Autonomous Transformation: The Strategy Shift for AI

[00:00:00] Hello, Renegade marketers. If this is your first time listening, welcome. If you're a regular listener, welcome back.

[00:00:07] You are about to listen to an expert huddle where our flocking awesome community CMO huddles gets exclusive access to experts, including the authors of some of the world's bestselling business books. In this episode, we're joined by Brian Evergreen, author of Autonomous Transformation. Brian makes the case that AI transformation isn't a tools problem.

[00:00:32] It's a leadership problem. He shares why you start with a clear vision for the future. Get alignment on what you're trying to change, and measure outcomes that matter, not just efficiency. And he's blunt about this. If the goal is to simply cut head count, you're missing the point. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review.

[00:00:56] You'll be supporting our quest to be the number one B2B marketing podcast. Alright, let's dive in. I.

[00:01:03] Welcome to Renegade Marketers Unite, possibly the best weekly podcast for CMOs and everyone else looking for innovative ways to transform their brand drive, demand, and just plain cut through proving that B2B does not mean boring to business. Here's your host and chief marketing Renegade Drew Nier.

[00:01:32] Hello Huddles. I'm excited to introduce you to Brian Evergreen. He's the author of Autonomous Transformation, a former Microsoft executive and a systems thinker who's helping leaders rethink the role of ai. Brian and I had a fascinating prep call on this, so I'm super excited about this. Hey, Brian, how are you?

[00:01:51] And where are you today?

[00:01:52] I am doing fantastic. I am in Seattle, which is where I live after two weeks in London. but I've been home a couple days, so hopefully I'm not still jet lagged, but if I say anything, it doesn't make sense. Let's hopefully just blame that.

[00:02:04] Alright, well we expect you to speak with one a London accent, and two, you went from like rain to rain.

[00:02:08] I'm thinking. Uh,

[00:02:09] that's true, but you know what? I, you know, I prefer it. I love, I love the evergreen, you know, I love, I love trees, I love nature, so it's great.

[00:02:17] Well, I don't know if we're talking about nature today. We may be anti nature on this call, but, one of the things that we'd like to do on this show is just in case the audience has to leave early or we need to convince them to stay, let's jump in with three things.

[00:02:30] Marketing leaders get wrong when approaching AI and autonomous transformation. If you'll just list them, we can go through them one at a time.

[00:02:40] Sure. So there three things that people get that marketing leaders, and I think leaders more broadly, but you know, when I think through the lens of marketing leaders, I think one, when it comes to AI is that, again, this is not, this is not exclusive to marketing leaders, but starting with the tool, it's a big one.

[00:02:54] So beginning with, you know, this is, this is the AI tool. I, I liken this to, um, if you were to pick up a, um. If you were to start a home remodel with coming in with a certain kind of hammer or a certain kind of saw and saying, how are we gonna make our house better with this? That's not how we start a remodel.

[00:03:09] We start with what we actually want to do with the remodel and then figure out which tools we need, which I know Drew, we will get into more of that. You

[00:03:16] Yeah, I'll, we'll go into that. But, so give them the list so I can sort of, uh, get a framework here.

[00:03:20] So number one, starting with a tool is a big one, right?

[00:03:22] number two, I would say is not building tr enough trust and alignment across the organization for whatever it is you want to achieve. And thinking that, hey, from my marketing budget, I've got enough money to go buy this thing and so I can make that decision when, if you don't have alignment across the organization and from a system sinking perspective, see, oh, I'm not, I'm getting back into it again, aren't I, drew?

[00:03:43] Okay. There you're so number two. Not having enough trust and alignment is number two. Okay. Number one was starting with a tool. Number two was not having enough trust and alignment. and number three I would say is, and this is true beyond ai, but it's become even more true for AI, is measuring the wrong outcome is what I would say.

[00:03:59] So,

[00:04:00] okay, so, alright. The wrong answer. So we, we don't wanna start with a tool, we've gotta build alignment in measuring the wrong alignment. I'm

[00:04:08] the wrong outcome.

[00:04:09] Those are. Interesting. And I wanna go a little deeper on it. It's, it's funny because I totally understand what you're saying. Don't start with a tool.

[00:04:18] Of course, you're not gonna, you, you want to build, start with a strategy, not a tool, but there's so many cool tools out there, and you hear about a tool and you just wanna go, I wanna go try that. there is a, and there is a tendency, uh. In, in this community where we are encouraging our teams to try new things, to expose us to sort of the art of the possible, if you will.

[00:04:42] Mm-hmm. And, and I guess I'm gonna give one more pushback on that one alone, which is if you don't play with the tool, you have no clue as to what they could do anyway. So how it's a little chicken in the egg here. How do we, avoid the starting with the tool syndrome, and how do we get to a vision if we don't know what the tools can do?

[00:05:01] Yeah, great question. So what I'd say is if you wanted to figure out how to fix a car or, or make a car better, you wouldn't start by saying, okay, I'm gonna learn everything there is to learn about transmission. And I'm gonna master the transmission and then I'll be able to make cars better and I'll be able to fix cars.

[00:05:15] Right? You would say, okay, I need to understand how all these pieces work together. And if there's new, new pieces, like a new type of lidar, kind of, you know, radar sort of optionality or something else you might wanna add to a car, you would research that, yes, you'd make sure you understood it, but you wouldn't come up with a transmission strategy for improving your car.

[00:05:34] Or a lidar strategy for improving your car, you would say, okay, based on what our car is and what it does and the, and how it moves, maybe we can use this thing to make it even better. Let's take a look at that. And I'd say the same is true for ai. So based on how your marketing department is, is running, if you say, okay, this is how we're, this is where we want to play, this is how we're playing, this is the value we're creating right now for our organization and for the market the brand we're maintaining and all the other facets that are important to you.

[00:05:58] And then say. What would, what would the best version, setting all tools aside, what would be if, if you look at the total addressable value that your organization and your department creates? there's no way you're ever gonna completely fill up that circle. So, but wherever you are, there's room around it that, that you can move into and say, oh, well, you know, our customers would love it if we could do X, y, Z thing.

[00:06:19] Or it would really push our brand forward if we could do, you know, a, b, C thing or, you know, whatever it might be. So, determining what is that thing, and to your point, drew. In order to envision all that might be possible, you do need to have a level of literacy or awareness of what, what the tools are that are out there.

