Episode 5
The Anatomy Of An AI Center Of Excellence In GTM
In this episode of The Get, host Erica Seidel talks with marketing leader Audrea Madey, who has led AI transformation at Rocket Software and previously led digital transformations at Manulife and John Hancock.
You will learn about
- The anatomy of an AI center of excellence in GTM, and how to adapt it to your org, regardless of size
- Infusing AI into marketing at enterprise scale, including training, enabling, and optimizing
- 'Meeting people where they are' – giving the stars the spotlight while providing the learners the coaching they need
- How AI transformations are distinct from digital transformations
- Metrics that balance cost savings with quality improvement
- How to immediately identify someone with curiosity and systems thinking DNA
- An interview tip: "Here's what Perplexity or Claude produced. What would you add to this argument?"
Some memorable quotes:
- "AI for the sake of AI is just… beige."
- "If a tool sounds too good to be true, it probably is."
- "I've found that people will ask a third party the questions that they might feel dumb asking of their bosses or their managers."
- "If you can't add to the points that these LLMs are putting out, you don't have a job in the future."
00:00 Welcome to The Get
00:58 Meet Audrea Madey
01:58 Art School to Marketing
03:58 Scope and AI COE
07:23 Leading AI Change
10:04 AI vs Digital Shift
11:51 Three Pillar COE Model
17:32 New Roles and Agents
20:21 Measuring AI Impact
22:11 Hiring for AI Mindset
29:25 Building COE from Scratch
31:41 Leader Advice and Wrap
The Get is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.
This season’s theme is focused on how AI is reshaping the CMO role: how you lead, how you hire, and how you get hired."
The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS.
If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make money’ variety, rather than the ‘make it pretty’ variety, contact Erica at erica@theconnectivegood.com. You can also follow Erica on LinkedIn or sign up for her newsletter at TheConnectiveGood.com.
The Get is produced by the team at Simpler Media Productions.
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy
Transcript
Welcome to The Get, the podcast that's all about recruiting and
Speaker:leadership in B2B SaaS marketing.
Speaker:I'm your host, Erica Seidel.
Speaker:My tagline is that I place the make-money marketing leaders,
Speaker:not the make-it-pretty ones.
Speaker:Specifically, I recruit CMOs and VPs of Marketing for B2B SaaS companies,
Speaker:from scale-ups to larger companies.
Speaker:So I have a front row seat to nuances of marketing leadership, and with The
Speaker:Get podcast, you get that view as well.
Speaker:This season on The Get, we're looking at how AI is reframing and reinventing
Speaker:the CMO role, especially as relates to hiring, getting hired, and leadership.
Speaker:Today, we do a deep dive on what it's like to infuse AI into
Speaker:marketing at enterprise scale.
Speaker:We look at best practices for building an AI center of
Speaker:excellence in the go-to-market org.
Speaker:You will find value in this, no matter the size of your organization.
Speaker:My guest is Audrea Madey.
Speaker:We recorded this conversation in Audrea's final weeks at Rocket Software.
Speaker:Her title there was VP Growth Marketing and Market Deal Acceleration.
Speaker:Cool title.
Speaker:As part of her role, she led the company's AI Center of Excellence.
Speaker:Audrea has a background in growth marketing, digital transformation,
Speaker:marketing strategy, and operations.
Speaker:Keep an eye on Audrea, who is now moving into a new marketing leadership role.
Speaker:Audrea, welcome to the show.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's great to chat with you.
Speaker:I know we've met before, and, uh, you are wicked smart, as they say,
Speaker:and I'm excited to hear from you.
Speaker:So I would love to hear, um, as I've been asking everybody this season,
Speaker:w- is there a piece of your career or your life story that would not
Speaker:make it onto your LinkedIn profile?
Speaker:So like a fun fact or a detour or a weird job that, you know, that
Speaker:explains your work better than, you know, a LinkedIn profile or bio does.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, so I went to art school.
Speaker:So, I started off as a sculptor and a photographer, and I landed into
Speaker:marketing because I was a designer.
Speaker:So I thought that I wanted to do graphic design, I thought I wanted to get into
Speaker:advertising that way, and I realized that there's a lot of people that s-
Speaker:are so much better than I am at it.
Speaker:So, but the nice thing is, is it really allows me to understand
Speaker:and mix what we always talk about, the art and science of marketing.
Speaker:So I really do, I think that marketing has that, needs to have that human
Speaker:connection even more now, right?
Speaker:With AI?
Speaker:Like it's so important.
