218: Build a marketing career that survives AI as a deep generalist with Tata Maytesyan

Tata: previously those would be all different roles. Like you will have technical SEO person, then you'll have a writer, and then you'll have a designer and then a web flow developer. now these roles collapse into one. if you say that that's not gonna happen, you are not living in reality.

I'm very sorry. that's already happening. for me, the deep generalist is the person who has the expertise and keeps building the expertise in certain domains. we have to teach ourselves in the modern world, call it learning sequence or learning tempo.

So I look at the whole range of marketing tasks and. Every couple of months I ask myself, okay, how comfortable am I doing this thing? and then going deep in there, trying and then going back knowing what good looks like ​ In This Episode - Phil: What's up everyone? Today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Tata Ian, founder and CEO of Grow Global Tech, where she builds AI marketing systems for tech scale ups.

She also runs a hands-on AI bootcamp for marketers on Maven, and she spent the last 15 plus years leading growth inside companies like Nike, Deloitte, and pixart. And this conversation we cover why every AI project should start with a whiteboard. Why deep generalists will outperform specialists? The rise of diamond org charts.

The fear of automating yourself out of a job and how to track your energy with a voice diary, all that and a bunch more stuff. Have to a quick word from two of our awesome partners. Sponsor: GrowthLoop - ​ Sponsor: Attribution App - ​ Phil: Tata, thank you so much for your time today. Really excited to chat.

Tata: Um, me too. I have been walking today with my dog and thinking about what are the kinds of questions you are gonna ask and what are the exciting things I have tested in the last few weeks I should tell you about. So you have been on my mind since the morning. Phil: Awesome.

Likewise. We had a listener that went through the AI bootcamp that you have at Maven and encouraged me to reach out to have you on the show. Um, I want my, my first idea to start the conversation was like. Tata's clearly seen a bunch of AI use cases for marketing with like consulting, but also the bootcamp that you're doing.

Um, but like, I kinda changed my mind about that question a little bit because, you know, 1. Which Marketing Tasks Are Actually Worth Automating - Phil: the thing that's preventing a lot of marketers from taking that plunge into AI and agents isn't really the lack of inspiring use cases. I think it. The lack of time and a lot of the posts you see on social about cool ideas and things that I've built, it's not usually useful to you and not related to your, your day to day.

Do you think that instead of waiting for like cool, crazy out of the box ideas for using ai, marketers should just stick to their current flow? Like, what did you do today? Pick one random non exciting thing in your workflow today and try to automate a part of it. Maybe not end to end, and then just kinda like build out from there.

What are your thoughts there? Tata: I cannot agree more. Um, that's actually what I use in my work. Um, I always think and say workflow first automation or AI second.

And uh, for me, um, if I am thinking about the process, walking to work with a new client or doing the training during the hybrid camp. I would literally force everyone to stop using cloud or Chacha PT or whatever they're using for a bit and open a whiteboard. We usually use Miro and just design their workplaces, like literally scribble a little bit of how they work and then ask them a few questions. How often do you repeat this workflow?

Um, even if it sounds very exciting and you want to automate that, if you are doing it once a month or once every few months, doesn't really make so much sense to automate that, then how okay, you are with your, um, potential, your, the output be not amazing or AI glit chain course swapping and. Depends on the industry you are in. The risks could be very different. Like I work with a healthcare company and we have to be extremely careful of what parts of, um, automations and AI integrations we do inter like we do.

And what, what we don't. Because some parts of the work are, um. Patient facing and you don't wanna have, um, mistakes there. And then the last bit is how exciting that part is, uh, for you and if that's something you truly enjoy doing and that's something which brings you joy.

Why would you try to automate that thing? So I usually go for the stuff which I really don't like to do. Like I absolutely hate LinkedIn analytics. Uh, it's so annoying to go and check your posts.

