The True AI-Driven Leader

Drew: Hello, Renegade Marketers! If this is your first time listening, welcome. If you're a regular listener, welcome back.

You're 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 best-selling business books. In this episode, Geoff Woods, author of The AI-Driven Leader, challenges us to think bigger about AI — not just as another tool, but as a force multiplier for better thinking and better leadership. He gets into why too many executives still treat AI like it's IT's job, use it on the wrong task, or ask it for answers instead of providing better questions. Geoff also shares a practical framework, CRIT, for turning AI into a stronger thought partner. By the way, I'm using CRIT all the time. It's incredibly helpful, and it is a game changer. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. You'll be supporting our quest to be the number one B2B marketing podcast. All right, let's dive in.

Narrator: 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 Neisser.

Drew: Hello Huddlers. At the risk of grossly oversimplifying our mission — our mission being CMO Huddles' mission 2026 — helping you all win comes down to two factors: your ability to lead and your ability to drive effective AI usage. Notice that marketing savvy isn't in either one of those, and that's why we've lined up leadership experts and AI experts throughout the year. Now I'm particularly excited to introduce you to today's guest, Geoff Woods, since he conveniently combines these two things into what he calls the AI-Driven Leader. Now I listened to Geoff's book, but I did buy a hard copy so I could do this. It's full of practical advice that addresses many of the issues we've been discussing for the last — I'm gonna say — 24 months. We all know that AI isn't just another martech tool or a clever copywriter that never sleeps, but are we using it as a force multiplier for thinking, for strategic thinking? Is it helping you all be better leaders? These are just a few of the things I hope we can cover in the next 50 minutes. So Geoff Woods, welcome. How are you and where are you this fine day?

Geoff: Thank you for having me, Drew. I am in Austin, Texas, and I am delightful.

Drew: I've been told that you came highly recommended. Let's do this. We do this on almost every interview, because some of our audience has to leave early, or we need to convince the others to stay. Can you list three things that you see executives getting wrong about leadership in the AI era? And if you could just list them, we'll unpack them one at a time.

Geoff: One, they think it's IT's job, not their job.

Drew: Okay.

Geoff: Two, they're using it for 80% of the tasks that only drive 20% of the results, not the 20% that drive 80% of the results. And three, they're asking AI questions like it's an oracle, rather than turning the tables and making AI ask them the right questions to elevate how they think and how they lead.

Drew: Oh my God, I love this. Okay, this is great. Let's start with the first one — thinking that it's IT's job — and let's talk about that. Now, I think — we had this debate yesterday at a strategy lab, because there is a role for IT in this. But you're talking to a CEO, or I feel like you're talking to the CEO a lot, and when they say it's IT's job, what does that mean, and what are the implications of that?

Geoff: Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, said everything you know about how your company operates will be different within the next five years — not ten. Five. Drew, he said that a year and a half ago. As a CEO, I thought of this as: you're telling me there's a tidal wave that's coming that can literally change everything I know about how my company operates. Is that something that I would say IT will figure that out for me, or I'm too busy, I'll get to it later, or I'll hire a consultant to figure it out for me? If so, you should be fired. No, you would be trying to figure out — acquire as much knowledge as possible — for you to figure out how you are going to ride the wave and not get crushed by it. And the key here is you don't actually have to become an AI expert at all, but you do have to become an AI-driven leader, meaning you know just enough about the technology because you use it personally. You walk the talk so that you can define and cast your vision for the future. You can define strategy for how you are going to win, and you can start to lead the change, because you set the pace for the organization.

Drew: Oh my God.

Geoff: And everything else is everything else.

Drew: There's a lot more to unpack in that alone. I want to repeat that as a sound bite and hit replay, but let's go to the next one. This is, to me, really everything. Great leaders do have an ability to focus on outcomes that really matter — that's consistent, that's been true for 100 years. Why is it so important now, with AI, to follow that sort of 80/20 focus on the 20% that really matters?

Geoff: When I wrote The AI-Driven Leader, I knew that I was writing about something that was very timely and that would constantly be outdated. And I asked myself, how might I write the book in a way that's timeless? I focus on what's timeless, not what's timely. I think 80% of the use cases, 80% of the tools, 80% of the news around AI are distractions. Here's my bar for this: will, if I focus on this, will this help me create better leaders who can create a better business, who can create better lives? If it can help me achieve my goals, then it's a 20% priority. Otherwise, it is literally a distraction. We all have way too much to do and not enough time. We're wall to wall every day with meetings. Our inbox is piling up. People stopping by asking, "Hey, you got a minute?" And because we're team players, we say, "Sure," and we know what it feels like to get to the end of the day knowing we were busy and questioning what we got done. That's timeless. Now you've got to figure out this AI thing. I'm not going to worry about 80% of the applications, because they only drive 20% of the results. I'm going to go straight to the 20% priorities to drive 80% of the results, and I'm just going to focus there.

