“Our CEO is demanding we become an AI-first company but is that really a thing?” asked a seasoned CMO from a $375mm SaaS company. This CEO’s demand is neither isolated nor surprising. It is, however, ill-advised. “AI-first” is certainly not a vision, or at least not one that will inspire growth or differentiate the company.
Leadership 101: Three Core Responsibilities
- Set the vision
- Hire the team that can achieve the vision
- Allocate resources to achieve the vision
AI-First Is Not a Vision
In her bestselling book, “The Right Kind of Wrong,” Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson writes about former Alcoa CEO Paul O'Neill, who shocked Wall Street in 1987 when he announced safety, not profits, as his top priority. Setting a goal for zero injuries, O’Neill empowered every employee to stop the production line if they saw a safety concern and fostered a culture of learning by insisting they study every accident, however minor.
When O’Neill retired 13 years later, Alcoa was both the most profitable and safest aluminum company in the world. It turns out that addressing safety issues leads to continually improving production processes, increased efficiency, and higher employee satisfaction. Using Edmondson’s language, employees thrived thanks to the “psychological safety” needed to inspire innovation.
Unlike zero injuries, AI-first is a solution in search of a problem.
Telling your team to use AI-first is like asking a four-year-old boy to play with a hammer. Most likely, they’ll have fun, but the outcome may prove expensive if not painful. This is not to say that using AI won’t help you accomplish lots of good things faster. However, returning to the vision thing, leaders need to focus on the big problems they want their departments or orgs to solve.
CMOs Need to Focus on the Big Problems to Get Big Stuff Done
Differentiation is undoubtedly a big problem for most brands. AI can certainly help you with competitive assessments, synthetic research, options generation, and even implementation suggestions. But it is a thought partner, not the decider. It will not help you build consensus with the executive team. It will not drive the commitment to execute relentlessly against your newly differentiated positioning.
What Are Your Biggest Challenges?
Seriously, I'd like to know. However, before sharing these, I would encourage you to prioritize them, then categorize them by scope (marketing-only, Sales & Marketing, GTM, company-wide, etc.) and timeframe (short, medium, long-term). With these in hand, applying AI will feel both purposeful and rewarding.
If you're a B2B CMO and DM me with a specific challenge, our team will connect you with another who either shares this challenge or has solved it.
Let's go human-first, shall we?
Written by Drew Neisser