I don't know why they don't focus on that. That's an our question. But, um, it was just running a script today to, uh, go with Cowork to go and open them. Uh, LinkedIn post, which I have done in the past, like for the last few years I've been actively posting and then I get the impressions and the comments and the likes and um, then put that all in the notion so I can analyze and.

I previously used to ask my assistant to do that, and that was not the task to like, before I had an assistant, that's what I would do. And it was absolutely like, I don't know who likes that kind of work. So that's, I think is a perfect use case. And I keep saying boring is sexy.

So, um, figure out the workflow. You do, you do that repeatedly, and then if mistakes are manageable and you're okay with them, then delegate and automate with ai. Phil: Uh, I love that the first step in the bootcamp about AI is to close all AI tools, open a whiteboarding tool, and just start mapping out what you're doing. Day-to-day.

I think getting that visual is, is awesome. I did something similar, like when I took my plunge, I actually like chatted with Claude about like, just interview me, do a long interview about like figuring out an output of everything that I do and we will like figure out the most time spent, the stuff that I like doing, not like doing. And so as an a long interview period. But the output was just like a list of recommendations from Claude about like where to start automating, where to not automate.

I love the Midjourney creative aspect of like doing the podcast and that's, you know, they have an API and I could automate pieces of it, but I enjoy doing it. It's like one of my favorite parts. So like you said, why automate something that you enjoy doing? Um, so it's a really cool shout out there.

I like that you start the conversation there with folks. I'm sure some folks part of the bootcamp is just like. Wait, what? Like first two minutes, we're closing all the AI tools.

What's going on here? Tata? Tata: people get a little frustrated as well. I have noticed that.

But, um, the, the reason for that is that I guess we are used so much to these, um. Element of our, our work when, um, we wanna see the results quickly. Nowadays, especially with ai, you, you wanna just get the answer quickly. So even if you come to bootcamp or you hire a consultant, it doesn't matter like you are in having this interface where you are expected to get some results.

You want that quick and that thing of opening a mirror board and drawing your, or like the interview, which you did, which is brilliant. Um. It takes time and it slows you down, sort of feels like it slows you down. In fact, it speeds you up.

Um, but, um, I think that some people get frustrated with that because it feels kind of counterintuitive because AI is here to speed us up and for whatever reason you are trying to slow us down. Uh, but that's, uh, that that's how you actually run fast. Phil: Yeah, there's like two different schools of thought when it comes to jumping in and, and learning. Like there's a lot of folks that are just saying, you should tinker and it doesn't matter if you get everything right.

At first. The principal, it doesn't matter like what you're trying to automate, just. Just try something, just get your hands dirty, get familiar with the system, whatever. And that's kind of the approach I did a little bit after that kind of interview.

Um, but then I quickly discovered by talking to, um, some of my developer friends who've been using cloud code for like. Almost a year now, and they're just like, Phil, you're, you're doing this wrong. Like, you need a Clot MD file, you need to read MD file. You like, you need to have folders, blah, blah, blah.

Like, there's so many things that if I just like slowed down a little bit at first, learn some of the basics, like I, I wouldn't have wasted like a day or two just like tinkering. Like a lot of people are saying like, just go tinker. Just do something. Just get in there.

Right? It's, uh, there's like, yeah. It's a tricky balance. Tata: I like to do both.

I do like to tinker, uh, but then when it comes to my work. I'd like to have a thing structured. So tinkering. I think there is a space for that and you should totally do that.

You could tinker testing how my journey works or you could tinker. Uh, seeing the recent update, I was just mesmerized. I just saw a video from Hicksville on the new capabilities and I was like, oh my God, I wanna go and tinker. I'm not a video.

A video is not my main domain. I don't create videos for a living. And those things are me learning and exploring, and that's totally fine. Um, and I do think we should, because that's your natural curiosity, right?

So you did nothing wrong. But then when it comes to actually doing something for your job. Um, I do think that you get better results if you go the structured way, what your developer friends were saying. Uh, setting up the context, uh, making sure the folders are there, files are there, instructions are there.

