MarketingRecon

Marketing Recon partners with executive teams to create stronger strategic linkages
between a company, its clients, and partners – laying the groundwork for new market growth
and designing custom programs to support the growth initiatives.

Imagination in Action| A little AI for everyone at the MIT Media Lab

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Many thanks to John Werner and his colleagues who put together an amazing event at the MIT Media Lab yesterday. Despite the fact that my brain is still a bit sore from absorbing all the rich panel discussions, I am optimistic about the evolution of the community surrounding this movement.
The format of 30-minute “speed” panels was impressive and the flexibility and authenticity of the panel made conversations fluid and accessible. Speakers ranged from the highly scientific and technical to those focused on the organizational and behavioral impact of AI on the workforce.

The informal gathering of sub-groups, such as the newly formed “Women in AI” made it collegial and convivial! It would be impossible to summarize each panel and likely all will be available on video. But here are a few of my takeaways from a cross-section of panels and panelists that I was fortunate to observe.

• With less than 10% of the workforce using AI, there’s still a lot of confusion about what it “is” and “isn’t” so education and skilling up is still critical.
• Many would say that the adoption of AI depends on the person next to you. Most people are more comfortable learning from their peers.
• There’s some debate about “shadow IT.” With so many solutions out there to solve problems, the biggest challenge is really understanding all the tools available to solve them and choosing the right ones. What’s out there in the stack? AI is truly about problem solving.
• Organizationally – AI needs community along with subject matter experts. It requires cr4oss-functional communication and expertise.
• There’s still much to be learned across modalities. Whereas “text” is well on its way – images, video, and voice – particularly speech recognition still has work to do.
• Selling AI into enterprises is still challenging (especially since much of the expertise is in smaller entities). Relationships matter in order to influence leaders to adopt. Entrepreneurs need to rely on strong boards with good track records with larger companies.
• Agents will start to diversify into many shapes and sizes and business models/pricing will evolve according to just how sophisticated a task the agent is accomplishing.
• There are many efforts to understand the “agent workforce” and what it means for the economy and the 163M jobs. Still many unanswered questions. Most people/companies are not ready for the potential impact.
• The idea behind decentralization of AI is to assure that all the economic power doesn’t end up in the hands of a few companies.
• Cybercrime is on the rise and the professionalization of such needs a strong response. AI has an important role to play. Companies large and small are being attacked “at machine speed” and need to learn to DEFEND at machine speed.
• Leaders need to provide “psychological safety” for their organizations to enable experimentation with AI. It’s about learning to act more like scientists who have the opportunity to fail without huge consequences. It’s critical to create a learning environment. It’s more akin to research and treating it like an investment in research.

The last panel that I attended with distinguished academic and industry leaders was asked for their advice on leadership imperatives. The advice is for leaders to help people “get curious” and share their learnings along the way. Understand that complexity and curiosity go hand-in-hand. Counteract any negative feelings by encouraging their people to find good in what they are doing with AI – and/or ways to use it to make a better world, or free up time to do good in other parts of life.

The 2025 HBS Tech Club Conference Takeaways| Behind the Bubble: Ushering in the new Era of Technology

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Takeaways from the 2025 Harvard Tech Club Conference| Behind the Bubble: Ushering in the new Era of Technology

 Saturday was an exciting day on the HBS campus if you were part of the 2025 Tech Club annual conference. As a member of the “greater tech” ecosystem in Boston, I felt privileged to hear industry leaders and a wide range of “doers” share their insights. It was advantageous to have attended the 2024 event to see where the conversation would go on the impact of GenAI. Appropriately, the theme was cast as, “the AI revolution, uncovering the transformative shifts redefining industries today.” The following blog is intended to provide highlights and my personal takeaways from the keynote sessions and breakouts that I attended. Hopefully, this will benefit those who could not attend and reinforce some key points for those of us in the room. Many thanks to the HBS Tech Club team and the generous speakers and panelists for sharing their insights.

Opening Keynote: Tom Eggemeir, CEO Zen Desk

Tom’s down to earth presentation and tone made the auditorium feel like we were having a comfortable face-to-face chat about the impact of AI on the customer service sector. Truly Zendesk has fully embraced all aspects of AI and is bring their customers along while meeting them in their comfort zone. 30% of their bookings are related to AI and he considers this the biggest revolutions since e-Commerce.
Tom’s slides told the story of adoption, but the talk spoke to understanding the demographics and human reactions behind it. In their recent survey of 50K respondents, it became clear that age is a huge factor with people under the age of 40 being most positive about these applications for AI and over 60 being the most skeptical (no surprise!). Behind the data, customer interactions are seeing less friction which translates into stronger resolutions. Banking on this, Zendesk is implementing an aggressive business model driven by resolutions.

In terms of human agents, making them friendlier, authentic, casual in tone, enthusiastic and knowledgeable increases consumer confidence. Adding personalization creates yet another key dimension for success. He gave a great example of a private jet company using personalization to anticipate and recommend leisure activities and resources to a client that had previously booked a trip to the Master’s.

There is no doubt about the cost savings of doing this right. CSX spend for human labor costing $5-$15 vs. $1.49 in the automated realm. Tom does not believe this is a bubble. It’s here to stay and in 3 years, nearly 100% of customer service will be in the hands of AI other than for VIP’s. In his estimation, many of the companies are underestimating just how fast this will happen. Hold on to your hats!
 
Nicholas Harris, CEO Lightmatter and Professor Andy Wu – Fireside Chat

Lightmatter’s Harris opened with a riddle. What did Alexander Graham Bell consider his greatest invention? It wasn’t the telephone! It was the photo phone – obviously ahead of its time. With a $4.4B valuation, Lightmatter is blowing up the chip landscape using light vs. electricity (for example) to move data between chips. Nicholas did an amazing job demystifying this highly scientific physics lesson into something that made sense to the mere mortals (like me). He articulated the many advantages of “innovating at the speed of light” from the ability to send many signals with different colors to the higher bandwidth nature of optical wires. The end result is the more efficient movement of data.


