How do you become a successful Chief Marketing Officer? According to our guest, Nischala Murthy Kaushik, CMO of HFS Research, there are three pillars: exciting strategies, constantly improving your skills, and encouraging smiles among your team. In a recent episode of CMO Convo, Nischala took us through her approach to each pillar, with advice on how today’s CMOs and CMOs-to-be can do the same.

We discussed:-

Prefer to listen? Check out Nischala's appearance on the CMO Convo podcast 👇

Nischala's background and approach to her CMO role

Today we're taking an overall umbrella look at the role of CMOs, which we're breaking down into three categories, it's strategy, skills, and smiles.

But before we get down to that maybe it'd be a good idea if you introduce yourself to the readers. Tell us a bit about your professional background and your current role as a CMO.

Absolutely. So my name is Nischala Murthy Kaushik and I'm the Chief Marketing Officer at HFS Research. I love my name, to be honest, I've met two people in my entire life who share the same name and I have to thank my father for that.

The reason I'm talking about my name is that I think very early on, I realized that standing out or having a unique and distinct identity to yourself is powerful. That's really seeded the thought of how a personal brand or branding or the importance of a name can actually make a huge difference in life.

Today, as the Chief Marketing Officer, I'm responsible for the global marketing function, which covers marketing strategy, brand, content marketing, marketing operations, corporate communications, social media, and events, both digital, hybrid, and hopefully, very soon, we'll be doing live events across the world. I'm really looking forward to that. I also champion the charter of diversity and inclusion, which is a theme core two HFS values.

I'm excited to be leading that because I think there's no better time than now for us to actively look at how we, as organizations, or as an industry can promote the case and cause of diversity and inclusion. In terms of my professional background, I've always been excited about doing new and diverse things in my life. And that's fueled my career for more than two decades.

As a result, it's taken me across the world to exciting and interesting destinations in the US, Europe, and of course many parts of India for work assignments. So in terms of my work, I usually like to call it the first 10 years, the next 10 years, and these 10 years. The first 10 years is where I actually started off my career on the technology side for an IT service provider based in India.

My role was basically around technology solution development, which included things like programming, designing software solutions, and deploying them, and maintaining them for clients. I worked with clients primarily in the banking and financial services sector. So that was interesting and important from understanding clients and the industry, getting into the depth of knowing what a customer really needs and wants.

The reason I'm mentioning that is I think that's very important in the role that we all play as CMOs. Firstly, in terms of just understanding and knowing your customer and where they're coming from. I also was fortunate that during the course of the first 10 years, I was lucky to have the opportunity to play diverse roles.

I also moved after my stint in technology, I moved to consulting and strategy where I worked with clients again, to develop their own strategy, and the consulting roadmap and stuff like that. I have the simple philosophy that every three years, you either change your role, your team, your boss, or your company, and the reason I'm saying that is it’s important for your own learning and growth and development as a working professional.

The other good thing is, I think, by consciously making those transitions, I've had exposure to diverse cultures, global companies, different work environments, different worldviews, and ways of working, which I believe has strongly shaped my career and outlook on life. The next 10 years or the second decade, as I call it, was primarily focused on work around technology innovations, and process innovations, and business innovations.

So it was really where I was involved in looking at how can we do different things either for our company or for the clients? That was an exciting phase because I was part of a couple of intrapreneurship programs where you have the opportunity to work in a corporate but run like a startup.

That was another exciting phase, because I understood the innovation lifecycle, so to speak, and how you can take a small nebulous idea really, which is a seed, and then take it up to a big tree or get it to flower. That process or that journey of creating something has always excited me and fascinated me.

Then these 10 years is really about using all my knowledge and experience of the last two decades, and putting it all together in the role of the CMO, which I'm currently playing and see how we can make a mark, as a company, or as a respected voice in the industry, as we move forward. That's really a story from a time travel perspective.

Do you think access to these diverse roles has given you a certain philosophy that you take into being a CMO? Is there a certain idea that you've built your leadership role around, a core concept?

Absolutely. I think as I said, all those little experiences and those diverse roles, have given me I think a good understanding of one, learning, unlearning, and relearning. Because when you change roles, there's always learning which comes with how you evolve, and I think that's a very, very important thing for us as marketers. Especially, if you look at the time that we are in, which is 2021, the entire world has changed in the last 18 months.