And it's sounds so boring, uh, for so many people because you're just gonna go in and. Do the stuff, but, um, at least for now, it doesn't work that way. It's not able to read our minds. It's not able to, to do the setup for us.

So we, we get a, we get to do that for, for the ai. Phil: Yeah. At, at least for now we're, we're recording this in, in March and this is gonna come out at some point in May. So we'll, we'll see what craziness happens in just a couple of months.

Um, Tata, when we had our kind of pre-call for, for this, uh, one of the things that was really top of mind for you at the time, and, and maybe still today, but still today for me for sure, is this idea of like, the shift from specialist to. Deep generalist in the crazy AI world that we're dealing with today. Um, I've actually had conversations with folks on the podcast that think that the specialist route is more important than ever, in part because if you're not a specialist, like a deep specialist in one area, at least, it's really hard to know sometimes if AI is right or if it's.

Confidently wrong, like completely after lunch, but it sounds really confident. Um, 2. Why Deep Generalists Outperform Channel Specialists in Marketing - Phil: maybe we can start with your definition of like what a deep generalist is and, and why do you think folks should invest more in becoming deep generalists? Tata: Yeah, that's, uh, that's a good question.

I did not invent the term of deep journalist. I came. The term, um, on the internet. And I was just thinking, wow, that's such a smart way of putting that.

I don't think this applies for every single profession. Uh, I'm speaking here mostly about marketing and business roles. 'cause I do think that, uh, specialists in some fields like robotics or medicine are definitely needed. But if we go to our little universe of marketing technology, I'd say that, um.

The shift has been, uh, undeniable. You would see a lot of companies, um, expecting that you would handle the, the work as like literally one of our bootcamp participants, we started this week, the cohort six, and one of them said, uh, we had a team of four and I'm a content writer, and now I have to do all the other marketing things. And I. I don't know where to start.

It feels confusing. And for me, the deep generalist is the person who is able to do different kinds of things. Let's say not just be an SEO specialist, but be able to create good social content, but also, uh, be able to work with a website optimizations and maybe run, uh, website updates. Um.

And previously those would be all different roles. Like you will have technical SEO person, then you'll have a writer, and then you'll have a designer and then a web flow developer. And all of those people, now these roles collapse into one. And if you say that that's not gonna happen, um.

That's just, you are not living in reality. I'm very sorry. So that's already happening. And for me, the deep generalist is the person who has the expertise and keeps building the expertise in certain domains.

Uh, it doesn't mean that the person has expertise in all of the domains, but uh, if you are really good in SEO and that's your main domain, you are very deep in that, but you still stretch yourself and you are a generalist and general in the content space or quantum marketing space, and. I do say that we have to teach ourselves in the modern world, especially if you work in marketing and business and have this learning, um, uh, call it learning sequence or learning tempo. So I look at the whole range of marketing tasks and.

Every couple of months I ask myself, okay, how comfortable am I doing this thing? How good do I feel? I have an example. I was working with, uh, a unicorn called Pixar, the photo video editing software.

And I remember they didn't have an SEO team, uh, for one of the divisions, and I was their marketing advisor, growth advisor. And I thought, okay, so. There are a few ways I can hire someone to be an agency or I could try to figure it out on my own. And I spent two months, uh, doing SEO owed it and uh, figuring out what are the little details out there.

Having calls with people by no means I become the SEO expert. No. But I learned enough information to be able then to direct AI in the work, and funnily enough, we eventually, because the business grew, we hired an SEO agency and they were so impressed that there was so much stuff done, and I was so apologetic. I was like, guys, I don't know if I did any mistakes or stuff.

We didn't have a budget, so I've been experimenting a lot. I do think that there is. These thing which we need to train, like really choosing the path and then going deep in there, like literally trying and then going back and knowing what the good looks like and applying that. Um, important thing, it doesn't apply if you are, does not necessarily apply if you are a doctor or an engineer, or you are okay.