Even more fascinating were his views on AI vs. Quantum. Quite the contrarian, he does not see a clear future in Quantum Computing as the writing of programs for Quantum is hard. He proports that AI can write the algorithms and create the same benefits with a broader based of engineering support.
When asked about where the opportunities are in the chip sector – he suggests that innovation in hardware is falling behind. He gave a shout out to the engineers to focus on this area. Prompted by the amazing interviewer who asked what his boldest, way-out, predictions are – he visualized data centers on MARS or perhaps in Antarctica!

Ed Tech Panel Discussion: Mary Strain, AWS ; Siya Raj Pirohit, OpenAI, Marta McAlister, Google, Joe Bennett, MBS Moderator

Two of this dynamic panel, Mary and Marta began their careers as teachers in the Bronx. Their observations of students – using technology the wrong way or not at all – or pure fear of completing assignments incorrectly – drove them into their current roles. Fast forward to the application of AI, what is unfolding is a complete redefinition of the roles of key players in education.

Impact to the Educational Sector:
Each of the panelists are focused on different parts of the educational spectrum, but all had in common the goal of more deeply engaging their target audiences from early childhood through higher ed. A common concern is to find ways to strengthen critical thinking. Whereas AI (like “search’) has made some things easier to do, putting in “effort” to achieve an end goal shows progress. Moving forward, the skills that will be needed are critical thinking and judgement – the same that will be required in the workforce and will not be provided by AI.


OpenAI has a relatively small number of its team devoted to education. They are scrappy and entrepreneurial. Their focus is on visualizing the output to help up-level all the AI products by spending time with experts in the field – noting that “teachers are the best prompters.”
Acknowledging that only 60% of the population actually goes to college, AWS is focused on creating architectures that create lifelong learning opportunities. A likely outcome is more decentralized learning. In higher ed, AI will challenge each university’s value proposition. If you are paying for a top-notch university, stakeholders will demand that the “end product” measures up – placing more urgency into the discussion of competency-based assessment.

Evolving Skills, Tools, and Roles:

OpenAI (through ChatGBT) is also focused on providing tools to make it easier for the influencers (aka professors) – so they have recently added 800 help numbers and a WhatsApp number to provide help to classroom superusers. The panel agreed that the role of the professors will have to shift considerably as more knowledge can be acquired through AI. Professors may be come curators or assessors – forcing a massive change in the way education is managed.


With AI replacing or enhancing many of the mechanical learning tasks, the superpowers of the future will be empathy, curiosity, and the ability to learn and be “coachable.” Additionally, be able to lead a team, inspire, and connect with others. In other words, the “soft skills” of the past will be the critical skills of the future. Other differentiating factors will be: domain expertise and the ability to solve real world problems.
Among the bold predications for the future – personalized tutoring stands to become a huge opportunity as it’s considered the “holy grail” of education. But overall, the panel agreed that overall, the fundamentals of pedagogy will not change and what we should be hopeful for is reinforcement of good, teaching best practices.


Health Tech Panel Discussion: Jack Sallay, Amazon; Derek Streat, DexCare; Jeff Liu, Assort Health; Chris Fank, Hippocratic AI; Moderator, Amna Hashni, MBA

Sector Focus:
Each panelist opened by citing their unique value proposition for AI in healthcare through the prism of a 2 x2 quadrant – Clinical, Administrative, Consumer, and Provider. The first panelist from Amazon believed all four quadrants could be impacted but consumer, non-clinical is where he sees a huge opportunity to unravel and clarify cost and services for health care procedures. DexCare (a Kaiser partner) helps providers become more efficient (founded inside of Providence), Assort Health is focused on AI agents for the health care practice with a focus on safety; Hippocratic is focused on closing the gap on the worldwide shortage of healthcare professional.


Adoption:
The sentiment was that the overall category was in the early majority phase of adoption with providers further along but pharma, life sciences, and the payer space lagging behind due to compliance and other factors. One of the panelists put it in the context that the health care system as a whole lean into being skeptical as the downside risks (loss of human life) are much higher. The non-clinical side, however, (payers) need to move up the adoption curve – noting that 11K people a day age into Medicare!
Human Interaction in Healthcare:


The question was raised as to whether there would always be human interaction in healthcare. The answer was “yes” but the job of the human will change considerably. With the scarcity of nursing and other health care staff, more information will be shared through vertical AI agents which are working from strong foundational models.


Other trends and models will include:
• The emergence of “pay-buyers”
• Return power to private practices (like dentists)


Overall, the problem that needs to be solved is to create a more sustainable, transparent health care system and one that reduces the cost to patients. Patients are consumers and have choices and there will be more competition for these customers.

Pre-Lunch Fireside- Linda Sheng, GM, Minimax

Minimax AI is an advanced AI-powered video creation tool that transforms text into dynamic video sequences with precise control over composition and camera movements. The CEO is an ambassador for AI and believes her role is to showcase what AI can do as a positive force.


This discussion centered around the overall threat/opportunity of AI and the role humans will play. The CEO clearly believes that a successful founder must be AI-equipped and somewhat technical but does not see a clear threat or “red button” that would blow up humanity.

Use cases will drive AI success. For example, the largest freelance network, FIVR adopted AI to generate IP protected voices of their freelancers to save the actors from having to repeat voiceovers over and over. Now they get paid for use of their voice more frequently and more efficiently.
Speaking to AI “morality,” Minimax is highly sensitive to content. Areas such as local customs and religion and social “red lines” are closely watched. Another key area of focus is “access.” Making sure that great creators/superusers can use AI for free if they are making important contributions. The Open-Source model provides this access and its important to support freedom of code.


NLP and Generative AI Panel: Aravind Suresh, OpenAI, Shashank Chaudhary, Google Gemini; Uriel Kejsefman, Duolingo; Avijit Ghosh, Hugging Face

The opening discussion focused on the unique challenges of AI – in particular the building blocks and infrastructure precedes the product/applications. Duolingo’s product lead provided an exciting use-case on all the ways that AI had enhanced their offering – creating entirely new ways of teaching, content development, and impact on productivity through use of new tools such as notetaking. Role playing, transactional writing, and features such as “explain my answer” are all part of the new level of offerings. It was also noted that AI can help create many more exercises, and courses and help modularize the curriculum.

The discussion broadened to talk about the socio-economic impact of AI. One of the areas of consideration is making sure that small companies have access- pointing out that that’s one of the advantages of DeepSeek.

