Shift & Thrive: CEO Insights on Driving Change

Amit Pande
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[00:00:00] In today's business world, change is the only constant, and mastering transformation is the ultimate key to success. Welcome to Shift and Thrive. I'm your host, Natalie Nathanson.

Each week we'll bring you conversations with CEOs who delve into how they successfully drove critical change in their organization. This show is sponsored by Magnitude Consulting, bringing you the thinking power of a growth consult. And the getting it done, power of a full service B2B marketing agency.

Natalie Nathanson: welcome to another Go-to-Market Spotlight episode on Shift & Thrive, and I am really looking forward to bringing you today's guest. He spent more than two decades helping some of the world's largest companies and fastest growing startups navigate major business transformations. Starting his career in product design and product development, he went on to lead product strategy before expanding into broader go-to-market roles, [00:01:00] including chief marketing officer, growth officer, and general manager, giving him a unique perspective across the entire customer and commercial journey.

Along the way, he's held leadership roles at Google, Oracle, Yahoo,

HP, as well as multiple category, category-defining AI startups. Today, he advises founders and CEOs

across the AI ecosystem to help shape the next generation of enterprise AI. Amit Pande, welcome to the show

Amit Pande: Thank you, Natalie. It's a pleasure to be here.

Natalie Nathanson: It's great to have you. And I really want to start with a transformation story. And I know, you

know, lots of companies will reach an inflection point where

a lot of different things need to change, uh, together, right? Product, culture, go-to-market, et cetera, um, which can make for a very large transformation.

And I know you experienced some of that at Aviso. Um, I believe the company had just brought in a new board and CEO, um, but would love for you to kind of talk about the core elements you were involved in and, uh, kind of what [00:02:00] you learned, uh, from that transformation.

Amit Pande: Natalie,

one of the, uh, things you never know walking into, uh, you know, a new investor and a

new board and CEO,

um, is

how

much an inflection point is so

counterintuitive

to what

your past playbooks,

you know, may have been.

You

know, the inflection point itself seems really like that it's about, you know, uh, you know, taking a company in a slightly different direction or helping it grow better. But really, you know, it's about, uh, a product,

uh, strategy, marketing, culture,

and all of these things, you know,

shifting at the same time. And, um, so

the transformation has so many counterintuitive elements that, uh, you can only think about it in reverse. And so I

actually have three perspectives on this transformation.

You

know, the first is that,

um, the natural

tendency when you get coming in as a leader

is to,

is to add more or do more because there's so much to fix.

But what we

found [00:03:00] counterintuitively was that subtraction helped a lot. So,

um, whether it's something as

trivial as,

you

know, why are we burning through

so much with all

of this, uh, software and SaaS that was,

you know, running

sort of

on autopilot,

and let's just subtract, subtract, subtract the things that we don't need before we can start adding.

Uh, that's sort of a more, uh, you know, uh, finance and budgetary sort of sense

to this.

But if you go,

All the way

to the top of the segmentation perspective of, you know, should we focus on large enterprise, mid-market, SMB? Should

we focus

on US, international? Um, we subtracted

a

lot from the equation first.

And I think that really helped us because when we,

uh,

then started focusing a stronger product on a more refined segment with,

uh,

you know, with a culture where some of

the elements of the culture had been subtracted out and trust had been rebuilt, uh, then we were just able to move faster.

[00:04:00] It's a lot like, what I'm trying to do right now, which is first get back into shape and lose weight before I can have the aspiration of running a marathon,

Natalie Nathanson: I just wanna ask you, because I think that's, um, it can feel scary for a leader or an organization to subtract and kind of worry, you know, are we shrinking, in the case of your, like, uh, audience, are we shrinking a market that we should have stayed with?

You know, uh, things of that nature. Um, so I'm curious, like, what was the process, uh, you went through for figuring out, like, where and how to subtract and, and I guess the comfort level around that?

Amit Pande: There's a lot of places you can, you can start. Um, I would say that i- if we, if you go back to this, uh, three-part framework that's existed, uh, it feels like for decades now, you know, of people,

you know,

process,

and

product.

What I found is a lot of the subtraction naturally fell into those buckets. And what I mean by that is, um, let's start with the people side because that's the most, most important thing. If there are people who have persisted and, and stuck through change over the years, and now they're [00:05:00] waiting for a new CEO and their leadership to, you know, come in and tell them what the plan is and work with them on building that plan, then you don't really want to, uh, you know, subtract anything and scare people more Other than the things that are getting in the way of doing their work.

We, uh, had, uh, international geographies. Uh, we were,

uh, working

very

closely with

operations

outside the US as well,

including in India. And the

first month my CEO and

I traveled, we spent time in, uh, town halls,

all hands,

small groups, everyone sitting around a large, you know, table, Thanksgiving style, having lunch, and, and really trying to understand what was getting in the way of those people.

On the product side,

we asked ourselves a hard

question on whether the, the, uh, audience

we were

selling the product to and

the product actually matched. And

then we realized that there were areas in the product

that we definitely had to... When I

say subtract, I don't mean... In software, it's difficult to subtract things, right?

If it's in the software, it's in the software.

Natalie Nathanson: You can't take things back away from your [00:06:00] customers that they're already using.

Amit Pande: Th- that's right.