Just, just to be very clear, but I think that most of the people are gonna be, listen, who are gonna be listening, are gonna be. Uh, marketers and, uh, marketing technology specialists. So for all of you guys, that totally applies. Phil: Okay.

So I feel like the deep generalist definition that you gave us is super close to like the traditional T-shaped marketer approach. Um, I dunno if you're familiar with it, like there's different versions of it, but like that broad. Generalist background across most domains, and then you're like a specialist in, in one or two areas. Listeners have probably heard about this.

Um, so you're not saying like, don't go deep on anything. Like you should spend the next, like three, four years of your career just building out that like top bar in the T and go super horizontal. Don't go deep on anything, just like. And like cover as many domains of marketing just so you can get like a, a baseline breadth across all the different things.

You're saying like it's still valuable to be a specialist in a couple of areas, but the more important part of it is that like top bar. And so like I, I was trying to figure out like how, how do we have a conversation about this, but, um, it, it sounds a lot more like you aren't saying, you know, like you should be a generalist instead of a specialist. The deep generalist sounds like it's kind of an in-between of, of the two. Like you still want to be deep in a couple of areas.

But where you want to focus more of your time is on that like top bar. Is that fair? Tata: I do think that's fair. I'm also thinking a lot about like how the channels change, because a lot of this.

Specialist roles are channel related, right? So, um, people say I'm an SEO specialist, and then the a o comes in and all of a sudden you've gotta learn the new thing, visibility on lms. And it's not vastly different, but it's slightly different then. Um, there was an era where there was no social media, where it wasn't that important.

Um, there was an era when we didn't have so many podcasts out there. And now look at us, we're recording a podcast. And that like, if we, like, I think that there are larger buckets of types of marketing to you. It could be a content marketer, and then within the content you would know what good content looks like, but you have a flexibility.

Among the channels, and you could figure it out, um, within community marketing. You could run physical events or you could run online events. And I do think that. You like people need to think less about the channels when they, um, when they choose the area, they wanna go deeper into, um, not necessarily think less of like not learn about these channels, learn, but know that they are fluid and they keep changing and they keep adjusting.

And, um, I remember. Someone was telling me in B2B SaaS a couple of years ago that like, why on earth would, would I need to go in TikTok and like do that, uh, on TikTok? And now look at this. Uh, I was just talking with uh, uh, VP of business development of one company, uh, today, and they said that one of the top performing ad channels for them is TikTok, um, for the B2B SaaS.

And. For me, that's kinda, um, like de delusional to just imagine that you gotta go like really deep and be an awesome specialist in Google ads, let's say. I think that that era is past, uh, past the reality. Phil: Yeah.

Such a good argument in favor of the, the generalist route there, like the, we might end up, or we kind of are already, in a lot of cases, we end up with specialists that can verify yesterday's version of their domain or, or their channel because. Like things are changing so much and maybe they're becoming increasingly blind to like the whole system changing around them. So instead of going really deep in that one slice of the world, focusing a lot of your energy on everything else around it so that you are prepared for the scenario.

Like you had someone at your bootcamp just like, yeah, we used to have four people. Now we have one. We need you to jump in into Webflow or build landing pages into nac. And you're just like, I.

I've never done that before. And I feel like now with like at least chap aids tools, uh, for LLMs, it, it feels less scary, less daunting. Like when I think back about my in-house roles. Like one of my most like technical roles, uh, when I shifted from just like, uh, I was doing marketing automation at a startup and was just like running Marketo programs was really deep in that world.

And then I left that to join a startup and one of my first mandates was like, let's get out of HubSpot. We need to migrate out of HubSpot, and we want to build a composable MarTech stack. And so part of that meant migrating like thousands of. Blog posts that were hosted in the HubSpot CMS and we need to like migrate that to a new CMS and so like a web migration project, it's like I've never done this before.

It was so daunting and I spent so much time just like researching best tactics to do this and like downloading guys and chalk chatting with people. Now I feel like there I had like a be way less daunting of a task to do that with ai or if I was like. Being asked to, you know, I'm gonna give you access to read only in our data warehouse. You need to be able to query that stuff yourself.