Speaker:You need to be able to pull out the creativity and get to what people really
Speaker:care about from an art perspective, while you mix that with science as well,
Speaker:and what is, what ca- what campaigns are landing, what is the ROI of those
Speaker:campaigns, how do you scale that more?
Speaker:And I think that just gives me a really interesting perspective,
Speaker:starting off from that art background.
Speaker:And I still do some art.
Speaker:I love it, uh, it's just not … I ended up going into growth marketing
Speaker:and really accelerating there.
Speaker:And here we are.
Speaker:Do you find that there is a higher bar for you that your investors or
Speaker:your previous bosses have had for you, given that you have an art background
Speaker:versus, say, an engineering background?
Speaker:I think so.
Speaker:It's interesting, though, that you say that, because I also, then when I went
Speaker:to Digitas, because I've, uh, when- that was one of my first advertising jobs.
Speaker:I mixed that with the digital side of it as well, and started to get really
Speaker:technical, so I joke that I was a Scrum Master before it was even cool.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Like it was like back like- 20 years ago.
Speaker:So I, I think that they have a higher bar because I came from advertising, too.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That I needed to un- they need to, they think that I need to
Speaker:understand digital, they need to understand that like tech side of it.
Speaker:But then also, the fact that I have an art background, it's like if I can't brief
Speaker:a creative team and look at something and be like, "That's gonna land based on
Speaker:the positioning and messaging," like I have to be able to do that, and that's
Speaker:what allows me with my background.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:That's great.
Speaker:So talk role now, like your scope and, and your title is a very interesting title,
Speaker:and how you've gotten to be this very interesting role where part of your role
Speaker:is overseeing the AI Center of Excellence.
Speaker:I know.
Speaker:Well, I love your tagline when you're like, I hi- I really hire the,
Speaker:like make-money marketers, not the make-it-pretty marketers, 'cause I feel
Speaker:like I started as a make-it-pretty, right?
Speaker:When I took my back- art background.
Speaker:But then I focus on my n- my metrics are driving revenue, driving pipeline,
Speaker:getting bookings, getting to wins, right?
Speaker:And then understanding from a science background how do you repeat that over
Speaker:and over again, and how do you scale that?
Speaker:So underneath my overall remit includes our ABM strategy, and
Speaker:I should say my remit's global.
Speaker:So going across Americas, EMEA, APAC.
Speaker:Uh, and each one of those are like almost nuances in themselves
Speaker:when you think about the geos.
Speaker:Like America is very different than what happens in Australia.
Speaker:Um- so having to have both the centers of, of excellence that I built, so
Speaker:that can really scale down based on those geos is really important.
Speaker:The ABM team, and they partner day to day with sales.
Speaker:Sales needs to be their best friend.
Speaker:Marketing and sales need to be the other sides of the coin, right?
Speaker:So they focus on an a- account based marketing strategy.
Speaker:So tier one, tier two, tier three.
Speaker:How are we gonna drive both pipeline and revenue in those accounts?
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:How do we really focus on a strategy that is focused on the seven steps of ABM?
Speaker:We follow this framework.
Speaker:Um, ITSMA framework.
Speaker:Uh-huh.
Speaker:Across.
Speaker:And then also that's complemented by the three other functions
Speaker:that I have underneath me.
Speaker:That is, uh, overall digital experience, and that's where
Speaker:the Center of Excellence lives.
Speaker:I have a person, Emma Harney, on my team.
Speaker:She leads the Center of Excellence underneath me.
Speaker:Very, very strong around what- how do we enable a team, and I
Speaker:know we're gonna go s- into that.
Speaker:Then I have, um, Brand Experience.
Speaker:I also like to call it Executive Wow.
Speaker:So how do we show up in the-
Speaker:Executive Wow.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Executive Wow.
Speaker:So how do you show up in the right spots where our ICP is?
Speaker:And how do you make it so that they remember our brand, and that
Speaker:we surprise and delight them?
Speaker:So that is a whole lane around how do we show up as a brand
Speaker:within these experiences?
Speaker:Especially as AI is coming in.
Speaker:Our own, own strategy for events and where we show up, events are
Speaker:having their moment again, like PR.
Speaker:People want, crave that human connection.
Speaker:So the how we show up and where we show up, that is even more important.
Speaker:Uh, and then the last part being our whole MarTech and insights, and that is
Speaker:me shaking up so much with AI right now.
Speaker:Uh, so that could be everywhere from how do we manage our tech stack, how do we,
Speaker:you know, send classic emails, which I could have a whole 'nother discussion
Speaker:around, like is email still alive or not?
Speaker:Uh, and then how do we actually pull out the insights from all the data that we
Speaker:see, which is ripe for AI at the moment.
