Crossmentors Insights- our June newsletter

It’s been another sombre month – the terrible plane crash in Ahmedabad, the chaos and the bombings in the middle-east and the continuing Ukraine- Russia war. The tech services industry is forecasting muted growth, led by Accenture, while all our consumer companies are still looking to hit the good times of growth, and hoping an abundant monsoon helps them. But the stock markets, both Wall St and Dalal St, have rebounded back to their highs, and we are now readying for a spate of IPOs.

AI adoption has been a hot topic these days, and we wanted to share some interesting insights. Broadly put, enterprise use of AI is going in a measured way. While a majority of organisations have given employees AI tools like Copilot, only about 50% are redesigning their workflows powered by AI- more in the financial services and tech industries. Agentic AI has not seen a wide deployment yet, and this BCG report quotes only about 13% of their sample talking of Agentic AI deployment. AI at Work 2025-Slideshow-June-2025-Edit-02

But the good news from that report is that more than 92% of the respondents from India are using AI- leading the world. But that picks on another trend- ‘consumer’ or ‘individual’ use of AI is growing. A very interesting study published in HBR talks about the different use cases of AI, and how it has changed from 2024 to 2025. Over 31% use AI for 'Personal and Professional support', with #1 use being ‘therapy/companionship’ and #2 being ‘organising my life’. The other broad buckets of uses were 'content creation' at 18%, and 'learning & education' at 16%. This is quite revealing- the power of AI to be a strong emotive support tool- maybe something for us to think about. Read this research here: How People Are Really Using Gen AI in 2025

‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’ is a famous quote. But how do we measure culture? CultureX, MIT and Glassdoor have come together to analyse culture from Glassdoor reviews, using AI. Quite an interesting revelation here about the top companies-   MIT SMR / Glassdoor Culture 500 | MIT Sloan Management Review

And how do we build an appropriate culture? Watch this space!

Some of our mentors have also shared some wonderful insights, through their blogs on  Insights | The Crossmentors

Pranjal Sharma, economic analyst, author and ex editor of Bloomberg talks about the use of AI in HR, and how HR needs to transform to get the maximum benefits HR Must Introspect and Transform

Giridhar Sanjeevi, Ex CFO of Indian Hotels, talks about how we need to continuously be in ‘becoming’ mode and writes about the books that have transformed him – a must read here Practise Becoming

Srikant Gokhale, ex CEO of Landmark Retail and currently a Prof, and also the curator of our Insights page, brings out an extensive study that shows that 96% of companies don’t scale (and thus remain sub-scale as SMEs)- and he provides insights on how one can scale with examples from retail  Scaling Up: Why 96% of firms fail?

We all want to create a ‘future ready workforce’- but how do we do it? You can read about a simple framework to build a future ready workforce by Krish Shankar, ex CHRO of Infosys Creating a Future-Ready Workforce

June trivia: The month June was reportedly named after Juno, the Roman goddess of marriage and childbirth, and protector of state! Juno is also the name given to a spacecraft that’s been orbiting and studying Jupiter since 2016. It was named after the goddess Juno, who—as mythology goes—could see through the clouds Jupiter used to hide his mischief. Fitting, since the spacecraft peers beneath Jupiter’s thick cloud cover to uncover its secrets!

Meet our mentors

This newsletter also gives us an opportunity to get you up close with our mentors - understand a bit more about them and what mentoring means to them.

Akhil Saxena spent 19 years in HUL/Unilever in various Manufacturing and Supply Chain roles, and after a brief period as the Head of Supply Chain SBU for KEC, moved to Amazon. He was VP Operations for India and then went on to Head Customer Fulfilment operations worldwide (except US) and Customer Service globally for Amazon. Clearly someone who has a storehouse of experience on Supply Chain and Operations, and on top of that, a passionate people developer.

“In my role at Amazon, I was managing many international teams and the mentorship I received from a peer at the workplace helped me adapt my leadership style to manage across cultures. His global experience and insights helped me adjust my leadership style and be a more effective people leader” Akhil reflects. “Being a mentor is fulfilling… it's my way of giving back… sharing my experiences and insights to support leaders and helping them scale their performance. And this is exactly what I got from my network of mentors!”

Akhil is also a passionate traveller- he loves to travel and has visited over 50 countries.

You can read about all our mentors here: Mentors | The Crossmentors

We have seen a strong resonance with what we offer- impactful, business context focused, structured mentoring to develop leaders. In addition, based on discussions with many of you, we are pleased to offer special Masterclasses- you will have accomplished CXOs talk of real issues they have been part of and share their learning and insights.

Do reach to us at connect@thecrossmentors.com if you want to learn more,

With best regards

Team Crossmentors