In this episode
Stephanie Trunzo, Chief Executive Officer at MERGE — a marketing and technology agency where roughly 70% of the business is health and wellness and 30% is consumer-native — argues that AI is not creating organizational gaps so much as revealing the ones that were already there. Speaking with Greg Kihlström, she lays out the expectation-versus-reality framework she uses with clients, explains why “we need an AI strategy” is usually a symptom of not having a strategy at all, and makes the case that the ROI on an AI investment is change ROI, not tools ROI. Running through the conversation is her distinction between what AI does and what people do: AI produces smooth surfaces, humans supply the texture — the nuance, judgment, and creativity that other humans actually respond to.
Key takeaways
- AI is a catalyst, not the cause. The gaps leaders are discovering in mindset, workflow, and culture largely predate AI; the paradigm shift is what made them visible.
- The working diagnostic is the gap between expectation and reality. If expectations outrun reality you operate in deficit; if reality outruns expectations you operate in abundance. The leadership question is which side you honestly need to adjust.
- “We need an AI strategy” is a tell. What organizations usually mean is that they need a strategy — after which AI can be discussed as part of it.
- The point of control on the pendulum is your value proposition. Companies getting whipsawed between hype and skepticism typically lack a strong true north or a clear articulation of their differentiators.
- Move the conversation from cost-cutting efficiency to hypothesis testing. Define what you are trying to learn and how you will know whether you learned it, rather than reaching for legacy KPIs to justify the investment.
- AI creates smooth surfaces while humans provide the texture. Texture — half-formed ideas, nuance, imperfection — is what other people grip onto, and it is where emotion and authenticity live, especially in regulated and personal categories like health and finance.
- ROI on an AI initiative is not a technology ROI on a tools decision. It is measured against organizational change, redefined workflows, and sometimes the strategy and value proposition upstream of both.
- The new KPIs do not exist yet, and pretending otherwise is fiction. Horsepower was a psychological bridge from horses to steam engines, not a real measure; scope small, non-core projects to learn what is actually worth measuring.
- Never outsource creativity, ideas, or critical judgment. Those are the uniquely human core that everything else should be built around.
Chapters
- 0:00 — Are we designing the human elements out of our organizations?
- 2:05 — What MERGE does and the markets it serves
- 3:55 — Why AI reveals organizational gaps rather than creating them
- 4:46 — The expectation-versus-reality framework
- 7:58 — The pendulum: finding the point of control
- 9:13 — From cost-cutting efficiency to hypothesis testing
- 10:45 — Are we recycling the same transformation conversations?
- 13:05 — Smooth surfaces and human texture, unpacked
- 16:13 — Inside MERGE’s AI Garage
- 18:49 — Measurement: why legacy KPIs don’t transfer
- 20:48 — Moving ABM past personas to real individuals
- 22:24 — Why AI ROI is change ROI, not tools ROI
- 26:21 — The leadership capabilities this moment requires
- 27:56 — Shifting GEO, AEO, and testing earlier in the cycle
- 29:13 — What should never be outsourced
- 31:14 — The 60-second test for informed opinions
- 32:28 — One year from now
- 33:42 — Staying agile
Why AI reveals gaps instead of creating them
Trunzo frames AI as a catalyst rather than a new toolset. When an organization treats it as a paradigm shift, the shift itself makes visible the gaps that already existed — unclear strategy, undefined workflows, mental models that were never reconciled — alongside new gaps created as teams work out how to use AI intelligently. Her framework is the distance between expectation and reality: expectations above reality produce a deficit, reality above expectations produces abundance, and the leader’s job is to be honest about which end of the equation needs adjusting. She sees clients over-rotate in both directions — those expecting AI to solve problems decades of humans could not, and those leaning back because they doubt the promise.
The pendulum, and where the point of control sits
Every wave of technology adoption has a period where the pendulum swings wildly, Trunzo says, and the goal is to sit at the point of control rather than out at the end of the arc. That point of control is the organization’s value proposition, strategy, and unique differentiators. Getting whipsawed — from metaverse investment to whatever comes next — is usually evidence of a missing true north rather than evidence of a bad bet. Hence her tell: when a client says “we need an AI strategy,” what they mean is that they need a strategy, and AI can then be discussed as one component of it.
Why AI creates smooth surfaces and humans provide the texture
Working with AI, Trunzo describes a smoothing effect: information gets ingested, synthesized, and played back as frictionlessly as possible. Humans do the opposite. They bring half-baked thoughts, ideas that aren’t fully fleshed out, and work that is full of nuance and richness rather than polish. People detect the difference, she argues, and texture is what they react to — she admits to occasionally wanting to leave a typo in an email as proof that a person was there. In regulated or personal contexts — health information, financial information — that texture is what carries emotional connection. As she puts it, you need texture to grip.