Drew: And it's so interesting that in what you're talking about is strategy versus tactics versus things, and a lot of times — and this is on me, this is on some of the guests that we've brought in — we focus on the tools and the applications of these tools in the moment. What are you using? How is it? Because it's so easy to get excited about the tools, and I really appreciate you bringing us back to: you're an executive who is making strategic decisions, and these tools either fit into that or they're potentially wasting your time. So key there, and by the way, better leaders, better businesses, better lives. That's very admirable

Geoff: It's our mission. Will this enhance us? Will it replace us? I think it's up to us. For me, I want to create a new category of leader that is an AI-driven leader — not only one that uses this to drive shareholder value or enterprise value, but keeping human interest at the center. I think we learned a hard lesson from social media that we've got to wake up from and recognize we've got to be better stewards of human interest as we embrace this technology.

Drew: This is something I've been wrestling with. I wrote about it last week, mentioned you, and when we say, has the fundamentals of leadership changed? Because if I look at it and I say, we were humans, we set a vision, we hired the right team, and we allocated resources — those feel like they're still there, but now there's this machine in the room.

Geoff: Yeah.

Drew: So when you say new category of leader, how big a shift is this from — you know, you were a great leader before technology. What do you need to be a great leader with this technology?

Geoff: Significant. Here's why.

Drew: Okay.

Geoff: 1900, We're in the middle of the Industrial Revolution. You've got factories booming everywhere. John D. Rockefeller is running Standard Oil, the largest company in the world, the richest man in history. He sees a huge problem, Drew. All the kids coming out of school that they wanted to hire to work in factories did not have the skills needed to be successful. So he started the General Education Board. He ended up investing $100 million — which is $2.3 billion today — with one goal: redesign the public education system so that when kids would come out of schools, they would have the skills required so they could be successful in an industrial world. What were those skills? Tell me if this sounds familiar: show up to school on time, take direction from a teacher, do something repetitively with minimal error and maximum efficiency so you can get a good job — exactly so that you can show up to work on time, take direction from a boss, do something repetitively with minimal error and maximum efficiency so you can make more money and one day live a good life. Here's the truth. We stopped building the skills that make us human and started building the skills that make us act like machines. Isn't it interesting that it might be a machine that returns us back to being human? So while everything about leadership is timeless, why I say it is significant is because we have normalized a world where we literally hire to an org chart and a job description, where we look at people and literally try to get them to fit inside a box, we try to get them to conform to who we think they need to be, versus actually exploring: who are you? Drew, you have God-given strengths that could become superpowers. How do we harness what your strengths are, focus them on the 20% priorities of the role in alignment with company goals, and use AI to turn those strengths into superpowers? It is a completely different way of thinking about human agency and how we hire, how we develop, how we organize. It is significant. The problem is it's really tough to read the label when you're inside the box, and until you get in the driver's seat and start becoming an AI-driven leader, you're living in black and white and you are trying to describe color — and it's impossible.

Drew: I have one thing I want to go back to, but before we do that, I just have made you the John D. Rockefeller of 2026. I've given you a trillion dollars. How would you redirect the education of children and students in college in order to prepare for this era?

Geoff: My kids are in an AI-first school. There are no teachers — there are guides. They learn twice the amount of information in just two hours a day because an AI model interviews them and understands exactly where their cracks are in the foundations of the curriculum, and it works with them to master the crack. And it does not move them forward when the syllabus says you move forward — it moves forward when they've mastered the subjects. The rest of the day they invest in developing skills that will actually matter in the future, like grit, public speaking, financial literacy, and teamwork. The kids in high school have to start a business that makes a million dollars a year in revenue. That's the education system my kids are in.

Drew: That's amazing. A CMO mentioned that her son, a freshman in college, failed calculus because he had used AI to do all his homework, and then he actually had a test where he had to solve problems and didn't know how to do it. And of course, this cost this individual a significant amount of money. So that was a painful moment and a misuse. I don't think that's anything like what you just described at all, but there is that. So skipping that for a second, let's get back to your third point, which was thinking that AI is an oracle as opposed to a tool for questions. And I thought this was one of the most significant to me, like the light bulb moment — the first light bulb moment in your book. Talk about that and the misuse of it.