Speaker:My role dual reports to the CMO and the CRO.
Speaker:So it puts me in a really unique situation, um, and has made me that
Speaker:true revenue marketer because now I have that sales side of my brain the whole
Speaker:entire time too, of how do we get our walk, what's gonna happen this quarter,
Speaker:what's our rolling four quarter, uh, and it gives me a really unique perspective
Speaker:that I didn't have before this role.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's cool.
Speaker:It's so meaty.
Speaker:Um, is there anything more you wanna say about day- day in the life of
Speaker:leading a marketing team to kind of build a full enterprise model for AI?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, from overall, for building a whole enterprise model for AI and
Speaker:leading a whole team, it's been a journey 'cause you always have to teach
Speaker:the lowest common denominator, right?
Speaker:So you have to figure out how do you bring peop- how do you make sure that
Speaker:the stars that are going ahead can keep motivated while you're trying to
Speaker:pull everyone else along that might not have that technology background?
Speaker:Like we started off, I have a really strong tech and art background, so
Speaker:I understand systems really quickly.
Speaker:I understand processes.
Speaker:I can get really in the weeds of technology, but you
Speaker:can't do that with everyone.
Speaker:So you have to find the right - and you also have to take into account
Speaker:all the geo differences of how you communicate to people as well, and
Speaker:time zones and those sorts of things.
Speaker:So I think for yourself as a, as a leader, you have to have humility to step back
Speaker:and say, okay, I need to be able to teach the lowest common denominator while,
Speaker:while making the high potentials that are continuing to expand with AI motivated,
Speaker:and how do you find that middle sometimes?
Speaker:It's one of those interesting challenges that I've been working
Speaker:through for the last year.
Speaker:Interesting.
Speaker:And do people know when they are in that kind of laggard group in your mind?
Speaker:I don't…
Speaker:That's the question for them, right?
Speaker:Like, I don't know if they know this 100%, um, because you're trying
Speaker:to teach everyone, and you'll go deeper with some people, right?
Speaker:So maybe they do know, 'cause you'll be like, "How about we do our own
Speaker:session on this?" Or "how about I get you some one-to-one coaching on
Speaker:these areas as well?" Um, I really try not to call people out specifically,
Speaker:um, because that, in some cases, that can make people retreat too.
Speaker:You really want, my old model is like h- we have this saying, so at Rocket,
Speaker:we have our brand tagline is, "We are going to meet you wherever you are
Speaker:in your modernization journey." So our AI COE tagline is, "Meeting you
Speaker:wherever you are in your AI journey."
Speaker:And how do you end up bringing, like, that brand ethos and that
Speaker:mission ethos into the team too?
Speaker:That's exactly what we try to do is say, we're gonna meet people wherever
Speaker:they are, and we're gonna give them the specialized training or the
Speaker:skills, or if they are rock stars, we're gonna give them the spotlights.
Speaker:We're gonna find other areas that they can go.
Speaker:They can learn how to build agents.
Speaker:They can go into the next step overall.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Um, I like that because for people who are less, um, you know, uh, less
Speaker:on the cutting edge, they, uh, yeah, you don't wanna make them retreat.
Speaker:You wanna, you wanna be kind of nurturing.
Speaker:Before I go into this AI Center of Excellence model, I have a question,
Speaker:'cause you've, you've had the title of Digital Transformation Leader in the past.
Speaker:What, how is it different to lead an AI transformation
Speaker:versus a digital transformation?
Speaker:It's, it… So there's so, they're, they're similars and different, right?
Speaker:So the similarities are you've had to make processes digital, right?
Speaker:Like so traditional, like when I was at John Hancock and Manulife,
Speaker:it was, like, literally taking paper and turning it into a digital format.
Speaker:Or like how do you change call center behavior to, like, start to have, like,
Speaker:these digital, like, stops beforehand of, like, how do you route people, right?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:All of that's behavior change.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And so it's very similar in that way, where AI is behavior change, and
Speaker:that's what digital transformation was, and it's all about systems.
Speaker:So, like, yeah, and you have to have that systems thinking.
Speaker:I'll go back to it.
Speaker:I would say the pace i- of AI is different than digital transformation.
Speaker:Digital transformation has been, like you said, 20 years,
Speaker:and people have had a ramp-up.
Speaker:And, like, we… I, we just had a quiz the other day on, like, when was the
Speaker:first time, the first instance of AI?
Speaker:And it was spam filters for email back in 1995.
Speaker:And so, like, people have had this ramp-up for digital transformation overall,
Speaker:but AI has been, like, I feel like it's just hit people over the last two years.
Speaker:And then over this year it's just been, like, exponentially huge.