Measurement: why the old KPIs don’t transfer
The most frequent question Trunzo fields is how to measure AI work, and her answer is that the honest position is “I don’t know yet.” She uses horsepower as the analogy: a psychological bridge between a model people understood, horses, and the steam engine — useful for adoption, not useful as a measure. Teams reaching for existing KPIs to justify innovation budgets are producing numbers with no evidence behind them. The alternative is to define a hypothesis, run scoped projects that do not touch the core business, and let what you learn ladder up into the larger transformation story. On ABM specifically, she describes moving past what she calls lazy demographics: personas and journeys are useful abstractions, but they are abstractions, and AI now makes it possible to understand actual individuals rather than flat composites.
ROI on AI is ROI on change
Trunzo is direct that an ROI on an AI investment is not a technology ROI on a tools decision. It is an ROI against all of the change that has to happen — organizational structure, new workflows, and potentially the strategy and value proposition upstream of both. Change management, she notes, spent years as a throwaway line item funded only with leftover budget, on the assumption that change would happen by magic once tools rolled out. AI is the catalyst revealing that gap too. Measuring all of it is genuinely difficult; the first step is an organization acknowledging that every one of those layers has to be touched.
The leadership capability this moment requires
Asked what capability organizations actually need to build, Trunzo points to resilience and a redefinition of leadership skills: understanding that change is hard and good, that standing still is not available in any industry, and that leading through it is not command and control or five-year plans. She also advocates shifting left — pulling practices earlier in the cycle the way test-driven development moved testing forward. GEO and AEO, she notes, are currently retrofits applied to structures that already exist; the shift will be building for them from the start. And the boundary stays fixed: creativity, ideas, and critical judgment are not outsourced. For executives short on time, her prescription is hands-on: build something small and personal, because if you cannot describe a concept in sixty seconds, you shouldn’t have an opinion on it.
FAQ
Is AI creating new organizational gaps, or exposing existing ones? Primarily exposing existing ones. Stephanie Trunzo describes AI as a catalyst whose paradigm shift makes pre-existing gaps in strategy, workflow, and culture visible, while a smaller set of new gaps emerges as teams learn to apply it intelligently.
What framework should leaders use to assess their AI position? The gap between expectation and reality. Expectations that exceed reality put an organization in deficit; reality that exceeds expectations puts it in abundance. The discipline is being honest about which side of that equation actually needs adjusting.
Why does Trunzo say “we need an AI strategy” is a warning sign? Because the underlying need is usually a strategy at all. Once the value proposition and differentiators are clear, AI can be discussed as a component of that strategy rather than as a substitute for it.
What does “AI creates smooth surfaces while humans provide texture” mean in practice? AI synthesizes and returns information as frictionlessly as possible. Humans contribute nuance, imperfection, and half-formed ideas — the texture other people detect and respond to, and where authenticity and emotional connection live in personal or regulated categories.
How should organizations measure AI initiatives when the KPIs don’t exist yet? By defining a hypothesis and measuring whether the thing they set out to learn was learned, using small, scoped projects away from the core business. Trunzo compares reaching for legacy KPIs to measuring steam engines in horsepower — a bridge for understanding, not a real measure.
What is the ROI of an AI investment measured against? Change, not tools. Trunzo frames it as ROI against organizational change, new workflows, and in many cases the strategy and value proposition upstream of the technology decision.
About Stephanie Trunzo
Stephanie Trunzo is CEO of MERGE and a veteran tech and health leader with 20+ years of experience in technology, marketing, health, and storytelling. Formerly SVP and General Manager at Oracle, where she launched Oracle Health and led the Cerner acquisition, she also held executive roles at IBM and was President/COO of PointSource.
As a recent addition to MERGE’s board in 2024, Stephanie is poised to drive the company’s growth at the dynamic intersection of consumerism and health and wellness. A pioneer in AI with over 20 patents, she’s recognized for her thought leadership and was named to the Frist Cressey Ventures Collective in 2024. In 2026, she received an MM+M Pinnacle Award, and under her leadership, MERGE was named 2025 Agency of the Year and made the 2026 MM+M Agency 100 list.
Resources
MERGE is a marketing and technology agency built for the intersection of health and wellness. They help organizations navigate AI, digital transformation, and emerging technologies with a human-centered approach, using storytelling and technology to create more meaningful connections with the people they serve.
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Greg Kihlström: Hi, I’m Greg Kihlström, host of The Agile Brand, and here’s a question for you. In the race to implement AI for operational efficiency, are we accidentally designing the essential human elements of creativity, judgment, and trust out of our organizations? Agility requires not just the rapid adoption of new technologies like AI-based solutions, but the deliberate and human-centered redesign of the culture and the processes that support them. Today we’re going to talk about why AI adoption is less about the technology itself and more about a fundamental cultural paradigm shift within your organization, balancing AI-driven efficiency with the essential human elements of creativity, judgment, and empathy to create superior customer and employee experiences, and
[00:00:45] Greg Kihlström: how complex industries like healthcare can serve as a model for using AI to democratize knowledge and empower consumers.