There was also an interesting talk track pointing out that not all AI will come from the same point of view. For example, the group has seen analysis that demonstrates bias against the US. It can also be biased for another region or country – reflecting the local “mindset” foreign policy or other national biases negating neutral guidance or responses. The bottom line of this discussion was encouraging US companies to invest in US-based models reflecting American value systems.
Evolution of the PM role:

The Product Manager has to uplevel skills to include:
• Prompting
• Creating a product that works but still needs humans
• Develop and socialize data strategy because bad data is devastating
• Break down outputs

And continue to enforce product/market Fit and A/B Testing which is still relevant.

AI Tools for Enterprise: Austin Johnson, Zapier; Nic Moralis, Cohere; Drew Bent, Anthropic; Tejas Pathak, Scale AI; Alisha Bhanji, MBA

Most of the panels and keynotes were superusers of AI, but reflecting on the general climate was a bit more sobering – especially as AI investment is growing inside the enterprise. Noted by one of the panelists, today’s environment dictates that we show ROI one quarter after Capex. Therefore, CIOs are getting disillusioned with AI as they do not see the usage of GenAI tools increasing at a rate that justifies the level of investment. The major call to action here is to move from a top-down implementation to a bottom-up adoption model.

Fluency in AI:
Delegation (automation of tasks); Description; Discernment (understanding outputs); and Diligence (responsible use of AI) were suggested as the four key pillars to achieve fluency. One of the panelists brought up a point of view – “Do unto others (in AI) as you would have others do to you,” using employee evaluations as an example of something you may not want to delegate to AI!

Use Cases & Best Practices:

Cohere discussed business value using an enterprise database software company as an example where 200 AI features have been implemented across its applications. With data at the center of AI’s validity – citing sources is more critical than ever.

The further discussion on data was to respect the existing rules on data. For example, asking the question – would my customers be happy with where the data is going? Generally speaking, security, compliance, re-thinking workflows and workforce dynamics vis-à-vis AI agents is still evolving. Additionally, different size models and pricing will evolve to accommodate different size entities and usage of the Cloud.
Looking ahead, AI knowledge, data gathering, and analysis has to have parameters – it cannot just be “let loose.” One speaker used the analogy – we just invented single brain cells, now we have to string them all together.

Business Focused Roles Panel: Maggie Yang, Amazon; Fadzi Makanda, Google; Jannis Woelk, Rippling, Cindy Fan MBA, Moderator

This panel was heavily focused on helping the student audience define non-technical roles they can seek out in tech with an emphasis on AI. Two of the panelists represented corporate development and one was in a business operations role.
The corporate development roles required top notch research on trends and the ability to make a clear case for expanding into new areas – working closely with product managers, engineers, and other key stakeholders across the company. Each faced a different set of challenges. These included:

• Build vs. Buy
• Identifying differentiators in highly competitive markets
• Defining and meeting success metrics

Key skills for these roles are varied, but being able to bring perspective/judgement; gaining the trust of peers cross-functionally; bringing high quality ideas to the table; listening and having empathy are needed alongside good, solid general knowledge of the technology.

Closing Keynote: Diego Lomanto, CMO Writer

The final keynote appropriately represented a company that addresses the full stack of Generative AI. As such, Writer has enjoyed success shepherding their customers on the journey by identifying “the most miserable parts of the job” and using AI to automate them.
The full stack, in Writer’s terms addresses: The brain, context, control, workflow, and impacts (see slide). Diego presented some key findings from the Adore.me use case to demonstrate how AI was used at each interval to improve the experience of the product managers and the end users. Two key tasks truly stood out of this overview. One involved using AI to write thousands of product descriptions – an excruciating task for a retail product manager. The second involved mining customer 200,000 insights from across all media videos, case studies, interviews, testimonials, etc. to create compelling content using the Knowledge Graph. Finally, he addressed Agentic AI – applied to an exploding inbox. When deployed well, an agent can understand content and context in the email so that responses are tailored and appropriate to the severity of the situation.

Companies are finding it hard to put all the pieces together and there’s clearly a role for intermediaries, full-service providers, and partners to act as catalysts and consultants to guide adoption. My takeaway for the day is that everyone one of us has a chance to be an AI ambassador. It’s clearly as big as any phase of the internet roll-out. AI emissaries are needed in each sector, at every level, and across all functions of business. Being proactive will ensure that we uphold business ethics and keep the technology accessible to all types of businesses.

[For the record, this blog post was NOT AI generated – you had to be there].

Lessons from Life, Leadership, and Loss with Kip Hollister| Highlights of a special evening

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Lessons from Life, Leadership, and Loss with Kip Hollister| February 19, 2025

An opportunity to free up our potential

When was the last time you walked into a room full of people you barely know (or even total strangers) and shared your most intimate fears and dreams? That’s what happens when you attend one of Kip Hollister’s leadership events and she asks each of the attendees to identify the inner voices that hold us back from reaching our full potential. I was fortunate to be in one of these gatherings last night at the Hollister Group’s State Street Offices. The event was a primer for one of several of Hollister’s Culture’s divisions intensive leadership workshops – Unlocking the Mind.

How it works
In this two-hour session, Kip shares her own stories going back to the all too familiar parental influences that we all share. Each story is followed by an opportunity for each of us to turn to the person/s sitting next to us to open up a conversation. Kip wants us to separate fact from fiction – fiction being all the falsehoods we accumulate based on life’s biggest inhibitors – fear of failing, judgement, age, self-doubt, imposter syndrome, lack of self-worth, to name a few.

Going into the basement


One of the many wonderful analogies used in the session was a trip down to our “basement.” Most of us are afraid to go down there for fear of what we might find. Though often true of our actual homesteads, it’s even more important in the basement, or subconscious of our mind. Things are buried so deep we tend to forget about them until triggered. But if we don’t start there, we cannot ultimately change our story.


Stripped of false beliefs, difficult stories, and too much judgement we can finally start to bridge the gap between beliefs and desires for positive outcomes. But this is an iterative process as life continuously presents us with events that challenge our beliefs about ourselves. The framework that is used in this workshop is a combination of many years of real-world experiences as a CEO and intense, intentional training with some of the greatest thought leaders in the leadership space. By sharing some of her most challenging and vulnerable personal stories, Kip demonstrates how one can choose to brighten the light around us versus getting lost in the dark.