What

we did is, um, we subtracted

by, um,

by

refocusing the energies on certain areas that we knew could be

in the

product but didn't necessarily have to be part of the positioning of the product anymore.

You know, so for, so for example, uh, if, uh, we were working on pipeline inspection, we started saying, "Let's

add more on future

quarter pipeline," so that any company would like to know where its future quarter pipeline's gonna be. Uh, but when it comes to things like reports

and analytics, which is more

par for

the course, we said,

"Well, that's in the product.

let's keep

it in the product, but let's not add another 100 reports because based on what we are learning, it feels like we need to sharpen the product

towards this new audience we're

going towards." Um, to be just very specific, we were selling the product

as a

forecasting tool before our time to revenue operations leaders and directors.

We expanded into large enterprise and going into a top-down chief revenue officer sale. And so you can now imagine that, you

know, [00:07:00] we're

matching a different product

which has a more CRO-level altitude to

that audience. And then finally, quick

point

about process, right? Process is about,

um,

you know,

how people, um, you know,

show up at

the office, how they serve customers.

And so

part of what we

subtracted from this,

uh, from this process was there was

a lot of,

uh, busy work that would, you know, often happen. Like, "Hey, um,

uh, prepare

this, uh, pr- spreadsheet, or prepare this PowerPoint," so that then someone shows it to their boss, and then their boss shows it to the CEO. And one of the things, um, I learned tremendously

from the CEO

that I worked with was, you know, I was-

his

right hand through that transformation

was that

he would just get all the right people into the room or Zoom around a problem, and then nobody would leave till that set of problems was solved.

And what this meant is that people stopped thinking about

how to

put together the perfect PowerPoint for the boss, and more about how

to

think about the problem that the boss was asking

them to

solve. [00:08:00] And, uh, I for one have, uh, learned that, uh, we should never waste our time making slides to convince each other in an internal audience in a company.

We should do all this great storytelling for partners and customers.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Uh, I love that and so much of, of what you, uh, what you shared there.

Amit Pande: You grow by, uh, by making a clear decision sometimes in these inflection points on who you should stop trying to convince. And this is a really important point because in many companies now I've seen this pattern that if there is a director level person that is in a more back office role, that is the right type

of persona

for a type

of product.

But

if it's a transformational product, um, which can impact revenue, uh, and it could be any type of product,

it doesn't have to be a

product like, uh,

the one we're discussing here,

then you have to find a new type

of person,

and that requires you to almost shed your old skin as a company. Um, one practical thing that also helped, uh, that, uh, you know, we, I know we'll touch [00:09:00] upon later today, is that

you

have

to show a

very vivid true north to an organization of what the new success path leads you towards.

Because if you don't know, and it has to be an emotional, uh, emotional story,

You, always find that, when, you can imagine that promised land, you can, um, you can keep coming back to work the next day, even

if some

days are good, some days are bad.

Natalie Nathanson: , I wanna ask you, um, to mo- to talk about the second area. So we talked about, uh, the, the first of kind of what to subtract. What is your second area from the transformation?

Amit Pande: The second

area of the transformation,

uh,

was, and,

and this

is, uh, maybe true more in software and AI than it is in,

in physical world industries,

but I believe it's

getting true

in physical world industries as well, is

you have to

build and rebuild a company around

a

product that is just, uh, outstanding in what it

does.

And, and

it has to,

the product

[00:10:00] has to evolve not,

uh,

thinking about your direct competitors, but really your

indirect competitors, and the biggest competitor of

all, which is the inertia in organizations to not do anything.

And

so our,

our second tr- I would say, transformation

lever was,

uh, we just out-innovated everybody else on product,

and that ultimately brought the rest of the company along.

Now, you cannot out-innovate on product without also having a clear strategy on who the product is for, which we covered earlier,

or having the people you

need and build trust in those people to now build this product.

But what we

did was we took a bet.

We

took a bet

that if we

work

backwards from the customer, the chief revenue officer, the

large enterprise offi- officers, uh, these commercial officers, and we ask ourselves, we put ourselves in their shoes, and we start thinking about the budget, uh, and the time that is being invested in customer relationship management, customer intelligence tools, CDPs, and then all

[00:11:00] these tools

around activity tracking, forecasting, analytics, call recording.

So we did that analysis and said, "We need to build a product that solves these problems for

the CRO," versus just saying,

"How do we do better forecasting?" And so in that arc of the next few years,

in shaping the

category, shaping the product, and then, you

know, shaping the

revenue in the company, we took the bet that,

uh, the leaders on the other

side, who were our buyers, would want, um,

almost a single

pane of glass for their revenue work, and they would want to reduce some of their tooling, and that's

a great

argument for a CRO and a CFO

both.

And

then they would want

to bring all of

their, uh, team members in, in revenue from the CRO

to the frontline sales rep to marketing and customer success, all in one platform. And so working backwards from that bet, I would say product innovation. And product innovation, um, uh, not just in terms

of a

better product that

had more

capabilities for a better price, right?

So that's, that's the value proposition. [00:12:00] But how we built the

product was also so

counterintuitive, and again, I,

uh,

have, uh, so much respect for the CEO who I partnered with on this because

he was a former CRO.