[00:01:45] Greg Kihlström: To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Stephanie Trunzo, Chief Executive Officer at Merge. Stephanie, welcome to the show.
[00:01:53] Stephanie Trunzo: Hey, Greg. I’m so excited to be here. We’re talking about all of my favorite topics. [laughs]
[00:01:58] Greg Kihlström: Love it, love it. Yeah. Lookin’- looking forward to it as well. Before we dive in, though, why don’t you give a little background on yourself and your role at Merge?
[00:02:05] Stephanie Trunzo: So, um, the CEO here at Merge. Um, Merge is an organization that is kinda trying to really deliver on the promise of something we’ve been talking about as an industry for decades, which is, how do you take technology and marketing and bring them together in a way that is actually serving the end user? So, um, that’s what we’re doing here at Merge, and, you know, I kinda come from a multiple-decade background of, uh, big tech and working in, uh, technology and, uh, thinking about, how do we use technology to really drive, you know, effective change and outcomes for those end users?
[00:02:43] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Love it. And, and to give a little more context as well, who are Merge’s customers? What are the primary markets and, and clients that, that you serve?
[00:02:53] Stephanie Trunzo: So Merge, we like to, to bring together the idea of understanding consumer-born industries, so about 30% of our business is really, um, consumer native, meaning, you know, companies like American Express or Subway, um-
[00:03:09] Stephanie Trunzo: … and then about 70% of our business is wellness and health, and we talk about health in the, the broadest way you can think about, so whether that’s, uh, provider systems, payer, life sciences, animal sciences, but also wellness, so companies like Oura Ring, for example, who are kind of in that in-between place between consumer and regulated healthcare and healthcare proper. Um, so those are the people that we’re really trying to help take advantage of these new opportunities that we’ve wished for years that we had access to technology that could do things like translate our messages to individuals, that we could, you know, operate at the kind of accelerated pace, um, that I think we’re just starting to begin to see a
[00:03:54] Stephanie Trunzo: reality for.
[00:03:55] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Love it. So yeah, let’s, let’s dive in here, and we’re gonna talk about a few things today, but I wanna start with really from the, from the strategic standpoint here and just this, y- you know, digital transformation was talked about for years and years and years, and then AI came along, you know, generative AI came along. We’ll j- I’ll just classify it. And, and all of a sudden, you know, there, there’s lots of talk about transformation, but there’s a need to kinda redefine it. And, and one of the things you’ve talked about and, and written about is that AI isn’t necessarily creating gaps, but it’s revealing them. And so from that strategic standpoint, what are some of the most significant organizational gaps, you know, could be mindset, workflow, culture, all of the above, that, that
[00:04:40] Greg Kihlström: leaders are, are discovering as they begin to integrate these AI-based tools more deeply?
[00:04:46] Stephanie Trunzo: Yeah, and I think, I think you just said it, Greg, which is that, you know, what I’m observing is that AI is a catalyst for so many things. When we think about it as a paradigm shift and not just a, a new set of tools-
[00:04:58] Stephanie Trunzo: … um, that paradigm shift, I think, is creating a lot of visibility to gaps that already existed and new gaps that are getting created as we understand kind of how to use AI intelligently. Um, the gaps to me are… You know, a framework that I think about a lot is the gap between expectation and reality, right? And you can adjust either end of that equation, but if your expectations are greater than reality, you’re gonna be in a deficit, right? I’m expecting it to do more than it’s actually delivering. If reality is greater than expectation, you’re in abundance. You’re, you’ve got things that you didn’t expect in terms of opportunities, promise, and value. And I think, you know, the gaps that we’re starting to see as people are embracing
[00:05:43] Stephanie Trunzo: AI or at least evaluating how to embrace it is, you know, that gap between expectation and reality. Are you being honest with yourself about which side of the equation you really need to adjust? Because I see, I see clients, I see people that I talk with in industry over-rotate both directions, so over-rotating to, “AI is gonna solve every problem that I’ve ever had in my business”- Without effort, by magic, right? And so your expectations are always gonna outpace reality when you’re hoping for something to accomplish goals that you haven’t been able to accomplish, you know, with-
[00:06:21] Stephanie Trunzo: … decades of humans. And I also see people who think, you know, reality is bigger than the expectations, and so they might be the folks that are leaning back a little bit because they don’t quite believe that it’s gonna deliver on, you know, the promise. Or-
[00:06:38] Stephanie Trunzo: … it’s the people who, you know, truly are starting to embrace it and seeing outcomes where they are in a place that, uh, they can chart a path that is gonna give them additional value, and so that abundance kind of thinking. I see an opportunity. I’m a futurist, and I get really excited, and so therefore reality is bigger than expectations because I’m very excited by what is possible.