[00:06:37] Because if you were trying, if you were someone that, you know, if you teleported from, um, the past where before cell phones or the internet were invented and you were trying to dream up the future of a marketing department, you would have to catch up on like where we're at and what all is. you know, what all is possible.

[00:06:52] Just in terms of all the tools and everything that's out there today, there is a level of literacy there where organizational leaders get stuck is by saying, let's go pick up this one specific. We did it with, blockchain, with the Metaverse now with AI of like, let's pick it up, let's create a whole strategy around it.

[00:07:08] and that's actually you fall into a pit hole pretty easily.

[00:07:11] One of the reasons I think, uh, a lot of pilots have failed is that in fact they have been, Hey, this thing can do this, so let's build a pilot and not sort of, strategically solving particular business challenges. Okay. So I'm, I'm with you on that first one.

[00:07:25] The second one. Is not building alignment. And then, and you also, but you started with not building trust and alignment. that's always an issue. I know we talked a lot about that at the super huddle. It's just alignment with your, CRO is you, you won't be successful if you, you're sort of not aligned there.

[00:07:43] And obviously if you're not aligned with where the CEO wants to take the company and how the CFO wants to spend money, you've got a problem. But why is it important in the context of AI adoption?

[00:07:54] Great question. So I'll highlight why it's important by contrasting an area or very recently where it wasn't.

[00:08:00] So if you're modernizing to the cloud, you have an app that everybody's already using, but it's monolithic architecture now, it's being put into a, a much lighter, you know, lightweight, more agile, more able to do, you know, able to do more things, add more features, et cetera. You don't really need to bring people along.

[00:08:15] It's like, Hey, we're upgrading from the less great experience you had before to a better experience. Like, you don't need alignment really. You sure you need to prove ROI to your CFO? You need sure, but there's not a huge amount of, like, it's incrementalism is just fine in that scenario, right? Where you're gonna take something you have, you're gonna make it slightly better.

[00:08:34] AI flies in the face of that. And so because for one inside your organizations, and, and I'd say marketing is, is one of the top three that have this sort of, I would say, pressure from the hype in the market today that, oh, AI's AI agents and AI is gonna take all these jobs, which I'll just say upfront, I don't think is true, I don't think is accurate for a number of reasons, which I'm more than happy to get into.

[00:08:57] we didn't mention this before, but I was working with Fortune 500 companies to build and deploy AI agents before chat. GPT ever even came out. So, like, very much, you know, a lot of history, they're happy to talk about it. But, in terms of the, the question, so in all that context where people are, are afraid for their jobs, which means they're not gonna perform well or be able to, you know, come up with the best ideas and so on.

[00:09:18] There's also, this idea I that I, Is central to a portion of my work, which is that I believe that trust, a shared vision for the future is a foundation of trust. So what's happening when you have teams across the organization and especially within your department that are looking at what you're talking about doing, and they're pushing back.

[00:09:36] A lot of it has to come down to this underlying, this hidden question, which is where, where am I in this picture of what you're building toward? What, what does that mean for me? What does that mean for my job or my future? and so being able to say, Hey, this is where we're going. This is where we're headed.

[00:09:50] This is how we see you winning CRO. This is how we see you winning CHRO. We, this is the new like family of jobs. We think this is gonna create that we're gonna have to go work with you to create, hey, over here, CFO, this is how we see the RO. Obviously there's gotta be some degree of ROI, even if it's longer term because of how AI kind of the natural curve is.

[00:10:10] so I think that that, that trust and alignment across and, and not, not just in a. I think before it's checking boxes of alignment. And I think there's a more human element looking each other in the eye. Like do we both see the same vision of the future that we both want to build toward? And are we gonna invest our time, energy, and resources to do that?

[00:10:28] Got it. And it's so funny 'cause it, it's, you know, it's the vision thing and if you're not aligned on the vision thing as a whole, I am, curious and as is someone, uh, uh, listening in, in live, uh, but I don't wanna spend much time on it. What are the other departments that are also under pressure to, uh, deploy ai?

[00:10:45] Ah, I said top three, didn't I? Obviously customer service, which depending on the organization right, rolls up to various places. So that's the one I think that people, that's getting the most heat. Okay. Um, I'd say, uh, where people are and you see what, like Klarna tried, which I don't know if anyone saw Yeah.

[00:11:00] The full life cycle of that was pretty fun to see. so that's, that's I'd say the number one, I'd say Mark,

[00:11:05] by the way, I just wanna thank Klarna for making that mistake first, so the rest of us didn't have to. Exactly. Thank you. Whether it be, you know, bleeding edge is called that for a reason.

[00:11:14] Exactly.

[00:11:14] I actually wrote a, um, in, in my book in August, 2023, like, so I'd already sent it to the manuscript or sent the manuscript out for publishing with Wiley before the Klarna case study started coming out, right where he made this first announcement how they're gonna be start laying people off.

[00:11:28] And in my book I said that, basically. In the era of autonomous transformation, the, the temptation for some organizations will be to go to full autonomy, but I, they'll, the market will rebound and they'll quickly find that they need to retain human connection where it matters most. and so it's kind of funny 'cause I said that right around the time he said his thing.

[00:11:45] A year later, it looked like he was right because they'd laid off 700 people and were declaring all these savings. Right. And then another year later, so two years in total, he came back. And for those who aren't familiar with the story, the big, um, article that came out was, you know, Klarna lays off their customer service department and then scrambles and has engineers and marketing managers, taking customer calls while they try to rebuild their customer service organization.

[00:12:07] So,

[00:12:07] oops. Yeah. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's, um, exactly. I can build on that. And this was amazing that, and, you know, so many people for years have been trying to automate phone trees. We all hate phone trees. When you finally get to a human, there's a moment of joy. Oh my God, you can solve my problem. And there's some businesses that have been built the opposite way and build in credible satisfaction.

[00:12:27] But I know from this one company, it doesn't matter whether they were calling to complaint or joy or had a problem. Every call was an opportunity to make them feel better about their relationship and cement the deal. So the minute you put a bot in there, it better be damn good. Otherwise, you're, you're going to risk that relationship.

