Entrust helps establish and maintain trusted user and machine identities, helps secure modern payments and its solutions use advanced security technologies to stop cybersecurity threats, protect data and enable digital life. Harini Gokul has been employed as the first Chief Customer Officer for the company and tells us about her management philosophy and go-to productivity trick.
Describe your current job role.
As the first Chief Customer Officer for Entrust, my role is to ensure our customers’ success. It means earning the right to be a trusted advisor for our customers and helping them innovate and realise their business goals, with agility, at scale. Period.
What would you describe as your most memorable achievement?
While I have done many things, putting in place the foundations for trust in the cloud, especially concerning the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is one of my most memorable achievements. This came about as a result of the NSA Snowden revelations and put a spotlight on trust and privacy in the cloud. Getting ahead of our customers’ concerns and proactively putting in place a framework to help our customers navigate trust in the cloud was groundbreaking and helped Microsoft establish a thought leadership position in the cloud.
What style of management philosophy do you employ with your current position?
I have a supportive and consultative approach to leadership where our teams can realise their full potential, thrive and be able to innovate. My fundamental beliefs are as follows:
- We should build workplace cultures that allow us and our teams to show up as our whole selves
- It’s important to create respectful, inclusive and safe environments
- Be transparent to build trust
- Create an always-learning culture
Finally, I believe in a #oneteam approach to success. We succeed when everyone succeeds. As some of you may know, I am a F1 fan (go Max!) and when I think about customer experience and the culture and cross-functional collaboration that will be required for our customers’ success, I envision the F1 formula for success. Even though you see only one driver in that car, an F1 team directly involves between 300 and 1,200 people, who are designing, building, manufacturing and testing parts that will end up in or on the car. Everybody contributes to building and maintaining the team and the drive for success. And that is how I see leadership – teams touching all parts of the customer journey, from building products, to sales, to finance, to onboarding, to support and renewals and working in symphony to achieve a fast start for our customers.
What do you currently identify as the major areas of investment in your industry?
In this period of macroeconomic uncertainty, we see that C-suites and boards continue to double down on Digital Transformation and security.
As encryption standards change, we are seeing once in a generation change with the advent of post-quantum. Boards and C-suites understand the importance of being prepared for a post-quantum world and are actively seeking guidance in setting up their businesses for success.
With more complex IT systems and expanded attack surfaces, Zero Trust has now become the de-facto standard. As customers address these opportunities, customer experience and success are becoming strategic areas of investment as companies realise that their customers are looking for trusted advisors to steward them through these opportunities. Investment in customer experience and success to be more proactive, data-driven to anticipate and look around the corners to drive meaningful strategic change will be key.
What advice would you offer somebody aspiring to obtain a C-level position in your industry?
A leader leads from every seat. You do not have to have a C-level title to exhibit that behaviour. Having said that, here are some things that I think are the hallmarks of a leader
- Start by understanding the market strategy, have a deep understanding of the space you are in and show thought leadership
- Be a learn it all, not a know it all – be curious and always learn about everything in the company and the market, not just your role
- Be generous – Be a mentor, sponsor and advocate for all teams, not just yours. This will help you earn trust
- Life is about two-way doors – take some risks and sign up for strategic projects and show that you have vision and execution that the company can bet on. If it succeeds, great. If it fails, even better, think about what you have learned
- Most importantly, understand what good looks like – as an example, are you a public company looking to optimise shareholder value? Show how you are doing that. Are you a company going through a transition? Show how you can lead through change.
What’s your go-to productivity trick?
I employ a 10/10/10 rule. Time is the most important thing for me, so I am maniacal about how I spend my time. As a leader, I must ensure I spend my time on the right issues and people.
The way I use to make decisions on how to use my time is with a mechanism called 10/10/10 – the first 10 is 10 weeks, the second is 10 months and the third is 10 years. My highest priorities are topics or people that will have an impact in 10 years (long-term). Next comes those topics or people that will be impactful medium-term (10 months). The lowest on my priority list is the urgent topics that may seem super important for now but will not have an impact long-term.
What changes to your job role have you seen in the last year and how do you see these developing in the next 12 months?
My customers live in ever-evolving, technical and complex environments. To meet and exceed their needs, we need to be always innovating, thinking about the next trend, the next breakthrough that their business needs and translating that into improving the solutions to serve our customers and challenging the status quo. All this needs to happen at speed and proactively. So I continue to see my role evolve to be strategic, raising the bar on innovation and being proactive, data-driven and growth-oriented.