[00:07:00] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think, you know, to, to your point about there, there are, yeah, there, there is this not only divide, but I would even say some organizations are, are both just in, uh, depending on who you talk to and, and what you’re talking about as, as well. And so there’s, there’s risk in, in both of those scenarios.
[00:07:22] Greg Kihlström: What, what would you say to, you know, or what do you say to companies that are, uh, you know, again, lots of companies risk-averse. Lots of companies been burned by the latest th- you know, uh, sorry to-
[00:07:34] Greg Kihlström: … for anyone that did that, but, like anyone that over-invested in the metaverse, you know, let’s just say we’ve-
[00:07:39] Greg Kihlström: … gotten burned sometimes before with, with some of these trends. But I think the thing that’s, I think, uh, different about AI, there’s so much hype, uh, as well, acknowledged, but you can actually generate real value from it too. So it’s, it, it’s complicated, [laughs] right?
[00:07:58] Stephanie Trunzo: It is complicated. I think about it like a pendulum, right? This is, this is one of the ways that I talk to our clients about it, is you think about… A- and you pointed out, you know, there’s, you can go back and look at different waves of technology adoption or disruptors or catalysts in every industry, and there is a, a time period where, you know, it’s kinda going wild. Like, no one quite knows, you know. But-
[00:08:21] Stephanie Trunzo: … if you think about a pendulum, you wanna be at the point of control, not kinda down on the end swinging-
[00:08:27] Stephanie Trunzo: … wildly in investment in Metaverse or, or whatever else you, you might be excited about in terms of innovation. And the way that I, I encourage people to think about it is that that point of control is your value prop, your strategy, your unique differentiators. And I think one of the gaps that ends up getting revealed is if you feel like you’re getting whipsawed back and forth at the end of the pendulum, it’s probably because you don’t really have a strong true north-
[00:08:54] Stephanie Trunzo: … or a strong way of making sure that you can describe what your strategy and value prop is. And, you know, I think of, like a, a tell is when people say, “We need an AI strategy.” Well, you need a strategy is what you mean, and [laughs] then we can talk about-
[00:09:10] Stephanie Trunzo: … how AI might be part of that strategy.
[00:09:13] Stephanie Trunzo: Um, so I think that gap, you know, kind of helping people calibrate where they are in that expectation versus reality, um, is, is a lot about, and, and you kinda said this as well, shifting the hype from cost-cutting efficiency, I mean, those are great words, and we all love them-
[00:09:34] Stephanie Trunzo: … but towards hypothesis testing. Like, what are you trying to do? [laughs] Do you have a strategy? Can you articulate it? And what do we wanna learn? If you can set up a hypothesis, I think that’s where the story starts to change with AI because now you’re, you’re looking at what is an outcome or an objective. I think this is especially important, and at Merge we talk a lot about this, is that, you know, we’ve talked forever about the CTO and the CMO needing to be in the same room.
[00:10:04] Stephanie Trunzo: Um, but there’s this Venn diagram, and I think the more that those circles n- come together, the better off each organization is going to be, is like let’s not divide budget. Let’s not divide attention and energy. Let’s think about what can we do differently together because the world has changed around us, and so conditions are different. But that’s two different mental models also. So-
[00:10:28] Stephanie Trunzo: … you know, I think we have a confluence of change happening that is AI as a catalyst, but it’s also churning up a lot of conversations, digital transformation, transformation, change management. None of them new words or phrases, [laughs] uh-
[00:10:42] Stephanie Trunzo: … just different contexts now.
[00:10:45] Greg Kihlström: Do you think that… A- and yes, I mean, you know, anyone, I, I’ve, I’ve gotta say I’ve been doing this for a few decades myself-
[00:10:51] Greg Kihlström: … and I’ve seen, you know, seen the, the trends and the cycles. And, you know, you live long enough and, and you start to see history repeating itself and, and all that. Do you think that some of the conversations that adopting some of these AI-based tools and, and platforms, do you think they’re generating better conversations, or are we just kind of repeating ourselves from five years ago?
[00:11:15] Stephanie Trunzo: I think, you know, and I, I, just to reflect on what you just said, because I was thinking this morning, um, about talking with you, and I was thinking about some of the things even around Agile, like, you know, when we had the conversations moving from Waterfall to Agile, and then everyone cheekily was like, “Agile Fall,” because they couldn’t really adopt all of the philosophies.
[00:11:36] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:11:36] Stephanie Trunzo: And, and I was thinking, “Okay, yes, I’ve been doing this for decades as well.” And I was starting to think, “Well, it makes me feel old.” And I reframed that because what I instead feel is very privileged that I have gotten to experience these different waves of, you know, rapid technology acceleration, but also the waves of how we as humans adapted ourselves around those waves of technology. And so-
[00:12:01] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm
[00:12:02] Stephanie Trunzo: … you know, to answer your question, I do feel like we’re recycling some of the discussions with one key difference, which is in the past we recycled them with no new information, no changes in variables.
