Leading Digital Transformation as a ‘Velvet Hammer’

There’s a book entitled “The Velvet Hammer” that describes the moniker of a woman who gets things done and done well by leading with grace and eloquence. Author Elaine Allison says this woman has let go of trying to make what works for her male counterparts work for her. 

Years ago, a colleague nicknamed Carol Houle ‘the velvet hammer.” She says that happened as a result of her doing “what I needed to do in order to set something up for success. If people were just being stubborn and more focused on power and control, I was able through influence and other tactics to gently nudge them into place, so that we were all going in the same direction.” 

That skill has been key to Houle’s steady progression up the ladder of success. She’s currently the Global Head of Banking, Financial Services & Insurance at Thoughtworks, a software company headquartered in Chicago. Before that, she was Senior Vice President and Global Head of Financial Services & Insurance at Atos. She has spent the greater part of her career building and renovating businesses for companies, like Cognizant Technology Solutions and Dell Technologies, which seek to focus on business-led digital transformation. Her approach is to begin with what clients know and understand, baseline where they are today, and help them incrementally improve – taking their businesses in the direction they desire.

After earning her bachelor’s degree in finance at Smith, Houle started her career at Price Waterhouse Consulting (now PwC Management Consultants). “They were really focused on taking people that had strong communication and people skills and training them in technology. So I’ve been a software engineer, a tester, a database administrator, an architect, project manager, program manager, you name it in technology, I probably did it.” She was part of the supply chain management group for Price Waterhouse where they applied Lean principles to client supply chains. In the early 2000’s when those same principals were applied to the software delivery lifecycle, she was an early adopter of Lean Agile practices applied to software delivery. Houle then charted a course toward being an expert in DevOps and enabling continuous delivery as an operating model. This involves helping clients achieve modern teams and culture, Lean Agile process, modern software and infrastructure engineering practices, and cloud native platforms.

When she went to Cognizant Technology Solutions, Houle made a conscious shift to being a change agent and initiator of strategic businesses for companies that wanted to move into the digital transformation space. That led to her current job at Atos. 

Houle has leveraged her Smith education to get where she is. “The degree was excellent grounding on the basics of business and on following your passion and curiosity. I learned how to learn and how to discern the right path forward.”  

“You have to know what you’re not, to know what you are. I think coming from a broad public education grounding allowed me to take risks that others have chosen not to take.” Some people might see taking a job at an overseas company (Atos) as one of those risks. But Houle says, “I’m learning how to overcome the natural fear of uncertainty.” 

It appears to be paying off. The tech industry continues to be male-dominated and Houle is among just 19% of senior vice presidents in tech that are women. She says she’s been underestimated for her entire life. “A big lesson for me and other professional women – people  are always going to underestimate you and it has nothing to do with your capabilities – it has everything to do with their bias. Don’t let other people’s disbelief in your capabilities drive what you believe you’re capable of achieving.”

Now that’s the kind of wisdom and inspiration you’d expect from ‘the velvet hammer.’