Geoff: So this happened from personal experience. When I first saw AI, I was the chief growth officer for a big public company out of India called Jindal Steel, 100,000 people around the world. I saw ChatGPT two weeks after it was released, and I saw the future, and I had every reason to delay. I'm busy. I've got a big IT department. I can hire any of the big consulting companies to do this for us. But something said this is a skill that is worth mastering, Drew, and I should focus on this. But every day I found myself asking the wrong questions. I was asking, "How do I use this to write a better email?" We've all gotten promotions in our career. None of us have been promoted because of the quality of the emails that we wrote. Yet the vast majority of people are harnessing this technology to do the things that do not matter — write a better email or be my really smart Google. And I found myself wondering what has mattered in my career. And that's when I realized it all came down to strategic thinking. Your ability to think strategically is the difference between growing your business or going out of business. But here I am asking AI questions. Could I turn the tables and get it to ask me questions? And that's when I discovered using it as a thought partner. And as I started to use it that way, it changed everything. I remember I was at the chairman's house in India. I have a very simple prompt framework called CRIT — context, role, interview, task. If you can just remember that, I'll take you to the top 1% of people using AI in the world. I was at the chairman's house, and I wrote a CRIT for him where I said, "Context: attached is our annual business plan," and I drag and dropped our business plan into a secure instance of ChatGPT. "Role: your role is to act as an aggressive, growth-minded board member with deep expertise in the steel industry, vertically integrated from distribution to mining. Interview me. Ask me one question at a time, up to five questions, to identify where our plan is insufficient to deliver results. Then your task is to tell me what those areas are and the changes we can make in the next 30 days so we deliver on our next quarterly earnings call." AI turns the tables as that expert and starts to ask pointed questions of our business plan to me and the chairman, and these are profoundly deep, industry-specific questions, and it lays out a roadmap of where our plan was deficient and how to fill it. And he goes, "This is incredible." I go, "Yeah, it's the future." And he goes, "I agree." I said, "We should drive this through the whole company." He goes, "I agree." I said, "I think this is so important. You've got to own this as chairman." He goes, "I disagree. Why don't you do it?" The problem is, Drew, I knew nothing about AI. I am not technical, I am strategic. But I also know if you're hitting a ceiling of achievement, you're just missing a person. So I partnered with Google, learned a lot about the tech, and as I started to drive it through the company, it became abundantly clear tech was not the difference that would make the difference. It was the people who would wield it, but nobody was talking about the people. So I literally resigned. During my time with them, the market cap moved from $750 million to $12 billion in four years. And then I wrote The AI-Driven Leader, which is now the number one book in the world for AI, and have built a company called AI Leadership.

Drew: Just pausing for a moment to acknowledge — there's hand-clapping going on right now. You may not hear it, but that is all that is amazing. I often just — I want a show of hands. How many of you are using something similar to context, role, interview, and task, thinking about that all the time? I just have to share a story that I felt was so unfair. I was doing — I'm on a board of a nonprofit, and they're doing their strategic planning, and they had initially just a mission statement and a vision statement, and I was able to ask it — we used the CRIT format. I asked it to interview me, and so when I went to the board meeting, I was so unfairly prepared to ask the right questions, in a good way. I mean, we got to a very good place, but if that CEO had done that, we would have been in a lot better place. It would have been a lot more efficient.

Geoff: Let me take it up a notch. We have created actual AI boards where, if you have a real board, you write a CRIT where AI interviews you about a director to understand them on such a deep level that it can create a personality profile for them. So we can have a project in ChatGPT, for $25 a month, that can actually simulate every director, feed it your deck before the meeting, and it'll tell you everything the board will say before they ever say it. Or in my case, I don't have a real board, but I have built an AI board that understands my 10-year vision, has all my personality profiles, our culture statement, our business plan, and I have had it diagnose what the gaps I have in capability are that will be required to get me to where I want to go over the next 10 years. And I had it research famous people that exemplify those skills. Steve Jobs is on my board for vision, product design, and storytelling, but he is not allowed to give me advice on being a husband, a father, or a leader. Warren Buffett is on my board for long-term planning and risk mitigation. My future self, 30 years in the future, is on my board. So the man I want to become advises me today with ChatGPT. I'm not even getting into custom architecture or tools yet. I'm talking about off-the-shelf — Copilot, Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT. They are all the same. They are all different. The difference does not make the difference. It is the person who wields it. When I say use it strategically instead of tactically, that's what I'm talking about. I want to just make sure that everybody sort of realized this notion of the one question at a time, and how you came to the conclusion that that was so important. So for the interview section of CRIT — context, role, interview, task — this is the exact language verbatim: "Interview me. Ask me one question at a time, up to three questions, to gain deeper context." It could be three to five questions. "Interview me" as a command — it's how you get AI to turn the tables and interview you instead of just giving you answers. "Ask me one question at a time" is critical because it's what makes it a conversation. If you don't put that in there, Drew, it's going to ask you all the questions at once. It's overwhelming, but you're also putting a ceiling over the quality of your results. When it asks one question, it is unlocking deeper context out of your head than you would ever have thought to proactively share. With that additional context, it will dynamically ask a better follow-up question, which unlocks more context, which allows it to dynamically ask a better third question, which will unlock more context that absolutely influences the quality of your results. And I mentioned three to five questions. Start with three. Here's why — it's the 20% that gets you there 80% of the time. It will be sufficient 80% of the time, and you're busy. So just start with three. You will naturally figure out when you wanted to go to four to go a little deeper, or when you wanted to go to five to go really deep. Do not go beyond five, because it'll start to ask questions that will become distractions. The whole context window will hallucinate. You're going to say that AI doesn't work, and I'm just going to tell you, it was your leadership.

Drew: So much to unpack. 

Geoff: Who's having fun, by the way? If you're having fun, put "yes" in the chat box.