[00:12:13] Greg Kihlström: Mm.
[00:12:13] Stephanie Trunzo: And it was just a complete You know, loop. [laughs]
[00:12:17] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah
[00:12:48] Stephanie Trunzo: … we’re talking about experiences at the end of the day and how other people experience your value prop, your brand, your service, whatever it is. Um, and we can’t isolate those discussions into a marketing lens and a technology lens anymore.
[00:13:05] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, talking a little bit about then how we implement this and how we put this to, to practice, a- another thing that you’ve talked about is AI creating smooth surfaces while humans provide the texture.
[00:13:20] Greg Kihlström: I, I, I love that, that analogy, but I wonder if you could, uh, you know, u- unpack that a little bit and maybe give a practical example of, you know, what, what does this look like in, in practice?
[00:13:29] Stephanie Trunzo: That I feel like is a, it’s a felt thing and a seen thing, right? Like, I-
[00:13:34] Stephanie Trunzo: … feel like when I work with AI, you can tell, um, it’s, it’s smoothing everything out, right? It’s ingesting a ton of information, synthesizing it, playing it back, um, and doing it in a way that is as perfect and frictionless as it can possibly make it.
[00:13:56] Stephanie Trunzo: Humans bring half-baked thoughts. They bring, you know, ideas that aren’t fully fleshed out yet. They bring, um, content written or designed in a way that is not perfect. It is, um, full of nuance and texture and richness and, and I think that y- you know, we as humans have an amazing capacity f- for incorporating billions of data points in every millisecond and discerning things that we may not ever be able to explain why we understood it the way we understood it. And I think humans are able to detect the difference between that smoothness and something that has texture in it. And so
[00:14:41] Stephanie Trunzo: I find myself sometimes inclined, as, as a- an English major in, of the past who used em dashes prior to AI, like I find myself sometimes wanting to leave typos in an email or in a document just as like proof of evidence that I was there and this is something that I produced. So that texture that I think humans bring are, is what other humans will react to. It’s where emotion comes in. It’s where authenticity, it, you know, is important and when we’re, we’re talking especially about things like regulated industry or, um, cases where like your health information or financial information, where it’s very important and private and personal, um,
[00:15:26] Stephanie Trunzo: you wanna make sure that, that people feel that connection and that emotion is part of the story, and that we don’t let it just get smoothed away, um, into something that has nothing to hold onto then. You need texture to grip, right?
[00:15:42] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And I, I also, I, I do mourn the loss of the em dash in, in-
[00:15:48] Greg Kihlström: … uh, much of my writing. I, I’m very self-con… I, you know, as, as, as someone who loved using them, m- I probably overuse… Maybe that’s part of why, uh, I write enough, I probably helped train a, a model there or something which like-
[00:16:00] Stephanie Trunzo: That’s the way I think of it. I think, well, all of us amazing writers in the world-
[00:16:04] Greg Kihlström: [laughs]
[00:16:04] Stephanie Trunzo: … who have been using punctuation correctly- [laughs]
[00:16:08] Stephanie Trunzo: … up to now, we did the right thing. This is what a well-trained model should look like, I guess.
[00:16:12] Greg Kihlström: I know. I know.
[00:16:13] Greg Kihlström: [laughs] So, uh, you know, an- another, another key part of implementing is, is experimenting, and I think, you know, you touched a little bit on that. I, uh, I think I’ve personally, you know, and with the companies that I work with, I’ve s- I feel like I’ve seen a resurgence of marketers thinking about hypotheses and stuff. Not everybody, it doesn’t come naturally to everybody. Some people need to learn or whatever, but I do feel like there’s a little more of that going on. But also, you know, your, your team at, at Merge, for instance, has, um, a, a AI garage to, to do some internal initiatives and, and things like that. I think-
[00:16:48] Stephanie Trunzo: We do
[00:16:48] Greg Kihlström: … things like that are, can be incredibly important. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, what, what have you done with that? How does, how does that work, and how might somebody apply something similar?
[00:16:57] Stephanie Trunzo: So we do. We, uh, we have an AI garage. Um, our AI garage has a couple different, um, objectives. You know, it has… I think about dividing things up a little bit between the experience of using AI and what AI produces, right? So it’s-
[00:17:14] Stephanie Trunzo: … it’s the production of the tool and then what the tool produces.
[00:17:17] Stephanie Trunzo: So, uh, the AI garage for us is as much about, um, I think early on especially, enablement. Like, w- we can’t expect people to pick up tools that they’ve never used before and automatically have like expert-level skillsets on how to use them.
[00:17:36] Stephanie Trunzo: And I think how to use them isn’t just feature, function discussions. It’s mental model conversations about how you think, you know, if, uh, if search gave us the ability to consider, um, poetry, right? Because you’re condensing all of your thoughts into something very short. AI is giving us the ability to write prose because it’s systems level, it’s conversation level, it’s bigger.
