In this episode
Kate Dalbey, Chief Client Officer at Qualified Digital, argues that most underperforming marketing technology is not a software problem — it is an operating-model problem that surfaces after the contract is signed. Drawing on enterprise engagements with Mayo Clinic, CommonSpirit Health, Kaiser Permanente, UnitedHealth Group, CVS, Novo Nordisk and AbbVie, she walks through the three places rollouts break: the implementation itself, the shift from building a platform to using and optimizing it, and the “messy middle” about six months in where executive sponsorship quietly evaporates. She and Greg Kihlström also get into why training is not adoption, how to separate pragmatic resistance from personality-driven resistance, and why an all-green dashboard of usage metrics can sit on top of a shrinking business.
Key takeaways
- Modern enterprises don’t lack technology — they lack connection. Dalbey’s diagnosis is that systems, incentives and teams are set up in silos, so the stack never resolves a business challenge end to end.
- A failed rollout usually traces to the operating model, not the tool selection. Qualified Digital is frequently brought in to repair implementations where the platform was chosen correctly and the execution wasn’t.
- The hardest transition is from building to using and optimizing. Teams that have spent 20 to 30 years building things struggle to shift into a mode where the work is orchestration and continuous optimization.
- Executive sponsorship evaporates in the messy middle, roughly six months in. The executives who see engagements through stay close enough to understand the choices being made without, in Dalbey’s phrase, swooping in — and they invest one-on-one time to untie knots before those knots reach the teams.
- Training is not adoption. People attend a beautifully built session, receive the new six steps, and by the following week have forgotten it — because nobody attached the change to a reason that matters to them.
- The “why” has to be tailored, not broadcast. A single organization-wide rationale fails; different groups need the change tied to what they specifically care about, whether that’s better data for decisions or less grunt work.
- Resistance splits into pragmatic and personality-driven, and only one is signal. Someone raising a hand because a change will break the next 30 days or won’t serve customers is giving you information; someone unwilling to try at all is a different problem requiring different handling.
- Get to a business KPI fast, then broadcast the win. Dalbey’s example: a B2B brand deploying an AI agent to work cold leads should measure pipeline from cold leads, not agent activity — and the moment that number moves, say so loudly, because visible results are what pull the resistant along.
- Green usage metrics on a shrinking business is the failure mode to design against. Qualified Digital will tell a client directly when productivity measures don’t ladder up to business outcomes.
- An operating model has to be flexible enough to be reasonable and inflexible enough to hit the metrics it was built for. Dalbey’s approval example: design the model to require approval without gating on it, and campaigns reach market — and generate revenue — faster.
Chapters
- 0:00 — Why martech budgets underperform, and why it usually isn’t the software
- 1:33 — The phase that decides ROI: everything after the contract is signed
- 3:30 — Kate Dalbey’s role at Qualified Digital: “responsible for happy clients”
- 4:05 — Enterprises don’t lack technology; they lack connected systems and incentives
- 5:39 — The implementation gap: right tool, failed rollout
- 7:31 — From building to using and optimizing: the mindset shift that stalls teams
- 7:58 — What real executive sponsorship looks like in the messy middle
- 11:40 — Team integration: the integration nobody budgets for
- 12:57 — Trained versus changed, and attaching the change to a “why”
- 15:23 — Telling pragmatic resistance from the toxic kind
- 19:11 — All-green usage metrics while the business shrinks
- 21:24 — Flexible enough to be reasonable, inflexible enough to work
- 24:32 — What clients actually mean when they say they’re “adopting AI”
- 28:18 — One year out: why human connection gets more valuable, not less
Why rollouts stall on the operating model rather than the platform
Dalbey’s engagements divide into two shapes. In the first, the technology was selected for the right reasons — it addressed a real business challenge tied to consumer needs — and then broke during implementation, and Qualified Digital is brought in to right the ship. In the second, selection and implementation both went well, and the failure appears later as an adoption problem: people cannot move from having built the thing to using and optimizing it. She frames that second case as the harder one, because it is a mindset problem inside teams that have spent decades being rewarded for building.