Speaker:Um, and the pace at which people are going and everything changing
Speaker:and how rapidly it's changing, I think that is the difference.
Speaker:It's like people are starting to get whiplash in a way
Speaker:of, like, how do I keep up?
Speaker:Um, where digital transformation was a little bit more of, like,
Speaker:a drip throughout the time.
Speaker:Yeah, more paced.
Speaker:More paced.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Got it.
Speaker:Interesting, but there's some similarities.
Speaker:So, um, s- building and, and leading the, the function that has this AI
Speaker:Center of Excellence in it, so can you talk about that, like, as if
Speaker:you're drawing on a whiteboard maybe?
Speaker:Totally.
Speaker:Um, all right.
Speaker:So I think of three areas, right?
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Like literally drawing-
Speaker:Three areas, I love it.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Uh-huh.
Speaker:Literally drawing on a whiteboard.
Speaker:And I, and what I'm gonna say to the, this whole group who's listening to
Speaker:this, is all of what I'm saying, it doesn't matter what size you are.
Speaker:You can be big, you can be small, you can be medium.
Speaker:It's like the principles, you're just like how big do you scale them or not, right?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I think of it first as, like, individual and AI enablement.
Speaker:Like, you equip the marketers on the practical AI skills that they need.
Speaker:You can teach them on the tools.
Speaker:We c- we all started with, like, what are the shiny tools?
Speaker:But it's like, what are the actual practical skills they need?
Speaker:How do you prompt?
Speaker:That is very different than how you, we all know this, than how you put in Google.
Speaker:What do you actually prompt to get the right output?
Speaker:That is even more important now when we talk about token and token usage.
Speaker:You need to get people to put in the right prompts so they don't go
Speaker:back and forth, and back and forth, and, like, burn through tokens.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:How do you give them the right tools based on, like I said, whatever their job is?
Speaker:And then how do you have a series of guidance on a regular
Speaker:cadence to keep them up to date?
Speaker:And so we have been very mindful of putting a training program in place
Speaker:over the last 12 months, I would say, maybe 18 months at this point.
Speaker:Um, first with what is the prompts, what are, what are those?
Speaker:Developing a use case library, developing a prompt library so people can share,
Speaker:and then slowly moving them through.
Speaker:And then along the ways, giving the spotlights to those people that are the
Speaker:high potentials and are going ahead, while doing that deeper level training
Speaker:with people that are just getting stuck.
Speaker:We did a lot of office hours.
Speaker:Um, a lot of, like, just open forum office hours.
Speaker:And we did bring in Pam Boris, who I work closely with, and I
Speaker:think you know who she is as well.
Speaker:She had started a company focused in beauty marketing, uh, overall training.
Speaker:And so we brought her in, too, because I found that people ask the
Speaker:questions that they might feel dumb asking to a third party more than
Speaker:their bosses or their managers.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So it's been, like, a nice way to have a third party come in and be like, you
Speaker:can do, ask whatever questions you want.
Speaker:Do you need one-on-one coaching?
Speaker:And then the other thing that we've been really focused on
Speaker:is that manager-level training.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:So making sure that the managers are also equipped to carry that message on as a
Speaker:company, uh, because you could imagine someone's, like, trying to learn AI that
Speaker:reports to a manager, and the manager doesn't believe in it, and they're like,
Speaker:"Just do it, just do it the regular way. Don't worry about this AI stuff." Right?
Speaker:Like, so you have to make sure that you've brought the managers along as well.
Speaker:So that was the first one, is like management training, continual cadence.
Speaker:Um, if I had my whiteboard, right, I'm just drawing these bubbles.
Speaker:The next one, next to it, is around AI-enabled workflows.
Speaker:So really, how do you design and scale those AI-powered workflows and with
Speaker:agents, and how do you build that out?
Speaker:Uh, in the beginning of the year, we moved our marketing org to a pod model overall.
Speaker:So we thought about our teams, an ABM pod, which has an ABM specialist, a content
Speaker:person, an SME, someone from sales.
Speaker:How do you then think about agents surrounding those and that workflow
Speaker:that enables people to get their work done and give them a superpower?
Speaker:I always like to say we use the Gallup survey every year, and one of the
Speaker:questions is, "I have my opportunity to do my best every single day."
Speaker:Uh-huh.
Speaker:I like to say that this workflow enables people to do their best
Speaker:every single day with a superpower.
Speaker:And so that is what this workflow and this section is all about.
Speaker:That, and then the last one is around campaign and project excellence.