[00:18:04] Stephanie Trunzo: Um, and I think that we have- AI Garage for us is about helping people, um, really think about how this is a paradigm shift rather than just, “Here’s a set of tools.” So yes, you can go, you know, our AI Garage has set it up so that anyone at Merge can log in and see everything that is available for them. We’ve made a secure moat around it so that it’s self-safe play, basically. And then the AI Garage is also developing platforms and agents and tools for us to be using as Merge employees and for our clients. So it’s both inward and outward facing, um, and I think it must be because that is what a mental model requires, is change inside and outside.
[00:18:49] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about measurement as well here.
[00:18:54] Stephanie Trunzo: Yeah.
[00:18:54] Greg Kihlström: And I wanna talk about your, your team e- evolved its, uh, account-based marketing, ABM approach, um, using AI tools to move beyond, you know, to use your words, you know, beyond lazy demographics-
[00:19:08] Stephanie Trunzo: Yeah
[00:19:08] Greg Kihlström: … to real human signals. You know, what, what is, what does that mean and, and how do you measure a suc- the success of, of this more nuanced approach?
[00:19:18] Stephanie Trunzo: And I’m, I’m so glad you asked about that because I think it is also one of the conversations I’m having very frequently, is y- how do we measure this? So people are wanting to use, just like always, KPIs from the past, but-
[00:19:32] Stephanie Trunzo: … you know, like even the measurement horsepower, you know, you think about like where did that come from? It was a psychological bridge between a model that people knew, which was horses, and the steam engine [laughs] in this case, right?
[00:19:46] Stephanie Trunzo: Does it help anyone to measure horsepower? No. [laughs] It was just-
[00:19:50] Stephanie Trunzo: … a way to help move people’s brains from what they knew to what today looks like, or the future in that case. And I think we’re in the same situation right now, which is what are the new KPIs? I don’t know yet. What we can say is we can define a hypothesis, and here’s how we’ll know whether that thing we’re trying to learn, did we learn it or not? And I think people, by and large, are trying to leverage the existing KPIs that they have to justify investment or decision-making in, you know, how they’re gonna apply their, their funds in innovation. And-
[00:20:26] Stephanie Trunzo: … I think people need to get comfortable with the unknown right now because pr- assuming I can say we’re gonna have a 15%, uh, decrease in budget, sure, we can make up these KPIs, but we have absolutely no evidence until you start the work of understanding truly is that gonna give you the, the value that-
[00:20:48] Stephanie Trunzo: … you need. So, you know, to your question on, on ABM and kind of looking differently at the way we identify individuals, we don’t have to rely on, um … Personas have a, a place and a purpose, and they’re very useful. Journeys are useful, but they are not, uh, practical and real, right? They are-
[00:21:09] Stephanie Trunzo: … abstractions, and they are concept. And so now we have the ability to use those to drive our understanding of reality and find Greg, and find Stephanie, and understand more about us as individuals than what a flat persona or, you know, an ideal journey when the reality of a journey is, is never linear, right? Like, we’re living our lives in 3D. So-
[00:21:33] Stephanie Trunzo: … um, that’s a lot of the work that we’re doing, is, is helping people and, and ourselves. We have a big drink your own champagne, um, mentality here at Merge, is that we have to always be our own first customer. We should learn and then share that with our clients. Um, and a lot of those conversations truly are about, “I know this is how you used to measure your business.” Um, clicks, eyeballs, these are not the things that we need to be measuring anymore. And I think that is also a really exciting moment because just like horsepower and just like, uh, you know, when, when Agile became kind of the first order of conversation, you start to realize what value do you really want to measure? Um-
[00:22:16] Stephanie Trunzo: … and that doesn’t come until you are in the process. You can’t know what you’re gonna measure until you kind of get into the work a little bit.
[00:22:24] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, and I think that, that gets to just the, the complexity of these things. And I know, again, predating AI transformation, digital transformation was certainly, you know, many organizations tied up in that for years, some successful, some not so much, but all of them doing something. So it’s, in a sense, it’s not that we’re necessarily doing something completely different than we were five, 10 years ago with some of these transformation things, but, you know, the, the ROI of, of an AI initiative is often tied to transforming processes-
[00:23:00] Stephanie Trunzo: Yes
[00:23:00] Greg Kihlström: … transforming entire systems. How do you, how do you begin to measure things when, uh, when it’s, it’s a work in progress, but also it’s so, it depends on so many changing pieces?