Our data analysts are gonna do that anymore. Like three years ago it's been like, man, like I don't wanna like be an expert in SQL to just like, get data now. It'd be so much easier to do it. So, uh, the, the pace is changing super fast, I feel like, but you know, we have access to so much intelligence, even though we aren't a domain expert in there.

We can go pretty far, um, in terms of like being at least like going from like, know nothing about that space to just being very average at it. Tata: Yes. Uh, and I do think that, uh, it's a very good explanation, which you're given of like, um. Being good enough in certain areas and then being an absolute rock star in some areas.

Right? And when you are a generalist, eventually you are good enough in those areas. But also think about this, like, I remember when I was in my first leadership role, uh, it was about 25 years old. Um, and I became a manager of six people.

And, um. Uh, I was by no means the expert in all the areas they have done and in all FMCG world. We also had people who were specialized in trade marketing and merchandising and all those areas I had very little idea about. And, um.

The, when you become a leader, um, whatever division you are leading or whatever marketing leadership role you are getting, you will have, um, these areas of work which you don't touch eventually for some time long enough. And what is happening now is that you could do a lot of this work using systems or semi-automated systems and then. You are all of a sudden becoming that manager layer. So you need to make judgment calls, although you are not a specialist.

So I do think that's a very similar transition. And the issue I'm seeing a lot of people are having is because they don't know how to say if it's a good or bad enough thing. So the one of the things for us to train is judgment and taste, because it's very. Like, it's not enough to just be able to generate images.

Uh, it's important to know if the image is good. Um, it's not good enough to look like at the process and say, let, let's go from, we were just doing a migration from WordPress to web flow with a bunch of blog pages. So when you said about the process you had, I had an I inside and I was like, I'm just going through this right now. And even with ai, it's a nightmare.

So. Um, doing, uh, doing this thing is, uh, it's good enough to understand the process, like high level and go with it with ai, but then you also need to have a little more holistic view into what's happening out there and evaluate things like security risks. Uh, understand, okay, if I give access now to the agent, is it gonna be okay? And all those like little questions you ask yourself, uh, or you should ask yourself.

Those come. From more of a generalist kind of a profile than a specialist kind of profile because you are evaluating and you are having a judgment into whatever you have been presented. So that's, um, I guess the main difference, right? Um, between the generalist and, um, generalist, T-shaped, what you call them, T-shaped marketers, I think it's a fair name, um, to use.

Um, that's one of the main things you, you need to develop nowadays to, to evaluate what the agents do. ​ Sponsor: MoEngage - Sponsor: Knak - ​ Phil: So what advice do you have for listeners right now that are maybe really deep in one channel? They're part of a bigger marketing team and they're hearing about us talk about this future in the next couple of years where, you know, 50% of their team might be a lot smaller, they might take on a lot different roles, and they want to become.

More of a deep generalist. Um, like where do you see that boundary between like being versatile and, and having that like good horizontal bar but being too shallow? Like what, what depth is non-negotiable? Like, does someone need to have lived experience for X amount of years or has been responsible for outcomes in the past to be.

Like versatile enough in, in that area or like having studied that thing for X amount of hours to be like an expert. Like what does someone have to actually have done for you to take that label seriously, that this person has judgment in this area or on their resume versus, you know, someone who has just touched a bunch of tools but maybe hasn't like, lived that world before. Tata: That's a very tough question, huh? Uh, because, uh, I think the answer would be, the answer would be, it depends, uh, depends on the area.

So for me, uh, especially nowadays, having some sort of formal education is definitely out of a question because by the time we graduate, the world changes so much. So I'm not sure. Like fundamentals in life. Yes, they teach and explain.