Speaker:How do you pull together what the team has done with an AI in enablement,
Speaker:with a technology workflow to enable marketers and agents to deliver faster
Speaker:and higher impact campaigns, and optimize those on a regular basis?
Speaker:And so those have been our three areas that we've talked about the whole
Speaker:entire time with the marketing team.
Speaker:Uh, and that we have dedicated, and we just continue to reiterate it
Speaker:over and over again, that message.
Speaker:Here are our three areas, and today we're gonna go deep into this one.
Speaker:Here's our, you know, here are our three areas.
Speaker:Today we're gonna go deep into technology workflows so that people
Speaker:can see the vision overall, they can understand the plan how to get there,
Speaker:and then we're bringing them along, because you can't change people unless
Speaker:they want, unless they want to be.
Speaker:Got it.
Speaker:Got it.
Speaker:And, and just for context, you have how many people on your team?
Speaker:So the, I'm … This has been for the whole marketing team,
Speaker:including the customer success team, which is around 100 people.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:Um, what we have done though, is because use cases are different.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So we've done time with the product team specifically.
Speaker:We've done time with the traditional field marketing team.
Speaker:We've done time with the traditional demand gen team.
Speaker:So each person and each team, we've carved out special moments too,
Speaker:to focus on what they care about.
Speaker:Since sometimes the use cases are different.
Speaker:Now, because we've been doing this for over 18 months, we're pulling
Speaker:those together and now talking about the jobs to be done, and, and
Speaker:really looking at a full ecosystem.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Interesting.
Speaker:Can you talk about the organizational reimagining and, and kind
Speaker:of how that looks different?
Speaker:Like for, like for one, you have this person whose title is, I, I don't know
Speaker:what their title is, but the Center of Excellence person, like I imagine.
Speaker:Is that a full-time job?
Speaker:And are there other kind of new roles that didn't exist,
Speaker:you know, a couple years ago?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I think we would love this person to be the full-time job, right?
Speaker:We know, especially in PE-backed companies, you have to be
Speaker:creative with your teams.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So I like to look, when we start to think about, like who do we hire and what do we
Speaker:do, I like to look at the people that, to start, had some sort of tech background.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Has that intellectual curiosity, is a systems thinker, 'cause this is, this,
Speaker:this is, like, traditional sy- the systems thinking of how we build this out.
Speaker:Um, and that want to have a new challenge.
Speaker:Like, these people that are like, oh, you know, the people, the type
Speaker:of people that are just like, oh, I wanna take that, I wanna own it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I wanna figure it out because this is so gray right now, it changes so much.
Speaker:So I put this individual who was my Head of Digital Experience, head of website,
Speaker:head of all of that, in charge of this.
Speaker:They also had been doing a lot of work on our overall customer journey.
Speaker:So they understood the different pieces of it, and they just had that mindset of
Speaker:how do you build campaigns, how do you build them against a customer journey,
Speaker:but then also with a tech background.
Speaker:Um, that they could really dive into that.
Speaker:So, so that, that I would say, and then I tried to remove as much as I
Speaker:could off of their plates besides this.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I would say it's probably 50% of their time.
Speaker:I would love to have more dedicated people, uh, on it, right?
Speaker:So what I'm looking at now is how do I get, the next phase of this
Speaker:is, how do I get agent builders?
Speaker:Because that's the phase I like.
Speaker:If I can have a company come in and build me a few agents,
Speaker:but how do I maintain that?
Speaker:How do I grow that?
Speaker:H- that, that is my newest challenge, so I'm gonna use my development team.
Speaker:So I have a team of developers, um, four people roughly, two
Speaker:in India, two in Costa Rica.
Speaker:So I am gonna train them now on how to build agents.
Speaker:Because they have that tech background as well, and they understand
Speaker:code and those pieces of it.
Speaker:Um, but when I think about the, like, really technical agents,
Speaker:that's where I wanna train them.
Speaker:I, we have been training the rest of our marketing team on how to build their own
Speaker:productivity agents in Cowork, in 365.
Speaker:So people still, so there's, like, the low code version that we're trying to
Speaker:teach anyone that wants to learn how to.
Speaker:Uh-huh.
Speaker:And then that, like, broader ecosystem is the higher code one that we're
Speaker:using our development team for.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Right, right.
Speaker:And are you goaling people on AI kind of, I don't know, fluency or th- the percent
Speaker:of their work that is, uh, you know, uh, you know, kind of AI orchestrated
Speaker:or, uh, how does, how does that look?
Speaker:I mean, so we do look at usage and things like that, and we were
Speaker:looking, but I don't feel like the, like those kind of, like, stick
Speaker:mentality really helps people a lot.
