today. So there are so many opportunities that you could use data and analysis within business assurance that takes you from not only just being preventative and proactive, but also leads to business optimization because you're using to improve your efficiency of your business processes. You make it sound easy, but it's not easy Divya, it's far from easy. So stepping back and drawing on your experience, you're an independent consultant now, but previously you led large teams. And as I say, you make it sound easy, but what is it about a person? What is it about the people that you've worked with? What is it about the people who have worked for you in the past that signal out the attributes, the qualities that are needed in order to make this thing that you've said make it sound very easy, but actually it's difficult. What are the attributes to look for in somebody who's going to be good at that kind of work? I think there are so many attributes, but on a broad stroke, I would say what I look for and guide the staff who are working on business assurance areas or who want to extract value out of data that they need to have definitely the business. process understanding, to extract any value out of that process data. A lot of times I've seen that a lot of emphasis is put on the technical skills required for data analysis. You know, you need to be a technologist, you need to learn coding skills, or you need to be able to, you know, use SQL to extract data, etc. But apart from the engineering aspect, the most potent aspect is that data analysis comes best to those who are curious and have a learning mindset, who can really understand from a human aspect, what is the business process producing, who can look at the spreadsheets of data in front of them, link them to a purpose or lineage, understand what data it is, what process is this coming from? What kind of measures are used to determine the success of that process? For example, is this data telling me something regarding the top line of the company or the bottom line of the company? Is this helping me to present sales pipeline or is it on revenue realization? It's just asking these very process-oriented questions, you already start digging deep into the data to start extracting value. I think another skill that I'd point out, which is quite underrepresented, is the communication aspect of data, is how you weave a story, how you tell a story with the data. Because only with effective communication can a person like me, a data analyst possibly, can go and collaborate or facilitate a conversation with frontline staff to the senior management and ensure that whatever insights are being produced out of the data can be actioned. Because what good it is to produce lots and lots of recommendations, but nobody does anything about it because they don't know what actions are out of it. So communication is very, very key to weave the story around whatever you're producing as a value out of the data. It's a hell of a combination though, isn't it? So you've got curiosity, which you talked about having right from the start of your career, attention to detail, because it's not just enough to just know things in general, you really need to drill down into detail. And sometimes people's understanding isn't right. So you need to follow through and find out the reality of the detail. Then you've got to be action-oriented. There's got to be some purpose that's actually fulfilled by this. It's not just idle learning. And to be action-oriented means being able to talk to people about the things that are supposed to happen, because again, it's no good having it all in your head and not being able to express it to other people. So that is quite a combination, isn't it? That's why people like you. You've summarized it better than I did. So I'm going to use the recording to now remind me of your answer when somebody else asks me this. You're too generous. It just makes me think, because I don't do this kind of work anymore. I do this. I speak to people on camera these days. So I forget that actually there is quite a combination of skills. It's quite a challenge. And very rare that one person would be equally adept, equally confident, especially at the beginning of the career across all of those things. Some of those areas you'll be stronger, other areas you'll be weak and you'll need to develop, but you have to be open to developing and getting stronger at those areas. So I'm curious, I'm not sure which is the area that you were ever weak at Divya, because I've got a feeling that you were good at all of them right from the beginning. That's far from the truth. I would say I have, in my initial years of career, I was very good at the engineering aspect. So I could pretty much extract model data, put my data scientist hat on, use mathematics and statistics, brilliant at it. But that data had no value in it, because anybody who reads that data could not make sense, what am I trying to tell them? So there is about the engineering aspects, but also about making sure that you're assigning value, identity, and that comes with the business process angle. And that was one of the trigger points for me to move to business processes, because I felt I was inefficient and insufficient as a data person, as a data analyst, if I didn't