[00:12:44] But it's, it's again, thank you, carna. Alright. We have to finish up on the third one.

[00:12:48] Yeah. Yeah. So the third one I would say, I mean, I, I, when I said top three, I was really thinking like. It's one of the top, but I guess I didn't think of specifically three. Okay. But obviously customer service is one. I'd say for third I would say it's, it's more horizontal.

[00:13:01] It's across all organizations. That entry level, and again, I'm not, I wanna be very clear, I'm not predicting what Dario Amedee predicted that up to 50% of entry level jobs will be gone in the next five years. I think what we're experiencing right now is because of. The threat of recession that's been looming over us for a couple of years.

[00:13:20] Yes. Especially with political upheavals and, and geopolitical, you know, climate that we're in right now. I think that is, and plus some of the taxation that was taking place where the codes shifted for r and DI think that's much more to blame why we've seen a, a, so many layoffs. And so few entry level hires, I don't think I have yet to see a single company where if you go look under the hood, they say, yeah, we actually have these AI agents that are doing all these things.

[00:13:45] So now we don't need to hire entry level people. That's not what's happening. So that it's a, it's a false narrative.

[00:13:50] Right. Uh, so, okay. And I appreciate that. So the last one in this quick summary that we were working on mm-hmm. Which is that people are measuring the wrong thing. Let's talk about that.

[00:14:04] They're measuring adoption in most cases or they're measuring, I mean obviously marketing is so difficult, difficult 'cause it's trying to figure out true attribution, especially the larger your organization, so easy at a small organization, right? You talk to this person, you know, they sent you a proposal, you, you did it, okay, good to go, right?

[00:14:21] Or, you know, you came inbound from this one website versus the larger, the organization. There's just so many different ways that they can, they can find, and so many different touch points that aren't tracked. so it's a classic problem, but I would say it's from a systems thinking perspective, you know, you, you introduced me as a systems thinker, so I have to live up to that.

[00:14:36] but it's very easy to look at and, and our, our instinct for all of us, when analysis was really codified in the 1950s and the systems thinking movement, it, it's really about taking a subject. And breaking it down and trying to understand each individual part and how well it's doing. And then re aggregating that into the, into how well the overall, so if you say, oh, well, how good is our reach?

[00:14:56] How good, how many impressions, you know, are we getting, what, what level of clicks are, are we getting on those? And then are, how many demos are we booking? Or whatever the, those are all functions of analysis, of breaking it down to understand individual parts, to try to add it back up. Like is the whole working, but you could have a million demos booked a day, a, you know, a billion.

[00:15:15] Impressions a day and all these things looking off the charts and yet still not have conversion. And that's because analysis can tell you how something's working, but it can give you understanding of, of why it exists or how well it's actually doing. For that, we need synthesis to understand, so in the case of marketing, the, the role that the marketing function serves in the broader organization.

[00:15:35] Right? Like what does the sales team need from marketing? What does the customer service team from marketing, what does and, and based on what all those other departments need from marketing. 'cause they're all interdependent, right? You could have the best marketing department in the world, but if the product's terrible.

[00:15:51] You know, it doesn't matter, right? It's interdependent. And so measuring the interaction between how well are we understanding and perfectly positioning exactly what that offering is that we're putting in the market is more important than how many impressions. 'cause you could have a million impressions of the wrong impression.

[00:16:08] Right. And that's happened so many times for so many organizations that I've been a part of and worked with. Where, I, I liken it to Beyonce. We're gonna be an choir. she would need to degrade her performance. We wouldn't be measuring and saying, well, Beyonce did this well, and everyone else needs to pick up the slack.

[00:16:22] We would say Beyonce needs to actually like sing below her, capa her full capacity for it to all sound good together. And that's something that not it's, it's not just a marketing problem, it's. Every org, every department, tends to focus on how well am I doing and then I'll blame other people if something's going wrong with what they're doing.

[00:16:40] but when really it's the interaction between all of our organizations that the real performance is, is actually measured by.

[00:16:47] So I, I'm wrapping my mind around the measurement and the measurement that we hear a lot in the community about the usage of ai. And I'll give you, an example. one member of our community was looking to help her team be 50% more productive thanks to these tools.

[00:17:07] Hmm. It wasn't we're gonna make our team smaller, but it was gonna make our our team 50% more productive. And so a lot of the emphasis, and I, I tell that story mainly because the emphasis so far has been in using these tools to be more efficient, right? We're gonna be able to get more content out faster.

[00:17:25] Not necessarily we're going to, and, and we're gonna then use that time to spend it on other things that are in fact more productive, and so forth. So we're getting rid of a lot of the lower level, you know, brainless stuff and adding more time for brain power. But the pursuit of efficiency alone feels like, to me, falls into this buffet potentially of myopia versus mm-hmm.

[00:17:50] A, using AI to do new things, to create new levels of value. And I'm just curious if your point of view where, where, where your point of view on that is.

[00:17:59] I love that you asked that because, um, I actually, in the same article where I introduced the idea of total addressable value, I actually created a, like a three circle Venn diagram.

[00:18:08] The biggest circle is total addressable value. This one of the smaller circles. Is addressable by humans, but really it's addressable by whatever you're already doing. Now, there's a certain amount of the big amount of value you could create that you're already doing, whether it's software automation, your people.

[00:18:23] Then there's another circle that is addressable by AI and AI agents, and there is some overlap where you could take something you're already doing. And say, how do we do this exact same thing, create this exact same value with AI and maybe create it more efficiently and faster and cheaper? Like, yes, there is some of that, but the majority of actual like where the, the potential value with AI and AI agents 'cause it is fundamentally good at different things than people are.

[00:18:51] And different things than it's, it's different than automation. It can be used in automation, but they're not the same. So then the majority of the, the actual value to be found there is in creating new value, like you're saying, drew, that hasn't existed before. And I'll, I'll give you a quick example that I, that I give often, which is if you have two companies.

[00:19:09] let's say that, um, I, you and I drew, we each run a construction company, let's say, and I live in Seattle. Drew, where are you calling in from today?

[00:19:16] New York City.

[00:19:17] New York City. So you're running a construction company in New York City? I'm running one in Seattle. We each need steel 'cause we're building skyscrapers, let's say.

