Spotlight on Ashish Srivastava

Ashish Srivastava is the Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer of Daikin Applied Americas Inc. a $4.5B subsidiary of world’s largest HVAC company Daikin Industries Limited. He is an industry veteran driving large-scale digital transformations and pioneering forward-thinking Enterprise AI frameworks for multibillion-dollar global corporations. He currently guides the digital function for Daikin Applied Americas, overseeing the business transformation through digital strategy to scale the organization.

An established industry thought leader, keynote speaker, and mentor, his career spans pivotal executive roles at Medtronic, Amgen, and CNH Industrial, where he has consistently unlocked hundreds of millions in business value by bridging emergent technology with commercial strategy. As an inspiring, change-agent leader, he excels at building high-performance cross-functional teams, cultivating strategic alliances, and transforming complex organizational structures into unified, high-velocity operating models.  

Ashish is a foodie and music aficionado. He loves traveling the world, learning cultures and in his free time playing his guitar.

Learn more about the Minneapolis CIO community here.
 

Give us a brief overview of the path that led to your current role.

I started the first decade of my career in technology consulting with Accenture. During my time there, I learned a lot about global companies, their complex problems and how executing on large scale transformation was a very challenging and yet rewarding experience. I played technical leadership roles in many highly visible initiatives pertaining to infrastructure modernization, post merger integration, large scale transformation at many Fortune 500 companies.

This made me realize that transformation is the at root of what keeps me going. I always say that “Transformation will also transform you”.  Which it did, I decided to make a very bold decision of exiting consulting industry and do an MBA in strategy and finance to sharpen my skills as a business leader and then re-entered the industry as an IT and digital leader, sharing the leadership room with other business leaders to shape the organization and drive business value. 

That training in always pushing for digital transformation led to my current role as Chief Digital Officer of DAA where we have signed up to transform the organization digitally and deliver hypergrowth and unrivaled customer experience by the power of digital capabilities.  

What is one of your guiding leadership principles?

My entire leadership boils down to a simple one line: “If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together”. 
 

What is the greatest challenge CIOs face today, and how are you addressing it?

The greatest challenge our C-level is facing today is the perfect storm of all headwinds at the same time. Challenges such as geopolitical instability, unpredictable market demands, rapidly changing business models and last but not the least, the opportunities and disruption due to AI. This has resulted in all of us becoming humble and have a student mindset to solve complex business challenges. We spend a lot of time together thinking deeply about complex business challenges and how to unpack them into smaller, practical pieces to solve them by using the people, process and technology equation.
 

What is the key to success for someone just starting out as a CIO?

There are three keys to success for someone who just started in C-level.

1. First, become a student of the business and customers and learn relentlessly. 
2. Second, shift your thinking from solving tactical managerial problems to solving for the future.
3. Third, deliver results, both short-term results to meet the plan, and long term results to build the scalable future.  

If someone practices these three mantras and becomes naturally good at it, they will have significant success and growth in C-suite. 
 

How do you measure success as a leader?

As a leader, the success is measured by how many more leaders you created, how did you move the needle and shifted the organization to another level and how did you deliver impact in people’s life and the community that you serve.
 

What is the value of being a member of Gartner C-level Communities?

The biggest value in being a member of Gartner C-level Communities is the opportunity to be able to meet so many inspiring leaders and upcoming leaders. Learning from them, sharing what I know, and collectively elevating the whole community together - all by doing our part.  It is also a great creative break from day today work and spend some time in the intellectual environment to keep pushing the boundaries of creativity and thought leadership.

Governing Body members share their insights and leadership perspectives to shape the agendas and topics that address the top priorities impacting business leaders today.