He wasn't even a product guy

And

what I learned in

working with him

was that he just

took his first principles approach and said,

"Well, why do product managers do it this way?

Why do UI

designers do it this way? Uh, why are we

taking so much

time in the QA process? Why do we have a hundred tickets open for the

last

one month?"

And then, you

know, after one, uh, coming clean call with everybody in

the team, you

realize, well, half of it is because people aren't talking to each

other. So

we just started doing more pods, um, and a compression of hierarchies, and,

uh,

compression of communication.

And I think that just helped our product

move faster,

Natalie Nathanson: Well, it sounds like the, it was

kind of

enabling the culture to be able to move like that and to think about the, the customer first. So I think that's fantastic. Thank you. Um, and can you take us to the next one?

Amit Pande: The third thing I'll

talk about is, uh, really [00:13:00] how, uh,

to bring, um, you know, integration. And when I, when I say integration, what I mean is

the

engineers and the support

team and

the marketing team and the sales team

all

really anchoring around the

clock speed and the

behavior change that you need to bring into a prospect or into a customer.

And

that's something

that we did, um, uh, both in terms of everyday tactics and strategy very differently during the transformation. So I'll give you the, the, uh, the tactics first, right? Some of the very specific tactic. Uh, like many other companies, we used to have Slack channels, and those Slack channels were separate for engineers, for their products, and they were separate

for deals, uh, for sales.

And

the deal channels only had sales and marketing, and the product channels only had engineers. And we, uh, when we started talking to, uh, engineers and product leaders in the company, we learned that, uh, they had very little idea about what was

actually going

on on the deal-making side,

and

vice versa.

And

that just is

daft, right?

Because it's a small company.

If

you're you're a small company of fifty or a hundred people, you [00:14:00] need most people to know most things. And the default

we

designed was that, you know, if you are added to

more

channels than you should be on, you can, uh, go q- uh, quiet on them or you can, you know, archive them. But if there's only twenty pursuits in a given quarter and you're the one of the lead engineers, you should know what those

pursuits are,

and you should hear exactly what those people are saying.

So what we did is, uh, we, um, first of all shifted our product. We stopped using Slack.

We

started using a product that was built by the former, uh, CEO of WebEx. You know, they had this open source version of that collaboration workspace. We embedded that into our own product, and in fact, then that became one of our product offerings.

So think about deal

rooms,

which

bring everybody that should be around a deal.

Think about customer rooms where it's, you

know,

with a customer, and you have the people

that need to be in with that customer. And, uh, that's how we started running the company. We, um, you know, this was something that my CEO did brilliantly, is

he said, "We're all gonna

shift from Slack into [00:15:00] this

new thing.

I know there's gonna be some pain." An inflection point around a recapitalization or a new funding or

a new M&A does not mean

that

people's habits

and behaviors are going to change, as you said.

So

the

behavior change has to be brought in right

from the bottom.

So,

for example, you, if you, um, are bringing all, all, all of your teams now into this new collaboration channel, that also means that you're sending the message to them that you should use email For only very critical things with the CEO and, uh, the rest of the leadership.

But for quick decisions,

there's a hierarchy here. Um, if

I need something from you, Natalie, or you need something from me, there's something called a phone. We can, we can text each other or call each other. We

should be

doing that, uh, most actively. Uh, and if you're in the office, just walk into that person's

room and talk.

I

mean, these things sound simple, but when trust has to be rebuilt, you have to remind people it's safe to do it. Uh, and, uh, you start sort of rewarding those, those behaviors. Um, but then if I now, you know, go into [00:16:00] the, uh, the more, uh, strategic aspect of what I meant by integration, you know, it really means that

We had to be very parallel in

how we were

thinking about

building product,

serving customers, and

also getting prospects.

So what

we found was our existing customers, you

know, became such

a beachhead for us, both in terms of

testing our

new messaging as well as testing which features would make most sense. So many more of our feature requests quarter after quarter after quarter started coming in from

customers because rather than

going back every quarter and saying, "Hey, how are things going?

Are things going great, and do you have any support tickets?" We said, "Wait, let's

make this a

strategic 360 conversation, a QBR where, uh, you're my customer, we're spending time with you. We're not just telling you about what we

did and how..."

Remember, we were, we were, at its core, a time series engine that would also predict your forecast.

So it's always good to go back and say,

"Well, we told

you we were gonna be 98%

accurate

on your revenue forecast

for the

quarter. How, how did we do, right?" But we elevated that and said, um, "We have looked [00:17:00] at your CRM and all your, uh, calls and all your emails very

carefully. Here's

five deals that we believe your team should be looking at that our AI has found."

And so

you just start

thinking about surplus value and where you can inform that value. And then the last 5% of that type of conversation, you say, uh, "Would it be okay

if I showed you

some of

the things we're thinking

about in our roadmap and get your candid feedback on it?"

And of course, your,

your, you

know, your customers are,

um, your single, you

know, greatest asset.

So

I

would say that integrating

different teams around

the customer was, uh, our

third play, and I

think this is something that really helped us with, um,

with

category creation, uh,

in terms of,

you

know, becoming the first AI chief of staff for go-to-market teams, and then in becoming sort of a revenue

system for,

you know,

for AI because, um, category creation is a very fancy word.