Key takeaways

• Separating who we are from what we “do” is a key starting point for achieving self-awareness.
• Don’t let circumstances and conditions define who we are and lock us in
• Loss of one thing can create space for something bright if we allow it
• Take time to identify what we need to “shift” to ignite our psyche and connect with our desires
• Ask the question – who believes in you more than you believe in yourself? And likewise – in whom do you believe in more than they believe in themselves?  (when you find out – be sure to let them know)


To get a taste of this workshop firsthand, you can participate in an upcoming two-hour session on March 19th or be in touch with Hollister for the next scheduled workshops and off-sites.  To obtain an invitation for upcoming events, please contact Michelle Hanna -mhanna@hollistergroup.com.

 

Context is King in pursuit of influencing a positive AI future!

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The Kendall Project is educating and inspiring Boston businesses and professionals with its thought-provoking workshops

I think I speak for most professionals who are trying to navigate AI opportunities and challenges. Where do I begin? What’s working? How do I get started? Am I already too late? Thanks to the generous effort of the team at the Kendall Project, some of us can breathe a momentary sigh of relief after attending their AI workshop for marketers at the Cambridge Innovation Center earlier this week.

The Host:

The Kendall Project has a clear mission “to empower companies to rapidly identify opportunities where AI can solve real business problems and create a positive impact, without compromising jobs.” But the important first step is to form a community and common language. By attending the workshop, each of us began the journey. In this case- most of us were independent marketing advisors or agencies – coincidentally one the very top areas where AI is being applied and enjoying the highest growth rate.

The Content:


After a brief introduction to AI basics – level setting terms like Large Language Models, Context, Persona, Vector Databases, Nearest Neighbors, and Hallucinations – the Kendall team (Brendan McSheffrey and Kevin Gulley) introduced the fundamental rules of AI engagement and excellence – including these top three:

• PROBLEMS ARE AI’S FUEL
• AI IS A TEAM SPORT
• AI PLAYS BEST WHEN IT KNOWS THE RULES – WHAT’S IMPORTANT AND WHAT’S NOT

Context:
A key message of the day is that AI relies on context – defined as “what we know.” It can be mundane or strategic. In any case it helps inform the agent about the focal point or “what to pay attention to.” Prompting is a type of context as are personas. These translate into instructions that tell the LLM how to act and become an expert.


Hands-On


The workshops, organized into various peer groups lay the groundwork for introducing AI into different types of businesses. The hands-on portion of the workshop offers a step-by-step approach to problem identification AI-style – using logical components – role, capabilities, problem, and processes worksheets voting to flush out priorities of each sub-group. Yes, we had to actually do work and articulate problems to be solved in our individual businesses. Voting helped distill priorities for each group. Though many concerns were common among marketers – challenges like reconciling all the data coming from different marketing applications came out on top. The purpose of doing the workshop was not only to populate an AI marketing utility to solve today’s problems but also to lay the ground work to understand AI’s future problem solving capabilities. Technically speaking, the goal was to create “controlled structured data.” All the data is collected and the group will receive the output of the data collection as part of the process. Seeing the output from previous workshops helped us visualize how the data starts to form an AI utility. I am looking forward to seeing how our discussions came together!


The Eco-System:


Being co-located in the CIC with AI startups and investors is purposeful. The Kendall Project is dedicated to its investment in the local tech economy and Governor Healy’s stated opportunity for Massachusetts to be a global leader in AI. The leader of C-10- Labs, Beth Porter (a venture studio and eco-system of founders for applied AI companies) finished off the day sharing some of the work being done with her cohorts at the CIC – building solutions from scratch or customizing existing ones. Per Beth, agents are like the millions of semi-conductors in our phones – each has a unique relationship with the other. Therefore, the potential for custom AI solutions is limitless.


Call to Action:


This project is important, ambitious, and a somewhat altruistic effort. Similar to the early days of Open Source and Cloud Computing, AI will have to iron out the misunderstandings, concern, and/or barriers to entry for the industry or specific sectors. It’s a clear case of a community coming together to raise awareness and education, putting aside individual motives, so that the entire industry can benefit and move forward. I fully recommend to my clients and colleagues to sign up for one of the future workshops. Better yet, invest in a company-specific one as a very practical and useful “off-site” for their team. The time to jump on this bullet train is now while you can still catch it! Find upcoming workshops here and become part of this exciting new community.

Takeaways from the 8th Annual Authors and Innovators Business Ideas Festival

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It’s always a welcome adventure to participate in Gennari-Aronson’s Authors and Innovators event.  Just the venue alone was a great discovery – the Mosesian Center for the Arts in Watertown was a pleasant surprise.  I love being greeted by great art on the walls!

As per Larry Gennari, the voracious reader who thinks up the festival each year, the theme was “The Persuasive Entrepreneur: leveraging the power of storytelling to explore your own journey, grow a brand, raise money, motivate a team, sell a business, and inspire change.  Stories matter and the most successful leaders are the ones who know how to develop and share an effective narrative to inspire willing change in others.”  This helped cast a wide net to encompass many interesting and timely reads that kicked off on Thursday evening.   My blog, however, will cover Friday as I was in the audience live on that day.

Time, Talent, and Treasure: The opening conversation between authors Archie Jones and Jennifer Tosti-Khara focused shared many common findings from both personal experience and research.  If only 1/3 of people are happy at work, what’s happening with the other 2/3?  Many are disengaged or trying to follow a path of what they think they “should” be doing.  The goal of this conversation is to understand and help close the gap of engagement at work – whether it means changing your line of work or finding a way to leverage superpowers in your current role.   A lot here for leaders to absorb and take under advisement.

