Digital Commerce Re-Tales: Surabhi Pokhriyal

“ No means ‘not now’ ”?

Surabhi Pokhriyal, Chief Digital Growth Officer at Church & Dwight, can’t take credit for the unassuming motto she discovered during the pandemic. “This phrase is not mine. I learned it from my six-year-old daughter.”

After shifting to virtual meetings, Surabhi’s daughter started quietly entering her mom’s office looking for “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” answers to her “urgent” questions like, “Mom, one candy, please?”

“I don’t have to speak…Now, I'm in a call and I'm doing like this (thumbs up) and this (thumbs down) and people on the call are thinking I'm responding to them, but I'm just telling [my daughter] no. So she's trying not to disturb me and get all the answers. And sometimes I would say ‘no’ and then she would write a poster and say, 'Mom, no means not now, right?'?

But her daughter isn’t the only tough negotiator in the family.

“So that really makes me reflect. And I think that's my personality also. That ‘no’ is ‘not now’ within career or home or any situation. You will get past it and you will come out stronger and prouder.”

Surabhi brings that challenger mindset to all aspects of her life, including her career.?

“I don't enjoy sitting in little boxes of the five bullets written for me. I would like five more bullets that are not written…I realized it's not about, whether you know a subject or not. It's about your curiosity and tenacity to keep peeling the onion. Keep asking the three questions and four questions and five questions. Get to the root cause and you will influence. You will inspire people and impact outcomes. And success breeds success.”

This constant curiosity keeps Surabhi going.

“What lights me up is having the ability and the humility to ask those three level, two level, one level questions to say, 'Tell me more. Why? So what happens? If we do this, what's the outcome? If you don't do this, what's the outcome?' Things that make me slightly uncomfortable—not very uncomfortable, slightly uncomfortable where I don't know the answer. Where the topic is, these days, supply chain, fill rates, co-packers and manufacturers. I know these areas superficially, but I don't know enough. That really keeps me excited and I personally believe if I don't do 10 to 20 hours of personal learning every week, either by reading or talking, from work or otherwise, what's the fun in life and how do we grow intellectually, emotionally, spiritually? So I'm extremely passionate about [having a] growth mindset for myself and my (work and home!) family. It's not just academic learning, it's overall learning. So that really lights me up. How can I be a bar raiser for myself and my team? And how do we live the right behavior for others to emulate and stay insatiable in learning?”

Surabhi, on her professional passions...

Like many others who have paved a path in the eCommerce space, Surabhi didn’t start within this field and she entered eCommerce facing many unknowns.?

“I would say my first digital job was non-CPG. It was with hotel clients like Wyndham and Starwood hotels. I had a large team where we were doing brand site reconfiguration. It was not eCommerce eCommerce, but it was booking reservations online and that's when Expedia.com and Booking.com and all of those things were happening. There were no rules. There was no precedence. And you [were] truly disrupting yourself and the industry and learning at the same time. That got me hooked to the whole digital and the online and the fast action that happens with the consumer, but more in the services space than the soap and lotion space.”

Surabhi started her career back in India and the very first job she landed was with Procter & Gamble after graduating from business school.

“Back in India, we have campus placements in business school. Companies would come and make presentations at elite schools and solicit students to apply to them. So P&G and Unilever and Goldman Sachs were considered really great places to join. A lot of candidates would apply and they would call them ‘Day Zero’ and ‘Day One’ placements. Day Zero would typically mean the companies that got the top talent.So P&G and such were considered Day Zero companies. I was, I think, the first or second student on campus to get employment. So that was very prestigious, but I had no idea what that meant for me because I just knew the goal was to get the best company, that comes on Day Zero, and apply for it. So not much clarity at the age of 23, but I did know they were iconic brands. That was when the Gillette acquisition was happening, so I was very much in the thick of things with P&G- Gillette and traveling extensively? across Southeast Asia.”?

Surabhi’s first experience managing a team was also at P&G, and again like many others, it’s a role she grew into while helping her team grow.?

“I was new, fresh out of business school, and [managing] people senior to me by tenure and age and every other manner, so that was tricky. That was very humbling. And I did not really know how to manage. I just knew on Outlook, I am their supervisor and respectfully, how do I get the work done without making anyone feel awkward. I was just making the projects chug along. Over time, I realized that leadership is not anointed by title or by your supervisory capabilities. Leadership is anointed by followership and you are privileged to be a leader because the people in your care, your guardianship, are just temporarily there. Your job is to just make sure that they try to be better, they get groomed, and they move on to the next phase in life and career. So you are just a temporary guardian and you make sure, like plants, you help them grow. And, you know, I feel a lot of pride in my talent that I have groomed. And I feel so proud of what they're achieving in their careers.”?

On her thoughts about leadership...

Surabhi parted ways with P&G in order to move to the United States and be with her husband who was moving overseas with his job.

“So I joined Cognizant, and they were starting a big advisory practice on CPG and Retail, and I had a mentor from P&G who had joined the company. So that company brought me to The States, since 2010 I want to say, and there was no looking back.”

In addition to her inquisitive nature, Surabhi credits her success and approach to business to the wisdom gained from mentorship throughout her career.?

“I have some very good mentors, especially women mentors from my past life, and I get disparate advice from different people, which I love also because there is no consistency in some of the advice. Some of the people tell me you can be unapologetically ambitious and that is good and keep at it and that's your core and keep challenging. Keep reading the room and keep doing things that are not told to you, that are not assigned to you, that are not in your wheelhouse. And then there are some folks who say, 'Pace yourself, it will happen. It may not happen soon enough, but it will happen.' And I take both advice to heart because depending on the situation I think both are valid. So very diverse advice, and I like the diversity of thought, diversity of opinion, and I embrace both of these.”

On advice she has received...

“There are people who touch your life in a way that give you tremendous pride for having worked with them, that give you the sense of privilege for having known them. And I realized in my career, you don't always need bosses or mentors who know the work that you do...they just need to know you and be your champions and the work will follow...”

Between celebrating her new 15-minute commute to navigating annual acquisitions, Surabhi is navigating a lot of change, both at home and at work. But she doesn’t let that phase her.???

“I have learned in the last four or five years that work life balance is such a myth. And I don't even attempt to do that anymore. There was a time in my career where I was attempting to balance and purposefully count hours to give to the family, hours to work and so on…This sounds like a good equation. Like an equation that could be balanced but it never is…I don't do that anymore. I'm more in the camp, that there are ‘work/life sways’ and each day, each week will mean different things and that’s okay. So I won't say there is a formula or a rulebook. Overall, I think it averages out to what needs to be prioritized and when it needs to be.”