I'm, I'm

always

on the fence

about how much to

use it,

but I

want to share this with you because, you know, you're an entrepreneur, so I think you'll relate to this,

that category creation is never

about giving a new clever [00:18:00] name to a product. It's really about making an old problem impossible enough

for the

market to ignore.

And so you're making it about the problem of the customer and then integrating your organization around it.

And then over time,

you

know, as you, as you get better at it, you start bringing in your, your partners. I mean, we worked with private equity companies,

for example,

as partners,

and said, "Can

we help you with your portfolio companies?"

We started working with the, uh, the Salesforce, Microsoft-type, uh, companies and

saying, "Can we help you, you

know, with things?" And,

um, so I would say, uh, it's a, it's an interesting mirror to the

first point

I mentioned, that you have to subtract a lot. Um, but you,

you

know, you have to subtract a lot, you have to innovate a lot, and then you have to integrate a lot.

And once that's in place, then in some ways- You are making a company less

subject

to the individual brilliance of leaders, and you're creating more of an almost like an operating layer for the company

itself, right? Because the company, uh, the best companies in the world survive

not because a leader lives 200 years, right?[00:19:00]

They survive because they're able to

have succession, and

their systems are the, uh, are the, uh, engine behind the company.

Um, and

new generations of people can keep coming and growing into those companies. Um, I always tell every founder I advise

or CEO I work with that, you know, we're a

startup. I love that term, but we,

we have to eventually be grown up

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Uh, I want to shift gears a bit because

we're talking

about, uh, you know, all the things that need to go into a, a transformation. And you touched earlier, uh, about, you know, sometimes needing to, uh, kind of shed your old skin, uh, as part of something like this. And so, um, we can talk about your leadership, we can talk about experiences you've had.

But, you know, how do you recognize when a business now needs a different version of you, uh, you know, as part of this?

Amit Pande: And this is such a great

question, and

often I,

you know, ask myself how, uh,

did I find myself in these, um, in these roles which have titles attached to them, [00:20:00] where they weren't maybe on my radar a decade ago.

Uh, and,

uh, the

most honest answer to that is, uh, related to the question you just asked, which is that I went to wherever the problem was. And, uh, if the problem demanded the marketing side of my brain to be exercised, then that is what I exercised. So in the role that I had prior to Avizo, I would really, uh,

qualify

myself as much more of an integrated marketing person, starting through product marketing,

you know, with

sort of my product roots early in career and so on.

But when I was,

when I

was entering Avizo, because it was a transformation,

I

knew that the last thing you ca- you should do is, um,

change

the banner above the shop and say, "Under new management," and keep the rest of it the same. Uh, and so part of, um, the

leadership,

uh, playbook there, I've learned, is that if what

the

problem [00:21:00] requires you to do right now is to look at a budget closely and understand why we are burning so much,

and especially if you're burning

on,

like, real

estate or we're burning on tools that nobody's even using and nobody even knows when that license was done,

you should focus on that first

rather than

your

marketing brain saying, "Let's run a campaign.

Let's run

a campaign." And if your board insists,

as boards often will, "Hey, when are we going to turn the marketing tap on?" You have to balance that because you can't say, "Well, wait for six months." Instead, you, you give

them a s- you

give them a very logical point

of view

on why you will turn certain parts of

marketing on in a certain

sequence.

So a lot of this is about

sequencing and prioritizing when

you do what

you do. Uh, for

example, if you have,

uh, AWS

re:Invent at the

end of the year,

or you have Salesforce Dreamforce, or you have one of these, uh, NVIDIA or, uh, um, uh, other AMD-type conferences

going on,

and those are the anchor events of your industry,

there are

natural moments in the annual calendar in [00:22:00] any industry where now you can go to the market with your new product, your new story, which allows you to

interface with the biggest part of the market.

But you have to work backwards from that

and say,

you know,

in our, uh, in our, uh, approach today, what is the one thing we have to get right this month? I find that with startups, one of the biggest challenges is you are always trying to do

so many things

that it's very difficult to sometimes separate out the outcome-driving activities from the activities that are, that just sort of feel cool, you know?

And, um, and so I've definitely found in my leadership style that, uh, especially because I went in

as an individual

contributor leader

to

many of these transformation roles

first, and

I had to lay the ground before I hired anybody else, and that was something I chose

to do at this stage of my career,

versus earlier in my career, I would hire teams much faster, bring them on, and then kind of figure out the

playbook. Because, you

know, you're an early

manager, that's what you, that's what you do sometimes. You, you get the resources when you can. [00:23:00] I went the exact opposite direction in these transformation moments and said, "Wait,

uh, adding

every new person adds complexity

right now." So

add them at the right

time and then add

them in areas

which are uniquely additive to,

and multiplicative to your skill sets, rather than someone who can do the same thing that I do, because then I'm not going to get that,

uh,

you

know, get that kind of leverage.

Um, uh, perhaps just one last comment on that. I have found in not just the startup world, but in my personal career and style as well, that

Uh, the best

ideas around, uh, leadership come from the weirdest and strangest places, not just in terms of, um,

talking to people

who are leaders of, uh, you know, say, um, a, a leader of a theater company, a leader of a nonprofit, a leader of a social movement, uh, can teach you things that,

uh,

sometimes, uh, the best Silicon Valley or

technology leaders cannot because their domains are different.