Changing the Story:  The sole panelist here was Christopher Marquis, author of the Profiteers speaking directly to leaders about moving beyond shareholder primacy to finding a purpose in what they are leading.  In a world where climate change is REAL, what is our level of accountability toward this and other externalities?   He used many examples from companies that have built their brand based on their social responsibility – but then found out they weren’t entirely true to solving the problem.  Patagonia was used as an example – identifying its externality as impact on agriculture and then creating its “provisions” division to give back in this arena.  A second example is a Dutch chocolate company,  that fought the child labor abuses by creating a healthy supply chain

Spin in Business, Politics, and Beyond: This one was a bit unsettling.  One can only describe Phil Elwood as quite a character, a self-names PR Operative.  Doug Banks of the Boston Business Journal appropriately conducted the interview to add the journalistic “spin” to the interrogation. Elwood kicked off by reminding us that Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, but his legacy will be the Nobel Prize for Peace.  This is what he defines as spin.  If you even wondered how the US lost out on hosting the World Cup to Qatar where many workers ultimately died of heatstroke – this book reveals the story.   If you ever wondered about the impact of “sportswashing” and “greenwashing” – this is the playbook.  Candidly, Elwood uses these stories of his colorful PR work to force each of us to answer the question – “should I do this?”

All the Feels: Throw way traditional brand marketing and research, Leslie Zane a leading behavioral research and advertising executive has explored the power of instinct and how to tap into it. She shared her guidelines for the five promises a brand needs to keep – Empower people to do things; know your people/audience in a non-creepy way; reach the audience, show me something that I can see (literally), delight me and make me better.  She eschews all the “scores” out there for brands and suggests a brand must BE LARGE; more positive than negative; and distinctive in order to reach the instinctual level of the brain via brand connectomes.  A lot has changed since the early days of consumer behavior and Leslie gives us serious food for thought.

Alongside Leslie, David Edelman introduced Personalized.  David provided a detailed example of how he was persuaded through personalization.  He and Leslie riffed on the subtleties of reaching the consumer in a world of constant messaging and believes that AI will create unlimited opportunity.  An internet pioneer, he believes we need to look at AI’s disruption in the same way

Presidential Stories:  Just in time for election season, this curious wealth manager, Megan Gormon, explores an uncanny topic – how former Presidents made and managed their personal finances.  Professionally, she has studied the “psychology” of wealth accumulation, so it’s a fascinating way to complement her professional portfolio. As part of her talk, she discusses how slavery played into wealth accumulation – citing 12 presidents who were slave owners.   Fascinating details emerge and pique one’s interest. One in particular was how Gerry Ford used the Franklin Mint to create presidential medals – something we now take for granted.   Her hope is that by humanizing presidents we will come to know them and relate better to who they are as people.   This book and talk are both timely and relevant and a perfect match to the storytelling theme.  We can all stand to learn more of our country’s history and what a fun way to do it.  Megan was delightful.

On the whole, this event provided a congenial and comfortable way to meet authors, learn from them, and enjoy the exhibit of innovators who are an integral part of its format.  What’s truly outstanding is how the curator, Larry Gennari is able to distill the vast array of current business topics into those that are truly top of mind regardless of industry or size of company.  Many thanks to Larry and his team for their hard work.

 

 

 

 

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EmpowHER builds on an exciting trend| Women leading in tech

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This is the third event with which I have been involved as an attendee or a moderator focused on women leaders in tech and beyond.  I recently moderated a private event for Emory University as part of a TrailblazHER program.  I definitely see a trend!  Women really getting out there to share their stories and support their peers and emerging talent with their very real experiences.  This event, Wednesday, October 16th was hosted by Databricks, moderated by Allyson Wilner of Databricks at the AWS offices in the Seaport District in Boston.   The buzz began long before the event with a line going out the door to enter the office building.  Pretty impressive security.  Those who depend on AWS for their IT lifeblood should feel good about that.

The introductions were fun and revealing with speakers doing a 3-minute summation of their roles and one personal factoid.   Those are always the most fun and give us a chance to find common ground.  From gardening to beating one’s husband in golf, each speaker went beyond thew walls of work in a fun, engaging way – many also raising young families.   With only 45 minutes to spare to attend this event, I picked up some tidbits from the speakers that are worth amplifying.  Several speakers answered each question, so highlights are below:

Today’s Key Skillsets

  • Technically speaking, handling and understanding all aspects of massive data – especially governance.
  • Learn to use Excel – a key to everything and still relevant after all these years – thank you MS!
  • Constant Curiosity about tech trends – For example, what was known as a “large language model” we now know as ChatGBT – so what’s next? Machine Learning?

Soft “hard” skills

  • Communication, maintaining relationships especially with coworkers – how to do on remote world?
  • Having thick skin!  And don’t take it all personally. As a manager or peer, learn to give direct and caring feedback.

Self-advocacy

  • This is always tricky – finding the balance between being egocentric and showcasing your skills and personal brand.
  • A key to accessing leadership and sponsors is to follow the company strategy to see where leaders are going – understanding their priorities. That will be generate a healthy conversation.
  • Never be afraid to ask when you need help
  • Remember it’s better to be well respected vs. well liked!
  • Everyone has challenging moments – so keep a folder of “attagirls” for reference so you can give yourself a boost or use them in a review.

Advocating for your team

  • Amplify their voices & help and encourage them to build personal brands!
  • Find opportunities outside of normal channels and encourage your team to grab them.
  • Don’t worry about having every qualification for a post or a job – go for it. Research shows that men are more likely to do this than women, so reverse the metrics.

Advice to younger self 

You cannot predict the non-linearity of your career.   There will be times you will make changes, times to hold and times to accelerate – so be prepared to step back and review.  Certainly, having a child will force you to evaluate things.

The long-term goal of women should be to look at the bigger social picture of education, child-bearing, and careers.   There is a much bigger challenge that goes beyond an individual.  It’s very clear in the medical profession and several use cases were discussed demonstrating that it’s there are many factors working against one to go to medical school, have a family, and make a living    

And finally, not so surprising, #Work-Life integration is the new way of managing competing priorities.  Work-life balance is a myth!  Many thanks to the dedicated group of women that took time to tell their stories and share their experiences!

Moderator: Allyson Wilner at Databricks

Panelists:

Kate Shamsuddin Jensen from Definitive Healthcare
Shailja Dedakia from Capsule
Vida Ha from Databricks
Amy Winter from Tripadvisor
Sarah Cooper from DraftKings Inc.

A Window Into the New Generation of Women in Tech

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There’s nothing like jumping into the middle of a college campus and getting a read on what’s top of mind for young women carving out their careers.  I popped into the Women in Technology conference at Tufts over the weekend and did just that.   Here’s what I found.

