I think that collaboration and partnership are critical. That's the key to driving retention and growth versus having a siloed approach.
MEDIA 7: Could you please take us through your journey? How has it been in general and with Gartner?
AKHIL GOPINATH: It's been a pretty interesting run so far. I've had a whole variety of experiences and each experience has taught me so much. I've been in Marketing, Sales, Tech Consulting, Entrepreneurship, and now most recently in my role at Gartner which is, on the strategy side; Retention, Growth, and Product Strategy. Each experience has taught me something new, broadened my horizons, and pushed me out of my comfort zone because they are all unique and different in their own way. The Marketing and Sales experience taught me to be client-centric, to deal with pressure. The Tech Consulting and Entrepreneurship experience helped me get comfortable with ambiguity and have confidence in doing so. In a start-up, you need to do everything from scratch.
So it gave me that confidence that I could build anything from nothing and also deal with more ambiguity lack of structure. Being part of this group within Gartner, which is like an internal strategy group, it's given me the opportunity to truly be a part of transforming an entire business unit. I am a part of the high-tech vertical here and I've been part of the journey in helping drive transformation across the entire business unit over the last few years, and its driven impact at an organizational level. It has not just impacted that vertical but impacted the whole organization. It's been a very gratifying experience. And as a professional, I feel that you need to constantly push yourself outside your comfort zone. That's super important for your development; else you will reach a saturation point. That is a big takeaway from all these experiences.
M7: Okay, so the USP is pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. The #GartnerLive Series seems a great concept. Could you please shed some light on this?
AG: It's a pretty simple concept. It's more about increasing the social media presence and getting to a more tech-savvy audience. A lot of things happen on social media these days. This is to cater to that audience. A lot of leaders, CIOs, and other top Tech Leaders are leveraging social media more and more to increase their reach and influence. So the #GartnerLive Series is a quick snippet where you can cover relevant topics, drive insights on a particular domain or an area, and at the same time, magnify that through social media.
Read More: Microsoft's Director of AI and Innovation, Nicholas McQuire, explores AI's potential to solve society's and Science's biggest problems
M7: What are the main social media platforms that you use for the Gartner audience?
AG: LinkedIn is a big one. We've also got a presence on Twitter and Facebook.
Be open to learning and feedback. What you're doing right now might not be what you will do a few years down the line.
M7: Could you please share some tools and techniques regarding the growth and product strategy that you have learned in recent years? And what has been your take away from them. Basically, for product marketing, so maybe some software or maybe some new ideas that you have learned during the recent times.
AG: Retention and growth are a big focus for me. I'm responsible for the retention and growth strategy of a particular business unit within the company. Like, how are the growth metrics doing with respect to the overall company's goals, the company's been growing and doing very well for the last few quarters, so is everything in line with those goals. In terms of retention and growth, the biggest thing for me would be to focus on delivering insights and value to our clients. So that Gartner is a must-have versus a nice to have! You can create the best PowerPoint, write the fanciest stuff in a document, but until that value/ impact is delivered to and seen by the client, it doesn't really matter.
So it comes down to value delivery. Sometimes you have silos, breaking through those silos, connecting the dots, stitching a strong story to have a unified approach by bringing everyone on the same page. I think that collaboration and partnership are critical. That's the key to driving retention and growth versus having a siloed approach. Oftentimes you'll find silo one will have their focus, silo two will have their focus/ their goal, silo three, silo four, so on and so forth, but it's breaking through those silos and getting everyone on the same page and driving the highest value that you can to the client. Putting our clients first and encouraging my team to have a ‘clients-first’ mindset – I think that's what helps propel growth and retention. For me, that's been most important to be successful and deliver high-impact value.
Read More: Marlab’s Mahesh RG believes, ‘Organizations who share/exchange information grow much faster than those who keep it as secret’
M7: Wow that’s amazing. If I may ask this question, you have been associated with Gartner for the last five years if I'm not wrong. So where was the company at the time when you started and where is it now? What changes have you seen in all these years?
AG: A lot of changes actually. Gartner is a very fast-paced, fast-growing company. It's not small and it's not too big. It's in a space where our insights and values are very unique and differentiated. Of course, there’s always competition, but the sort of value proposition of Gartner is very unique, almost in a space of its own. When I started out it was a much smaller closer feel to it, it was probably about, half of its current revenue. So it's almost doubled its revenue since I joined. So, from $2 Billion it is now $4 Billion, it's a huge leap. During this journey, we did the acquisition of CEB.