[00:19:25] And for some reason we need the exact same amount of steel. I call a b, C steel and I say, hey. I need some steel. And they look in their warehouse, in their databases of all their warehouses, and they say the only warehouse we have that has lumber or has that steel is in New York City. So we're gonna drop a purchase order, we're gonna get a truck driver, they're gonna drive it across the country.

[00:19:43] Right. You call not a BC lumber, but you call x, y, Z lumber. And they say they check their database of all their warehouses and they say, well, we have this, the steel you need in Seattle. And then now, you know, you see the inefficiency, right? It's so obvious that we're, we're each paying for steel to be shipped all the way across the country.

[00:20:01] Not to mention the carbon impact, the, the livelihoods of those people that are, you know, having to, to drive all the way across the country and then straight back. So, That's, that's the world we live in today, because it would be too inefficient for every steel company to spend time calling all their competitors and everyone else to see, do you have steel there?

[00:20:19] I don't, I don't have steel there. Should we? Right. It doesn't make sense in the era of AI and AI agents, we could instead have where a, a marketplace of AI agents that represent these different steel companies, even though they're not, they don't have to be that. They don't have to be Microsoft or Amazon or Google.

[00:20:34] They, they could, steel companies can do this relatively simply. We'll have to have a square for like, like the way that Square enabled everyone to be able to do payments. It'll be a version of that, where essentially when I call up, it, it, it actually, they, they could trade customers behind the scenes, right?

[00:20:51] Where instead of it being that people having to call and check with other people and they're checking a database. It's just at the moment of inquiry, it's also interacting and, and negotiating even with other agents that represent other steel companies and then they're trading, they're getting referral fees.

[00:21:07] So we are happier as a customer. There's less waste in the society and they're still making referral fees and making money even though they're not having to fulfill that order. so that's an example of like the amount of new value that we're, and, and I think from a marketing perspective, as we're moving into an era where.

[00:21:22] Purchase decisions are gonna be made, made by an agent where I might say, Hey, I'm have a Super Bowl party coming. I, I want to get me everything I need. I have 11 people coming. One, two of 'em are vegetarian, one's vegan. The rest, you know, there's one gluten-free and the rest eat, you know, have no dietary restrictions.

[00:21:38] I, I want to throw a really good Super Bowl party. Get me everything I need. No, I might go outta my way if I have a strong enough brand relationship with. Coca-Cola I might say, and make sure all the products are Coca-Cola and not Pepsi. Maybe I'll say that, or maybe vice versa, right? But for most, I'd say the average consumer, you're most likely at that point, I'm stating the outcome that I want and I'm leaving it up to this, the group of agents to come up with the, the recipes and they might come back to me and say, okay, we're gonna make a vegan pigs in a blanket and we're gonna make all these things.

[00:22:10] And here's. You know, maybe, right? And then I review all that and say, okay, that sounds great. I don't care at that point, if it's Safeway, Albertson's, Walmart, who's the behind the scenes stores? I don't care if it's Uber, DoorDash or some Noname brand doing the delivery. And then I may not care if it's Lay's or like.

[00:22:29] Actual brand of the sub-brands of all the different food, I might just care about the outcome and just leave it up to the food unless I have a negative experience in which I'll come back and say, Hey, never get, never get this food again. 'cause that wasn't great. Right? So as our decisions change at that point, you could have a company perfectly optimizing you conversion rates and their end.

[00:22:48] End of, uh, as, as organizations continue to optimize, let's say in the, in the food and beverage industry, their end of vial, you know, how they're showing up at end of vial and purchasing the best placement that a bunch of Uber drivers just walking right past. 'cause they don't care 'cause they're filling out a list that's already been predetermined and now that marketing, those marketing dollars are wasted.

[00:23:08] Right? So I think that's to long answer to your question, drew, but I think that's kind of aware that Just a diatribe, I suppose, on where I think that the focus on new value needs to be a little bit on where the, where the puck is headed, where the consumer's headed. And I think especially for marketers leading in that and also recognizing when I think because we're in such an era where all of our.

[00:23:27] Societal and political and like what it means to be human and, and with ai and everything is just so jumbled that I think that we are back in a need of, like, we're not in a space of just, let's just keep automating whatever we've been doing. I think we need to start new modalities, new ways of connecting, reconnecting with, um, how we, and we're seeing more and more brands obviously do that and, and very successfully.

[00:23:50] We're gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back.

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[00:24:45] Hope to see you in a huddle soon.

[00:24:47] Well, perfect transition 'cause you have this concept in the book about future solving and that flips how leaders think about planning. Talk a little bit about this because it, it, part of this is, it does take some imagination and some projection and so forth. So let's get into, uh, future solving and how that's sort of different from problem solving.

[00:25:09] Well, why thank you Drew. That's one of my favorite things to talk about. so all of us have been taught to be good at problem solving, right? That's like you go to any conference everywhere, they say, well start with what problem you want to solve. That's the guidance, that's like the prevailing best practice and.

[00:25:23] In the context of that best practice, 90 per percent, 95% of AI projects fail. when I was leading AI strategy for Microsoft, us, I was flying out to meet with Fortune 500 C-level exec teams to set their AI strategies. And I, I got fed up with the fact that we were having all the same problems the low success rates, even though we had tremendous resources.

[00:25:42] Some of the most brilliant people working on these things. And so I said, okay, I'm not going to, I need to challenge all conventional wisdom that I've heard. And one of them was problem solving. I said, okay, is there, is there any issue with this? And what I realized is, and what I learned through research and, and.

[00:25:58] Learning from people that came even before me and, and passed away before I even started this research. Unfortunately, especially one particular hero, Dr. A Russell aov, for anyone who's familiar with his work, um, he was a Wharton professor. That was just phenomenal. But, the problem with solving problems is that problem solving is the craft of getting rid of what you don't want.

[00:26:17] So when you, when you're problem solving, you're, it's an elimination exercise, I find something I don't want, I eliminate it. And it makes sense that we're so focused on that, because that's one of our inheritances from the industrial revolution. When a machine goes down, you find the problem, you fix the problem, hopefully the machine comes back.

[00:26:32] You wanna make the machine work better, eliminate more problems. So it's, it's just baked into how we think about everything but. What I'd like to say is that the problem with solving problems is yes, it's get the craft of getting rid of what you don't want, but it doesn't have anything to do with getting what you do want.