Where executive sponsorship actually disappears
Support is easiest to secure at the signing stage, when the purchase still looks like a silver bullet. Dalbey locates the failure point about halfway through a large engagement, when the vision has been agreed, a mixed internal-and-partner team has been stood up, and things get messy. The executives who succeed stay close enough to know what decisions are being made — even when everyone is reporting that things are fine — and spend deliberate one-on-one time with partners working through problems before they arrive. Her other recommendation is physical: get the teams in a room together six months in, plan and budget for it up front, and follow it with a meal or a drink, because it is easier to untie a knot face to face.
Why training is a line item and adoption is not
A team can learn how something works without changing how it works. Dalbey has watched trainings run flawlessly — full attendance, a documented six-step process — and be effectively gone a week later, because participants could not remember why they were being asked to change. Adoption requires that people see themselves in the new way of working and understand the reason for it in terms they care about. That reason is not uniform across an organization, so the case has to be tailored by group and repeated across many conversations rather than delivered once.
Reading resistance correctly
Resistance is routinely written off as a culture or fit issue. Dalbey’s position is that humans simply don’t like changing, so resistance is the default state and the useful work is sorting it. Some of it is rational and long-range — the change won’t serve customers or the business. Some is rational and short-range — this will disrupt the next 30 days and someone is raising a hand about it. And some is a refusal to try at all, which she treats as a personality challenge that has to be handled differently rather than argued with. The sorting mechanism is a business KPI: the people who will go to the number with you are the ones who will carry the change.
Measuring value without fooling yourself
Adoption of modern platforms often coincides with democratization, so more people log in — which makes login rates and similar usage measures look healthy while nothing about the work has changed. Dalbey’s rule is that productivity metrics that don’t ladder up to business success are actively dangerous: every light green on a shrinking business. The alternative is to reach a business-level KPI as quickly as the reengineering allows and accept that it will sometimes take a while to surface, because tying the change to a business metric is also the fastest route to broader adoption.
Designing a model that is flexible and inflexible in the right places
Flexible platforms are a feature until they fragment how everyone works and the operating model drifts back toward whatever it replaced. Dalbey’s test case is campaign launch delays, referencing a Kihlström survey finding that 98% of respondents reported campaigns launching late. Her read is that the cause is almost always an approval gate — one person who must click a button. The design goal is a model that requires approval without gating on it, so that oversight is preserved and the campaign reaches market, and revenue arrives, sooner.
Getting specific about “adopting AI”
When a client says they’re adopting AI, Dalbey’s first question is what they mean by that, and her second is which business goal it supports — both are required. From there she diagnoses the phase: a vision that needs implementing, no vision that needs defining, or a prior failure with battle scars. She also listens for whether the answer contains original thinking, noting that LLMs function as a thought partner for everyone and therefore return the same patterns to everyone. Her closing note on the industry: everybody feels behind, some brands genuinely benefited from waiting and learning from others’ mistakes, and AI remains a tool in the toolbox rather than the answer to every challenge.
FAQ
Why do marketing technology rollouts stall after the software is implemented? Because the operating model underneath hasn’t changed. Kate Dalbey’s experience is that the technology is often selected correctly and either breaks during implementation or stalls at adoption, when teams cannot move from building a platform to using and optimizing it.
What does real executive sponsorship look like during a martech implementation? Staying close enough to the work to understand the choices being made without swooping in to override them, holding regular one-on-ones with delivery partners to surface problems early, and budgeting for at least one in-person session at the midpoint when the engagement gets messy.
Why doesn’t training produce adoption? Training teaches a team how something works; it doesn’t change how they work. Dalbey argues people have to see themselves in the new way of working and remember the reason for it, and that the reason has to be tailored to what each group actually cares about.
How should teams measure martech adoption without relying on usage metrics? Tie the change to a business KPI and get to it as fast as the process redesign allows. Login rates and activity measures can all read green while the business shrinks; a business-level metric is both a truer read and the fastest route to wider adoption.
How do you design an operating model that’s flexible without fragmenting? Make it flexible enough to be reasonable and inflexible enough to deliver the metrics it was designed for. Dalbey’s example is approval workflow: design the model so approval is required but does not gate launch, which preserves oversight while getting campaigns to market faster.