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Drew: So let's — you know, one of the things I like to do with our group is make them just think about — sometimes there are some basic things that you need. You talked about all the GPTs that you have. And I know I have one friend who has built a chief of staff GPT for everyone on their team. But the thing that feels really important to me with the CMO-CEO relationship is — everything for a CMO to succeed, they have to have the trust and be seen as more than just the marketing person. So creating a GPT of the boss is like a no-brainer. Is there something in creating that — some of your formulas — that you think would help make it more productive, more valuable?

Geoff: Yes. For those of you who are listening later, I just switched to a document camera where you can literally see a piece of paper in my hand, and I'm about to draw, and I will narrate everything here. I kind of think of it like dominoes, Drew. If you stand them up and line them up correctly, you hit the first one and the other ones fall. Before we even get to creating a GPT or a project to simulate your boss, you haven't earned the right to go there. There are three key skills you have to master as the foundation. Number one: can you identify a 20% strategic use case? You could have the best form in the world in archery, but if you aim at the wrong target, it's impossible to hit a bull's-eye. Before I'm even talking about using AI, can we get good at identifying the 20% use cases that drive 80% of the results? Otherwise you can have the greatest prompt in the world, and it will not matter, because it doesn't help you become a better leader who builds a better business and creates better lives. Step one: identify a 20% strategic use case. Step two: you have to communicate effectively. For any of you who have ever been married or in a romantic relationship, you understand the power of communication and relationship with another human. Might it be the same with AI? How do you communicate effectively? CRIT — context, role, interview, task. I'm telling you, this framework for a prompt literally applies to any use case, and it will take your quality of results to a different level. So we identify a 20% strategic use case, we communicate effectively because we know how to write CRIT. The third skill is how do you remain the thought leader with AI as your thought partner? This is very important. Who is the leader in the relationship? You are. You are in the driver's seat of the car. AI is in the passenger seat. And this is one of the mistakes people are making, Drew — without realizing it, they're abdicating their responsibility as the thought leader. They're asking AI a question, and they're getting a result, and they're trusting it. They're copying and pasting; they're not applying any judgment, any oversight. They are allowing AI to undermine their cognitive ability. Your ability to think is a muscle. If you do not use the muscle, it atrophies. Or you can use this to enhance your cognitive abilities. So rule of thumb: when I get any answer from AI, I don't care how good it looks — I tell myself, "This is the bad answer." There are three things I do when I get my first response from AI. First, I tell it what I like about it. Second, I tell it what I don't like about it. And third, I tell it the top changes I want made to it. So when we created a personality profile for a board member, it spat out a personality profile for Susan. And I looked straight at the CEO and I said, "Don't read a word. It's wrong." And he said, "Excuse me?" I said, "Some of it's going to be good, but some of it's going to be wrong. Don't expect perfection. Expect this to be a draft. Here's what I want you to do as you read it: I want you to tell AI what you liked about the profile, I want you to tell AI what you didn't like about the profile, and I want you to tell AI the top changes that need to be made to the profile." He gave that feedback. The next version was what we submitted. If you can do these three things — identify a 20% strategic use case, communicate effectively with CRIT, and stay in the driver's seat as the thought leader by telling it what you like, what you don't like, and the top changes — you will be playing at a different level. Then you can ask the question, "How do I create a personality profile for my boss?" Well, I have a sticky note on my desk that says, "How can AI help me do this?" What does that prompt even look like? Second sticky note: context, role, interview, task. Context: I want to create a personality profile of my boss. I'm the CMO of this company. My CEO is so-and-so. When I think about this person, here's how I would describe them. I describe them in vivid detail. I also want you to conduct research on everything you can pull on this person to help shape a personality profile. Role: your role is to act as an organizational psychologist in creating personality profiles. I want you to interview me, ask me one question at a time, up to five questions, to gain deeper context about the person. And then the task is to create a personality profile for them that I can then review. I know I said that really fast — rewind and listen to it again. All I did is I said context, role, interview, task, and I just talked stream of consciousness. That's the skill.

Drew: I just wanted to highlight a misuse case that could be urban legend, or could be the CEO of one of our community members. The CEO went into ChatGPT and said, "Hey ChatGPT, should we raise our prices?" — with no context, no deep thinking. And it said, "Yeah, go for it." So yes, you can really misuse these tools. And I want to get to how you help organizations not misuse these tools. But I want to first — you talk about the 20%. I'm just wondering if you have an example, and again, where you deal with a lot of CEOs — this is a community of CMOs — perhaps there's an example of an AI use case that you can share where they did focus on the 20% and got 80% of results.