So definitely not that, but some hours of practice and some results. So, um, I see that there are a lot of people on LinkedIn nowadays, uh, which are claiming that they do. AI automations or they're doing these super outreaches or getting a lot of leads out of something. And, um, I always wanna ask, show me the proof, like, show me what you have done.

So when it comes, um, I can answer like, what it comes to me and my team. How I think about this is, have I done this process good enough amount of times that I have seen results, positive or negative? So I have that lived experience. And depending on the area, that could be different volumes of tasks.

But in general, I'd say that on average it takes you a hundred hours. For example, I saw with my assistant, um, who she's still a student in the university doing her bachelor, uh, degree, and she has never done research before. So even with ai, her research was really mediocre in the first couple of. Months, I would say very bad.

And then it was slowly improving with feedback. So it took her about six months. And now if she's doing the research with assisted AI tools, uh, and our workflows, which we have, she's doing an amazing job. But it took her, even with ai, about six months to get there and do a good enough quality research.

Um, but it's not the research which you would go and show to investors yet? Absolutely not. But it's good enough quality to have the first base and maybe it would take her few. A few more months, uh, to, to get to even better level.

The, the good thing with AI is that it accelerates you a lot. It's easier to find the information, et cetera, but you still need to have this back and forth and feedback loops, et cetera. So I'd say one thing is like, put the hours in, do the work. That's one non-negotiable.

And the other one, even if you are working in a certain channel, but you feel like you wanna. Do something more and you wanna explore. There is nothing stopping you today. Yes.

Even if your boss is very strict and they don't want you to do anything else, you could do something on a site. You could create a pet project, you could try to build something on your own. And one of the very good things to start tinkering about and it. Experimenting is actually your public profile and your brand.

You as a person. Uh, think of starting a podcast. If you're a marketer, start a podcast, write a newsletter, post on LinkedIn. Do one of those things and then try to, to learn one of those skills, um, because.

That kind of a skill is very transferable. Once you know what good content looks like, you understand how to manage your own little thing. Like I'm sure Phil, you have so much work to do with a podcast like technical issues, resolving, like, figuring out the guests, inviting them. Uh, I'm saying about technical issues because as our fourth take, uh.

We, um, you need to manage the gas. You need to create the script, you need to do the interview, you need to do post-production, you need to create the visual. That's already pretty a generalist marketer, right? So when you think about that, uh, that kind of a small project, it would have multiple benefits for you.

First. Um, you will learn how to do all these things a little bit. And second, you were gonna grow your brand. And then your story felt is very inspiring, how you started Humans of MarTech, and then it became a whole business.

Like that's what, what's, what's your main job now? And I get very inspired by these kinds of stories. So I do encourage everyone, if you don't know what to take, do something for yourself, because then you will definitely see some really good results. Phil: I love, love that answer.

I feel like a lot of folks think of, um, I don't know if you're familiar with, uh, Malcolm Gladwell's, uh, outliers book is one of my favorite like, uh, nonfiction books. And he said like way back when, I forget when he published this, but like, you need to spend at least 10,000 hours of. Deliberate practice and consistent to be, quote unquote an expert at something. I'm sure that AI prompting has completely changed the number of hours, and it was probably like overestimated already.

Um, but I really like your, your, your advice about like instead of trying to figure out all the different things you could learn next to like, add new things to that horizontal TT bar. Why don't you just take a more like personal approach to it and, and things that you enjoy doing versus like, you know, the, the, the pressures of everyone else, and especially on LinkedIn. I, I don't know about the advice of telling people, everyone to start a podcast. I haven't done it myself.

I actually like do calls with people that are just like, Hey, I just heard a podcast, like, I wanna ask you for advice. And I'm just like, you're not gonna like my advice because I would tell you don't do a podcast unless you're willing to spend the next three years screaming into the void. And you're. Doing it consistently every week.

And it's something you're like super passionate about. And a lot of people don't like having those intro calls with me 'cause they get disappointed. Um, but it takes a lot of work and, and, and reps, I don't think it's like 10,000 hours anymore, but I think your answer is, is spot on. 3.