What should a client be able to answer before “adopting AI”? What specifically they mean by AI — a single feature, a workflow, an agentic system — and which business goal it supports. Dalbey treats both as prerequisites before advising on rollout.ital.
About Kate Dalbey
As CCO, Kate leads client management and growth initiatives at Qualified Digital, bringing over 20 years of digital marketing experience from both client-side and agency-side roles. She’s responsible for driving organic and net new growth by leading multi-disciplinary teams who turn light-bulb ideas into fantastic outcomes for the brands QD works with. Kate is guided by the client philosophy that “we grow because they grow.” Kate has consistently delivered year-over-year growth in her portfolio within fast-paced, high-growth start-up environments. She passionately believes that digital experiences can change people’s lives for the better and works diligently to see these outcomes arrive in real time. In her daily life at QD, Kate enjoys what she calls “the relentless pursuit of better business results” and takes pride in building the teams that can create them, from idea to strategy to plan to execution and measurement. Because what’s next isn’t enough, it’s what’s north that really gets her excited. Kate’s career experience is deeply rooted in healthcare, across provider, payer, and life sciences. The client roster she’s managed includes category powerhouses CVS Health, CommonSpirit Health, Mayo Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, Cigna, Aetna, Sunrise Senior Living, Gelesis, UNCH, Jefferson Health, Cedars-Sinai, Spaulding Rehabilitation, UHS, and Wedgewood Pharmacy. She’s also led digital transformation for AmeriGas, Hitachi Vantara, Thomson Reuters, ScanSource, U of Pennsylvania, and the Am. Board of Internal Medicine. When Kate isn’t delivering her unique brand of magic at QD, she’s with her husband and 2 sons. She loves cheering on Philly sports teams, coaching youth soccer with her husband, and traveling with her family.
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Transcript
[00:01:33] Greg Kihlström: [gentle music] Hi, I’m Greg Kihlström, host of the Agile Brand, and here’s a question for you. How much of your marketing technology budget is quietly underperforming, not because the software is flawed, but because your teams can’t or won’t fully adopt it? Because real agility was never about buying faster tools. It’s about having an operating model that can actually turn a tool’s potential into results and keep doing it as the tools keep changing. Today, we’re digging into the phase that quietly decides whether any MarTech investment pays off, what happens after the contract is signed with things like implementation and adoption. We’re gonna get into why rollouts stall and why the real cause is usually the operating model, not the tool, what it takes to move a team from trained to genuinely changed, how to measure real value without fooling yourself with usage metrics, and what shifts once the platform starts doing some of the work itself. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Kate Dalbey, chief client officer at Qualified Digital. Kate, welcome to the show.
[00:03:18] Kate Dalbey: Hi. Thanks. Thanks for having me.
[00:03:20] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah, always great to see you. Looking forward to, uh, to talking here. And before we dive in, why don’t you give a little background on you and your role at Qualified Digital?
[00:03:30] Kate Dalbey: Sure. So as, as you mentioned, I’m the chief client officer at QD. Um, I’m responsible for happy clients. That’s the gig. Um, and we partner with our clients. We, you know, we use the word partner, not vendor, to make sure that we’re helping them build experiences that meet consumer and business needs. Um, when they grow, we grow, and I love that, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
[00:03:55] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah, love it. And for those that may not be as familiar with, uh, Qualified Digital or, or QD, uh, what’s the company’s core focus? Who are the customers you typically work with?
[00:04:05] Kate Dalbey: Sure. So we’re an experience company creating connections across data, business, strategy, creative, technology. Um, and in this era of AI disruption, I will call it, um, many organizations are coming to, to us to help them transform and change and, and adapt and practically use AI to, to help create those connected experiences. So, you know, our– we’ve seen over and over again that modern enterprises, and I think you could- you share this with us, Greg, like, they don’t lack technology.
[00:04:40] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:04:40] Kate Dalbey: That’s usually not the problem. The challenge is things have been set, set up in a fragmented way, incentives are fragmented. There’s– Everything is kind of in silos, and it’s not connected in a way that helps achieve business challenges that meet consumer needs. So that’s exactly our sweet spot. That’s where we come in and help clients across a variety of, of different challenges. We work with complex large enterprises like Mayo Clinic, CommonSpirit Health, Kaiser Permanente, UnitedHealth Group, Marriott, not Marriott, I’ve learned.
