You Don't Have to Figure It Out Alone

When Monica Kumar needed a leader to drive marketing AI transformation at Extreme Networks, she reached out to Drew to think through how to structure AI adoption and the role that could lead it.

That one-on-one conversation helped Monica clarify that she needed a right-hand person to own the charter. She has since moved forward with hiring someone for the role, while also relying on the community for candid peer support.

How Did CMO Huddles Help Monica Build Her Marketing AI Transformation Team?

CMO Huddles gave Monica direct access to Drew for a focused conversation about how marketing could adopt AI and benefit from it. That discussion helped her define the leadership support needed to move the transformation forward.

For Monica, the community also offers something harder to find inside the organization: a place to hear from CMOs facing similar pressure. Those connections remind her that she is not alone in the challenges that come with the job.

Drew, I think two things. One is, I think personally me reaching out to you has been very helpful. If you remember the conversation we had a few months ago, I was looking for a leader for marketing AI transformation for my organization.

We talked in a one-on-one about what does it mean to have marketing adopt AI and benefit from it? Like, how do you set that up? And I said, "You know what? I don't have the time in the day to do this myself. I need to find a person, my right-hand person, who can lead that charter for me."

And guess what? We're just hiring a person I can't announce yet, but, so I think that conversation was very helpful.

I think, in general, I view organizations as CMO Huddles also as therapeutic, I'll be honest with you. I think we get a lot of trashing and stuff that happens in our day-to-day job, and it's great to hear other colleagues and peers going through similar challenges and coming out of it.

So, for me, that's also what I'm hoping to get out of it. Obviously, create connections, but also feel like it's okay, like, what we are dealing with, I'm not the only one. This is part for the course. This is part of our job.