Geoff: I asked a question to a group of CEOs: "What are the biggest problems you are facing in your business that, if we could solve them, would unlock a new level of growth?" The question itself is strategic. For a guy who wrote a book about AI, I do not care about AI adoption — that is not your goal. Building a better leader, better business, better lives — yes. Can AI help you do it? Yes. Can it distract you from it? Yes. One CEO looks at me and he says, "I run a manufacturing company here in the US. I leased all this capital equipment from a company in Japan. Since doing it, things have shifted in the market. The debt structure is killing us. We are going to go bankrupt if we can't get it restructured." And I went, "Okay, what are you going to do?" And he said, "Honestly, I have no idea. These are the five things I've done. None of it has worked, because this is a public company in Japan. The board is refusing to restructure the debt because they think they'll lose face in Japanese society. I have no next steps. We're going out of business. Do you think AI can help?" And I literally opened up, in this case, ChatGPT — with none of his data — and I wrote the following prompt, and I'm actually sharing my screen, and I'm going to read you the actual CRIT I wrote for this person. Context: I'm a manufacturing CEO. I leased all this capital equipment from a company in Japan. Things have shifted in the market. The debt is now killing us. We're going to go bankrupt if we can't get it restructured. We feel like we've tried everything, and I listed all five strategies. None of it has worked because this is a public company in Japan, and the board is refusing to restructure the debt because they think they'll lose face in Japanese society. I have no alternatives, and I feel we're going out of business. Role: your role is to act as an investment banker with deep expertise in restructuring debt. Interview me — ask me one question at a time, up to three questions, to gain deeper context. Then your task is to generate five non-obvious strategies I could deploy to get the board to restructure the debt. I want you to think about how many books you've read in your life, whether it's 100, 500, 1,000, thousands. I want you to think of every book, every page, every word. What percent of that collective knowledge can you recall and apply this very second? If you're like most people, it's like 0.001%. And look at how successful we've been on our ability to recall and apply the minority of what we've learned, which is the minority of the information of the world. When I wrote that prompt, I tapped into 500 million books' worth of data. How long do you think it took AI to read through the equivalent of 500 million books — to understand how an investment banker with deep expertise in restructuring debt, who also knew 2,000 years of Japanese culture and history, would think, act, turn the tables, and ask a question? Under a second. The question it asked was, "Do you have any real relationships with any other influential executives in Japan that the board would respect?" And I look at the CEO, and he goes, "What a good question. I would have never asked that." Oh my gosh, he actually does. Drew, AI asks two more questions at that level before it turns the tables and gives him the five non-obvious strategies. Number one on the list — the saving-face consortium — it said, "You have enough relationships with all the right people in Japan, why don't you just approach them to acquire your debt, give them really favorable terms? Your debt gets restructured. The board saves face." I turn and look at him. He's actually holding back tears, and he vulnerably looks around the room at the other people and says, "I haven't slept in 90 days. I have been making peace with the fact that we are going out of business, but in less than 10 minutes, I got hope." Two months later, my phone rings and it's a text that said, "The ball is moving. I actually think this is going to get done." What if your ability to think strategically was the difference between growing your business or going out of business? How might that change how you think? How might it shift what goes on your calendar? And just might it change how you view your relationship with AI? That's what it means to be an AI-driven leader.

Drew: I want to put this in the context of CMO, because we know that — at least I know, through all the conversations that I've had with CMOs in the last 20 years — when the CEO sees you as a strategic partner, where they just say, "Hey, I was thinking about this. What do you think?" When they're bouncing ideas off you, when you're writing their speeches, when you're doing some of this work, you know, you have a really solid relationship where you'll be allowed to do the marketing you want to do. So suddenly, even if you weren't a brilliant strategic thinker, you have the opportunity to help your CEO be more effective and have them see you — which is amazing. And this gets to a question that we just had, which is: every executive says AI is the future — I'm quoting — but fewer than 5% have taken meaningful action. Do you see an invisible barrier holding back the other 95%?

Geoff: So I quoted that in my book. You know, I had literally interviewed hundreds at the time. 100% said it was the future and they would adopt it. Less than 5% had done anything. That has shifted, but where we are today is there is a gross false sense of confidence in companies that they've adopted AI because they gave everybody Copilot or ChatGPT. That’s not adopting AI.

Drew: Right.

Geoff: That's not adopting AI. And so I still see a level of complacency that is forming, and I don't think they realize they're failing so slowly they think they're succeeding.

Drew: It's scary.

Geoff: And it's not. It won't be until they see it that it could be too late, and when you really start to see what this technology is — I mean, even, hopefully, some of the stories I've shared with you here are kind of changing the way you view AI where you're going, "Holy smokes, I didn't know you could do that with ChatGPT or Copilot or Claude or Gemini." Like, I could do that with any of those models right now. Literally any single one of you right now could give me the biggest problem you are facing in your business, and in about 20 minutes, I could write a CRIT where we'd either solve the problem or massively move the ball. I don't need to know your name, I don't need to know your company, I don't need to know your problem as any pre-work, and we could do that in 20 minutes. That's how accessible this is right now. That's just step one. Let's take it to a whole new level. That's you being an AI-driven leader. Now let's talk about an AI-driven organization. I've had a recent revelation, Drew, which is companies are not structured to move at the speed AI requires. If you cannot move at AI speed, you can never fully capture its value. And when I think about what's really needed, leaders are going to have to redesign how they align, make decisions, and execute to move at AI speed, and this is where we've really chosen to specialize. I'll give you a real use case. A major airline CEO makes a public commitment for three years from now, and there were real question marks on the C-suite — did they really all