[00:05:14] Greg Kihlström: Right. Yes.
[00:05:15] Kate Dalbey: [laughs] O’Reilly Auto Parts, CVS, Novo Nordisk, and AbbVie, and, um, help them kind of unpack these challenges and create great experiences that meet business goals. And AI, as our CEO Jackie Salim says now over and over again, is a tool in our toolbox. It’s not the answer to every single challenge on Earth, so.
[00:05:39] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Love it. Well, yeah, let’s, uh, let’s dive in here and, and we’ll touch on a few of those, those points as well. And I, I wanna start with what I teed up in the intro and just this implementation gap. You know, w- it’s– I think it’s, uh, in the, the, uh, three-legged stool they call it, you know, people process platform, I think it’s easy to blame the platform when- Uh, rollout stalls or there’s implementation issues or adoption issues or, or things like that. And, you know, certainly there can be tech explanations for these things, but how often is the real fault something else? You know, a, a process-
[00:06:20] Greg Kihlström: … of people, you know. Yeah, um, [laughs] yeah, we’ve, we’ve been through this before, right? So, um, so what, you know, what is the real way to kinda get to the, the problem instead of just kind of, “Okay, we changed tools, so it must be the tool”?
[00:06:34] Kate Dalbey: So it’s… I was thinking about this question a little bit too and, and a lot of times, because we’re brought in candidly to help fix a-
[00:06:44] Greg Kihlström: Hmm
[00:06:44] Kate Dalbey: … failed implementation.
[00:06:45] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yep.
[00:06:46] Kate Dalbey: [laughs] So we do see a lot of times that the technology was maybe chosen for the right reasons, which it’s going to meet business challenges that end consumer needs, great, that part has been done, but then it has kind of failed in, in the implementation piece. So we’re brought in to help right the ship there. That happens sometimes with our clients. Sometimes though, to your point, the other thing happens where it was chosen well, it was implemented well, and now there’s kind of an adoption problem where people are struggling with moving from the thing that was built to now we’re gonna use that thing and then optimize that thing. And I think that, that kind
[00:07:31] Kate Dalbey: of mindset shift of we’re no longer only building, we’re now using and optimizing to kind of orchestrate things, is, is really a hard thing for enterprises to kind of overcome. Because I think a lot of those teams have spent 20, 30 years kind of building things, right? And so to move away from that mentality is often really, really hard for teams.
[00:07:58] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Well, and then from a, from an executive support standpoint, you know, it’s, it’s e- nothing’s truly easy but, you know, it’s easier to get, uh, executive support at the signing stage. And, you know, it’s, it’s not dissimilar to… You know, we’re all customers in real… You know, it’s not dissimilar to, like, buying a really cool, expensive thing and, you know, everyone’s kind of excited about this new thing, that it’s gonna be the silver bullet that, that changes everything and makes everything easier to work with. And, you know, I’ve, I’ve been doing this long enough to know that, uh, you know, what, what you just said, basically [laughs] it’s, it’s, it’s easier said than done. But, you know, getting, getting that support, there’s certainly lots of reasons to do it. Certainly AI and, and all that conversation has been a reason to rethink how things are being
[00:08:43] Greg Kihlström: done, make sure you’re on the right platform, so on and so forth. But six months in, you know, when sort of the excitement, the contracts are signed, excitement is wearing off, let’s say, people are… You know, what, what does, what does real sponsorship look like when you’re in that kind of messy middle area, and where does it most often evaporate?