Why Marketing Org Charts Are Not Getting Flatter - Phil: It makes me think about like. Flatter orgs is something else that we talked about when we did like our, our pre-interview call. Um, on top of like all the students that you have in your bootcamp, you're consulting with a bunch of different companies. You have your own in-house experience, um, from like the unicorn you mentioned.

You also like spent a lot of time at Nike earlier in your career. So you get to see inside a bunch of different orgs, um, through all the things you're doing. And I'm curious to ask you about like what you're seeing in terms of how marketing roles are changing and if orgs are getting a lot flatter or as much as people on LinkedIn are saying, uh, that they are. Um, you do way more consulting than me.

I'm still kind of dabbling a little bit on the side to, to stay sharp on top of just being the content engineer on the, on the podcast. But I, I'm gonna share like, some anecdotal observations from like the small, um, um, list of clients that I have and, and you tell me what you see. Um, so I actually see like a tiny percentage of companies that are actually becoming flatter. Uh, the ones that.

Are like there's one thing in common and they have someone at the top that thinks in systems like they see marketing and go to market teams and growth as like this big complex workflow. There's like inputs, there's outputs, some humans, some ai, but the whole thing is like more of a system than just like pure human resources. And the other observation I have curious to get your take on it is larger. Uh, like the large majority of orgs have this weird thing happening right now where, um, like there are some people that are really strong in adopting AI in the org and they are kind of exposing everyone else that are a bit slower or, you know, more resistant to diving into it, to ai.

And it's kind of like more of a divergence, if you will, than like a restructure or a flatter org. But curious to get your take there. Like, do you see this also? Tata: It's, uh, a very interesting topic, which I keep thinking about.

I guess the different kinds of organizations are shaping really differently. So I would say that, um, I have experience with very large corporates. So that's one kind of a best and large corporates. Nikes, Deloitte's of the worlds, uh, I don't know, Nestles, you name it.

Like any big company, um, the way they are structured is not changing as much yet. So they do all have, um, a lot more roles, which you see AI is a requirement. They even have this AI evangelists, AI task forces. Um, I have this really weird obsession.

I constantly check LinkedIn job. Uh, and I check for the companies. I'm curious about like what kind of job post they do and what are, what are, what is the marketing role, how it's changing, what are the expectations? Um, so what I've noticed is that even in a very traditional country like Switzerland where I leave, you have pretty much every large company having these AI teams popping up.

Then, um, what is happening within the org, as you said, that they have is AI evangelists. I know, uh, main architects, the adopters, and then they are creating the main use cases, creating the main programs, and then everyone else is listening or adopting. I even had someone last week, uh, I was a speaker at a conference and uh, one of the people approached me and said, look, I work for this large organization and I am observing and I wanna learn, but they are not letting us in to build something.

So definitely not flatter ORs there. Not yet. Maybe eventually in the future, but I think those are such big ships that to turn them around you need a lot of power. So you need to really be thoughtful as that's like.

The very, very big, uh, company trying, trying to make a change. So that's not necessarily that. One thing, which is very much discussed now is if organizations are gonna change from having a prior shape to more diamond shape. So having less people executing and then having that middle layer bigger, and then keeping the management layer.

So. Uh, they think that those execution roles, which is like the base of a empower now in pretty much any organization that's gonna get a lot smaller. And I do think that there is a very fair assumption. It's just not gonna happen that fast.

But that's with larger corporations. I mainly work with scale up, so I advise companies, um, anywhere between few million dollars a year in revenue, $200 million in revenue. So they are not large corporations. They are these.

SMBs and. There, as you say, I also noticed that first only tiny percentage is doing the Fletcher Orgs, and usually that would be a very tech savvy founder, most times an engineer who would have that systems thinking and willingness to do. Uh, this shift. I was yesterday exchanging notes with, um, the founder of, um, financial Scale Up, uh, they're called Entropy and Nowra, the founder told me that they have actually made their org uh, flatter.