have enough empathy and understanding of the business process. Yeah. I mean, here's again, this is about human personality, human psychology here. People who tend to be very good with things, machines, data, they're not necessarily always the people who are best at empathising with human beings. So if you're going to be very good at drilling into data, you still need to develop the skill set of relating it to other people. What do they want? What are their goals? What are you helping them to achieve? How can you communicate what you've done in a way that they understand, because they don't have the detailed knowledge that you have. By definition, you've done some work that they've not done. You've found something, you've learned something that perhaps hasn't been communicated before. So it's fascinating. And this is, again, about the challenge, because you may start with a very strong background, as you obviously did with mathematics, statistical analysis, data analysis, but then you have to develop these skills in terms of dealing with the people. Other people will start from a different position. They may be great communicators, but maybe they're not so good at the maths, maybe not so good at statistics, and they need to work on that in order to improve their analysis. I'll just finish this conversation, this particular thread with one more thing. It absolutely is outstanding, and it baffles me sometimes that data career is probably one of those careers where you could become a data person from pretty much any background. I was speaking to a colleague in marketing, and they are now using Power BIs and clicks to be able to develop market insights and customer trends, which previously, the previous person in me who didn't have that much of understanding of how data could transpire into different professions thought it was only an engineering aspect. So today, I can see people from legal using data to apply data policies, the regulatory compliance aspect of it, people from marketing using it for market segmentation and trends and things. So it is unbelievable how wide this profession can go. And perhaps this is a reflection about the availability of data, the computational power around data is changing all lines of work, because you can't just be in your box, your narrow box, and we don't have data, we don't use data, rely upon assumptions. To do your job well, you need to understand the data, you have to be able to use it, interpret it yourself and have the people around you. Fascinating stuff, fascinating stuff, Divya. It's such a pleasure talking to you about these kinds of, again, talking about finding value and understanding how to extract, manipulate, interpret data. Is that the core of finding value? The extraction, manipulation, interpretation? How much is the actual value coming down to understanding the business and the context in which it operates? Is it an even balance between the two? Which would you say is the greater influence in terms of finding value? Is it the core data skills or is it more as you progress in your career, knowing what a business is trying to achieve, your organization, where does value come from? Or is it impossible? Is that a stupid question? Because it's impossible to say where it comes from, you need all of it. I think one cannot exist without the other, in a simple statement. If someone were to make an effective end-to-end data strategy, they would ensure that data is collected, well-processed, governed, utilized, and stored in a well-organized, secure manner, with a meaning assigned to it, which is a business meaning, like a business glossary assigned to it. All of this falls under the jurisdiction of your data engineering and data governance. But so far, all you have done is, and I don't mean it by any manner of speaking, it's not a small task to do, but data engineering would get you to the point of, here's the data, here's the business reference to it. But then somebody needs to read the business reference and put their lens of the business process and say, ah, so this process is telling me that we are generating X amount of sales, or this process is telling me that while we are at a triple-folded growth perspective, we are having so much of operational cost that our margin is depleting. So somebody from a business angle needs to look at this information, this data, and convert it into a tangible business information. So I think one cannot exist without the other. And that's why the profession works across multitudes of backgrounds. One of the things that I know in BT, they were very strongly positioning data strategy to do was to democratize the data, so that while the engineering aspects is the responsibility of the digital teams, they get you the data, they present it in a business reference, they democratize that layer, which then means everybody in BT has access to that information to produce their own insights. And that is gold, because democratizing means you are unlimited, you have that unlimited resource power and capacity of the company to start looking at innovation, start looking at opportunities, start looking at questioning the data and producing insights. And I think that is the best way to go forward, democratizing data so that business users can have equal access to the information. I