[00:09:05] Kate Dalbey: That is such a good question, and it’s ex- it’s, it’s usually happens, to your point, like halfway through that big engagement where things start to just get really, really messy. So the executives have worked really hard to get all that vision figured out and bought in, which is not easy, to your point, and then they’ve enabled a team to help realize that, that vision, which is typically people that work internally at the company and people like us that help, right, achieve that. The best executives that have seen this through to success are the ones that stay close enough to the work to understand what’s going on and the choices that have been made to this point
[00:09:52] Kate Dalbey: without kind of coming in and swooping and pooping. [laughs]
[00:09:55] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:09:56] Kate Dalbey: So in order to do that as an executive, you c- you have to stay close and you have to understand the choices that are being made. Usually when we’re in that kind of messy middle, I’ve been having a one-on-one with these executives all along the way, and we’ve been kind of unpacking and what I like to say untying knots together, right? Um, so that we can kind of identify the challenges that might crop up based on our shared experiences before they happen, and then we can kind of point the teams back to where they need to go. But the, the, the exec- so the executives that are kind of willing to invest that kind of time in terms of, like, showing up, even if everyone’s saying things are fine, you still kind of have to show up and understand
[00:10:41] Kate Dalbey: what decisions are being made, and then devoting some intimate time to certain partners so that you can kind of untie those knots together. It- that’s where s- the success happens. Um, the other thing that I see that executives have been very willing to do this, but sometimes brands have budget constraints, so it makes it harder, that messy middle that you’re talking about, right, six months in, if we can get the teams in a room together physically-
[00:11:12] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm. Yeah
[00:11:13] Kate Dalbey: … so they can kind of stare at the whites of each other’s eyes, you know? [laughs] It’s just easier to unpack and untie things when you can kind of look at somebody face to face as a human.
[00:11:23] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:11:23] Kate Dalbey: And so you have to kind of work that into the plan in the beginning, and you have to know it’s gonna get hard, and we have to have people come to the table together and talk through it, and then also then go, like, have a beer or have a meal or something and just connect on a human level, and it helps a lot.
[00:11:40] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, I think, uh, I think, a- and rightfully so, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of focus put on data integration and systems integration and, and things like that, but what you’re talking about is team integration, which I think is, uh, you know, o- often overlooked. It’s, uh, I don’t think it’s for lack of, uh, you know, caring about the teams or whatever even. I think it’s just, it’s often just glossed over because this is a data and a tech thing, so it’s a data and a tech solution. But, you know, so much of this- There’s so many nuances to this, you know, in addition to what you’re talking about, which is, you know, even just socializing challenges and, and opportunities and stuff. Training, you know, is something that it’s, it’s often a line item in a, in a
[00:12:25] Greg Kihlström: contract or something, and so, okay, let’s get the team trained on it. And it’s kind of like some of the other things where if we get them trained, things will work themselves out, but it, it’s rarely that. You know, a team g- learns how something works, but it doesn’t change the way that they work unless there’s other things involved. So, you know, what, what separates a team that’s been trained, you know, in a, as a line item versus one that’s, you know, truly thought about how they’re, they’re gonna use the tool?
[00:12:57] Kate Dalbey: So the thing that separates the teams, ’cause I agree with you, training is fi- training is fine, and it needs to happen, but the team needs to adopt-
[00:13:05] Greg Kihlström: Yeah
[00:13:06] Kate Dalbey: … that methodology, that new way of working, and in order for them to adopt it, they have to see themselves in it somehow, and they have to understand why they’re doing this new thing this new way. I’ve seen trainings be beautifully put together, [laughs] right? Like, everybody attends the sessions. There’s the new six steps that this is the new way to do it, and then literally the next week, no one is even thinking about the training manual that they w- were sent or session that they attended because they don’t remember why they need to change. So you have to attach that change to the why. It, this is gonna help us get better data so that
[00:13:51] Kate Dalbey: we can make more insightful decisions. This is going to help you move faster as a marketer so that you don’t have to do that grunt work that you already don’t like, right? It has to be attached to what’s important for them, and sometimes that’s not a one-size-fits-all situation either, so you kind of have to tailor that why to certain groups or certain people, um, so that they can remember why they need to change.