[00:23:14] Stephanie Trunzo: Right. And I think that a- acknowledging what you said is the first step, um, and, and this is a big part of, you know, we, we say digital transformation, we say change management. You know, change management, I think for many years was a throwaway phrase of like, if there’s a little extra budget, [laughs] we will allocate it to change management. Otherwise-
[00:23:36] Stephanie Trunzo: … we’re just gonna roll these things out, and change will happen by magic. And I think, again, AI is a catalyst for revealing some of the gap there that this isn’t a nice-to-have. We can call, label it something else-
[00:23:48] Stephanie Trunzo: … but acknowledging that an ROI on an AI investment is not a technology ROI on a tools decision. It is-
[00:23:58] Stephanie Trunzo: … a ROI against all of the change that needs to take place, whether that’s organizationally, whether that’s defining new workflows, whether that is, you know- Like I said, it may even be the whole way back up the stack upstream at making sure you know what your strategy and value prop is. Um, so it’s very difficult to measure all of those aspects, but I do think that the first step is at least acknowledging [laughs] that you’re aware as an organization that all of those things need to be touched, and that you do need to think about how they’re all gonna come together. I also really encourage people, like we talked about the pendulum a little bit, like pick a couple fun projects that are not gonna impact your core business or your value prop-
[00:24:43] Stephanie Trunzo: … and use them to learn on. Like, you can set measurement against smaller scoped projects and learn from them and let that ladder up into your bigger transformation story. Um, you know, and I think a little bit that, that two mental models also coming together between technology and marketing is, a additional complexity on top of everything that we just described here, because you’ve got, I think if you come from a technology lens, you believe in iteration, you believe in continuous improvement. You- it’s baked into your DNA that there is no such thing as done, like you are always moving, right?
[00:25:21] Stephanie Trunzo: And in traditional advertising, you know, where marketing kind of came out of, there is a sense of done because at some point the thing goes up in Times Square or the ad-
[00:25:31] Greg Kihlström: Right [laughs]
[00:25:32] Stephanie Trunzo: … is ended, right?
[00:25:32] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:25:32] Stephanie Trunzo: And like, there is this notion. And so those mental models also are pretty different. You know, we, from a tech lens, you identify a scope and then you figure out the budget. Marketing figures out budget and then identifies scope. Like it’s, uh, two different worlds coming together at the same time. This big collision of, of exciting things are happening in the industry around us.
[00:25:55] Stephanie Trunzo: And I think it’s also, you know, back to your earlier question, it’s a reason why these conversations can’t continue to just circle a drain. There are too many new variables and new things that need to be considered that I think we’re gonna be able to unlock a bunch of decade old [laughs] hopes and-
[00:26:11] Stephanie Trunzo: … and dreams, uh, in the next, I don’t know, five months. Let’s see how fast acceleration really is happening, but fast.
[00:26:21] Greg Kihlström: We can’t just be focused on the technology. We can’t just be focused on the platforms and, and some of these other things. What’s the, what’s the capability or, or even the mindset that, that orgs need to be fostering within, not only their leadership, but the, the people doing the work to get through what- whatever the next thing, you know, the, there, there’s gonna be a new, you know, a new anthropic model tomorrow and a new, you know, what… But like that’s, those are details in the, in the scheme of things. What’s the, what’s the capability that really needs to be built to, to navigate all this?
[00:26:57] Stephanie Trunzo: One thing is that we need to be redefining what leadership skills are required in this moment. Um, resilience, the understanding that change is hard and good, and that-
[00:27:12] Greg Kihlström: Yeah
[00:27:12] Stephanie Trunzo: … you can’t sit still, that evolution is a crit- There’s no business anymore. It does not matter what industry you’re in. Um, you know, we work a lot with regulated industry, which is even more complex and adds additional layers on top-
[00:27:26] Stephanie Trunzo: … of all of the layers that we’ve been discussing. Um, but I think that, you know, really leaders who understand how to bring their organization with them through major changes like this, it is not a command and control. It is not, you know, giving five-year plans. It is being in the moment and reacting in the moment. And yes, like having a, a north star, having a stable point that you can reflect back to, but you know, helping people through, through that change. I think too, like, you know, people need to start thinking a little differently about the order of things. Like, I think about things like, um, test-driven development. You know,
[00:28:11] Stephanie Trunzo: there was a, there was a moment in time where it was like, this was the last thing we do.
[00:28:15] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:28:15] Stephanie Trunzo: Well, how about instead you start thinking about it, you know, earlier in the process-
[00:28:20] Stephanie Trunzo: … and then that changes the dynamic, and I think we’re gonna see the same thing with AI. Like we’re doing, you know, AEO and GEO and all of these things that are looking backwards at things that have been created already, or structures that are already in place to now make them AI friendly in some way or optimized. But if you’re optimizing something, it’s ’cause it already exists and you’re going back-
[00:28:42] Stephanie Trunzo: … and applying new constraints to it. I think we’re gonna start to see, and we need to, and we are starting to think about how you pull all of those things earlier in the cycle, right? How do I make sure, and sure, I definitely do this for fun in my spare time.