And

they've perhaps dealt

with a

different level of un- you know, uncertainty.

I [00:24:00] read this somewhere

or someone told me this, I forget now, but when you plant a seed in good soil, it takes time for that, those seeds to get adjusted to the soil.

And so you

have to give time so that the first crop that you do,

uh, is,

uh, is done effectively.

And then the next year you don't have to do that. So the equivalent of that in this case is, uh,

you are

now bringing in new people into a company, or you have these old people, and

now you've

changed the leadership. You've changed the product direction. You've changed the segment you're going after. Um, it's pretty scary if you're in the, you

know, in the ground.

And, um,

so

one of the first things I remember

we did early in our transformation was I remember, uh, telling the CEO, "We're probably gonna have to talk to fifty people over the next three days, but I really think we should do it. And there are some people who have already submitted their resignations, and,

you know, this

is before we've started here, but they're leaving in two weeks,

but I think we should

talk to them also."

And, uh, you'd be surprised how much people tell you about, uh, what, what they really think is going on in

a company, especially if

they feel you wanna hear

their [00:25:00] views, even when they're

on their way out,

Hey, this is Natalie, your Shift and Thrive host. After chatting with lots of CEOs, one thing is crystal clear. Leveling up your company means having a killer Go-to-market strategy. That's what my crew at Magnitude Consulting does every day. If you're trying to step up your marketing game, whether it's strategizing, accelerating your pipeline, expanding into new markets, or getting into AI and automation, let's talk.

No pitch, no pressure. Just good conversation. Visit shift and thrive podcast.com/natalie to schedule a time. Can't wait to connect.

Natalie Nathanson: I want to come back to something you said a few minutes ago, um, around coming in as an individual contributor and kind of taking your time to build the team, because I think that sounds very smart, but oftentimes is not the way that the people go about it, right? You are kind of breaking the expectation.

Sometimes you might be afraid of losing the budget of your head count. You know, whatever the case might be.[00:26:00]

So I'm curious,

like, what

was going on, uh, kind of for you internally as a leader to decide to do that, to trust,

kind of

trust your gut that it was the right approach? Uh, talk, talk to me about that.

Amit Pande: Uh, number one,

um, i- in the startup world, I felt

you had

to trust the board and the CEO that you were going to

work with, that they

would make the right decisions

to

support you with resources once you showed that, uh, the blueprint was clear

towards success.

And so that was, uh, important, that psychological factor for me.

Um, and, uh, they, they supported me once we started scaling. And

e-

eventually, I built out a team of 25

people over

multiple years. But in that,

in that first six months, um,

there was a, a quid pro quo. You know, sh- show us that the new vision makes sense, show us that we can go win in

this market, and

then you can, you

know, hire people.

I think the second

was, um,

uh, asking

the hard question, what am I optimizing for?

And,

you know, there's a

very famous [00:27:00] American, uh, fighter pilot from, um,

decades, decades, ago

named John Boyd. He,

uh, is also

the person credited

with

what is called the

OODA loop, observe, orient, decide, act, which is,

how quickly you can, uh, you know, compete. How quickly you can think and change

yourself, right? It's

really a rate of adaptation. And, um,

he

tested this as a fighter pilot where you have no time to think. You, you can't be

clever about it. You have

to immediately iterate, and whoever does that the best wins that battle.

So I told

myself that if

I

am creating the leanest environment for me to have

the fastest rate

of learning and iterate the fastest, um, it would either be with someone that I've trusted over a long time, maybe they've been with me in the trenches for the last 10 years, and, uh, we can do a lot of things, uh, in an unspoken way, or

I have to build

that foundation and then bring that person in Now, uh, my boss had that luxury because we had worked together for five [00:28:00] years in

a previous company in a

different context,

and we had

built a lot of trust and chemistry with each other.

So in some sense, he was bringing me in also alongside him in this new journey, but I

think he knew I would be

comfortable with that

ambiguity. Um, and, uh, so that, that

was

the way I thought about

it. But when I went to C3, which was my last role, I had a similar dynamic. I came in as an individual contributor.

Um, there the math was different. I knew that the resources existed inside the company. I didn't have to hire them, but I would have to just build the business case enough and bring

enough customer

demand in that then I would get access

to those, uh,

to those resources. Um, I,

I, I

do think this is

a great

question you've touched upon because

for so many of us who are now mid-career or stepping

into that stage where, um,

in the

past you were judged by how many team members you have, you know, I think the new equivalent of that, that we should all be asking boards

or companies

we work with is, um,

"I'm not necessarily

asking you [00:29:00] about the

people that

I'll

get, but I'm asking

about the resources I'll get."

And, you know, maybe in this world it's also a token budget.

Maybe

it's also an AI budget and how much AI I'll be able to have

access to,

because the difference

between the teams that have,

um, that have industrial-grade, absolutely top-shelf AI, you know, versus, um, you know, everyday AI, which is more, you

know, us,

uh,

you know, figuring

out, um, the best way to, uh, host a weekend event or something, that gap is going to increase.