[00:15:23] Greg Kihlström: That change management component’s so, you know, so critical as… And, you know, I’m sure you’ve seen the same. I get brought in, you know, as a, as a consultant. I work with a lot of different teams, and there’s, you know, there’s, there’s always resistance to change. I mean, even no m- no matter who you are, no matter how excited you are about something new, it’s, we just don’t love change as much as, uh, you know, our, our bosses or our, our clients or whatever would, would love, love us to, to do. But s- a lot of times resistance just gets written off as, okay, you know, this is a, a culture thing, like a, a wrong fit maybe or, or something. And, and certainly sometimes that’s the case, but other times there’s a real rational reason, whe- whether that’s
[00:16:42] Greg Kihlström: long-term, you know, right reason to be resistant, as in, you know, this is not gonna work because it’s not gonna serve our customers or the business, or it’s a short-term, “Hey, this is gonna disrupt everything in the next 30 days. Like, I’m raising my hand. Please listen to me.” You know, I’m sure there’s a lot of gray in between as well. You know, how do you, how do you work with clients to be able to tell the difference between what’s just more on the, let’s call it, on the toxic end of that to more on the pragmatic end?
[00:17:12] Kate Dalbey: So it’s, to your point, is complex and nuanced, and what I’ve always seen is that I agree with you. People don’t like to change. Inherently humans are like, “No, I don’t wanna do this differently.”
[00:17:24] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:17:25] Kate Dalbey: So once you go through the exercise of helping them understand why, you have to reinforce that. That’s many conversations typically. Then you set the expectations. They change. You have to attach that change to the business objective that the change is supporting, and even if it’s like one tiny little instance of it. So say in B2B marketing a brand implemented an AI agent to cold call cold leads, right? Great. Somebody has to be kind of monitoring that and watching that and making sure that’s happening instead of picking up the phone and doing it themselves, right? So the KPI that’s connected to that
[00:18:10] Kate Dalbey: is … pipeline from cold leads faster, right? The minute someone sees that actually happening, you start kind of shouting about it [laughs] and getting people really excited and saying, “Look, it’s working. It’s working,” right? And so the people that are willing to do that, you know are gonna buy into this long term, right? And then you have to get the, the people that are a little bit more resistant to change even more, and you use it through that, that data insight. So the faster you can get to that high-level business KPI, and the people that will get, go there with you, that’s how you can tell this is, like, a real s- thing that’s gonna be successful. The flip side of that is people that don’t even wanna try.
[00:18:56] Kate Dalbey: That’s a different thing. That’s a personality challenge, and that has to be handled much differently. But as long as people are willing to try and then see the results and then shout the results really quickly, like, you know that that’s, th- this is a good thing that, that, that we’re doing together.
[00:19:11] Greg Kihlström: That’s a good segue to, you know, how do, how we measure this as well, ’cause, you know, there, there’s gonna be, let’s say, the people that always speak up regard- like, good or bad, you know, there’s, there’s gonna be the louder voices in the room and, and certainly they’re valuable, but, you know, it’s, it’s, it can be anecdotal that way. So, you know, getting some metrics behind this.
[00:19:29] Greg Kihlström: You know, a- a- and another thing just to be mindful of is, you know, in, in my work at least, you know, a lot of the adoption of new platforms and, and technologies is also moving towards democratizing a lot of things, which also means a broader set of, of people might be logging into things or, or things like that as well. And so, you know, you’ve… It’s another complication to, to everything. But, you know, usage metrics like, like login rates and, and things like that can look healthy. You know, lots of people other, other than those kind of naysayers, you know, lots of people logging in, but, you know, not necessarily anything has changed in some cases. So how do you kind of read, you know, read the right numbers
[00:20:14] Greg Kihlström: in the, in the right way and understand, like, what, what are people actually doing?
[00:20:19] Kate Dalbey: So that comes up a lot here at QD because honestly, the last thing that we want to do is have clients measuring themselves against productivity metrics that don’t ladder up to business success.
[00:20:32] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:20:34] Kate Dalbey: So teams are all green, right? Every light is green. Great. But the business is shrinking meanwhile. No, we don’t, we do not want that, and, you know, we will have honest conversations about, like, if we see that happening and why we do not recommend it. I think that’s where, like I was saying before, kind of getting to that KPI as quickly as possible so that people can understand that this is already successful is kind of the only way to do that. And sometimes it’s not quick because you r- reengineered all these processes and all these people need to do things differently, and it’s gonna take a little while for that to kind of come out in the business. But as long as it’s tied to the business metric,
[00:21:20] Kate Dalbey: that’s the quickest way to ensure larger adop- adoption.