Attendees| Technology savvy and much more

Sitting down to lunch with a group of students, I found a diverse group from many surrounding schools – Brandeis, Smith, BU, and more.  They were gracious in welcoming me and curious to find out why I was there.  Full disclosure, I was there to learn about them as I am involved in talent marketing and employer branding – so I wanted to see who all these companies will find!

I was impressed.  They were all committed to go beyond the classroom and several were in the midst of a special MIT extra-curricular program that focused on machine learning, robotics, and more.  Each had a unique focus on how they would apply their computer science background from Computational Linguistics to Product Management to consulting and had dug deep into all their options.   But what was more interesting is when I asked them about what they did outside of school – their interests and avocations.  Three were also musicians – the clarinet and guitar.  Two were fluent in at least one second language and all were well traveled.  We talked about art, museums, cooking, and family.   I was so pleased to see they were not at home watching video games, but truly turning into well-rounded global citizens.

Panel Discussions| Product Management, Open-Source Impact, Cybersecurity and beyond

The orientation of each panel was primarily to guide the attendees on how to successfully kick start their careers in software and related fields.  I was touched by the panelists’ honest and thoughtful advice as well as their commitment to being part of this event on their personal time – a precious Boston September Sunday.  

Based on statistics provided by the Open-Source session leader, Paula Paul, women in tech have had a huge resurgence in the workplace since being squeezed out during the height of Silicon Valley explosion in the 90’s. 

As Open Source revolves around so much collaboration and volunteer community work, the speaker encouraged the audience to find a way to contribute actively one of the many projects available for input across Open-Source communities.

 Cybersecurity presents many opportunities for tech careers whether it’s part of a company in nearly any “vertical” market or it’s a Cybersecurity entity itself.   The panelists represented the full range including a quasi-government entity, an industry non-profit, and an advertising platform.  The panel was vibrant and presented many examples of ways to “attack” this field and not be intimidated by not knowing everything as the field is constantly changing as new threats emerge.  It’s critical to be flexible and understand the risk tolerance of the organizations with which you are involved.  Being a problem solver and knowing how to assess a situation is as important at the technical skills.

It’s not about just getting the job, it’s about leadership

Despite the stronger presence of Women in Technology, the real message was to move women up the technology chain to occupy more leadership roles.  Each session offered different buckets of advice to this end.  Here’s a sampling of what I heard:

  • As young women, be sure to have your voices and opinions heard in the workplace as you will likely still be outnumbered. When you speak up, you may be seen as “aggressive” but don’t let that get in the way of your progress. 
  • Technology is omni-present and impacts every aspect of our lives, therefore, technology has to take into consideration a very wide and diverse set of users. Therefore, it’s up to each and every one of the creators of this technology to consider the diverse audiences they serve.  Try to stay away from assumptions and truly do your research.
  • Learning your tech stuff is just a ticket to get started. To advance, one needs to hyper-focus on the “soft skills” such as strong communications, problem solving, writing, etc.   These will be the keys to success.
  • Building a robust set of relationships (a/k/a – network) is a critical success factor, often overlooked and not easy to achieve. It requires getting out of your comfort zone and often outside of your company.  The time to start is now (or if you already started, that’s even better!).  Be creative about how you approach people and consider both the give and the get.  The women on the panel, the speakers, and the volunteers were all doing just that – and they should be congratulated.

Who’s Hiring?

The career fair was packed with curious students and energetic recruiters.  I spotted these companies in the mix: Cognex, Intersystems, UKG, Athena Health, Mathworks, Mitre, and Zagaran.

Among the panelists I met and heard, many thanks to:

 

 

 

 

Revisiting a Fundamental New Market Development Building Block| Looking Back to Move Forward

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Twenty plus years ago I left a robust corporate career behind and launched a consulting practice.  Certainly, when I left the telecommunications industry and corporate environment, I felt I had achieved a great ROI on the first 17 years of my career.  However, as a professional in the marketing world, I did feel something was missing.  In fact, it was the direct connection to the MARKET and the customers.  I could see that slipping away then and today, with so much marketing technology in place – it’s further away than ever.

Moving up often means getting too far away | FTF Time Wins

As a marketing leader in a large company, my duties were focused on motivating and leading my team, setting goals and objectives, and reporting into the top of the company with results from various programs.  I had to fight for fact-to-face time with the sales team, field managers, and customers.   My favorite programs always included actual customers and/or partners namely – Customer Advisory Boards, programs in the field in competitive markets, and identifying and qualifying partners when that opportunity presented itself.  I often felt bogged down with administrative duties that didn’t leave me time to do the outreach with the field.  Yet I felt, marketing needed to be balanced with both traditional quantitative and select qualitative research to be effective.

The best opportunity for me to have direct customer interaction came when I was sent to Asia to build our markets there.   We virtually had no product, brand, or customer track record in this part of the world.  It was a clean late – a tabula rasa!  Every outreach to a potential customer large, state-run telecommunications enterprises required a consultative sell.  It was also a very raw type of market research using a lot of creativity and grit to identify challenges and potential solutions in this wide open “market.”    Here I learned out to “test” a value proposition real time.  I also learned that in many cases, the best way to enter a market is through forming partnerships.  Long before today’s formal partner programs, partnering was a matter of identifying key complementary roles that each could play and sharing a vision for a market – a simple, but critical principle.  It was equally important to engage with partners to understand their needs and priorities in order to set the right expectations.

It’s Powerful to Listen to the Market | Observing Forward

Fast forward to my years as a consultant, I have many examples of the impact of value proposition testing – an opportunity to work with a third party to ask the right strategic questions and engage the client in a conversation that demonstrates you are listening and willing to pivot if needed.   This is very high-level market research and a type that should be done by someone with a wide range of experiences upon which to draw.  The conversation is mostly held with a top tier decision maker and the person initiating the conversation should be their peer in terms of years and/or experience.

One cannot argue that digitation and now generative AI have made customer targeting and filling the sales pipeline more efficient.   At the same time, however, it also takes the face-to-face strategic conversations with customers and partners more inaccessible.   Such conversations assure that both the timing and efficacy of a product or new market entry makes sense.  Based on my experience and consulting engagements – I believe this part of the short-term market research process is more important than ever.   I would advocate strongly to invest in this marketing step in collaboration with the sales and partner team but engage an outsider to actually do the work.  You may be surprised at what you hear and in the long run, it will pay to take a step back to move much further forward in launching new markets and products.