[00:26:47] Back when people were using television and clicking through channels, I know some people still do, but most of us don't. it was actually statistically that if you didn't like what was on the TV and you went up or down, you're actually less likely. To see something you want to see, then to see something you don't wanna see yet, another thing.

[00:27:02] So then, then you're clicking through, you know, 30 channels, so you finally find the thing that you want. So what do you do instead? You go to the TV guide or you go to the, the homepage you watch, you know, as they're scrolling through, you go, oh good, that show. Yes, I'd like to watch that. Let's go straight to channel 34.

[00:27:17] Right. That's essentially what business leaders need to do today, which is start with what future you want to solve for, like what is an ambition, what is a goal that is worth solving for, and make it visceral. So, JFK did a great example of this when he said, by the end of the decade, we're going to land a man on the moon and bring him back safely.

[00:27:35] Like when you say land a man on the moon, he could have said, you know, by the end of the decade we will have achieved a moon landing and, and a safe return. Same thing, but when you say land a man, you could almost, you could almost see the feet thudding against the moon. Right. When I, when I work with IT departments, I tell them, an example of the kind of future worth solving for would be, uh.

[00:27:55] That our work as it is so, so good that when shadow IT vendors come to our marketing or come to our business partners, they're laughed out of the room because they're so happy with our work as it that it's, actually hilarious to them to imagine partnering with Shadow IT vendors. Like that's a visceral goal.

[00:28:17] It's not just a set of numbers, like you can actually imagine the energy that would have to be true. For that. So then that, that's the second piece. So you first start with what is that future we want to solve for? I'll say, as we say that, that there is no such thing as a strategy that isn't anchored to a vision.

[00:28:32] So I'm, I wrote an article recently that's coming out next month that says, it's called No Strategy Without Vision. So we like to talk about making strategic decisions, but you can't actually make a strategic decision if you don't have a strategy. Otherwise it's just a decision. And you, because a strategic calling it strategic means it's aligned to the strategy.

[00:28:51] So if there isn't a strategy, it's not aligned to anything, right? It's like left aligning, but there's no left. You just, it just keeps going, right? so what I recommend to leaders is to start with creating a vision, which is something we haven't been trained to do. So most of us, and I'm sure most of you.

[00:29:05] in school we aren't taught, there's not a how to create a vision 1 0 1. It's like, you know, all the basics of like, mark, you know, basics of marketing base, basics of accounting, basics of management, et cetera. But creating a vision isn't taught in school, and it's usually almost never taught in organizations either.

[00:29:19] We're taught how to be good operators, how to be good at executing a scorecard or executing against it. A goal or, or something that's been set, but not necessarily creating a vision. So that's actually the work and research I'm doing now, is part one of the, one of the core pillars of it is how to teach people how to actually create a vision so that we can have a new era of visionary leadership, um, inside of our organizations and, and at large.

[00:29:42] Um, so yeah, I can go on frame, but,

[00:29:44] so when we talked, we, we also talked about your nine box framework. Oh yes. And I think it would be good to sort of just explain those boxes. The nine? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:29:58] I call it a nindrant because, and this is a very nerdy joke, so forgive me, but there's no Latin equivalent of quadrant when you get up to nine.

[00:30:04] So you, you can only really call it a nine. so I, I, I actually, I know you mentioned it'd be helpful if I actually showed it, which I can. So it, it's part of a i'll, I'm pulling this up from a keynote a keynote deck. So, where I talk about one of the first things you have to do when you're solving for the future is to start with a vision. And I, I share some of what I just shared with you, which is that, that creating a vision is a skill just like program or project management or, or j writing JavaScript or anything else is a skill. It's really included in our training or job description. So something that you could do with your team this week, if you can find the time, maybe next week is. To actually go and do a workshop and say, alright, we're, you know, we're, we've been doing some great things, you know, we have our operational, you know, plan locked down, but we want to come up with a vision for the future. Here's the exercise we're gonna do. I'd like everyone to write out three, three visions for the future of either our team, department or organization, or even market, right?

[00:30:58] Like scope and size right. All the way out to it could be the whole market that you think would be worth solving for. And give them, give them five, 10 minutes to think about it. Write them down on sticky notes, but don't show them the nindrant until after they've written them down. And then once they've written 'em down, then you show them the nindrant and say, okay, this is a, you know, a graph where we show the, where we're gonna bucket and organize divisions that we've created.

[00:31:21] So you can see on the y axis achievable within my team. In other words, I don't need anyone else's permission to go do this. I can achieve it right now with the, the time and the, the team and the dollars that I have. Then to the right of that is achievable within my organization with consensus. And that's where you say, okay, as A CMO would actually also need the CRO and maybe CFO and some other departments to agree to actually do this with us, or that maybe this is a product team.

[00:31:45] And so we, I can't just, I'm not the one who can just make the call. And then the third is achievable in my industry with a coalition. So that's where, hey, we as this, this problem or this goal, or this future we're trying to solve for is bigger than just our company. We would need other companies to co-sign whether that be.

[00:32:02] Other companies in the same, exact type of company that we are, or like a co-opetition kind of arrangement, or our partners, or, there would have to be a government policy change. Like it could be anything, anything that requires like more of a coalition that's on the right there. then you can see on the Y axis there's not ambitious enough, bold and achievable or too ambitious.

[00:32:23] Obviously the goal is bold and achievable and what I, what I always share is you really want to have. A portfolio of visions across, across the middle here where you have ideas that are, some of which are I ideally, they're all bold and they're all achievable. Some of them are gonna be achievable just with your team.

[00:32:41] Some that you need more in the organization to sign off and and partner with you, and some that might need a bigger or longer industry coalition. And these almost. Start to map the McKinsey horizons in a way based on the length of time they would take. and, but it's really, really interesting when you do this exercise, because what I do is once I've explained it to them, then what you do is you say, okay, everyone, we're gonna one by one.

[00:33:00] Do show and tell, show the three visions you wrote down and, and propose for each one where you think it belongs on the nindrant. And so a lot of times you'll find a clustering, or you might find this one leader is only coming up with things that would fall within their purview, or, oh my goodness, all of our leadership team, everything they came up with would require a whole industry coalition.