Speaker:Like, it really, like I could look at people and be like, here's your
Speaker:usage, and like, here's how much you're using this percentage of time
Speaker:spent, percentage of time saved.
Speaker:Where the models are actually going towards, which is really interesting,
Speaker:is percentage of revenue by FTE now.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Because that is actually a real measure.
Speaker:And like you could say like, okay, I can get to market faster with a
Speaker:campaign, but if the campaign's generic and you get a bunch of bad MQLs that
Speaker:come through and they're trash, like that doesn't actually matter, right?
Speaker:So like especially like what I'm starting to look at is like how do you start to
Speaker:look at the amount of revenue of a company by FTE from a marketing perspective?
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:And, and some of those measures overall is like the efficacy that comes out of it.
Speaker:Like is, is the output good that is coming out of what you're doing with AI?
Speaker:Rather than like can you get something, can you reduce time
Speaker:from five days to one day?
Speaker:Like it doesn't matter if, like, it's not good.
Speaker:That's a really good point, yeah, and I don't know if everybody sees it that way.
Speaker:Might be just pure cost savings and y- you know, y- you, you want the
Speaker:quality improvement, you know, as well.
Speaker:You want the quality improvement.
Speaker:AI for the sake of AI is, like, it's just beige.
Speaker:Like, you just get this beige content that everything looks the same.
Speaker:You want it to be meaningful and meaningful work, and like, you-
Speaker:going back to my art background and going back to the creativity
Speaker:piece of it, it has to be human.
Speaker:It has to speak to humans.
Speaker:So it's like AI for the sake of AI isn't the right thing.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Got it.
Speaker:You talked about systems thinkers and curious people.
Speaker:How do you test for that?
Speaker:Uh, so there are a few ways that I test for that, right?
Speaker:So, like you can tell immediately if someone's a systems thinker just
Speaker:by the way that they draw things.
Speaker:If they are, like, if you're asking to solve a problem and they start,
Speaker:like, thinking about how things are connected and what are the different
Speaker:connection points, like, what, you need to have this before you have that.
Speaker:Like, that is a systems thinker.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Like, you can immediately be like, "This has to go here to here to here to here."
Speaker:It's like you can tell that very quickly.
Speaker:Um, and I've, like I said, I'm very much a process as a system thinker,
Speaker:so things have to connect and they have to have points overall.
Speaker:Intellectual curiosity is another one that you have, like, how do you test for that?
Speaker:You ask people questions.
Speaker:You see if they go deeper, and they say, "Why?"
Speaker:What, like, right?
Speaker:They, they're questioning themselves.
Speaker:Or if they get an output of something from AI, they don't
Speaker:just ha- hand it over to you.
Speaker:They'll say, like, "These are the three things that I thought were wrong with
Speaker:this," or, "This is where I would go deeper with this." Or like it's very…
Speaker:I, I was listening to, I went to a, what was it?
Speaker:Boston Business Journal had an event a month ago, so Professor Ramachandra
Speaker:was there, and he was saying, he was talking about how he's training his
Speaker:college kids and how he is actually testing his college kids now.
Speaker:And this was the best idea I thought about how to test for intellectual curiosity.
Speaker:He said he gives Perplexity, ChatGPT, Claude a question, and then he
Speaker:gives his students, here are the answers that I got from all of this.
Speaker:Like, this is the answer that Claude gave me.
Speaker:This is the answer that ChatGPT gave me.
Speaker:This is the answer Perplexity gave me.
Speaker:What would you add to this argument?
Speaker:Oh, I love it.
Speaker:And, uh, right?
Speaker:I love that moment because it's like no longer of like how are you using AI?
Speaker:It's like, what would you add to this argument?
Speaker:What would you add to this?
Speaker:What are the other questions that you wanna go deeper on?
Speaker:And that is intellectual curiosity because that's the world, and
Speaker:that's how it's gonna change.
Speaker:Like, we, like, if you can't add to the argument or add to the points
Speaker:that all these LLMs are putting out-
Speaker:Yeah
Speaker:you don't have a job in the future.
Speaker:You know, you have this concept, um, that you've been starting to kind of talk
Speaker:about, which is this, uh, 100x marketer.
Speaker:And, uh, I think I know what that is, but can you kind of discuss
Speaker:that and, um, bring that to life?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So there's a concept in tech and development and software
Speaker:around, like, 100x developer.
Speaker:So if you could make a developer 10x, then, so but imagine if you
Speaker:could bring that to marketing so that every single marketer, like I
Speaker:said, had super agents behind them, and you could 10x their output.
Speaker:They're 100x marketer, and then you'd have all these marketers that are focused now.
