Praniti Lakhwara
CIO
Zscaler
DECEMBER 2023
CIO Praniti Lakhwara of Zscaler refers to herself as an “accidental CIO.” She came to the U.S. from India with the goal of becoming a pilot, drawn by the adrenaline rush of flying. During her aeronautics management program, she realized that she liked engineering and excelled at it. Praniti switched gears to aerospace engineering, which had a focus on computational modeling. “That is a fancy way to say that I had to learn how to code,” she says.
After graduation, she landed her first role in technology as a software programmer in Silicon Valley and hasn’t looked back. Eventually, she found the same sense of excitement and satisfaction in technology. “I was solving problems, and it had its own mini adrenaline rush,” she says.
Prior to joining Zscaler, Praniti spent 11 years at Invisalign, where she “took the opportunity to lead many different groups.” She explains that she was part developer and part architect, ran manufacturing Systems for a period of time, was a solution analyst and got her first leadership role. “That's where I had my first exposure to the C-suite and to the board,” she says. “I had opportunities that showed me the path toward becoming a CIO, and then I knew I wanted to run IT organizations.”
I wanted to be at the forefront of solving complex business problems.”
Keys to Success for Technology Leaders
Praniti says two of the keys to her success were finding her passion and understanding that every career journey is different. On finding her passion for technology and leadership, she says, “I truly, to this day, feel like I arrived at the perfect role for me. So, passion is a big driver – and not letting yourself get derailed.”
”Not all careers are by design,” she says. “It may or may not be a direct, straight route.” There are pauses and sidesteps into different roles, and as she says, “Life is going to get in the way.” When Praniti had her first role as the head of IT, for example, she had five-month-old twins. “It was quite a juggle. But I like high-pressure situations, and I took it as a challenge.”
Praniti also learned from her career journey that “you need to have courage, you need to have conviction, and you need to stay natural to who you are and your approach.”
4 Principles for Leading IT Teams
The keys to success for Praniti are closely connected to her leadership principles and the values she tries to instill in her team.
- Stay Curious
To drive the utmost value for your organization, Praniti believes the CIO is well-positioned to see opportunities for efficiencies. “You need to be very curious in the CIO role,” Praniti says. “You're constantly wanting to dig in and ask the question, ‘Why?’ It's not just about delivering value. It's thinking holistically for the organization.”
- Create a Growth Mindset
As Praniti says, “I am a true believer that we don't know it all.” She not only sees the need for continuous learning herself, but thinks it is necessary to drive that as a cultural value on her team. “That includes learning from our failures and learning from taking risks. That, to me, is an important driver of my philosophy,” she explains.
- Drive a Purpose
Praniti believes in setting a purpose for her team and aligning it to the organization’s purpose to help prioritize tasks and manage burnout. She explains, “It is a problem when you have so many different things you are constantly working on. It's really important to clarify our top priorities and emphasize the fact that we want our team to be empowered to say ‘no’ to anything else that comes their way.”
- Value Integrity
Praniti shares that honesty and integrity are important to her as a leader of a team. “Whatever principles you hold yourself to become even more important when you are responsible for a team of people,” she says. She believes that if you make honest and ethical behavior a priority, your team will follow suit.
Current Challenges & Opportunities for CIOs
Key challenges Praniti sees for CIOs this year include balancing growth and innovation with risk, economic uncertainty and talent. On the topic of balance, she notes that “there are always going to be competing mandates, and it's nothing new to a CIO.” She explains that there is always a push-and-pull dynamic between speed or risk, or between margins and costs with the pace of growth.
“It's important to understand which use cases and what domains you want to prioritize and which ones have the potential to drive the right value for the company – and understand which technologies can be deployed to capture that value,” she shares. “So the portfolio is informed by that value and the risk.”
On the topic of economic uncertainty, Praniti says that “it gives rise to doing more with less.” There is more scrutiny on how efforts to boost the topline impact the margins, which requires IT teams to be more agile. “You have to constantly evaluate your landscape. You are trying to drive efficiencies and simplify so that you can get to those business outcomes of top line and margin,” Praniti explains.
With talent, Praniti believes that it is key to think not only about the needs you have today, but what skills you will need in the future. “The skills that we are hiring for are not just technology skills… but analytical and problem-solving skills,” she says. She also believes that upskilling internal teams has become increasingly important for retention.
When discussing opportunities for CIOs, Praniti says, “no conversation like this goes without mentioning generative AI.” She believes implementing it across the organization relies on a strong foundation of data, as well as the right policies and use cases to enable productivity. But, she also thinks the opportunity of generative AI goes beyond efficiencies and better margins.
“You can actually democratize value to almost all of your users. It used to reside within IT, where only a few super users utilize certain tools because they understand the tech stack. Now, we have an opportunity to broaden that to all users and drive the same value to everyone,” she shares. “I have a tagline – ‘make every desk more productive.’ And I think AI could be a game changer here. Our challenge is, of course, how do you deploy this at scale?”
I really do think of CIOs as business leaders. I don't think of them as just technology leaders – we cannot possibly be just technology leaders.”
The future of the CIO role, as Praniti sees it, is becoming “architects of the business.” She believes CIOs have a broad view of the business, both upstream and downstream, and can connect the dots across the organization. “This allows us to drive outcomes like influencing revenue, productivity increases, and informing product strategy,” she says.
“We understand that we need to have a foundation of operational excellence, but the true value comes from driving those outcomes to the business.”
For more conversations with CIOs on leadership and driving business outcomes, join your local CIO community, or, check out our calendar for opportunities to meet and collaborate with your CIO peers.
Special thanks to Praniti Lakhwara and Zscaler.
by CIOs, for CIOs
Join the conversation with peers in your local CIO community.