So, uh, you know, when I was sleeping last night, I had this idea. I said, and I'll-- I thought

I'll I'll share this with you on the

podcast, which is I think we shouldn't just be asking about human resources. Now we should be asking about, you know, token and AI resources

and saying, "Well,

what is

that gonna be like?"

Because if you can

give me enough so that I can now

spin up a new

go-to-market team which has go-to-market team members, and then all the AI I need to power my go-to-market, you know, I think then we can be in business. Because, uh, a small team, this has been true throughout

history, but a

small team, uh, with 10 people,

or five people [00:30:00] with

access to the right tools and the right motivation can actually outperform 100%, 200% team.

I've seen it all the time.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I love that, and I love that kind of shift in the conversation around resources. Um, I often experience it in terms of, uh, kind of the... my consulting, uh, world is, you know, someone might, uh, a CEO kind of a company might be set on, uh, on hiring in-house and kind of have blinders on to kind of other approaches to bring in.

Um, the, the focus on resources is kind of proof of the trust in the leader to make the right choices and knowing that there's different ways of solving that, um, and you're not kind of presupposing for them what that looks like. So I do love that, and I think that brings us a bit into kind of the conversation around, uh, AI that I was hoping to have.

Um, and, uh, really, like, maybe a bit of AI with, uh, the go-to-market. So would love to hear from you, uh, where do you feel CEOs should be focusing when they look at kind of [00:31:00] redesigning kind of their team, their go-to-market, uh, just the approach to make kind of better decisions and, uh, kinda enable their leaders in this

environment?

Amit Pande: When we think about the most important moments in our own life when we've had, uh, the most success or we've been challenged the most, I find that

it was always the quality of our central nervous system,

you

know, the,

the brain that was, uh, invisible to us that perhaps gave us that insight that helped us avoid trouble.

Uh, or to, um, have a good nose for where opportunity is. And, uh, the more science has learned about,

uh, the way

the brain works, they've realized it's,

it's not

just like up here, it's actually, you know, the brain is around your body.

You have

a,

you have

a brain-brain, you have a gut-brain, you have, you know, all these,

um, these distributed

ways of thinking about intelligence.

That is the potential of AI for CEOs and for companies, is that,

you know, it really

becomes, um, your extended brain of sorts, but also [00:32:00] it's, it's, it's

baked into

your organization almost as biological intelligence.

Because

if you think about the last three decades of software,

it

was a really important foundation.

We needed that foundation. But pre-AI,

most of that foundation is plumbing and

bookkeeping.

That

is not really the kind of intelligence we're talking about here.

We're talking about the kind of intelligence

that allows us to

adapt quickly in new markets, uh, uh, with new products, think about current and perceived competitors,

and just respond faster

and better. And those who have that fastest rate of learning with AI, uh, will just out-compete. I mean, the interesting, uh, you know, thing today is it's very hard to get to a million dollars

when you're

a

new startup,

but it's way easier to get to 100 million from that $1 million.

Why? It's because you- When you think about,

uh, what, uh, leadership can

do with AI, it's never really about,

um,

heroics. And I, I think too much of leadership is associated with heroics, and that's because it comes [00:33:00] from, you know,

the history

of wars and, and countries. But actually, I think that what leadership means in this era of AI is that,

you know, it's

really about creating systems with AI so that the heroics become less important, and now the systems can, uh, you know, take you forward.

So now let's get one level more specific, right? So copilots

came

into the enterprise a couple of years ago, and what was the job of copilots? It was to, you

know, help

individuals do things that they were already doing, but just do them better. That's really the

truth, right?

You were... You were creating, uh, for the first couple of years

of copilots, you

were maybe,

um, using them to create

a, a dashboard or a spreadsheet

or maybe spin up a

mini application, which you would have done in PowerPoint

earlier. Could

you have done it without the copilot? Yes. In most cases, yes. So then the, uh, it should be clear to us

that that era of copilot was

really just about

making us slightly

more efficient on the things we were, um, we were, we were hesitant to do. I don't think that's really, you know, AI in its truest sense, right? AI in its [00:34:00] truest sense is you say, "Wait, let's work

backwards. What is

my product? My product is, uh, this product, okay?

This product, but, uh,

this product

may be, uh, a home robotic system, okay? Or

an

industrial, uh, uh, warehouse robotic system. Okay, great.

Who

are all the companies in the world I could sell to

right

now?"

Who are all the companies in the world that have

some intent of looking into this area

right

now? Okay,

now how do I capture that intent?

Okay, how do I set up, uh, AEO, GEO, SEO machines to

now create the kind of, um, let's just say, uh, air cover, air game, so that those companies can learn about me by me educating them about the problem? Problem education, buyer education is the best kind of marketing. So I think

when I think

about AI in the context of go-to-market, certainly I often think about how, you know, it's about explaining why something has happened, but more about what

we

should

do

next, [00:35:00] creating shared understanding, uh, across a company.

So you know that integration

pillar I spoke

to you about earlier? I really think AI can be a... The technology is not quite there yet.

Uh, shared

agent

memory is a newer area companies are investing in, uh,

because your agent and my agent don't yet talk to each other. But imagine if all our agents can sort of, you know, hang out in this trusted agent space, and then they're coming back to us with ideas.