So our ability as marketers, or as CMOs or marketing leaders to one just be aware of the nuances of change, and then respond to it in a way that makes business sense is extremely important. But if you look at my philosophy of the CMO, and what is important, I'd say first is I think every CMO or a marketing professional should be a customer champion, which means your customer should be at the heart of everything you do.

It might not be possible, always, but at least in terms of intent, if you're doing any activity or any marketing tactic, any marketing program, any strategic marketing initiative that you're running, it should be somewhere pivoted on your customer. That's one. Second I think is very, very important more in today's era is that I honestly look at my role, and I've always looked at my role as a business partner.

This means I envision my role as a growth enabler to business. I think a lot of organizations and a lot of people tend to look at marketing and marketing functions as business support. I think there's a huge difference when you shift your own lens from being a support function to being a business partner.

The minute you look at yourself as a business partner, I think that's when you truly think about business growth, and when I say business growth, I believe that as a CMO, it is important to have a long term strategy and plan, which is at least 80% aligned to business priorities.

You cannot go off on a very different tangent from what your business or your CEO wants to do, which I know a lot of marketers and CMOs generally make that mistake. You're not 100% aligned with what your business wants to do. I think that's another very, very important philosophy, which I've embraced in all the marketing roles that I have played.

The third, and very important thing is I think every CMO needs to embrace storytelling as a way of brand communication. Right. I was actually hired to play the role of the chief storyteller for the company before I took on the role of the CMO.

So in some sense, for me, every CMO is also the chief storyteller of the brand and the business and it is very, very important for us to consciously look at how we could bring creative storytelling in everything we do. That's another important aspect that I think we should be mindful of as CMOs.

A couple of other things, too. One is the importance of data. We are living in an era where everything can be measured. Gone are the days when marketers or CMOs could get away with vanity metrics, and soft qualitative stuff like, "Hey, you know what this campaign has done well."

I think we should fall in love with data and we should always ask the tough questions where we are compelled to go and look at data because data always show great insights and data cannot lie. The only time when data lies is when the quality of data that you have put in is not right.

But otherwise, every time data gives you a picture which is what it is, and that is important for us as marketers, or CMOs to have. The other two very important, one is embrace technology. There are 8000 marketing platforms and solutions which are available and it's such a complex ecosystem and landscape of Martech which is available for all of us.

That can be mind-boggling, but I just feel as CMOs, once we know our customer, what our customer wants, once we know what the business priorities are, we should be reasonably quickly able to at least have a view of what kind of martech solutions, platforms, products make sense for us to achieve what we set out to do. So I think that's another extremely important aspect.

Last, which I said is I think you need to be an eternal student as a CMO, because you need to be constantly absorbing, reading, learning, and staying abreast of what's happening, both in terms of industry, marketing, your customer, customer behaviors. You just need to have a curiosity for learning and reading and just getting on the go.

Strategy: how to market in the age of COVID

It's interesting you ended with being a student because a lot of marketers and CMOs are currently having to learn completely new practices to develop strategies and market in today's world, not just in terms of countries that are still struggling with the pandemic in major ways, but also countries that are moving out of the pandemic that are lifting restrictions.

Many countries are experimenting with lifting restrictions. But even then, how do you plan ahead? How do you understand what your customer experience needs to be a post-pandemic world?

As you said, the past 18 months have changed the world completely, but the C-Suite still expects leadership. How can you develop strategies and marketing plans for the coming year? What should CMOs be focusing on with their messaging? What are you focusing on and why for your target audience?

Sure. So I'll just give that in two perspectives. One is how do you define the marketing strategy? I would just say, a few basic tenets, which are again, linked back to what I said before, know your customer, make the effort or take the effort to know your customer, their challenges, their priorities, and most importantly, their content consumption patterns.

It is very, very important to understand what is it that they want? Or what is giving them sleepless nights? And I think as a marketeer, it is important to know that because that's when you can define or run a campaign or create content that can resonate with them.

And there are a couple of ways to do that. I think one of the least used ways from marketers is to ask your customers, talk to your customers. There are not too many marketing professionals who interact directly with customers.

Obviously, there are nuances based on industry, geography, organization culture, whether you're a B2B or a B2C, whether you're a product or a services company, there are multiple nuances. But either which way, there are always ways and means to just check the pulse of your customer.

