Janak Rajpurohit, Chief Operating Officer at AdGlobal360, is a dynamic operations leader with over fourteen years of experience across business analytics, advertising, transformation, and customer service. He has played a pivotal role in driving operational excellence and fostering high-performance cultures across diverse sectors. At AGL, Janak leads teams focused on efficiency, innovation, and client success, leveraging his expertise to build robust frameworks and scalable processes. In this conversation, he shares insights on navigating change in advertising, the role of trust and technology in leadership, and strategies for sustainable growth in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
Your career has spanned across industries and roles. Looking back, what guiding principles have helped you adapt and thrive through such diverse experiences?
Looking back at how things panned out and with leverage of hindsight, I would say keeping focus on the basic tenets helped me in not only doing the task at hand properly but also to grow as a professional. These basic tenets are:
Embracing the positive mindset is key to keep focused at the job at hand without getting bogged down by setbacks. Life is not perfect and it applies to work that you do as well. Having a positive mindset helps you in not only navigating the roadblocks but learning from them and being better prepared next time.
Communicating clearly with stakeholders is the most crucial aspect. It is better to say or write what you think clearly rather than assuming that people have understood what you want to say. Oftentimes one finds that while in their mind they were clear while discussing something but others didn’t have that same understanding, resulting in issues down the line.
No matter the field, success is built on collaboration. Taking the time to understand the perspectives of colleagues, clients, and partners is invaluable. By putting myself in their shoes, I’ve been able to build stronger relationships, anticipate needs, and work more effectively as part of a team.
The shift from being task-driven to orchestrating teams and outcomes is a big leap for many leaders. How did you personally navigate this transition, and what did you learn along the way?
Navigating the shift from a task-driven to an outcome-oriented leader requires a fundamental change in the approach as you grow. The instinct is always there to get deeply involved in every task. It’s important to learn that true leadership isn’t about doing the work, but about empowering others to do it well. I began to build trust in my team’s abilities, delegating not just tasks, but also the authority to make decisions. This allowed the team to grow and helped in focusing on a larger canvas. As a leader, the role is no longer to just give instructions, but to provide clarity to the team. The focus needs to change from measuring effort to measuring results. Instead of tracking hours spent on a project, monitor KPIs and outcomes. This allowed you to provide targeted feedback and support to the team and help them achieve the shared goals.
You often emphasize the importance of people in driving success. In your view, what makes a team truly effective in today’s fast-paced business environment?
A truly effective team in today’s fast-paced business environment is built on a foundation of trust. Enabling team members to take calculated risks and innovate without fear of judgment is the crucial aspect. This trust fosters open communication and diverse idea-sharing, which are crucial for rapid problem-solving. Beyond trust, a team must have a clear, shared purpose. Everyone must understand the “why” behind their work to stay aligned and motivated. This purpose, combined with a degree of autonomy, empowers members to take ownership and be resourceful, driving outcomes more efficiently than a top-down approach. Finally, the most effective teams are inherently resilient and committed to continuous learning. They view setbacks not as failures, but as opportunities for growth, constantly adapting their processes to stay ahead of market shifts and new challenges.
Every industry is facing rapid change, from technology disruption to shifting consumer expectations. What recent challenges or opportunities stand out to you as the most transformative for your work?
In today’s landscape, no challenge is more transformative than the rapid rise of AI. I see it as less of a threat and more of a profound opportunity to redefine how work is done. Rather than automating or replacing the roles, I see AI as a powerful assisting agent that can handle the repetitive or data-intensive tasks that once consumed a lot of manual time. This opens up the bandwidth to focus on the higher-value, uniquely human aspects of any job, such as critical thinking, creative problem-solving, and building stronger relationships. The challenge lies in staying ahead of the curve, constantly upskilling to leverage new AI tools, and embracing a mindset where human expertise and machine intelligence work together to drive innovation.
Growth brings both opportunities and pressures. How do you balance the pursuit of scale with maintaining clarity, focus, and sustainability in your decisions?
Balancing the pursuit of scale with maintaining clarity and sustainability is a key leadership challenge that needs to be addressed by adopting a disciplined approach. There has to be strategic clarity, which is clearly defined by fixing what your non-negotiable strategic priorities are. This prevents you from chasing every opportunity and ensures that all growth initiatives directly align with the core mission. Strategic clarity needs to be backed with focused execution by building scalable systems and processes that don’t just add capacity but also enhance efficiency and quality. This helps avoid the chaos that often accompanies rapid expansion. I believe that true scale is not just about getting bigger, but about building a resilient organization that can sustain its growth over time.
Looking at the evolution of marketing and adtech, what excites you most about how the space is shaping up, and where do you see the next wave of opportunity?
We are currently looking at the inflection point in advertising where two major things are happening at the same time: the rapid advent of AI and the growing focus on privacy first in the digital world. The next wave of opportunity lies in how we leverage AI to move from broad, intrusive targeting to delivering highly personalized and relevant experiences powered by first-party data. Instead of relying on cookies, we can use AI to analyze customer data we’ve earned like their on-site behavior, purchase history, and content engagement—to predict needs and create dynamic, hyper-personalized campaigns. This approach builds genuine trust and a stronger customer relationship. The opportunity is to create a new, more ethical, and ultimately more effective ecosystem where technology empowers creativity and respects consumer privacy, ensuring we’re not just reaching audiences, but truly engaging with them.