[00:33:20] No wonder we're struggling with where to get started because it's all lofty. It's good that we have those kind of visions, but now we can constrain ourselves to say, we also have to come up with stuff that's more near term. Right. so this is the, the framework. It's become, there's over $20 billion of investment that have been invested on the future solving, um, methodology and, uh, not directly to me.

[00:33:41] Right. That would be nice. Yeah. Um, but no, but, but, uh, this is one of the core pillars, of doing that as first going through this and a, and a series of other exercises to walk away with a portfolio of visions worth solving for.

[00:33:53] Got it. Really interesting. And I'm, and just, uh, a plug for you, you actually run these workshops for companies, right?

[00:33:59] Yes. Workshops and, and even broader scale, um, like self-paced resources and transformations when a company wants to ditch OKRs and replace it with future solving.

[00:34:09] Okay. So beyond, um, that. is there anything else while we have your deck here, is there anything else that you wanna cover?

[00:34:18] Professor?

[00:34:20] Let me, let me see. All right, let's see. Let's discard let's, let's say a vision would be, and I'm trying to make it visceral, I don't know what kind of companies, I know obviously we have CMOs, but I don't know what kind of, we,

[00:34:30] it's all B2B. It's, a lot of SaaS, but not only sas. Okay. Uh, a lot of tech, uh, and, uh, so

[00:34:37] yeah, let's, let's, let's say, let's say you set a vision where you said, we want our marketing, all the accumulation of all the marketing efforts that we do to be so strong that we are actually asking ourselves, do we need an outbound sales team?

[00:34:52] Because it's just like overwhelmingly inbound because we're doing such a good job, right? That's an example of what I mean about like a visceral, like you can imagine the phones ringing off the hooks and how, what, what a great problem that would be to have to, to have to deal with. so let's say that's the vision that you're setting at the very top, and that's what a future point is, is yeah, everybody, as, as, as authors, go through these journeys and if anyone else has gone through writing a book, you know, you, you, I know you have Drew.

[00:35:15] you know, sometimes you coin something, you name it, something you realize, ah, it's more like instead of the future point, it's the vision, right? Or it's tomorrow. It's the thing you're trying to go toward. But once you've defined that, so again, if we defined it as, the, that our marketing is so good that we don't even know if we need an outbound sales team anymore.

[00:35:32] then you ask the question, what would have to be true for us to reach that future? And the next step after that is, so you ask, see, come on now. There you go. It would've to be true. And so you write, start writing down the things that would've to be true. And then you say, okay, so if these four things were true, would we be in that future?

[00:35:46] Would the phones be ringing off the hook and would we have to, would we feel like we don't even need outbound sales anymore? Would, you know, just reposition all those outbound sellers to becoming inbound sellers? you know, so, and if the answer is yes, then you move on. The answer is no. Then you say, okay, well if this were true, this were true, this were true, and this were true, what else would still be missing before we'd actually be in that future?

[00:36:06] And you document all of that altitude and then say, okay. Then once you have it where everyone agrees, yes, if those seven things or those five things are true, we'd reach that future. Then you do it again. Isolating each theory. So you, you might say for theory, you know this one over here, which is that, you know, let's say a, a click down from that is that, you know, we'd have to have such a strong brand impression that every time someone saw it, they immediately knew.

[00:36:29] Like who was making the commercial or who was, you know, featured in the ad or whatever. Just be such a strong brand. Then you might say, well, what would have to be true for that? Okay, well, distinctive brand elements, distinctive storytelling, distinctive whatever, and now you're coming up with the other hypotheses that might have to be true.

[00:36:44] And then you do it again and say, well, for our storytelling to be considered distinctive in today's era with AI and all the AI slop and everything else that's going on, everything's starting to look the same. In some ways it's easier to distinguish. In some ways it's harder. What else would have to be true?

[00:36:57] And you keep going down until you get to the point where you say, okay, well now everything below this line is stuff that's already true. So this is the, this is the starting point of everything that's already true. And we've documented all the other things that would have to be true in order for us to go from where we are today, which is the starting point to where we want to go, which is the vision or the future point.

[00:37:19] And what this does is it creates an actual. Unlike I've seen in any organization I've ever worked with. Every time I say, can I see your strategy? Which is a fun question to just ask. You're just like, let's see your strategy there. Often you get a, like, what do you, what do you mean? Like, you want us to show you the deck McKinsey made for us?

[00:37:34] Or, well, it's, you know, it's a memo or it's, it's a series of PowerPoint decks that describe the context of we're in and the areas we want to play, and some of the investments we're making, which I would argue is a. Highly contextual plan, but not a strategy, right? So this a strategy is a, is a me, is something you document as a means of going from where you are to where you want to go.

[00:37:56] And this is the only framework I'm familiar with that puts that all in one single sheet of paper that you can show someone and say, here's our actual strategy. This is where we're trying to go. This is where we are. These are all things we think would have to be true. Oh, and then, and then after that, you can say, here's the things we're investing in right now.

[00:38:11] Here's the stuff we disproved. Here's a whole branch that we're gonna actually see if we can get a partner. You know, strategic partner to go invest in. 'cause it's not core competency to us. Here's something we found that the, um, let's say the National Science Foundation is already investing in, so we're just gonna, we're not gonna spend our capital, we're just gonna monitor, like, or maybe it's in your case, the NRF is already doing some kind of cool research project.

[00:38:31] So we're just gonna watch that from afar, not spend money trying to figure, answer that question, while we focus on the stuff that is core competency to us.

[00:38:39] Cool. Got it.

[00:38:40] You said, professor. So I, I tried to go in as much of a professor mode as I, as I could. I did. I love it. And so, uh, strategy is a bridge from where we are to where we wanna be's and if's.

[00:38:50] You don't have that, you don't have a strategy. I, I love the, the simplicity, of that. I wanna make sure that we're, we get this, that was big picture. Right? And I think that's really important because we talk about if we're gonna be driving big change, you're going to, to need to do that.

[00:39:07] I still, at the same time wanna make sure we give CMOs some concrete things that they can do. I'll start with one. Sam Altman has, said repeatedly, you know, the billion dollar company, two people, it's happening. every department will be smaller and, and more efficient thanks to AI and CEO CEOs, particularly Silicon Valley CEOs are hearing that, listening it, and it translates into this, Hey, marketing cut your team by 50%.