So I think one easy way to do it is to ask them. In terms of what we are doing, that's something which I'm doing as the CMO of HFS, where I'm trying to talk to customers and get their feedback on things from how do they like our website to what would they like to see at an event.

Or when would they like to attend a HFS live event? What kind of content is of interest to them or what kind of content they would like for us as an analyst firm to produce. That's very, very, very important. That's number one. Second is I think, stay close to business, have a seat on the business table. It cannot be that you are getting information five days after all the decisions have been made.

As the CMO, it is extremely important for you to understand how your CEO or the board, or the executive leadership team is thinking about business and strategy and the future. Because, again, as I said before, the marketing strategy cannot be independent of business strategy. It is very, very important to look at the business strategy.

In our case, to be very honest, we had an annual research agenda which we used to draw out at the start of every year. But given the global situation, given that our client's needs and priorities, and what they expect a research firm to produce is changing, how do we respond to those changing customer needs?

There are a couple of things we are doing. One is, we are reviewing the research agenda every quarter, which means we are looking at is this topic of research that we are publishing something which our clients would like to read about now?

Or is it something which is just not of interest to them, which means that we might need to reprioritize what we put out, let's say, this quarter? That is one. The second one is, as we interact with clients, we understand how they would like to consume what we have to provide.

Then there are also some existing gaps, which they are looking for an analyst firm like ours to provide. So we are also looking at launching new offerings, one of the offerings that we're launching is around sourcing advisory where we're advising large companies on how could they, source technology service providers for different strategic digital transformation projects.

And because most of the clients across the world, the large organizations are looking at digital transformation as an important priority for them to work on but the question is always, who is the right service provider to help me or to partner with me on this digital transformation journey?

When you are unsure, I think most of us whether we are businesses, or individuals, always like to go to a trusted, independent third party voice and say, "Hey, can you give me some perspectives? Or can you directionally give me some clarity on how I should be approaching this or give me a shortlist of three providers are three solutions I can use for a requirement like this?" So we are constantly scanning the market, listening to customers, and coming up with new solutions and offerings.

So, in terms of our own strategy and roadmap, what I looked at for this year, to be very honest, is to have a marketing vision, have a strategy of where you want to go directionally but every other element of what we do as a marketing function is on a quarterly basis.

This means we look at what is it that we'd like to do for this quarter, whether it is from a business perspective, whether it is from a customer perspective, or whether it is from a brand perspective, and we look at prioritizing what is important for us every quarter and then working on it. Of course, I love data and I love to use data as the front and center for decision making. That's something that I think most CMOs do or most CMOs should do if they aren't.

But decision making based on data is always a good way to course-correct and make changes. So even if you look at our social media strategy, we review it every week, we look at how our clients are responding, the ecosystem is responding to some of the content marketing that we put out there.

And then course correct in real-time, maybe something is not working, maybe it's not great to put out something at a particular time of the day. So just thinking about different nuances of what you're doing, and then trying to look at the most effective way to build that out. Those are some of the things that we're be looking at.

The other one which I strongly believe as a CMO is it is important to have one high-impact initiative every quarter. You might be doing hundreds of things, but there should be one initiative that is really your ultimate high for the quarter. So in June, I think I mentioned to you when we spoke last, we hosted our first ever one office digital symposium.

I call it a Digi-ganza, I think it was wonderful the way it ended up but it was just the energy and the passion, and it all just came together as a beautiful orchestra. It was wonderful because we had all parts of marketing working together, whether it was social media, events, martech, the platforms we were using, the technology, the whole team came together, campaigns, email communications.

So one high-impact initiative which really furthers your brand and business every quarter, I think, is a good way to make sure that you're having a strong impact every quarter. And that's really significant. And your clients are also watching them so that's how I look at it.

Digi-ganza, that's a great word! So in terms of these high-impact activations, a lot of CMOs and marketers are feeling a bit wary about pushing ahead with those kinds of things, in light of everything that's happened in the past 18 months. Is that wise, for everyone to be cautious?

Or are we being overly cautious when it comes to those kinds of things? Do you advise ambition, should we be aiming for big things in a post-pandemic world? Or is it wiser to just reel things back and wait until everyone can see the lay of the land?