[00:28:56] Stephanie Trunzo: I write text messages in a way on purpose so that when they get summarized [laughs] to my intended recipient, right, they’re either funny [laughs] or-
[00:29:06] Stephanie Trunzo: … they’re making sure that they actually pull out the right information, and that’s just ’cause our brain is starting to learn, right, as you see it often enough-
[00:29:13] Stephanie Trunzo: … what that translation is gonna look like. So I think a big shift is gonna be pulling a lot of these concepts earlier in our conversations, in our strategies, in our content production, and, and, you know, back to why that’s all uniquely human is those ideas, um, and, and the advice and encouragement I give, right, is that, um, we should never outsource creativity. Um, that is something that is uniquely human. We are-
[00:29:42] Stephanie Trunzo: That is part of texture. That is part of like, don’t outsource ideas. You know, don’t outsource, um, your thinking, your critical judgment. Those are all things that they need to be core and most important, um, as, as we leverage AI.
[00:29:59] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. I mean, I think the, the opportunity, I, I wouldn’t say it’s a guarantee, but like the opportunity is y- I think of the, the term shift left from like engineering and, and testing and stuff that describes, I, I think what you’re, what you’re talking about, which I will say I think a lot of people, myself included, ha- Like I’ve al- everyone considers themselves strategic, I’m sure, right? So nobody wants to say they’re not strategic, but- I’ve noticed that I have been more strategic in some areas because of exactly what you’re talking about, is like I, I benefit by thinking 10 steps ahead. Like I, you know, I’ve always done that in some things that I do when I’m intentional about it, but I find myself actually doing it more with more things. And my hope
[00:30:44] Greg Kihlström: would be many more people can, you know, adopt that, that approach as well because they have the tools that can then do some of the, the frankly the, the less glamorous parts of this work down the road, and they can actually afford that mental-
[00:30:59] Stephanie Trunzo: Yes
[00:30:59] Greg Kihlström: … real estate for it.
[00:31:00] Stephanie Trunzo: Totally, and I, I think that, you know, the, the idea of pulling some of this stuff earlier in the cycle does give you a, a different frame of reference for how to think about strategy and create some space for it.
[00:31:14] Stephanie Trunzo: Um, I also think that, you know, I heard something or, or read it that if you can’t describe a concept in 60 seconds, you shouldn’t have an opinion on it, and I loved that because-
[00:31:27] Stephanie Trunzo: … I think a lot of what we see right now is, are people that have opinions on things that they have themselves not ever learned about, right? So-
[00:31:35] Stephanie Trunzo: … I am also always encouraging, especially folks in the C-suite who maybe don’t have a ton of time, but you need to get your hands on things and play with it yourself because it is the only way [laughs] I feel like people are going to really get where’s the value for them, you know, how do they think about it for their company and their audience. And so if you haven’t picked it up, you know, built an app for your family to track the shows they’re watching, or do something that is just-
[00:32:02] Stephanie Trunzo: … for fun, like, you know, measure the, the growth of your plants in your garden, or I don’t care, whatever interests you, do it in your spare time so that you actually have an informed opinion. Because I think a lot of the struggle that I’m watching play out, and even that pendulum swinging, is coming from people who don’t know. [laughs] They truly-
[00:32:22] Stephanie Trunzo: … just do not know.
[00:32:24] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:32:24] Stephanie Trunzo: And they need to invest a little bit of time themselves, um, in learning.
[00:32:28] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Love it. Well, Stephanie, thanks so much for joining today. Really, really appreciate you sharing your insights. Uh, got a couple, couple last questions as we wrap up here. First one, if we were having this interview one year from today, what is one thing that we would definitely be talking about?
[00:32:44] Stephanie Trunzo: Um, a year from today, I think we would be talking about, um, how insanely advanced we’ve become in understanding our own health, our own bodies, our own data, um, how much in a year we have leapfrogged decades of attempts at untangling some of… I al- You know, we already see it, so I can only imagine in a year what it is gonna look like for individuals who truly want to take control of their own health journeys.
[00:33:17] Stephanie Trunzo: I think also in a year, my hope [laughs] is that AI is only in the second sentence, not the first sentence, that we are-
[00:33:26] Stephanie Trunzo: … talking about the objective of what we’re trying to do and what is the reason that, that we care about this, and what is the virtuous goal for a population. And the second sentence is, and here is how we’re using AI or how AI is helping us achieve that.
[00:33:42] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Love it. And last question for you, what do you do to stay agile in your role, and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
[00:33:50] Stephanie Trunzo: Um, I am an extremely curious person. I love learning. I like new things, so I’m one of those bizarre people who change is, like, a joy. [laughs] I love it, so it’s easy for me. Um, but I also, I practice yoga. I offer that, um, to my employees and to Merge and anyone, whoever wants to practice. But I do feel like a lot of it is, um, it is agile in the sense that you yourself n- need to believe that learning, growing, being curious is good, and it is, you know, something maybe you’re just pre-inclined and drawn towards.