think you're so right on that. And when I reflect upon, say, the history of revenue assurance, business assurance departments, there was certainly a period where they were in a privileged position with data, data wasn't democratized. And as a consequence, they would have opportunities. And I would always say to these people, look, take your opportunity, don't just make it about what your current objective is, use the data to find other ways to improve the business, add value to the business, show the full extent of what you can do. Conversely, flip side, I'm really glad that data is being democratized in the way that you're now describing has happened in BT and I know has happened in the company. So I'm really glad because I want other people in the company to have the same opportunity. And if the revenue assurance business people, the business assurance people don't pursue that goal with as much vigor as they might, somebody else grab the data, use the data, show what it can be done. In the end, I want everybody to have an opportunity to add value because that's how we will have better services, better delivery, lower costs, energy efficiency savings, all the things that we want in life is going to come from some human inspiration connected to the data. Absolutely. So that's why democracy is important. That's why it's great to have people like you leading the way with this. Now I'm going to ask, we're running out of time. So I'm going to ask a tricky question as the final question today Divya, but I'm keen to have your honest opinion on this one because I know it's one that a lot of people watching will be thinking about at the moment. Now businesses, including BT, are looking to replace very significant numbers of their staff with artificial intelligence. Will techniques like machine learning lead to the identification of value from data in ways that are quicker and superior to the analysis that's been provided before by human staff? Or is the potential of artificial intelligence sometimes exaggerated? Wow. What a controversial question to ask me to finish this conversation. Okay. I must first of all start by saying I'm hardly an expert on this at the moment. Why I say that is the world has moved so much from, you're rapidly from AI to gen AI. I mean, it's just mind baffling. But if I answer your question about machine learning, yes, machine learning techniques have definitely shown remarkable potential in rapidly extracting data as rapidly extracting value from data. And indeed, it surpasses human analysis in terms of speed and scale. I mean, that is why it was built to do that. It was built to improve operational efficiencies. AI, its prowess is evident in complex pattern recognition, predictive modeling, data driving insights, etc. But while AI offers all these transformative capabilities, it's very crucial to maintain a balanced perspective. And this is where AI can become very, very easily biased, we know that. They can replicate existing patterns, existing biases, and that can lead to almost like a torpedo effect of biased and discriminatory outputs. So striking, I think, you can see how I mean, I'm really putting my brain to work on this answer, because I really think striking a synergistic balance between AI and human insights is of utmost importance. And that is one of the aspects of what data strategies should include to do. And it can only happen with human interventions, when they interpret the data that is coming out of AI, interpreting the results that are coming out of AI, and they constantly challenge the stereotypes. I think to summarize, we will always need human staff to keep AI sustained and relevant. It's possible that we don't need humans as much for the repetitive aspects. But isn't that growth and development in any economy where you don't need to continuously crank the notch, but you have a repetitive process being automated, but you're using your human and human skills and brain to do far creative stuff that hasn't even been thought of. And once you think of it, AI can probably do it. And that leaves you want to do greater, bigger stuff. So I hope I have answered this question without getting a lot of troll from your audience. I think it's the opposite Divya. I think the audience be glad to hear that people like you are irreplaceable, Divya. The artificial intelligence will never do what you've just done, that synthesizing of insights from across the board. And in the end, we do still need a human hand on the rudder steering us towards the correct goals because the AI doesn't know which is the correct goals. I would love to keep on chatting with you all day, Divya. We've run out of time for the interview, but thank you so much for being on the show today. I'm so glad to see you back at it. A hundred percent. Can't wait to see what you come up with next in your career, Divya. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me, Eric. Thank you. Now, thanks to Divya Shridhar for giving such great advice to professionals wanting to further their careers. And before we continue the chat, a lot of comments have come in. So I'll just share a few of those with you now. James says, good to hear Divya is pursuing her passions. A comment here from Bartek. Very glad to have you back. So energetic, Divya. The smiles and sparkles are so great to see, boss. And hopefully, Andreas Manlis won't get offended if Bartek says that Divya is the best direct manager he's ever had. Another comment here saying from Nora, so happy to hear Divya's story inspiring. Also, a few other comments here, not just about Divya here. So some earlier WAG asks, is Eric starting to like communist China? No, I just don't know why you think that. I mean, they're doing some things right. They're doing other things wrong, obviously. And a question here for you. Let's just go straight to you here, Lee. A question here for you that came in whilst Divya's interview was being played there. What is Lee thinking about the job prospects for RA professionals? Are they bouncing back? What should RA professionals do to boost their careers? So my advice would be, just kind of leading on from what Divya was saying there, would be to probably kind of expand more into something like data insights or analytics. Yeah, I think this is something like the revenue assurance team should probably focus more on. It's kind of a natural progression going in from revenue assurance because they're kind of one of the fewer teams in the organization that's used to kind of handling big data. Great advice, good stuff. And I think that was brilliant advice as well, Divya, all way around in terms of that interview. So I'm sure the viewers enjoyed that. Now, Ed, I wanted to ask you specifically about, obviously, you missed out. We missed you for a show. My gosh, I don't know how we managed without you. And you spent last week at an industry event run by the TM Forum. Thinking about the tone of the event that you were at there in that event in Copenhagen, thinking about how we've had many announcements of job cuts in the last year and how this most recent TM Forum event compared to events that they and other organizations ran in the past. What is your career advice that you would give to anyone wanting to make themselves essential in the way that Divya has? Is it sufficient to do the same kinds of things that people have done in the past? Or do professionals need to take a fresh approach to adding value? Yeah, I mean, I think the culture of telecom is changing. So what's going to be valued is going to be different. And the kinds of skills that we've talked about on this show are obviously very much in demand, right? And I think you have to sort out some of the myths here. I think part of what happens, especially within telecom, when we talk to ourselves, is these doomsday myths start to build up, like, oh, my gosh, the industry is fading away and traditional revenues are declining. What are we going to do? All of that's true. I think the result, though, is, yeah, the world has changed and these companies probably become smaller, more focused on connectivity, ultimately. There's plenty of demand for that. You know what I mean? That's not going away. I think what changes is that, yeah, you're not going to be maybe the biggest employer in the country anymore. But I think as a result of that, to answer your question, is then the nature of who works in that environment changes. So there's a lot of emphasis, I think, on skills and automation, skills and data analysis, and the integration of those two things become increasingly more important and far more important, I think, than understanding the procedure that we've been using for the last 15 years to do X and handing that off to the next person to shepherd. I think that's probably an aspect that probably has to change or you become not flexible enough to be competitive. And that's sort of the, you know, you're asking me about TM Forum. That's sort of the center of the discussion is, guys, it's time to cut legacy and let's go. We've been talking about this long enough, but now it's time. And even, like, Nick Willits, who's the CEO of the forum, got up and said, it's code red time, you know, and I think he would admit that he probably could have said that a couple of years ago and would have gotten the side eye from a lot of people. But a lot of people are saying now, oh, we should have said that two years ago. So one thing, yeah, go ahead. No, you go ahead. It's okay. No, you're asking for career advice for people, you know what I mean? And I think, like, I don't, I'm not one to give career advice, per se. But I think that things that are, you know, like management skills are going to be valued, right? Knowledge of the integration of cloud and telecom technology is going to be highly valued. Knowing how to work with really big data sets in a telecom context is going to be valued. And I still think there's going to be a lot of value in understanding, like, the way that telecom networks and operations work. And even though that's evolving all the time, like, for example, like in the forum, there's all the work that goes into things like open APIs and have gone into business process modeling. And, you know, we're now going into, like, moving that into an automated state and getting into things like autonomous networks. And, like, all of those types of things are reflective of how the industry is changing from, I get an order, and I go out and hook up a circuit, and it takes a few days to, I push a button and something happens instantly, or I make an API call and something