I think ambition is always good. Personally, I think you should be ambitious because if you're not ambitious, then I mean tomorrow... everything is questionable. But I think I would answer that question by saying that I think it depends on the industry you are in, the geography you're in, and whether you're a product or service or a platform.

It needs to be a very thought out and comprehensive approach. Maybe for some industries, for some kind of products or services, being ambitious is not the right time because the cash reserves are low, many businesses are in survival mode so embarking on very expensive marketing programs or projects might not be welcome.

But I also believe that gives you an opportunity as a marketeer to where your creative thinking hats and look at maybe no money marketing programs, which still help further the brand and the business, but you keep the costs at optimum level.

And that's not easy because it's a fundamentally different way of thinking. And it's a fundamentally different skill required to act on those grand plans. But if you don't have an option, then you have to do something.

So if you have the money, your CEO and the business is growing, and they're happy to put all the dollars in, then I'd say go for it. But if there's a general sentiment of being cautious, and business is not doing well, then I wouldn't say go and ask for millions of dollar budgets for running high-impact marketing programs, because it just doesn't make sense.

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It must have taken a lot of relearning processes. If you're in an industry that's previously had ample resources, say like the tourism industry that's been hit really hard in the last year, they've completely had to change how they market, change just to survive. Those skills might take a lot of relearning for CMOs going from a resource-rich environment to a very resource-poor environment for their marketing campaigns, and they have to do it very quickly.

Skills: a good Chief Marketing Officer is an eternal student

You mentioned relearning as being an essential skill of a CMO. Is that something that you had to learn to do? Or is it something you've always had as an inherent thing as a marketer? Is it something that every CMO and business leader has naturally or is it something you can learn to do?

I don't know if every human or every individual has it naturally. But I think I've always as a person, and this is for me as an individual, not me as a CMO, speaking. As an individual, I've inherently been curious to learn new things and I think that has been part of my DNA, and just what excites me as a person.

But I also think, looking back now, this whole concept of changing or making a career transition every three years, I think, inherently equipped me with some skills to relearn and unlearn and get into a zone of skill upgrade very consciously. Because when you make switches in two to three years, there has to be a learning process before you can perform at an optimal level.

So, I think those multiple six to seven transitions have helped me understand the process in the way it works for me, and everyone's process of learning and unlearning, and relearning is very personal. Somebody can just snap out of it and pick up something in a week. And some people can't do it for a lifetime because they just don't know how to do it. So I think a lot of it is personal.

But having said that, I think it can be learned, it can be taught, but then the point is, how do you do it? Or how much importance do you give to that learning process? And what kind of resources do you tap into for that learning? I do also believe there is value in formal learning, it is not always about "Hey, can I read something on YouTube? Or can I just chat with a friend and try to learn digital marketing or SEO?" it doesn't work like that.

A lot of marketing professionals feel embarrassed to even say that they don't know some things. You don't need to probably say to everybody that you don't know something, but if you see a gap, the skill gap in yourself, I think you need to put in the time, and the money to refresh or upgrade your skills.

I also interact with a lot of young students and young professionals, and one thing which I strongly advocate is to do what I call an annual skill audit. You just look at your own skills, and maybe skills of let's say peers or somebody who is let's say two to three years ahead of you in the career path, and you'll see there are always gaps in skills.

So, it is important to make that a little bit of a proactive self-designed learning program, as opposed to waiting to be punched, and then having no option and then you have to just learn everything very quickly.

You mentioned formal learning to fill these skill gaps, what did you find to be the most important resources for upping your skill levels, when you identify those gaps? Was it going to your peers and your colleagues and asking them to work with you on those skills? Or did you actually take courses or anything like that for certain skills?

To be very honest, when I took on the role of the CMO, I asked myself, what are some of the evergreen life skills or leadership skills that I need to probably strengthen? There were a bunch of them, but among the top three were public speaking and oral communication because I just feel as a leader, that's one area that we can always get better on.

How do you connect with an audience? How do you get them to listen to you? How do you get them to align to your vision and direction? It is very, very important, especially in the pandemic world where you probably have five minutes sometimes to really get somebody on your side or get them disengaged in what you have to say for the next three months.

So, communication is very, very important. I signed up for a formal course, for a three-day program where I worked with a team who helped me in understanding my own communication patterns, what are some of the things which I can improve on, and it was a pretty intense three-day learning program. A paid one, time off from work. But the learning was phenomenal.