[00:39:36] Right? Not vision, just you should be able to do it much more efficiently. It's not, what can you do better? It's not strategy. It is, yeah, cut costs because you should be able to do that and First of all, there's no business case out there that shows that, oh, somebody actually cut their marketing by, staff by 50% and actually grew that next year.

[00:39:57] In fact, there are very few cases at all that show any kind of marketing cut actually led to growth. but nonetheless, that is so How do CMOs fight that right now? Because it feels like prevailing wisdom. If you are a forward thinking thing and you are working, you know, God forbid you are at open AI or lovable, and you're at a nine to nine by six, which I, I heard that expression today for the first time and I went, oh my God.

[00:40:19] Oh yeah, no, that's the whole thing. Yeah, that's a thing. It's a thing.

[00:40:22] So obviously if everybody was working nine to nine to six, you would need one 10th of people. some er EMTs standing by.

[00:40:30] Yeah, no kidding. so the question is really how do we, if you're a marketing leader you're getting the edict from either your CEO or the board, right? That you need to figure out how to just cut insane amounts of cost out of marketing, the first thing I would say is that. You're right. That that's, that's not a vision at all. And so it's not visionary leadership.

[00:40:48] so Microsoft is a great case study because they went from, in 2014 when Satya came in as a new CEO, right? He set a vision for the future of the organization and he executed it, honoring the history, but also forging a path to the future. He said, we need a new people strategy, a new technology strategy, and a new business strategy.

[00:41:04] He didn't just say a new business strategy or a new technology, but also people, which is really interesting. there's a lot of lessons and I saw, I was able to see some of those firsthand. what's interesting is. So they 10 x their value in about 10 years. Right? It's even, even better now. The last time I checked was a couple years ago, it'd been 10 years, right?

[00:41:21] And they 10 x their value in those 10 years, 10 x. So it's interesting 'cause if you think about where Oracle and where, you know, IBM and a bunch of other companies that are seen as legacy tech companies, they weren't that. If you go back and look at where they all were in 2014, there wasn't that big of a difference.

[00:41:36] And then if you look at 2014 to today, that just the way Microsoft has absolutely exploded, right? And I would, I might tell the story to a, a c-suite exec and say, and do you think that that was because Sia came in and said, let's cut our marketing spend by 50%, right? Like, no, not at all. Right? He had a vision for the future of like, the industry as a whole.

[00:41:56] things are moving to cloud. We need to change the way we're doing licensing. We need to change the way that we, we've traditionally tried to be like. Anti walled garden by not being willing to like put our software on Apple devices. We need to change that. We're spending all this money in mobile and we're losing.

[00:42:11] We need to cut bait, let it go. We need to, you know, double down on things we're really good at and et cetera, right? So, if you're working for the kind of leader who you can, you can have that conversation, frankly, have that conversation with and say we have a new impetus with new technologies that are capable of insanely cool things that.

[00:42:29] We couldn't do before. Like it's in a whole new palette. You know, it's like, it's like if you're a painter and all of a sudden a bunch of new colors appear that are like three dimensional or something, and you're like, wow, I can't believe I can actually paint with these things. you have a choice as a leader to say, am I gonna try to cut costs with this?

[00:42:41] And sort of take the value we're already creating and try to keep creating the exact same value a little more efficiently and post good numbers for a few quarters until someone else comes up. And with that completely new way of doing things, now that we have this new palette that just absolutely undercuts our whole business.

[00:42:56] or do we want to be the ones because we're already there, we already have the resources, we already have the market share. That if we, if we can get there first of finding new ways to create value with all the capability that's out there today, you know, we can create whole new growth markets for ourselves, And so, that's the first thing I would do is have that conversation with them. the second thing I might clarify if they're continue to push back is say so where like. I, I do the, there's this thing in, cognitive behavioral therapy, where you go where someone says, oh, I'm afraid that I'm a bad like father, let's say.

[00:43:26] And you say, really? And what, what does it, you know, what does it mean if you're a bad father? Well, it means I'm letting my children down. What does it mean if you're letting your children down? Well, it means, and you just keep going until you get to like the root thing. So you could do a version of that.

[00:43:36] Don't call it cognitive behavioral therapy with your CEO, but you could do a version of that with, with this idea and say, well, where did you hear this idea that you can cut your marketing spend by 50%? Oh, well, I heard it on this podcast. Okay, well, who said it on that podcast? Well, it was Sam Waltman.

[00:43:48] Okay. Does Sam Waltman work in marketing? Okay. No. No, he doesn't. What does, has Sam Waltman ever worked at a company of our size? No, he hasn't. Okay, so he, so, okay. Like, so this person who's never been in the context we're in is making some kind of bold declaration about the completely changing another in.

[00:44:04] It's like if I, as someone who has never worked in a steel mill, steel mill, coming back to steel, said, you know, five years from now we're gonna, you know, you're not gonna need like any more workers in steel 'cause they'll be fully automated. It'll all just be autonomous. And it's like, and hey, I'm the author of autonomous transformation.

[00:44:21] Come on. Right. But it's like, I don't, I don't know that I, I, I have no context with which to make that statement. So I think, I think you do have to like, I think discernment is one of the Like one of the most important skills in in 2025 and 2020 and so on this, in this decade. I think discernment will be one of the most important skills.

[00:44:38] And sometimes, you know, you have to sort of bring others along when they're, when they're showing a lack of discernment, just talking them through it. Just the Socratic method, right? Like well really, where'd you hear that? Can you ask, can you tell me more without, you know, is a fine line. 'cause you don't want to sound like judgmental or be.

[00:44:53] Be,

[00:44:53] where did you hear that stupid idea go?

[00:44:55] Yeah, exactly right. Just say like, oh, that's so interesting. Like, can you share, can you share that with me? Like where you, where you heard that? And then if they say, oh, well actually, yeah, and you know, you can say, you don't have to say, can you share the well-documented case study that, you know, had a, a broad, you don't have to, you don't have to cut 'em, you know, cut 'em down.