CEB has led to several thousand employees joining our workforce and all of a sudden, it felt a lot bigger overnight. There were several changes as well and I would like to call them as growing pains. Whenever you’re integrating an organization, there's always going to be growing pains because there are different work streams and different cultures. So, kind of amalgamating all of that. Some present their own unique set of challenges but like I said, from $2 Billion in revenues to double the size of $4 Billion in revenues today, it's been great to have been part of this ride because the growth has been massive. Today, we have close to 16,000 employees globally. Gartner is the world's leading IT advisory and research firm. So it's been a pretty good, fun ride so far. So far so good, I would say!
M7: How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected the market and what are the top challenges that you see this year?
AG: In high-tech, we have the Pivot Forward framework which is, “How do you pivot forward from the pandemic or any other challenge?” and so it starts off with the phase where the pandemic hit the world, affected everyone and businesses went down. You can either stay in that phase and not do much about it hoping things improve, or you can pivot your business model. Think about the ‘Next Step’, what do I need to do to get to the next step? What is the direction you should take? And that's what we're doing. By pivoting forward, we help businesses move forward and move ahead of the pandemic, address the challenges head-on, and then pivot in a different ‘New Direction’. I think the challenges have been pretty similar to what most companies have faced. People have been in the office and then now, suddenly have to work remotely. Several businesses have been affected because spending has come down, a lot of companies are more crunched with cash than they were before but at the same time, what's interesting is the high-tech business is relatively unaffected. Our vertical still grew, we still had very satisfied clients who leaned more on us through the pandemic.
We were the top-performing channel within Gartner. So for us, it's been a pretty good journey. I would say it's almost a mindset, sometimes there's also Covid fatigue, if everyone starts talking about Covid and you keep doing that, you get into that phase where it's hard to move on from it. What we've been doing well, is talking about the next steps. We get that these are the challenges. What do we do next? Here's what we see, potentially what we can be doing next. And here's the roadmap, step by step. We define industry-specific roadmaps for different companies within different industries. That's what we've done to circumvent some of the challenges that we're seeing. I think now if you see a lot of companies/clients have moved out of the ‘crunch phase’. The pandemic hits you, there's a decline in growth for companies, that becomes stable, and then there's the growth phase. Now, we are entering that growth phase where companies are spending back again. If you've worked with the companies in the beginning, when things were down, and have shown them how you pivot your business model forward and in which direction they could be moving towards and other opportunities they could explore, then you will be partnering with them during this growth phase. You will grow as they grow, the pie becomes bigger for everyone involved. So I think it's more about adapting to the challenges than getting stuck within them.
Read More: Futurex’s Adam Cason advises, ‘To look at your data security posture with a critical eye’
Whenever you’re integrating an organization, there's always going to be growing pains because there are different workstreams and different cultures.
M7: Oh lovely! Coming to a little personal question. So how do you keep yourself motivated during these tough times?
AG: I don't view them as tough times, it's tough but it’s not like we're going and fighting a war or something. Yes, in a way, it's a war, but I'm grateful for what I have. I'm grateful for my family and that everyone is safe. It's affected my lifestyle, like going out, meeting people but in terms of managing my stress, I work out a lot. I don't let any stress get to me. I view things a little differently. Sometimes people get so caught up in a moment or a phase that they confuse that moment or a phase with life itself and I don't let that happen to me. For me, life is made up of many phases, many moments. So there might be a really bad moment, but it’s just that, a phase/moment, and that too shall pass. So, that's kind of my philosophy. I am also musically inclined; I used to play for two bands sometime back. I played the guitar, I still do from time to time. Those are some of my ways to deal with stress and be positive.
M7: That is so amazing to know, wow! So lastly, what is your advice to young people who are starting their careers in product management?
AG: Be open to learning and feedback. Gartner, by the way, has a very feedback-driven culture, we believe feedback to be really important in the development of our associates. So, it's really important for especially people who are starting their career whether as a Product Manager or into product marketing or anything, to be open to learning and feedback and to keep an open mind. What you're doing right now might not be what you will do a few years down the line, for example, I did a whole different set of things and each experience taught me something new. So you could try different things, you might find your dream, and you could be doing that for as long as you want to.
You also might not, right away. Just don't forget that the possibilities are endless. You just need to keep an open mind. Look at what you want to do and if something doesn't work out, that's okay. You can always move on and get to doing something else. The other bit of advice is similar to what I had mentioned earlier, keep pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, if you do something for a long time, you get comfortable with it, and then everything is flowing well for you and it’s not as challenging. Then you reach a saturation point and you get comfortable with it and the growth stops or becomes limited. It's important to be aware of that and make sure that you push yourself, keep improving, and keep going to the next level.