And what I realized is, it was a global team of about eight professionals, all senior executives from across the world, from different cultures, different backgrounds, in different organizations, but they were all committed to learning. All of them signed up, there was nobody who missed even a single class, everybody came, we all got homework, everyone did all their homework, everyone did all the practice exercises.

So I'm saying after a stage in your career, it has to be professional learning, you need to get trained with the expert, or with a professional or with somebody who really knows the stuff. It cannot be with somebody who is going to give you a little bit of information and let you fend for yourself, it doesn't work.

It's a lot easier to pick up bad habits doing that method as well. If you're going to a peer who seems competent, but they're really just getting by, by the seat of their pants on certain skills, and they teach you these tips and stuff that work for them, but they might not work for you as well. They might not be good habits, really, they could just be stopgap solutions.

That sounds like a really positive experience, the public speaking session, as communication skills are so essential. Was that the main thing that you wanted to focus on? Or were there other skills that you've been developing? What's next?

I think communication is something which I think is a journey, and that's something which I will continue to focus on honing and developing, and strengthening as we move forward. I think the other one which I definitely would want to strengthen is around data science and analytics, in terms of how do we as CMOs be able to analyze all the data that's thrown to us from multiple platforms, sources, tools, technologies, and just look at an integrated way of making sense of all of it, and making the right decisions after that.

But another skill, which I feel is very important for the role that I play, and the company I belong to is about building high-performing teams, in this environment. Because we're all working in a virtual hybrid environment. And the other interesting thing about today's work environment is the whole concept of a team has changed.

Earlier, as a team, you would probably be in one office interacting, having a cup of tea, and you'd stay with each other for a year or two years, or whatever. Now, when you join a company all that changes is maybe your laptop, or maybe even your laptop doesn't change, it's just the voices and faces that change, nothing else really changes when you talk about a new team.

You just sleep one day, you're an employee of company X, and you wake up the next day, and you're an employee of company Y, nothing else changes. You're in your bedroom, or in your study, with the same laptop, and it's just you're seeing a different face and a different voice.

And for me also, personally, my team composition is culturally very diverse right now. And also very diverse in terms of just the age demographics, which means I have somebody who's 20 years old, who's fresh out of college, I have somebody who's 55 years old, who is a grandfather.

For me, I think the leadership skill which I need to develop is how do I build a team which is performing when we are all so diverse and distinct as individuals? Because the motivator of a 20-year-old is very different from the motivator of a 55-year-old. That's part of my learning for this year, how do I as a leader build an environment where, one, people are genuinely motivated and passionate to do their jobs.

And then also, how do they align to changing business priorities and strategies, yet deliver impact? I think that's a skill which I think most managers across the world are probably grappling with, it has nothing to do with being a CMO, I think it's just about leading or, working with people in today's era, it's just our reality.

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Smiles: a happy marketing team is an effective marketing team

Great that you mentioned employee motivation because that does lead us into our third "S" of the day, which is smiles. One of the things that a lot of workers have struggled with in the last year is employee happiness, staying motivated. Depression levels have increased massively because of the pandemic, because of people being stuck at home, not having human contact.

What can CMOs do as leaders to make sure their marketing department is happy? And make sure they're motivated to do the work? Are there certain steps that you take to check in with your team members that can be applied to other CMO roles?

Yeah, there are a bunch of things that I do, and I'll just share a few of them. One is, obviously for every single person who is working with me, I do a weekly check-in and by design, I structure that in such a way that about 40% of the time is purely about nonwork conversations.

Because I do think it is important for people to just have those conversations with somebody who's not family. Because you're living with your family the whole time. So sometimes, even if it's like, "Hey, what did you have for lunch? How is the weather?" I think those are just interesting, nice conversations.

There are days when I'm clearly not interested in turning on my video, to be honest, but I do feel that mandating it for some meetings is very powerful, because what I've seen happens is when you mandate that you have to be on video, then people actually make the effort to at least look presentable, put on a smile, just look at another human being, and talk to them, engage with them.

At the end of the day, man is a social animal. So it is important for us to connect, and just see the faces and see the smiles and exchange a few laughs and keep that human connection and conversation going.