I think that's the potential,

you know, of AI I

really say, which

is that, you

know, we

have a wider field of view And we just

have more at-bats to

succeed because, uh, this is almost something, you know, I feel emotional about. I see way more companies and founders with good products, well-meaning technology, and they have absolutely no idea what they can do on their, on their go-to-market.

And, um,

you know, I wrote a LinkedIn post

about this

last

week. I

met this friend who, um, was, uh, you know,

a,

um, a colleague at my last company. He's at this, uh, agentic control plane company.

You know, that's a term you've heard a couple of times now. It's this agentic

control plane [00:36:00] that can,

you know, run

across

a company.

He said, "Dharit, look, the problem is everyone's saying the same things. But when we go to the customer, the

customer's

really now differentiating between all of us on how our sales process is different, and the sales

process is becoming

a lot like a solution and a consulting

process while

being a sales process."

So,

um, uh,

you know, so, so that's where I really see the potential of, you know,

AI and all

of these. I didn't touch as

much upon,

you know,

AI

for HR and finance. I do think that those areas have tremendous, you

know, room

as well. But to bring it back home, I think the biggest, um, the biggest value a CEO can get today

is

that every CEO or every, uh, president, every,

uh,

military leader will always have this,

you know,

this one, like, person that's their trusted ally.

Back in the days, even the word strategy comes from the word

strategos, which is an...

you know, I think it's a, it's a Greek Roman construct. There used to be a person like that who was the, you

know, the

king's sort of brain, and they [00:37:00] would often be hidden. In fact, there would be, uh, there would be soldiers around them because they wanted to protect that brain that was telling them how to win in, in battle.

And then over times, you know, other terms like this evolved, right? Consigliere and, you know, sort of, uh, Jiminy Cricket and, uh, you know, this kind of, this, this, uh, conscience by one shoulder that's

helping you.

I think CEOs can use AI for that. Uh, and, uh,

I,

you know, I, think

there's a,

there's a billion, trillion-dollar company to be made, uh, for, um, for an AI that

a CEO can

really trust as,

like it's, uh,

the CEO's chief of staff

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. I'm finding myself, uh, kind of in, in that demographic where I would love to have something like that already built and already accessible, you have some, some things in, in this, uh, tool, some things in another tool, right? Like, bringing it all together. Um, and I think that's also, you know, and the, the, the inertia to, uh, to change behaviors and to get over the fear of having all of that information in, [00:38:00] in your life everywhere, I think is, uh, one of the hurdles that, that that company will, will face that does finally crack the code on that kinda brain as for, uh, for CEOs and other leaders.

Amit Pande: 100%. 100%. And I

think this is why, uh, the shift to open source models

and

sovereign AI

and, you know, you should keep all

your data locally. Um, uh, I'm 100% with you on this, Natalie. I have not yet connected, you know, AI systems into my personal emails. Uh, I, I don't give it full access to my, my desktop.

Uh, you know, maybe I'm just an older school pers- you know, old, old school of thought person that way, but,

you know, I'm also taking steps into this

in Gingerly, and I've found, uh, that a lot of people are starting

to talk about how do you build your second

brain. You and I are having this podcast in July 2026.

I'm telling you

right now, this is the summer where the second brain thing or this organization

brain thing is starting

to get more real. I suspect that by the end of, of this year,

you'll just start seeing

this more in the language of

companies saying, "I'm

building this kind of brain." And then [00:39:00] again, the burden will be

on buyers

to say, "Wait, wait, wait.

what do you, what do you mean by, you

know, brain? Are we

talking dolphin brain, crow brain, human brain?" Like, what are you know, talking

about?

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. It's so, so interesting. Uh, one other question I want to ask you on this topic, uh, because I think, you know, you and I are, are both, uh, you know, in the, in the mode of looking at how do you kind of think and look differently, how do you build those kind of fundamentally different approaches that are not just about efficiency but are about thinking differently.

Um, and I know, like speaking for, for myself but also for many others I know, like encouraging that shift in mindset in kind of how you work, how you think, being ready to turn a, a process or, or something on its head,

you know, how have you been successful in getting,

uh, kind of teams and, uh, folks to, to think along those lines?

Amit Pande: You know, at a, at a most fundamental level, uh, one thing that's become very clear

to me

as the, as the years

go by is that,

uh, Once you figure out,

[00:40:00] um, how something

works,

um, it almost feels too simple to be true, but often it's true.

So,

you know,

I've been saying this for the last 10 years to, to people, um, that I work with, that sometimes you have to think your way out of a problem, and sometimes you have to act your way out of

a problem.

You can't think

your way out of it. And, uh, action by itself means movement, moving in sometimes unknown directions and groping in the dark, if you will. And then you find some patterns, and then you...

And

you need to know when action is the right approach and when thinking is the right approach. Uh, so it's principles like these that have really, really helped me.

Um, you know, if there is a team,

for example, that just doesn't talk to each

other, people have some bad, uh, you know, uh, past relationship or they've had fights

and they've,

they've kind of built up this animosity towards each other, you can have as many strategy sessions and get two adults in a [00:41:00] room and say, "Well, why don't you both talk

more with

each other?

Um,

why aren't

we working better?" Uh, but, um- Perhaps there's a better way. Maybe that better way is to take that team,

uh, go to your favorite

gym or go to your favorite, uh, musical performance and get people out of, get people out of this, this mindset where, where they're stuck. You know, there's a beautiful, uh, documentary on

Amazon Prime, uh,

which is called The World of Titan.