happens instantly, right? And that's where we're going, right? And so ultimately, like, if that's the change that the industry is going to make, then heck yeah, like, the jobs that are behind the scenes to make that happen are going to change very radically, right? See, one thing that you mentioned about your event that you attended in the TM Forum was about this continuation of the separation of the network businesses from the businesses that provide the services to the end user. And, you know, I think it's going to accelerate over time that we're going to see more and more of the tarot codes, the NBN type businesses. And bringing in Lee here on this one, if you think about, say, the history of revenue assurance, which started out quite fixated on things like usage and how much you're billing usage to a customer, if you're going to be transferable, you're going to be valuable in the telecoms industry in the future, you don't want to be just fixated on things that work at a certain layer in telecoms. We need people to do assurance work around the network too. We need people to understand the network assets too. Lee, when you look at a CV these days that maybe comes into you, somebody's hoping to get a job in your department or whatever. And you chided me, I think it was last week or the week before about not being enough revenue assurance in this season of the show. Okay, let's talk about revenue assurance. How do you stay relevant? How do you have skills that are transferable, even as the kinds of businesses that you're applying to? They're not got the same configuration and not got the same business models. You can't just assume you're going to be doing switch to bill reconciliations anymore. So how do you show that you've got the skills to be relevant in this increasingly evolved architecture that Ed's talking about? Yeah, it's an interesting question that Eric, I mean, my advice would be if you are working in revenue assurance, if you are more technical, if you're more technically minded, my advice to you would be go and learn Python. Yeah, because Python, that's all AI is kind of coming off the Python. So make sure you have these skills so you can kind of take that into, you know, you could take it outside of telecoms if you wanted to, you could go into anything, right? But you're right. I mean, if you look at linking back to what Ed was saying there, where you're going to have a service code, network code, they're going to be separated. It's going to be a whole different kind of skill sets required to make sure around the operating models and how they charge, how they do different things. So I think, yeah, I would say go and expand your skill sets and capabilities, go and learn Python, Linux as well. Linux kind of gives you a good stepping stone into cybersecurity. Yeah, I'm not sure I agree with you there. I wouldn't say it was different skill sets. You see, I'm wary of that. I'm wary of saying it's different skill sets because it implies you have to do this job or you have to do that job and they're very different things. Surely there's more transferability here and the challenge is to find the transferability of the skills. It is. Maybe that was the wrong choice of words. I think maybe what you should be doing is learning different codes, you know, those types of skill sets. So things like Python, Linux, those types of things, expand into that. Stay within your revenue assurance domain or realm. Be more adaptable, essentially. Or show you can adapt, is perhaps the most important thing. Yeah, I mean, you have to be, you have to adapt, right? I mean, if you don't adapt, you die at the end of the day, right? So you have to... Yeah, I know, but people have been saying that for a long time, and then you look at some people, they've been doing the same job for 20 years in a row. So this is part, I mean, is this not the point that we're now getting to the point where Ed is going to an event and the CEO of a major international telecoms association is saying, code red, now you must change. Isn't this part of the problem that we've been crying wolf for quite a long time in this industry? We go, oh, the rapid pace of change, oh, how will we keep up? And you listen to these people who go about the rapid pace of change, and sometimes they're really exaggerating how much the rapid pace of change is actually affecting their job. Their job is not changing that much from one year to the next. And now, now it's going to start hitting home, because if they thought they were rapidly changing before, they're going to see a whole different world of change that's coming. Is it not a completely different level of which we're changing at now compared to anything we've seen in the last 20 years, or am I wrong? I mean, this feels to me like a huge step change in terms of the industry now. It is a step change. And if you take the revenue assurance example, instead of focusing on things like revenue and cost leakages, you should probably be looking for more things around what drives a particular type of usage or behavior. Are there any kind of cross-correlation between events that could be something that is either, has a positive or a negative impact on an outcome? And then if you look at things like humans, we are creatures of habit, right? So sometimes it's