[00:21:24] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Well, and then as, as adoption spreads, a, a lot of these platforms are very flexible by design and, and that’s, you know, isn’t that a great feature until it starts fragmenting how everyone works and it, it doesn’t kind of align to the original vision, which a- any vision needs a little refinement o- overall. But, you know, y- you can potentially get into a very fragmented way that either looks very different than the original or starts looking like what it used to be like, which was there was a reason why there was a new platform brought into things in the first place. How do you, you know, encourage teams to move fast because that, you know, that they need to, but also it,
[00:22:09] Greg Kihlström: it helps them feel better about the platform without the operating model fragmenting underneath them?
[00:22:16] Kate Dalbey: Boy, you’re asking me some tough questions, sir. [laughs]
[00:22:21] Greg Kihlström: [laughs] No, no easy ones today, so yeah. [laughs]
[00:22:25] Kate Dalbey: This one is hard because you have to design an operating model that’s flexible enough to be reasonable, but inflexible enough to support achieving the business metrics that it was designed to support, right? So thinking of an example of that, I think I was reading through some of the things that you’ve posted on ch- your channels recently, and I think you posted something around 98% of people that you surveyed said that their, um, campaigns are launching late.
[00:22:58] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:22:58] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:23:00] Kate Dalbey: Okay. So to me, that means that there’s probably a process problem somewhere. I would guess, ’cause I’ve seen it before, there’s probably some sort of approval gate in every single one of those people’s ecosystems that people are stuck on. I need X person to click a button and say, “This is approved,” right? So the operating model is, in that case, inflexible because the campaign can’t go to market without that button being approved, but there are other ways to get approval so that something doesn’t go to market that’s, you know, not seen by the CMO or what have you, right? If the operating model can be designed to need approval but not gate it,
[00:23:46] Kate Dalbey: then that campaign will go to market faster and revenue will be generated faster.
[00:23:50] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
[00:23:51] Kate Dalbey: So I think it’s the operating model has to be Has to be both flexible and inflexible at the exact right times. And to your point, you have to be able to be okay with optimizing it, especially in today’s day and age where AI is changing things so quickly.
[00:24:30] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:24:30] Kate Dalbey: And you have to be able to respond to that.
[00:24:32] Greg Kihlström: Well, yeah, and let, let’s talk a little bit about the, the AI and, you know, I just, I, I feel like I, um, have started caveating that, you know, AI is just such a big umbrella. It’s-
[00:24:43] Greg Kihlström: … it’s starting to become hard to just use that, that term as, as any one thing. I mean, I think a lot of people started using it as to refer to ChatGPT because we, we all f- collectively forgot that there was AI for three decades or, or more before, but, you know-
[00:25:01] Kate Dalbey: Google Maps. Hello.
[00:25:02] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. [laughs] Right, right. Exactly. Um, but that said, you know, quote, unquote, “AI,” you know, it can cover a vastly different amount of things within, you know, depending on the platform that you’re, that you’re talking about. It could be, you know, a sing- a single feature that, that a person uses, a system that runs a workflow, you know, agentic, so on and so forth. Um, and the adoption of these things is very d- you know, adopting an agentic workflow, obviously vastly different than generate a first draft of a blog post or, or something like that. So, you know, when a client says that they’re adopting AI, you know, doing AI [laughs] or whatever you wanna call it, how do you get them to be specific about, you know, what, what they
[00:25:47] Greg Kihlström: actually mean by that, how they’re thinking about it, and, and how does the answer change how you advise them to roll things out?
[00:25:56] Kate Dalbey: So the first question I ask is, “Great, what do you mean by that?”
[00:26:01] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:26:02] Kate Dalbey: And then I listen intently and, um, I listen for signals that tell me that there’s a fair amount of original thinking and kind of what you can get from consulting the A- LLMs currently, because I think that’s also a tricky spot right now, is that the LLMs can be such a thought partner to us all, but they’re also kind of repeating the same thoughts and patterns to us all, right? So the, the vision has to… The, the response has to have kind of like, uh, equal parts, um, originality and, like, obviously thought partnership with where we’re all getting it, right?
[00:26:40] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:26:41] Kate Dalbey: It used to be Google, now it’s an LLM, right?