Titan, uh, is this, um, this, uh, you know, exquisite watch

company that was started by

the Tata Group, which is India's most respected business group, uh, over, like, a few decades. And, uh, Titan was the first watch company where they really wanted to build a world-class

watch, and at some

point they built the world's slimmest watch.

And it's about how they were looking for the tune,

the theme, the brand.

You know, what's that,

uh, thing? And they were all

stuck, and

then the gentleman who started the

company, who, you

know, now

long dead,

the original, um,

uh,

uh, gentleman, J.R. Tata, [00:42:00] uh, there was a Mozart

conference... Uh, there was a Mozart, um, uh, show

that was happening in Bombay in that

era, and

he took his whole team for the show.

And, you know, when they're there and they're listening to this, and there's one part of the symphony where

you can see that they all felt like perhaps that part

of the symphony could be the brand

tune. And I

can tell you for, you

know, the billion

and a half people

that, uh, have, uh, memories of this

who grew

up in India or are from, you know, the Indian diaspora around the world,

that

tune, it's a Mozart tune, but it's associated with that brand, and it's

because they stepped out of that

skin.

It's you, you, you have to sometimes sort of, you know, feel that. Um, so I have found that more and more

I'm

certainly relying on the intellect, but I'm relying so much more on, um, what's going on here? What's the energy in this room?

What are, what are,

what is someone not telling us? Follow the money, follow the information, follow the incentive, and you can go pretty far in understanding why

something has not changed.

And if you

start applying that first [00:43:00] principles process, then, um, you can get really far.

Natalie Nathanson: Yes. That's, uh, some great information, so thank you for sharing that. And I know we only have a few minutes

left,

Amit. Um, would love to close with a question I like to ask every guest, and that is what is the best piece of advice you've been given that still shapes

you?

Amit Pande: Somebody gave me this advice very early in my career, where we were trying to sell a sponsorship of $15,000 to someone, and they weren't listening, and I,

you

know, I tried to

give them more

justification. And then when we

walked out of that meeting, the person I was w- with, who

was

running the conference,

he said,

he said, "You know, you're 24 years old, but I should give you this advice."

And this was a former Fulbright fellow.

Um,

you know, he

said, "If you're in this conversation and the other side's not listening, imagine taking your head into this island in Hawaii and just go quiet

for 10

seconds. Because if they're not ready to buy right now, they're not ready to buy right now. Uh, don't try to fill that empty space.

And in those five seconds, just leave that empty space."

Uh, that

was advice 20 years ago. Uh, I've had advice from my [00:44:00] former, you know, CEO saying, "Listen, I don't think you're ready

to be

a CEO, uh, in this area yet."

And that was, like, maybe five years ago. So

I said, "Okay, I'm gonna challenge myself more to be a CEO."

When I took on the GM role, I built more muscle around that area.

and, uh, will

I be a CEO or not

in the future? I

don't know yet. But of course, working

on my own portfolio of projects, I'm sort of trying

to do

that right now. So I think

that, that, uh, slightly harsh but

well-meaning advice

is the best kind of advice.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. I love that. That's, uh, great advice and also signals, uh, needing really good self-awareness, uh, to be able to, you know, close those gaps and, and do that. Uh, so thank you for sharing that. And as our listeners want to get in touch, what's the best way to reach you?

Amit Pande: The best way to get in touch with me is, uh, is LinkedIn.

Um, uh,

I am most active there

and a little bit on Substack. Um,

and then for

some of my other creative projects, like the, the new graphic novel that I'm

working on, which

is really strategy, but strategy as science fiction, 50, 60 years from now. I think

we'll most likely be, um, [00:45:00] on, more active on, uh, Instagram.

But I'll be talking about it on LinkedIn as well.

Natalie Nathanson: Okay, wonderful. And I know we didn't have time to get into your, uh, graphic novel, which sounds fascinating, and kind of tying where we are today as a society with the future. So, uh, would definitely love to, to hear more, and we can add a link to that in the, in the show notes. And, um, thank you, thank you so much for everything that you shared today

Amit Pande: Thank you so

much, Aartaj. Uh, it was a pleasure talking to you.

Natalie Nathanson: It was great to have you on, and I loved so much of what we talked about from the lessons you shared, uh, around the transformation of, you know, subtraction and product excellence and integration, the conversation around the second brain and hopefully, uh, where we're, where we're heading soon and making sure that that is, uh, done right.

And then I just love the common thread of borrowing from other disciplines. Um, I know I certainly, uh, have some new food for thought based on what you shared, so thank you for that, and I'm sure so many valuable takeaways for our listeners

Amit Pande: Thank you so much, Nati.

Have a wonderful rest of your day.

Natalie Nathanson: [00:46:00] Thank you. You as well. And thank you too to everyone that's listening. And if today's conversation sparked something for you, and I am sure that it did, please pass this along to another leader in your network because we know that these are the kinds of conversations that really help all of us build stronger, smarter, uh, organizations and, uh, go-to-market engines.

So thanks again, Amit, and this has been another wonderful conversation on Shift and Thrive. I'll see you all next time