I think beyond that, also, for leaders, it is important just as there's so much importance to say, 'know your customer', I think it is important to know your people. Sometimes you don't always need to ask the person, there is a network that is an organization. People share usually, so suppose I asked, "Hey, what's your favorite color?" I can ask you or I can ask somebody else on the team.

Just knowing your people and asking a thoughtful question about them. As I said, I have a very diverse team, so somebody's mother was not well and diagnosed with cancer, somebody's other parent was having a health issue. The point is, can you ask the questions? Can you be a better listener?

Sometimes I think, after an age or phase, most people realize that the problems are not going to go away, and they'll take their time to resolve but I think just being an active listener, or just sharing it with somebody, I feel is important. The other interesting point that I want to make is if I look at my own career of two decades, I've had a bunch of bosses. There is only one boss who I really valued as a leader or I felt he made a difference in my life.

The reason was when I was going through a personal, difficult situation he used to just listen. And he would always take the time to just check in on me. He would never give me advice. He would never ask me any difficult, unpleasant question. He would only listen to what I had to say. And he would just say, "Hey, are you okay?" I still remember him today. He's the only person who comes to my mind when I'm having this conversation.

If you're just doing your job as a boss or a leader, giving work, tracking what people are doing, expecting performance, people will just deliver what they're supposed to do. But if you want people to go the extra mile, be loyal to you, be committed to you, be motivated, I think there needs to be a level of connection, a level of trust, and a level of confidence in each other that you're one team or one unit.

So in situations like this, what happens as a consequence of having these conversations is if somebody is going through a difficult time, and somebody needs some time off, needs some flexibility, you allow for that because you realize that people are going through their own struggles. And I think just the loyalty and goodwill that you as a leader amass by being there for your people, at times when it makes a difference, they will always remember that.

There are times when I'm really very uncomfortable asking people to, let's say, do some things outside of office hours, or do some things on weekends because everybody is really struggling to find that balance between work and home. But if it's important and I just send them a request, they do it, they never ask me a question.

The reason they're going that extra mile is because when they needed some kind of support from, let's say, an organization or from a leader, you've given it to them. So I feel one, listening is important, two is communicating is important. And then also, finding channels to connect and bond as a team.

So we, as a company, have these informal all staff socials, where we connect as a group and talk about things, which has nothing to do with work, which could be show me your pet today, or bring your kids today, or ask your spouse to say, "Hi", or everybody dresses up in green.

It's just something that helps people bond and connect beyond work and just creates a more happy environment. Those are just some of the things but again, this situation we are in, the dynamics and realities we are all living in change every day.

So, as we respond to customers’ needs as leaders, we also need to listen to our employees, and I think respond to their changing needs. But I think in general, listening, communicating, and I think showing that you care is important, and that can manifest in many different ways.

Because a little about it is your own personal style of how do you express and show emotions as a leader or an individual. But fundamentally, if you genuinely care, people can sense it. So I think then they do respect and they do reciprocate that sentiment.

Definitely. Having those staff socials gives people something to look forward to, as well, especially if they've been stuck at home all the time, they've only seen certain faces in a work context and stuff or the only people they've seen in a social context is their family as well, you need those outlets. Having that something to look forward to is a very important part of motivation and happiness.

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The coming year

So perhaps as a final note, what are you looking forward to this year? What are you looking forward to working on? What are you looking forward to doing with your team, whether it’s marketing activities or social? What's the big project that you're building up to that's got everyone excited?

So, as I said, I've stuck with my philosophy of having one high-impact initiative every quarter. The next thing, which I am looking forward to is we are planning to host our first-ever live or hybrid event in New York in November. So I'm looking forward to that because I think it would be just fun to hop on a plane and travel to New York, and meet everybody.

We're also launching an awards program, it's our first-ever awards program, where we are looking at recognizing organizations who are doing some super cool stuff in digital transformation and designing and innovating on emerging technology solutions. So, that's something which will culminate next February in London. That's the other big thing that I'm looking forward to.

Then we're also looking at doing something really exciting in India mid-next year so I really have worked chalked out for me till next June, so it's gonna be busy times ahead.

But better to be too busy than not have anything to do all.

I agree.

Thanks, Nischala!

Got questions on strategy, skills, or smiles as a CMO? Got advice to share on any of those pillars? Head to the CMO Alliance Community!