Name: Rajesh Dangi

Title: Chief Digital Officer

Organisation: NxtGen

Rajesh Dangi is a technologist, works as a Chief Digital Officer with NxtGen and has over three decades of accomplished experience in Information Technology, Infrastructure / Cloud computing, Application/DevOps Operations and Engineering IT Services. A diversified background in large data centers, IT Infrastructure Operations, Engineering IT, Regulatory & Compliances, Payment Systems, Applications & Release Services and is a certified ISO27K lead auditor and a Project Management Professional (PMP) 2005.

Rajesh on the personal front is a poet, author and a social activist and loves photography, long drives and farming. He is based out of Bangalore, India.

Thank you to the 2,000 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 Questions on Leadership!

I hope Rajesh's answers will encourage you in your leadership journey. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Jonno White

1. What have you found most challenging as a leader?

Remaining current of the technology trends and keeping informed about the newer open source solutions wrt Cloud Computing, Storage, networking and Edge datacanters

2. How did you become a leader? Can you please briefly tell the story?

Never say NO for the new responsibilities, Never say Yes to the noise, that is out side your priorities, my career took me to new roles and responsibilities that made me learn all through my career, I changes jobs when i got opportunities to learn and delvier what i never did earlier.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

start early, walk a while, plan the day, at office first few hours are dedicated to strategic work, tactical work prioratization and reading and leaning things marked as "not known" to me, day ends with family dinner and digital detox at least an hour before the sleep, excluding when i feel like writing poetry...

4. What's a recent leadership lesson you've learned for the first time or been reminded of?

Self-awareness is essential, i am slowly awakening what mu body and minds demands from me physically and mentally, Everyone needs a balanced and honest view of their strengths and weaknesses. Self-awareness grants a person the ability to interact with others frankly and confidently and trustign everyone on the team to help them deliver at their own caliber and pace...

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen R. Covey, 1989) one that came to my mind first apart from many more... The book gave me perspective and made me aware to responsibility for your actions and choices, 1. Put first things first: 2. Prioritize your tasks and focus on what is most important and 3. Continuously invest in self-improvement and personal growth. these leanrigns kept me going though cycles of ambiguity, kept me learning all day long and nurture highly productive and trustworthy team deliverign cuttign edge technology solutions

6. If you could only give one piece of advice to a young leader, what would you say to them?

Learn to Earn, Earn to Learn and choose leaning over earning at-least first few years of your career, don't fool yourself by fooling others..

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader, so far?

While solving a P1 issue that impacted the customer, I remained on the call for 36 hours taking minimum breaks in between to show to the team that i am avaiable and standing by although they were helping solve the technical glitches, I used by presence to ensure they were not distracted and took entire pressure on me from the client, i believe leadership is not just about decision-making and strategy, but also about compassion, empathy, and leading by example.