[00:26:43] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:26:43] Kate Dalbey: Um, so I listen for that, and then I try to understand what phase they’re in because sometimes leaders come to us and they say, “Okay, we’re trying to achieve this in support of this business goal.” Always has to be those two things. We’re try- we’re trying to achieve this in support of this business goal. If they don’t know the answer to the business goal, then we try to help them get there. Um, if they do, great, then I try to understand where they are in their journey. Do you have a vision and you need help implementing it? Applied AI. Do you not have a vision and you need help defining the vision? Sure, we can help with that. Have you already failed and you have battle scars and you wanna do things differently?
[00:27:29] Kate Dalbey: Heck yeah, we can help with that, right? There are so many marketers at so many different stages of this right now, and I think the one thing that everybody’s kind of reacting in the same way is everybody feels behind. Everyone does. Everyone’s like, “Oh my gosh, I should be farther along.” But the reality is I think some brands are actually now benefiting because they’re able to learn from the mistakes that other brands have already made, and some brands have made some big mistakes because they’ve tried and then they’ve been brave, right? So I think there’s also a little bit of a w- there’s a benefit now to have waited, but I also think there’s a, the … People are right to be like, “Okay, we gotta go. We gotta do something. We have to adopt this new tool.”
[00:28:12] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:28:12] Kate Dalbey: But at the end of the day, it’s a tool. It’s not the answer to everything.
[00:28:18] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. [laughs] Yeah, totally agree. Yeah. Well, Kate, thanks so much for joining today. I definitely could talk about this for, for a lot longer, but, [laughs] but you know, we’ll, we’ll have to pick it up again. And, um, along those lines, uh, two last questions for you. First one, if we were having this interview one year from today, what is one thing that we would definitely be talking about?
[00:28:39] Kate Dalbey: Why do you keep asking me these hard questions? [laughs]
[00:28:42] Greg Kihlström: [laughs] Predict the future for me, Kate. [laughs]
[00:28:45] Kate Dalbey: I think it’s r- it’s actually really hard to do that in, in today’s era of disruption.
[00:28:50] Greg Kihlström: I know.
[00:28:50] Kate Dalbey: And, but that’s also the thing I think you, you and I probably are aligned on this, like, that’s what we love about digital marketing, is that it’s constantly changing and evolving, and I think that’s, that’s happening even more so right now. Um, I think a year ag- a year from now, we will be able to look back and say, “Wow, we didn’t know that much a year ago,” and we know so much more now, and it… because it’s only compounding. I also think that the value of human-to-human connection is only going to get more and more powerful. Going to conferences, grabbing that coffee or that beer with that person, going and making those human face-to-face connections, it’s going to be more
[00:29:36] Kate Dalbey: important to people because there’s so much that machines are generating right now and it feels like, as humans, we’re getting more and more disconnected. I don’t know if you saw on LinkedIn yesterday, but someone announced that there’s kind of like an, an AI slop marker-
[00:29:54] Greg Kihlström: Yeah
[00:29:54] Kate Dalbey: … that you can put on articles now, which is super interesting to me, right? Because a social media platform is now saying, “Hey, as a human, you can tell me if this is worth it for you or not.” And I think that kind of response is only gonna get more and more, um, valuable, where that connection from a human, a human creating something else for a human is gonna get more and more important.
[00:30:17] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. Love it. And last question for you. Uh, what do you do to stay agile in your role, and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
[00:30:24] Kate Dalbey: Oof. So I’ve always been a reader my whole entire life, so I begin and end my day with reading about whatever’s happening in the world of technology to just kind of stay abreast of what’s going on. And I also, like, I try to attach myself to a stat that is compelling that will also drive change in the industry. So for healthcare, for example, a leader that I really respect recently talked about how 14 million people recently used LLMs to not get healthcare at a health system. What? [laughs] That’s such a big challenge for the industry to unpack, so I’m staying agile by kind of thinking through every day what that means and how healthcare systems can respond to that huge challenge. Um, and, and it’s really fun and rewarding, but also tricky and it’s something that I love to do, and I think we’re gonna have to try and optimize and fail and optimize and fail and, and try again to meet that type of behavior change. Um, and that’s what’s the cool part about my job.
