At a Glance
Aravind Sakthivel, IT leader, Author, TechnologistFocus Areas: IT Leadership, Artificial Intelligence, Behavioral Science, Generative AI Thinkers360 In-Depth Profile & Portfolio: Aravind Sakthivel Book: The Leadership Trap: Why Smart Leaders Fail and How to Break Free Highlighted Content: How AI Will Reshape Careers in 2026 and What Professionals Must Learn to Stay Relevant?, Agentic AI In the Enterprise: How Autonomous AI Systems Will Reshape Business Strategy, Operations, and Leadership Thinkers360 Awards & Recognition : Top 100 Agentic AI, Top 10 Behavioral Science, Top 100 Cloud, Top 100 Leadership |
Thought Leader and Influencer Interview
Thinkers360 thought leader interviews profile prominent members of the Thinkers360 community who embody the power of ideas in their work. In this edition, we speak with Aravind Sakthivel, an intrapreneurial IT leader and former CIO whose work sits at the intersection of digital transformation, AI adoption, ERP modernization, and M&A integration. Alongside enterprise leadership, Aravind explores how behavioural science and decision-making under pressure shape real outcomes, and he is the author of The Leadership Trap: Why Smart Leaders Fail and How to Break Free.
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Thinkers360: Tell us a bit about your background and areas of expertise.
AS: My career has been built inside complex enterprises where technology only matters if it changes how the business operates. I’ve led as a CIO and senior IT leader, and I’ve always approached the role as an intrapreneur: someone who builds change from within, partners closely with senior leadership, and turns strategy into adopted capabilities rather than slideware.
My core expertise spans digital transformation, AI and generative AI adoption, ERP modernization, and the technology and operating model work that makes M&A integrations succeed. I’m particularly interested in the gap between what leadership teams intend and what organisations actually do under pressure. That’s where behavioural science becomes practical, not theoretical. Incentives, fear, status, and time constraints shape what gets said, what gets measured, and what gets decided.
Over time, I’ve seen the same pattern across industries: leaders can be intelligent, experienced, and well-intentioned, yet still drift into failure through small decisions that feel pragmatic at the time. That observation is what drives my work, my writing, and my new book.
Thinkers360: What are your current responsibilities and what does a typical day look like?
AS: My responsibilities focus on partnering with business leadership to deliver outcomes through technology and operating change. That includes shaping transformation roadmaps, prioritising initiatives based on business value, and ensuring execution stays grounded in adoption and measurable impact, not activity for its own sake.
On any given day, I move between executive conversations and delivery reality. One part is aligning senior leaders on trade-offs, sequencing, and decision rights. Another part is working with teams on the details that determine whether transformation sticks: process design, data foundations, security and controls, integration patterns, and how changes land with the people doing the work.
AI and generative AI add a new layer because speed is tempting, but operationalising AI requires discipline: clear use cases, trusted data, governance, risk controls, and a path to adoption. ERP work is similar. Go live is not the win. The win is a better end-to-end process and better decisions. M and A integration is the ultimate pressure test because you have to protect continuity while building a new future fast.
Thinkers360: What’s your favorite part of your current role?
AS: My favourite part is turning a complicated situation into a solvable one. In big organisations, transformation often stalls because people argue about symptoms, defend local priorities, or get trapped in reporting that looks good but hides reality. I enjoy creating clarity and momentum by helping leadership teams see what’s true, decide what matters, and commit to a sequence of actions that the organisation can actually execute.
I also love when IT shifts from being seen as a delivery function to being treated as a genuine partner in business strategy. That shift usually happens when you remove friction that people have normalised for years, like a finance close that always runs late, a customer journey broken by fragmented data, or an ERP process held together by spreadsheets and workarounds.
There’s a quieter satisfaction too: preventing failures that never make headlines because they never happen. That kind of value rarely shows up in a single metric, but it shows up in resilience, trust, and the ability to absorb shocks without chaos.
Thinkers360: How do you utilize Thinkers360?
AS: I use Thinkers360 as a signal and learning platform in an environment that’s crowded with confident narratives. Digital transformation and AI attract big claims, but enterprise outcomes depend on details like adoption, governance, operating models, data quality, and decision-making under pressure. I follow practitioners and researchers who publish frameworks and lessons that hold up in real organisations, not just in ideal scenarios.
I also value the cross-industry lens. When you work inside one enterprise, internal assumptions can start to feel universal. Thinkers360 helps widen the perspective and exposes you to approaches that you might not see in your own sector.
Finally, I use it as a place to contribute back. If I publish, I aim for usefulness: questions leaders can ask in steering committees, diagnostics teams can run quickly, and practical language that helps people spot early risks. That’s where thought leadership becomes a tool, not a performance.
Editor’s Note: See Aravind Sakthivel’s profile to work with him directly.
AS: I’m focused on moving into a permanent leadership role, so I’m not pursuing consulting engagements. The way I engage is through public thought leadership and professional dialogue that improves how organisations approach transformation, AI adoption, ERP value, and integration.
If a brand wants to collaborate on content or conversations, my preference is simple: it should be grounded, practical, and honest about trade-offs. I’m interested in work that helps leaders make better decisions, not content that pretends there’s a magic tool that removes complexity. The strongest partnerships are those that respect enterprise reality and emphasise adoption, governance, and measurable outcomes.
Thinkers360: What’s your main advice for upcoming thought leaders?
AS: Earn your point of view through real work. Think what is your role in the world! Thought leadership without operational experience often floats above the messy factors that drive outcomes: incentives, fear, politics, time pressure, and unintended consequences. If you want to be credible, write from the field.
Make your ideas usable. Give people questions they can ask in a review meeting, a diagnostic they can run with their team, or a framework that helps them choose between competing priorities. Vague content is safe, but it rarely helps anyone make a decision under pressure.
Also, don’t confuse visibility with impact. A better measure is whether someone applied your thinking and improved an outcome: they surfaced risk earlier, protected a capability, improved adoption, or avoided a costly pattern repeating. That’s how you build trust over time.
AS: My new book is The Leadership Trap: Why Smart Leaders Fail and How to Break Free, and the tagline is deliberately practical: 6 Traps, 3 Systems, and One 90-Day Escape Plan.The book exists because leadership failure is often misunderstood. Public stories usually blame personality, ego, or greed. But when you study investigations, regulatory findings, court records, and serious journalism, you see something more useful: repeatable patterns that can emerge in a single team as easily as in a global enterprise.
In the book, I outline six traps: The Echo Chamber, The Cost Cutting Illusion, The Vanishing Act, Innovation Theatre, Fortress Culture, and The Metric Mirage. These traps don’t require bad actors. They require systems that reward the wrong behaviour, make truth costly, and encourage leaders to manage the story rather than the reality.
The escape route is built on three systems: Challenge, Capability, and Cadence. Challenge keeps truth flowing upward. Capability protects the skills and processes that create real outcomes. Cadence creates a rhythm of decisions and reviews so good strategy has time to compound.
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