Geoff: buy in and whatnot? Now, how do most companies align? They get offsite, they get their Sharpies, they get their sticky notes. You get your sticky notes on the wall, you put them into clusters, you have a conversation, and you walk out with what you think is alignment. That is officially dead. It is officially over for those of you who are sticky note lovers — so sorry. Here's why: one, the process takes forever; two, the loudest voices dominate the conversation; the smartest ideas lay dormant; and not every voice is actually heard. We found ourselves — I was literally staring down at my computer and saw a sticky note. "How can AI help me do this?" Here's what we did. We partnered with that company. They gave us all their data. We pulled it into what we call an AI Thought Partner. This is a proprietary model we built that has enterprise-level security and custom-architected prompts. So we showed up in the boardroom, Drew — they opened their computers and they just clicked the button on the Thought Partner. AI simultaneously interviewed all C-level members at the same time on everything they could possibly think about the subject. And since it was anonymous, it pushed them to say the things they would never say out loud. And after 20 minutes, it spits out a detailed report. For every person I push the button, it reads all reports simultaneously and collapses it to one. And on the screen it said, "Here's where you're aligned. Here's where you're not aligned. Based on this, here's my question." The AI starts co-facilitating the meeting with me. That single question erupted 45 minutes of debate across the C-suite. The Thought Partner is capturing every word, and after 45 minutes it goes, "So what I heard is —" boom — and literally just showed five bullet points and said, "Based on that, my next question is..." That process went on for two hours, and by the end of two hours, the CRO stood up and said, "This would have taken us six months. We just did it in two hours, but with higher trust and higher clarity." This is how we run meetings now. In my company, we don't show up and talk one person at a time. The meeting owner architects a prompt. The first five to ten minutes is us sitting in silence with AI interviewing every single person about everything that could possibly contribute. Ten minutes in, it's all on the board. The meeting could be over, but then we actually get into execution — or we eliminate the meeting, because the prompt is sent out asynchronously and the owner is able to capture what they need to capture so they can move with speed. This is one example of what it looks like to start to redesign how you lead your companies. That's just a step in becoming an AI-driven organization. This is what's available today.

Drew: And what's so interesting — the smaller companies that I talk to seem to just find it easier to get on board, because they're dealing with less. They're not the aircraft carrier that takes five miles just to slow down. They're more agile, and that's really paying off for them. I want to get to something that's really critical for CMOs. We've known all leaders are only as good as the team below them. This is particularly true for a CMO — if they don't have great leaders below them, they're essentially doing the jobs below them as well, right? And it trickles down, and it keeps going. It's like, if you don't have an assistant, you're the assistant. But the thing that's interesting is, I don't feel there has yet to be a ruthless reckoning that says, "I'm going to my employees. I'm making a commitment to you. I'm going to make you an AI-enabled employee. I'm going to train you. I'm going to do all these wonderful things, but you have to accept that that's the new reality, and if you can't do it, this is not the right place for you." I know that sounds really severe, but I feel like that is not coming out of the mouths of the CMOs in our community.

Geoff: In the book, I call this "leading with empathetic strength." You need both empathy and strength, because you can divide your workforce into two groups — those that are optimistic about this and those that are fearful. Your job as a leader is often to meet people where they're at versus where you think they ought to be. So for those that are optimistic, how do you meet them with optimism and give them a challenge? Like, I challenged my executive assistant to harness AI and write a CRIT to identify what her core strengths were and how she could harness them in a custom role to bring 10 times to 100 times more value to the company. That transformed her career path. I've more than doubled her salary and transformed her job description as a result of that single exercise. Those who are fearful — meet them where they are with empathy and with strength. "I understand change is hard, but here's the good news: you didn't pop out of the womb knowing all the skills to do this job today. You learned them. And your job is just skills you apply and processes you follow. Because of AI, there are certain skills that are going to go up in value and certain skills that will go down in value. There are certain processes that will go up in value, certain processes that will go down in value. I'm simply saying to you, you've got to focus on mastering the skills and processes that are going to go up in value. AI is one of those skills. If you interviewed here and said, 'I really am excited about this, but something you need to know about me — I don't use electricity and I don't use the internet, but I'd still like to work here' — do you think we would have hired you? That is AI." Now, I understand that it's fearful, and you've got to start here. Let's do it together. And you say, "Give me a problem that, if we could solve it for your role, it would unlock a huge new level of growth." And with them, you write a CRIT where you show them how this doesn't replace them — this enhances them. And say, "Great. Now here's your homework. You need to go and put two sticky notes on your desk. I'm going to check. One sticky note has to say, 'How can AI help me do this?' And one sticky note has to say, 'Context, Role, Interview, Task.' Once a day, every day for the next 30 business days, you have to write a CRIT on something, and you tell me what it is — every day, every day."

Drew: It's a habit.