quite easy to find patterns in our type of behavior. You've just got to realize how do you extract that value and apply it to the business? Absolutely. Do you want the last word, Ed? I have too many words spinning through my head, but one of the things, like while I'm on it, that what occurs to me as we discuss this is that I almost feel like we don't have the right category for whatever the skillset is that's going to be needed. And when the industry realizes it needs it, is I think a matter of time, but there's sort of this skillset that's somewhere between cyber and fraud and telecom and TM forum terms, business assurance is the bigger perspective from revenue assurance, I think Lee, that you're referring to, and getting into sort of that bigger set of like risks to the organization. And I don't know that we have like necessarily a proper term for that, but it is like a multidisciplinary mindset. I think it is that fraud fighters mindset that's more of the detective than you, right? It's a different type of person that you have in the organization. And usually those people are in revenue assurance and fraud, that detective mindset, but I think it then comes with an understanding of what friend of the show Carson Knoll was talking about, going back to your point, Eric P., which is that we are transitioning the whole telecom industry to an entirely new tech stack, which really no industry has done before. So I chuckle when people are saying, oh, digital transformation hasn't happened fast enough. Like, well, it's not a commercial break and then it happened, like in your Netflix show, that's not how this is gonna work. And we are moving the entire tech stack to everything being software-based, including the whole network, which creates a whole new set of problems and challenges. So like, take a deep breath, right? And like, before you start calling doom, like recognize like, yes, we're doing something crazy and it's super risky. That's more of the important point than that it hasn't happened fast enough. So that's kind of my takeaway from this conversation, yeah. I think you're right. And I want the last word in this conversation because I think you're right about everything apart from one thing, okay? I know he's not used to hearing me say compliments because I always tease him every single week, but we already know the right skillset that you're talking about. It's the least skillset. People should be more likely and Lee should just put up his CV on the internet and people should say, I should be more likely because Lee's ready to deal with all this stuff. So there you go. I paid you a compliment this weekly. How about that? But it's true though. People should be more like you because I think you've nailed it basically in how to do it all. Chat GPT. Chat GPT, write me a resume in the style of Lee Skartel. Chat GP Lee is what they should be calling it because that AI should be copying Lee's model of behavior. Okay? Well, thank you so much guys for the chat. That's all for today's show. I'm afraid we're out of time. Of course, all you viewers, thank you for all your questions today. It's been absolutely fabulous to hear them and it's been fabulous obviously to share that wonderful interview from Divya Shridhar. Now tune in next Wednesday, October the 4th and we'll be talking about some very exciting developments in using technology to identify and verify which organizations are contacting you. Initially developed for the banking industry, this approach could potentially be expanded to providing a holistic means of identifying every single phone user. Our three guests joining us live to explain will be Stephan Wolf, CEO of the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation. Glyph, a super national not-for-profit organization set up by the Financial Stability Board as part of the response to 2008 banking crisis. Timothy Ruff, a pioneer of blockchain technologies and general partner at Digital Trust Ventures. And Randy Warshaw, a veteran executive in the telecoms industry and the CEO of Provenant, a business that is leading the charge for verifiable legal entity identifiers that will tell phone and internet users exactly who they're dealing with. That live stream begins 11 a.m. US East, 4 p.m. UK, 8.30 p.m. India. So if you visit tomtv.com, just .com, you can make his life so much easier by adding the show to your diary or better still subscribing to our broadcast schedule and have every show that's your diary in the correct time zone for you. We'll hope you'll join us. Thanks again today to my regular co-presenters, Ed Finegold, Lee Scargall. Thanks again to Divya Shridhar for that fabulous interview. Thanks to everyone who sent in their comments. And of course, thanks to our hardworking producer, James Greenley, that the show wouldn't be possible without him. You've been watching episode six in the second season of the Communications Risk Show. I'm Eric Priezkalns. You'll find recordings of all our past shows at tv.commsrisk.com. Between our shows, remember to keep visiting commsrisk.com for news and opinion about communications risks and visit the Risk and Assurance Group at riskandassurancegroup.org to obtain your free copy of their ever popular fraud and leakage catalogues. Thanks for watching and we'll see you next Wednesday.