 

Emory women demonstrate shared values on their path to leadership| Insights from Boston TrailblazHer panel

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Leading Ladies| Left to right – Jacqueline Ganim-DeFalco, Elizabeth Halkos, Nabiha Saklayen, Sophia Hall, Jodi Rosenbaum

Emory’s mission “to create, preserve, teach, and apply knowledge in the service of humanity” was on full display in the lives and professional accomplishments of panelists of the TrailblazHER event on the eve of the Presidential debate.  Even the venue, More than Words, is an entity born out of alumna Jodi Rosenbaum’s passion to change the system she observed over twenty years ago while she worked at the Atlanta area courts reviewing cases.  “I spent more time in the courts than in the classroom and even had a key to the courthouse,” said Jodi, whose organization empowers at risk youth through entrepreneurship and leadership.

The Journey and the aha moment!

More Than Words Bookstore

The evening began with each panelist sharing their journey and reflecting on when they realized they were in a leadership position.   The panelists included Elizabeth Halkos 01MBA, Sophia Hall 09C, Jodi Rosenbaum 97C, and Nabiha Saklayen 12C and were led by moderator, Jacqueline Ganim-DeFalco 81C.    Jacqueline kicked off the evening by setting the tone for leadership in the broadest sense.  At various points in our lives, we are called upon to lead professionally, in our community, in our family – but once a leader, always a leader in some capacity.

Nabiha, a Ph.D. in physics, admits that she didn’t set out to be a CEO, but nearly everyone around her, all leaders in their field, believed in her and she simply stepped up to the challenge, jumping into many roles as the CEO of a biotech startup, Cellino.  Her diverse background growing up all over the world and speaking multiple languages gave her a unique perspective that only she could bring to her role.  Sophia heard “no” too many times and just pushed through various roles until she found a firm that said YES to her ideas and passion.   Jodi was motivated by anger about the way things were done and was driven to make an impact.  Elizabeth was given a series of roles she thought were better suited to other experts, but quickly realized, she was the leader they needed in her organization, and she would learn what she needed to fill in the gaps. 

Challenges, Derailment, & Resilience

Michele Davis opening the evening

The simple answer to this is “yes,” we have all had them.  All panelists agreed that the main point is to constantly remind each other that we will all have bumps and bruises along the way, and you just have to know this is often the most memorable part of the journey.  For Nabiha, fundraising to the tune of $120M has been her most recent challenge which began in 2017 – facing head on the fact that only 2% of women-owned companies receive venture money.   Elizabeth remembers many closed doors when presenting the concept and raising money for an all-female venture fund.  “No,” was often based simply on gender (you don’t look like us) – a reflection of the tech industry as a whole.   She added somewhat humorously that one of her memorable experiences is being “deposed” for 9 hours when she was 8 months pregnant – a degree of discomfort unique to our gender.    Sophia emphasized that “success usually happens after going through the stuff that really hurts,” and vulnerability helps build the character we need as leaders.  Jacqueline reflected on her experience being asked to open up the Asia-Pacific markets for her employer NYNEX in the late 80’s.   “At the age of 26, I became a ‘Managing Director’ representing a major corporation overseas. Knowing the markets, building credibility quickly, and avoiding any social faux pas was essential to my success and the company’s reputation.  My reputation and the company’s were one in the same being halfway around the world.”

Leadership essentials – Innovation, Vision, and Relationships

Jodi reflected on how important it’s been for her to hire people “smarter that she is” in various parts of the More than Words team.   Innovation is part of their everyday mantra – and essential to growth of the individuals and the business.   Innovation in a different form allowed Nabiha to launch her cell tissue business which focuses on cells that are specific to ethnic groups – something truly new in the bio-tech world.  Elizabeth is breaking barriers in the Health Tech records management space – a thorn in the side of medical administrators.  Sophia reflected on one of her most interesting cases during the “me too” movement – exploring and representing issues unique to the Latino restaurant workers.  

The panel collectively agreed that relationship building, particularly outside your organization is a call to action for everyone in the room throughout their career and in their communities.   Jacqueline had the privilege of a co-consulting relationship with James Masciarelli, noted author of PowersSkills – a formula for building and leveraging top tier relationships for success.  Elizabeth shared a story about graduating from Emory’s Goizueta MBA program in ‘01, being ready to move to NYC to take on a new consulting role exactly 23 years ago when 9-11 changed the NYC hiring landscape.  Having found herself jobless, her strategic networking yielded an entirely new position in a different city.  Nabiha unlike many scientists, makes every effort to find new connections every day.   She focuses in on the “conversation” and works hard to get to know potential investors and partners and emphasizes the importance of the human connection.  No doubt, she has earned her 9000 following on LinkedIn!  

As each has advanced in their careers, the panel emphasized that “advocacy” becomes another dimension of their leadership.   For Sophia, it’s look at the systemic changed needed in her work for Civil Rights.   For Jodi, it’s becoming a lobbyist to advocate for a better eco-system for at risk youth.

Advice to a younger self

Nabiha reflected on the fact that she rarely slept during college and her lack of personal care could have had severe long-term consequences.  She advocates for better self-care and “health above everything,” “we don’t get to choose how our bodies respond to stress.”   Elizabeth and Sophia focused on risk-taking and keeping an open mind to paths you may not even consider.   Elizabeth recommends trusting our gut – remembering a time when she simply felt like the environment she was in was to big for her to make a difference.  Sophia reminds us that “we are presented with many molds, but it’s important to embrace your authenticity.”  Furthermore, take risks BEFORE you have children as that truly changes the landscape.  Jodi summed up the question and the session by her revelation that she wishes she paid less attention to what others thought.  In other words, set your own standards, get clear on your values and stick to them.  On that note, truly each of these panelists embraced a higher set of values very much in the spirit that Emory has built its culture.  It was remarkable to see that given the diverse range of backgrounds, experiences, and graduation timeframes that the group was united in their commitment to do good in their work and community. 