Geoff: If they don't do it, this is where the carrot starts to turn into the stick. "Standards without consequences are merely suggestions." Is AI a standard in your company, or is it a suggestion? I'm not saying it has to be a standard — I think it should be, though. And if it's a standard, if they do not start making progress effective immediately, there needs to be a consequence. And the consequence could come the very next day: "What was your CRIT today?" "Oh, I didn't do it." "Maybe I didn't communicate clearly yesterday. This is a standard in the company. I instructed you to use this once a day, every day for the next 30 business days. That was not a suggestion. That is a standard. What do you need to do differently so we actually don't have to have this conversation again?" And you keep amping it up. I hired a person who had been a mentor to me to be our potential CRO. He was not an AI-driven leader when he started with us, and I just told him, "We drink our own champagne. It's a core value. You must use this every day." After week one, he had no use cases — we had a conversation. After week two, he had no use cases — we had a bigger conversation. 28 days in, I terminated him. This was not optional in our company. We just parted ways with certain developers on our team because they think they should still be writing code. Effective immediately, in my company, zero developers write any lines of code. That's where we are right now. In the market, you've got to choose if you're going to have standards or suggestions in your company.

Drew: So we are — at least you and I, and hopefully there were some other heads nodding in agreement — that we need to have AI-curious, if not AI-truly-embraced, employees working for us. We're going to accept that just at face value. Now, chapter 12 of your book gave me pause. It's the 10x number — the impact of every employee.

Geoff: Yeah,

Drew: And obviously, unless the employee embraces AI, that won't happen. So we've already talked about hiring differently. I just — the number, that notion — because CMOs have been being asked to do more with less for years, but they are now getting hit with things like 50% less budget, 40% more growth. And so that would require some employees to have 10x impact, right? I just — have you actually seen that happen?

Geoff: By the way, I think I'm sandbagging it.

Drew: Okay, thank you.

Geoff: But I couldn't put 100x in there because you wouldn't believe me. 

Drew: No. And I'd be terrified — even more than I already am at 10x — because I think it's terrifying for an employee to read. I think about myself. Am I 10x the impact that I was pre-AI? No, I'm not. So I don't know how to make myself 10x, and so I don't know how to ask an employee to be 10x. 

Geoff: That’s why it starts with the leader, my friend. It's why it starts with you. Let's keep down the path. I'll give you two examples. We'll start with my executive assistant. I challenged her to come up with a vision for how she could bring 10 times to 100 times more value to the company. And I want to be clear — before working for me, she knew how to spell AI. That was it. She had never even used ChatGPT. She read the book — which you all have access to — she wrote a CRIT, came back to me the next week, and said, "I'm ready." And I said, "With what?" She goes, "My vision." I said, "All right, let's go." And she goes, "Based on my strengths, here's the 20% of things I'm currently doing that I need to double down on — they'll bring 10 times more value. But also, based on my strengths, here's all the things I'm not doing that, based on the goals of the company, I really should be doing. These things will absolutely bring 10 times more value. But if that's the case, here's all the things I'm currently doing that I'm going to have to stop doing. I've segmented those into three groups: here's the ones we should just stop — they're distractions, they don't matter; here's the ones I think we can use AI to augment or automate so they still get done, just not by humans; here's the ones that still need to be done by a human. Based on that, here's a job description for my replacement. Here's their 20% priorities, here's their 90-day onboarding plan, here's the compensation research — based on this, I'm recommending we pay them X. Do I have your approval?" I'm blown away. Drew — and I go, "Approved! I'm super impressed. What's next on our agenda?" She goes, "I appreciate that. We're not done yet." "Excuse me?" She goes, "Geoff, that's not what you asked for. You asked for me to cast a vision for 10 times to 100 times more value. Well, let's go. Here's my realization — I can't become 100 times more valuable unless I make you 100 times more valuable first. So based on that, here's a prompt I've architected, Geoff, where AI is going to interview you to identify how you can bring 100 times more value to the company." Drew, I tell her, "I can't wait to do this." And she goes, "Good. I'll wait. You'll do it now." She literally waits while AI interviews me for 15 minutes, spits out a vision and a system of rules we would have to embed in the company to transform my time allocation. I tell her, "This is one of the most valuable prompts I've ever done." She goes, "I appreciate that, but we have a problem we have to solve." "What is it?" She goes, "You love to break all the rules. So even if I put these in place, you're going to wiggle your way out of them." I go, "You're probably right." She goes, "I got a plan for that. Here's another prompt I've architected where AI is going to interview you to identify every way you're going to wiggle out of this, and it's going to generate custom instructions for a defense process. So anytime you want to violate one of your own rules, you're going to have to go through AI first." You tell me — did she bring 10 times more value in that single use case? Way more. I have transformed her level of responsibility in the company as a result. That's me doing it with an individual. Now let's talk about doing it with an org. T-Mobile just went through a huge restructuring. They flattened management layers. Spans of control just went up massively. The amount of work did not change — do more with less. The Chief Talent Officer brought us in and said, "There are three things we need to accomplish. One — for my whole organization, thousands of people — we have to identify: what are we going to continue doing, what are we going to pause doing, and what are we fully going to stop doing?" I want you to think about how much time that would normally take to figure out — just that alone — months. He said, "Then we have to figure out what are the top ways we can use AI and embed it into our workflows to enable us to do more with less. Third, we have to identify what are the top things we have to do to protect our culture, since we just went through a reorg." So I want you to put in the chat box — how long do you think it would normally take to accomplish those three major things for an organization of thousands of people and to get alignment? A while. We did it in one day. One day. We used our AI Thought Partner. They gave us all their data. We architected the prompts. We had AI simultaneously interview the right people on those three different things to pull everything out of their heads. Each step took about two hours — full day. By the end of the day, the CTO said, "We didn't just talk about changing the way we work — we just did it." That is 100 times better than the old approach. This is what's available today.