[00:45:11] You can just say, can you share that with me? I hadn't heard that. And if they send you a link to like, you know, some kind of. Tech podcast that is, um, you know, that, that's featured a Ai, CEO who's only ever worked in AI startups. Then you can just ask and say like, you know, do, do you have any examples? It would be helpful for me if you could share some examples of other CMOs at companies like ours who have done this and are, are talking about it and, you know.

[00:45:36] You can go from there, right?

[00:45:38] Yeah. I, you know, I, I think there are, there are a lot of startup CMOs out there, CEOs out there who will say, my vision is cut the staff by 50%. Go, uh, you know, they'll just, that's my vision, right? And you're not gonna have a, you're, you're gonna have a tough time arguing it. And they don't have the experience and they say, we're recreating.

[00:45:53] Why am I looking at these other companies that we're, we're doing it all from magic. I wonder if there's also a flip side of this is, I understand that you want to cut our costs, by 50% and I too, but all of that is in the purpose of growth.

[00:46:06] Correct. So if I could show you that with the team that we have, we could actually grow faster as a result of this teams would that. Vision be in line with you. 'cause I think that is part of the conversation. Mm-hmm. There are efficiency gains. I don't know if there's a diminishing return on efficiency gains.

[00:46:23] I don't know if we're talking about 50%, 20, but there are efficiencies.

[00:46:27] Yes. And I, I agree. And, and I think I would add to that, that you can also document what I, when another idea of way you could approach that is say, alright, that's one option. Option A, you know, cut 50% of the workforce or whatever. Option B, and then share other options like option B is something that what I would do the bold vision, like do that visioning exercise I shared with you and your leadership team and come back to 'em and say, option B is this vision for the future of how we're gonna market and reach our customers.

[00:46:54] And. That's option B. And that's, this is a potential growth that I think we could get to if we, if we were able to achieve that. another factor that I think is being left out of these conversations is the cultural impact, right?

[00:47:06] Of, 'cause people's performance in an organization is based on their sense of safety, their sense of cohesion, their sense of alignment, right? Gen Z more and Gen Alpha more than any previous generation especially. there is a tangible, actual. Cost to reducing headcount beyond the actual number of people that have been laid off.

[00:47:25] You used to do it, be able to do it somewhat quietly, where you go, oh, I didn't, yeah, I guess there was some layoffs and now Linda's not in our office anymore. That's too bad, right? 30 years ago. It's like, okay, you don't really know. Now, you know? Oh yeah. 10,000 people were just laid off. Oh my goodness.

[00:47:39] Right. And you know, wow. So that could have been, oh, this is the fourth 10,000 person layoff in our company in five years. oh, like that could so easily have been me. And so that, that the psychological safety impact of that and the way it breaks apart teams and all of the work that those people had been championing and work on just being left to kind of.

[00:47:58] Just be there as like technical and, and, like one drive debt. for the organization to try to navigate, I think is, is a, a very serious cost. Um, that, that is not, is very difficult to quantify, but I think that when people are saying, let's just cut 50% of the workforce, they're, they're leaving that off.

[00:48:14] That they're not thinking about that.

[00:48:16] Yeah, it's so funny. I, I mean, this is a much easier conversation if the CEO can connect marketing to revenue if the CMO has done that. ' cause if we can show that, like, if, if we are that marketing organization that's delivering, not just, you know, 90% of pipeline, but 90% of revenue.

[00:48:31] These are different conversations, but if there is this sort of disconnect in the marketing with, at least from the CEO standpoint of connecting the dots to the bottom line of things, he's gonna be measured. These are much harder conversations. Anyway, we're gonna wrap up, and we're gonna wrap up with two dos and one don't.

[00:48:51] four CMOs, when it comes to approaching AI and autonomous transformation.

[00:48:57] Number one to do is, Start with vision and any project that you have right now, ask yourself, is there a vision that this is tied to or is this just something we're doing? 'cause we think it might increase a number somewhere. So start with vision and, and recalibrate everything you're doing to some kind of overarching vision.

[00:49:13] It's okay to have more than one. Another to do is to make your strategy visible. So. It's so often that we've just accepted that strategy's invisible everywhere, but we'll feel more connected to what we're actually doing and be able to think more clearly if we can actually see what the strategy is and talk about it.

[00:49:28] The one don't that I'll add that we didn't cover, in this session, but I think is is critically important is, do not pursue use cases or low hanging fruit. a use case as I like to put it, is the friend of engineering. But the enemy of strategy. So it's good when you're trying to build a product.

[00:49:42] You need use cases to figure out if the product will ever be useful to anyone. But when you're trying to develop a strategy for what you're trying to do, instead of vision, starting with a use case automatically undercuts everything and you end up just doing something really. Not very, almost never is it actually transformative or extremely valuable.

[00:50:00] Right? But you might get 2% in efficiency improvement.

[00:50:04] Sure. Yeah. It's just not visionary. And I think the key conversation that we're having today, and that I wanna leave, our, our listeners with is. At the grownups table at the C-Suite, you as A CMO are leading with vision and you are helping those around.

[00:50:23] You have vision. And so the more that you connect your AI to vision to. The better. And so if you just talk about these smaller use cases, it's no different than you talking about smaller marketing wins. Mm-hmm. We're trying to elevate the conversation into something that's transformative. Brian Evergreen, um, thank you so much.

[00:50:40] where can people find you?

[00:50:42] I'm on LinkedIn is the easiest place to find me. Feel free to, to add me. Feel free to reach out. But, uh, yeah, LinkedIn's easiest place.

[00:50:49] Awesome. Alright, well, we, uh, appreciate you and, and all of the, all of the shares that you have provided.

[00:50:56] If you're a B2B CMO, and you wanna hear more conversations like this one, find out if you qualify to join our community of sharing, caring and daring CMOs at cmohuddles.com.

Show Credits

Renegade Marketers Unite is written and directed by Drew Neisser. Hey, that's me! This show is produced by Melissa Caffrey, Laura Parkyn, and Ishar Cuevas. The music is by the amazing Burns Twins and the intro Voice Over is Linda Cornelius. To find the transcripts of all episodes, suggest future guests, or learn more about B2B branding, CMO Huddles, or my CMO coaching service, check out renegade.com. I'm your host, Drew Neisser. And until next time, keep those Renegade thinking caps on and strong!