Summation:

As per the moderator, “when I began my career, I was grateful to the women that came before me to pave the way for a more balanced set of opportunities and career choices, but that was just the beginning.  Now, more than ever, we need to support each other and celebrate our collective success by paying it forward.”  Leadership comes in many forms.   It can happen in your family, community, profession, and the workplace.  Sometimes it evolves over time as you gradually build credibility and others start to look up to you for your expertise– other times it happens quickly.  Regardless, it’s important to understand your responsibilities once you are in a leadership position.  Help those around you become their best selves, listen and observe before making changes, reward your peers and team for their leadership, build healthy long-term relationships, inspire people through your actions, and be self-aware – taking time to learn, grow, and attend to your mental and physical health.

Special thanks to all the Emory family working hard behind the scenes to support Emory’s many initiatives – especially the Women of Emory Impact Circle.  A special shout out to Nicole Holubar and Michele Davis for having the vision to make this come to life.

Favorite Leadership Books, Tools, Workshops

Board Development: For non profit and private co boards

Event: Inc 5000 Fastest Growing Company events

Books – Daring Greatly by Brenee Brown, Good to Great – Jim Collins and zero to one – Peter Thiel.

Teamwork: The  Music Paradigm and  Meyers-Briggs (MBTI)

Leadership: Strengthsfinder from Gallup and PowerSkills   VIP Relationship Management

General Learning/Inspiration: HBS/WSA Dynamic Women in Business Annual Conference at Harvard Business School annually in February.

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Culture Defines Talent| A perspective on Employee Engagement from a divisional HR team

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Employee Engagement Expert Series:

The following blog was the result of an interview with two HR professionals in the financial services technology space.   Together they drive a divisional global HR function that includes Employee Engagement.  They use annual employee feedback mechanisms combined with their unique backgrounds to evolve HR practices in this unique global and highly diverse environment.  

A comprehensive HR approach

The director describes his role in this way, “I am responsible for leading people-related strategy and execution across multiple enterprise software businesses to solve complex organizational challenges.   I truly enjoy leveraging all of my experiences to help organizations to create and fulfill their business and people related strategies.  Doing this well, generally, drives employee engagement and creates a high-performance culture.”   He works together with a colleague whose background includes social work prior to human resources.   Together they cover a lot of territory – helping leaders with reorganizations, compensation, talent reviews, promotions, merit programs, and everything related to employee performance.

Spotlight on Employee Engagement

In this organization, the Employee Engagement function is fully integrated with other key human resource functions that support it. The main goal is to improve employee communications and career growth opportunities for the talent pool.

But it’s not a siloed function, it’s also a backdrop to Talent Acquisition, Leadership Development, Coaching, and Sponsorship across a global firm of over 20,000 employees.  It’s a hub and spoke environment with business units across four distinct vertical markets and has experienced growth through acquisition.  In the spokes, there are HR people that have local market expertise.  All eventually report to the CHRO in a matrixed environment with the corporate HR team focusing on companywide needs such as Employee Relations. 

In terms of a strategic approach, the first priority is the development of front-line managers.  It’s often said that people leave managers, not companies so this a top priority that is addressed early – in fact, with onboarding.   The key element is the 1:1 between the team and the manager – generally, the key person driving the employee experience.  However, in this organization, this is emphasized as a shared responsibility.   Both manager and team members have to bring their authentic selves to the table, earn their respect, and own their path at the company.  It’s critical that the manager embrace the culture and bring the team along with them. Focusing on career development and growth is a high priority to keeping people engaged.

Essential EE Tools

In this environment, Employee Engagement is a backdrop to everything but becomes more relevant in a cyclical way.  Annually, beginning in the fall, the organization runs a survey.  Each year the baseline and changes are reviewed to see how to move the needle on key dimensions.  It’s a robust third-party tool with predetermined benchmarking questions as well as open-ended for comments.   It focuses on helping the organization assess its top strengths, opportunities for improvement, and guidelines for priorities for the following year.  It goes out to 20K employees with participation varying by business units and is the key insight into the voice of the employee.   Given the diversity of the company and its global nature, the questions have to be generic, but themes are derived by business unit and can get quite granular.

Beside the survey, there are other tools that focus on employee retention, attrition, and internal mobility. These examine how many employees take on new opportunities internally each year and the primary reason for an employee to seek opportunity elsewhere – furthering the understanding of what keeps the employees engaged.  

Top priorities for Employees:

Here the top of the list from employees is communication and transparency.  In parallel, people want to know their job is connected to the greater universe and they are making an impact.  Employees want to feel connected to their work and the company’s overall mission. They value recognition and appreciate it for their own work, as well as having the ability to recognize their fellow employees.  Interestingly, this is now a very strong theme across many organizations regardless of industry or size.

The organization addresses these priorities both company-wide and by department.  One opportunity is via quarterly town halls.   There are also a series of smaller gatherings with senior leadership – with an “ask me anything” session.   Leadership is there to listen.  Many come to learn something new and sometimes we get good recommendations on ways to be more innovative.  The topic of innovation is taken seriously in this tech environment with additional specific sessions over a two-day period to bring tech folks together to put forth their best ideas and tech solutions.  These are run as a contest with awards and recognition.

It’s important to note that the employee recognition programs are run on a quarterly basis. Anyone can nominate an individual or team based on demonstrating alignment with company values. The reward can be monetary award or “in kind.”

Navigating a global footprint and acquisitions

This organization has faced many unique challenges as it has grown organically and via acquisition and enjoys a diverse global footprint.  This requires additional emphasis on bringing people together effectively re-energizing the team in face-to-face gatherings and upping the game on internal communications.   Town Halls, newsletters; and purposeful recognition of special occasions such as work anniversaries and other milestones go a long way to building bridges.

In terms of growing via acquisition, the goal is to harmonize all aspects of employee life and break down barriers.  It starts with the essentials such as benefits and remuneration.  It also means familiarizing everyone with the technology and systems, like Workday or Salesfoce.com.   At the same time, while blending is important, it’s also important to honor each acquired company’s specialization.  A large benefit is company-wide access to the use of LinkedIn Learning for personal and professional growth.

Considering an HR/EE Career

Culture Defines Talent

Advice from this team. Remain open, be curious, be an active learner, seek mentors in the areas that you see yourself being most attracted to, and bring your authentic self to all situations.  Each person has unique talent and perspectives.  As one gains experience by doing, listening, learning, they can then start to see patterns and make practical and useful recommendations.  All of this helps build skills and credibility, which your “customers”, internal or external, will value.