Speaker:When we talk about, like, jobs changing, they're focused on the strategy, they're
Speaker:focused on the things that quant and technology can't always get, which
Speaker:is, like, that human connection and the qualitative and all of those, and
Speaker:bringing the strategy to life while they have agents that are taking away all
Speaker:the menial, like, little minuscule tasks that they hate to do every single day.
Speaker:Like, if I can remove Jira ticket opening from every single one of my team
Speaker:members, I think they will, like, jump up and down with joy because that is
Speaker:the thing that they hate to do, right?
Speaker:Or if I can get a, if I can get them to add in the strategic guidance into an
Speaker:overall creative brief, but then that creative brief quickly turns into all
Speaker:the assets it needs based on agents and slows down all those handoffs and back
Speaker:and forth, like, that really changes the model and makes one person 10x.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So, uh, let's, a little bit more about talent and hiring.
Speaker:Um, we talked about curiosity, and we talked about, uh, kinda systems thinking.
Speaker:What about, like, evaluating somebody's AI skill set when they
Speaker:come in, you know, beyond that?
Speaker:Because somebody can be very curious, but curious about, I don't know,
Speaker:Opera or something, uh, you know, like, totally different, you know.
Speaker:Like, can you, can you do a deeper dive on kind of how you hire, especially
Speaker:with a, with a lens to having people be on the, on the kind of sharper
Speaker:side of the spear when they come in?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's been… So I've been hiring for a Director of MarTech and
Speaker:Insights over the last two months.
Speaker:And that's been an interesting hire, 'cause I want someone that's
Speaker:AI f- uh, really AI focused.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But in this world right now, who can really say that they have built, like,
Speaker:full agentic end-to-end in B2B software?
Speaker:And if they are, like, I really question that.
Speaker:I'm like, "Have you really?" Because I know the current state of everything.
Speaker:But I'm, I'm testing them for how they look at s- how they look into
Speaker:the technology, how they look at, like, building things with AI.
Speaker:So I talk to them like, how have you been using AI to gather on insights?
Speaker:Give me a really tangible example.
Speaker:And so, for example, one person that I'm interviewing, she sent me an article
Speaker:over the weekend about how she's been using, um, an example of how she's
Speaker:been using Claude to brillian- the insights from her Salesforce dashboards
Speaker:and what the output of that is, and, like, going really deep into there.
Speaker:So I've been going deep as much as I can, and, like, trying to get
Speaker:people to tell me what their use cases are for how they're using it.
Speaker:And then, like, keep going deeper with them to be like, rather than the surface
Speaker:level, if they're like, "Oh, well, I use it for reporting," I'll be like,
Speaker:well, how do you use it for reporting?
Speaker:What do you do?
Speaker:How do you actually… then do you connect it to other workflows?
Speaker:And I'm really testing them for how they think differently, too, of how the…
Speaker:And I always like to be like, "Is there a new use case?" I l- asked, one of the
Speaker:questions I asked her last Friday when I was interviewing was, "Tell me a use case
Speaker:for AI that I might not already know."
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:And that actually really helps too, because it, it gives me ideas.
Speaker:But then, also it's not just the ones that you can read everywhere.
Speaker:Was there anything that came up from that, in answer to that
Speaker:question, that was an aha for you?
Speaker:Um, she had something around her… This is gonna go really d- deep and nerdy.
Speaker:She had something around her CRM data and how she was working with the
Speaker:sales team with the CRM data, with the activity based, and coming up with
Speaker:signals for each one of the accounts that would help to tell how it was
Speaker:going to win with the next best action.
Speaker:Like it went very deep, and I was like, "Oh, well that is fascinating."
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's great.
Speaker:Do you have, like separate from the ones that you've discussed, the,
Speaker:these, uh, uh, kind of interviewing methods you've discussed, do you have
Speaker:a favorite interview question when interviewing somebody for your team?
Speaker:Like something that's particularly revealing beyond what you've talked about?
Speaker:I always like to ask them what they read and what they look at, and
Speaker:where do they find their information?
Speaker:Because I think that's really… It, it starts to talk to that intellectual
Speaker:curiosity of like, what do you read?
Speaker:Where do you find your information?
Speaker:Tell me something that I might not, might not know for my every single day.
Speaker:Um, and then I always like to ask them where do they think that AI is going?
Speaker:And that's a fascinating one, too.
Speaker:It's like, what do… I'm like, if you had a magic wand, tell me where
Speaker:it would go in the next six months.