Drew: I want to go back, because one of the things that I think is overwhelming about these tools — and there's so many cool new things all the time — is, well, what should I be doing with AI today? And so what's happened? It was really interesting, and then I'll get back to it. So it seems like a lot of employees feel like because they're empowered with AI, they're doing a lot more, and then they're doing a lot more because they can, and then they're doing a lot more. And they're actually on this burnout pace thanks to their ability to do so much so easily. CMOs already have a lot of things on their plate, and they are looking for this 20% of time that gives them 80% of leverage. If we, as we're getting close to the end here, help these leaders focus on the things that could give them some 20% guidance.

Geoff: Everything does not matter equally. Of all the things that are on your plate, they are not equally impactful to the organization. You've got to learn to prioritize. This is a timeless challenge. Priority. We're great at adding more to our plate. Most of us are not that great at subtracting. We're not great at saying no. We're not great when our colleague says, "Hey, I need this from marketing," or the CEO says, "I need this from marketing" — we just say yes, and then we ask our people to do more with less, versus, frankly, developing the skill of having a strong back and being able to say, "We can take that on, but based on the current priorities, here's how I would prioritize that. And if that's the case, I wouldn't be able to deliver it by this time — I'd have to deliver it by this time. Or if we even take this on, here's what we're actually going to sacrifice. I think that would be a mistake. Therefore, I don't think we can take this on right now." We lack a communication, a language around prioritization. This is timeless.

Drew: They just said, "I could do all these things in a day, so why can't you? Just find the time to do this thing. I'm a CEO. I want you to do these 10 more things. Just do it. AI can do it in two seconds. Go."

Geoff: I love your high standards, and I love your enthusiasm. How open-minded would you be that there might be an alternative perspective? Now I'm just role-playing with you, and I would physically show what's currently happening. There is something — there's the dual side of it. Are you really being as efficient and as effective as possible with the work that you're currently doing? Is your team really focused on the most impactful things? I'm going to tell you, there's truth on both sides to that.

Drew: Right. I think that's right. But I do think this — if there is strategic alignment between the CMO and the CEO, and often the CRO in the executive suite, this is a lot easier conversation. If there isn't strategic alignment, it's a problem — then it's just a to-do list, and there aren't priorities. And this is often the case with founders. All right, I hate the fact that we have to wrap up. Let's do a quick two key takeaways for our world of CMOs here specifically. But before that, tell them how they can engage with you and go deeper if they want to.

Geoff: The book is The AI-Driven Leader — Amazon, Audible, Kindle, it's everywhere. I can't think of a better step you could take with your team than to just get the book for them and to read it together. It will truly change — if you liked what you heard here today, that's 216 pages of exactly that, at that caliber, consistently, with over 40-plus ways that you can use this immediately. Highly applicable. Use the book. Second, the website is AIleadership.com. The core of what we do is we harness AI to redesign how you lead the company. We drive speed to alignment — you can give us the biggest problems you have in the company, and we can collapse months to hours in driving alignment to solve it. We then go on a 90-day speed-to-value pilot, where we take some of the big problems in the company and solve them in 90 days. And then we actually do speed to scaled value, where we actually embed our technology in the company so this becomes how you work.

Drew: I just decided that we're going to buy an Audible version for all the members of the Leader program. We'll just figure that out. That's great. Two quick takeaways for B2B CMOs, as we're wrapping up today, that can help them be an AI-driven leader too. Just two for right now, even if it's repetitive.

Geoff: Two sticky notes and a Sharpie — they're not fully dead, folks, they're back. One: "How can AI help me do this?" Two: context, role, interview, task — once a day, every day for the next 30 days. I want you to pick something you're already doing — don't look for something new, something you're already doing — and write a prompt. It's just about you learning how to communicate effectively with the technology. That will change your life in 30 days. That's a big statement. I know I can back it up. Do it.

Drew: It's a habit that you need to form, and habits are formed by doing — relentlessly, over and over again. So if there's one thing I'm taking away from this huddle, it's that AI doesn't replace leadership. It exposes it. The penguins in this huddle don't need another tactic. We just need sharper thinking, clearer standards, and the courage to decide what doesn't matter. Geoff, thank you for helping us think bigger and more precisely.

Geoff: Thank you.

Drew: Thank you so much for joining us today.

Geoff: I do have a request for everybody — if this brought value to you, share it. Share it on LinkedIn, share it in your company. Like, share it. That would mean the world to me. Thank you.

Drew: If you're a B2B CMO and you want to 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!