Speaker:And that's another one too, because it just gets to how people are thinking,
Speaker:and if they're visionary, um, and if they're gonna push the limits or not.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's great.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:So, um, let's look ahead together, you know, on that, on that note, and
Speaker:I'm wondering if somebody is building, uh, an AI Center of Excellence for
Speaker:a company, we'll just say of some size, uh, like from, from the ground
Speaker:up, like where should they start?
Speaker:Well, I would always start within the individual and team AI enablement, I
Speaker:am, because if you don't get your team and you don't have amazing leverage from
Speaker:a team perspective, it doesn't matter what you build if no one's using it.
Speaker:It always goes back to like, it's not the tool's problem,
Speaker:it's the user's problem, right?
Speaker:Like if you could have the best tools in the world, but if people don't know how to
Speaker:use it, then it's like a waste of money.
Speaker:So start there.
Speaker:Start with the individual team enablement, the m- putting the
Speaker:spotlight on it, starting with the training where people need it overall.
Speaker:Then I would move to personal productivity agents.
Speaker:I like, rather than building the full-out ecosystem, what are the
Speaker:things that are gonna make people's days, uh, better every single day?
Speaker:The personal productivity agents to take away the tasks that take them hours a
Speaker:day and turn that into minutes a day.
Speaker:Um, and then I would start to look at where can you put it within your workflows
Speaker:from a campaign process perspective?
Speaker:And then the last piece, too, is around what existing tool sets do you have that
Speaker:already have AI embedded in them that you could start using right away, right?
Speaker:Like, that was one of the first things I did, where I sat down with Adobe, I sat
Speaker:down with Salesforce, I sat down with SalesLoft, and said, "What are the AI
Speaker:capabilities that I can tap into right now without having to build anything?"
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:Any landmine you'd tell, uh, somebody to, to step around?
Speaker:Any, um, you know, beyond what you've discussed here?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:I mean, I think the biggest thing is
Speaker:focus on where you spend your investment.
Speaker:Um, focus on AI washing.
Speaker:Like if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:Um, it really is, right?
Speaker:And like, and really do your due diligence.
Speaker:And, and this isn't a landmine, but just get out there, right?
Speaker:Like, I think that's the thing is like, get out wherever you are, get
Speaker:out, go to as many events as you can.
Speaker:Suck in the learnings overall.
Speaker:Um, we have such an amazing community within the… We have a
Speaker:Boston AI week coming up, right?
Speaker:In the September timeframe.
Speaker:Go to as many events as you can and just suck up all the learnings across.
Speaker:Well, well said.
Speaker:Final question for you is, um, what is your advice for a marketing leader
Speaker:who's sitting between a CEO who wants AI everything and a team that's overwhelmed?
Speaker:Come up with, well, it's the classic.
Speaker:I'm gonna say that I grew up in consultancies that used a model that was
Speaker:point of departure, point of arrival, plan of attack, communicated all along the way.
Speaker:Where do we wanna be?
Speaker:What is your point of arrival?
Speaker:What is your CEO's vision and point of arrival?
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Where are you today?
Speaker:And then be really honest around the steps and the gates to
Speaker:get there, and show that plan.
Speaker:I think that's the biggest thing is like people react really
Speaker:well when you say, all right.
Speaker:Here's where we're gonna get to, and here's how we're gonna get to it,
Speaker:and here are the very tangible gates that you will see along the way.
Speaker:And then communicate that.
Speaker:Continually bring that in and say, okay, as a reminder, this is where
Speaker:we started, this is where we're going, this is where we're at today.
Speaker:And that way it kind of takes some of the pressure off.
Speaker:You're always gonna have the pressure overall, but that like shows that you
Speaker:have a very meticulous plan against it, um, with all the steps to get there, and
Speaker:then what you need from them as well.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:Thank you so much for joining the show, Audrea.
Speaker:This has been great having you.
Speaker:It has been fantastic.
Speaker:It's always lovely to see you and spend time with you.
Speaker:That was Audrea Madey from Rocket Software.
Speaker:Now that you've heard from Audrea, think about what advice she had that you can
Speaker:put into action to boost AI fluency within your organization, no matter what size.
Speaker:Thanks for listening to The Get.
Speaker:I'm your host, Erica Seidel.
Speaker:The Get is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and
Speaker:leadership in B2B SaaS marketing.
Speaker:We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today's top
Speaker:marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.
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Speaker:If you like The Get, please share it, and please leave a review.
Speaker:To learn more about my executive search practice, which focuses on recruiting the
Speaker:make-money marketing leaders rather than the make-it-pretty ones, follow me on
Speaker:LinkedIn or visit TheConnectiveGood.com.
Speaker:The Get is produced by Evo Terra and the team at Simpler Media Productions.