I'll send you the link and I can link up the article. I love the article. I can link up the article she posted on how their company has changed, and those usually are very visionary founders who have an idea and they invest the time. But.

That doesn't happen that much in my practice just yet, but what I have seen happening is having more expectations for the same team, uh, that I have seen because now the founder thinks, wait, there is an AI for that. So why we're not doing the output much more. So a lot of people comes from my boot camps or when I start consulting with a company, they don't want to like, it's very funny, but they don't want, you would imagine they want to let people go and have agents to do the work, but that's all what I see happening.

What they want is their team to produce so much more stuff because they want to get more market share, they want to grow, et cetera. So all of a sudden you have these, um. A sales manager who is all of a sudden also a marketing manager and they need to manage the product, hand launch, like real case from today. And then they also need to manage influencer marketing program.

And they also have to do these and that like they, they, their job description grows. So I see that, that for now, I don't see flatter orgs that often. I see the job responsibilities of a person actually inflating and becoming sometimes ridiculous. Phil: Yeah, I, I, I echo that sentiment a lot.

Like the promise of AI used to be automate and like save a bunch of time with like all the stuff you're doing right now, you're gonna have way more free time. But I feel like we've all either been asked to, or ourselves naturally have used that free time to just do more stuff and other things. And like AI hasn't, like, it's saved me more time, but I'm. Reinvesting that time in into doing more stuff, right?

There's just like that addiction of quality control. But when you work for a company, then it's like, hey, like I, I, I don't wanna be part of like that block layoff where, you know, AI's replaced a bunch of people, so I need to like. Three x my output, do more with less as everyone else is saying. Um, but your point about like the, the, the role redesign is, is really interesting.

Like, I don't see a lot of people talking about that. It's like sitting down and asking, like with HR leaders, like what does a marketing team actually need to look like now? They're like adding AI tools to existing structures and a lot of folks are just thinking or hoping that, you know, the structure of the roles are just gonna naturally adapt. Um, I haven't seen it like naturally adapt in a lot of cases, but like, 4.

Why Change Management Determines Whether AI Adoption Actually Sticks - Phil: do you think that most orgs have the right marketing leaders in place today to kind of design the new marketing org? A lot of cases, like we're asking a VP of marketing who's built their career on like an old school model of marketing to kind of sit down and figure out. They still fit into the new AI era. It just feels like an existential exercise, right?

Tata: It is, uh, yes, and I'm not sure I'm in a position to comment for all the companies from the experience which I have. I actually have very good experience. Marketing leaders are very eager to change, and CMOs are. Actually excited to try new things.

And, uh, very often when we work together, so I mostly work with CEOs and CMOs, so, um, or VPs of marketing, depending on the company they're called differently. So I would work with marketing leader and help them figure out, uh, what are the areas. Where we need to integrate AI in within their business and where and how to do that. And then also how to train their team.

Uh, for example, uh, there were is one of my Swiss clients, the person who came to me was not the CEO, that was a CMO of a company and. She came to me saying, I really want to do that, but my team is kind of resistant and I think it would be more effective if someone from outside came and looked at our Phil: Hmm. Tata: So I spent a few days with their team. I looked at how they work.

They gave me access to all the systems. We did the exercise with shutting down the edge tools and opening the mirror board. We'll look at the processes. We have evaluated a pro.

Each process discussed. What everyone hates, doing what they love doing and created that safe space for them to feel that their job is not at race, because it truly wasn't in that case. And then once we figured out the case, we were like, okay, here are the tutorials for you. This is how you could do that stuff.

Do that. If it works, then people are curious. Great. If it doesn't work, then we do trainings for them and we build with them.

So they start shipping. And I think that. Um, it's gonna be a lot of change management. You cannot just say, Hey, I am just gonna change my whole team and now I'm gonna have all these AI native marketers first.

There is not enough of AI native or whatever they're called, marketers out there. Second, um, your team has the domain expertise and knowledge and like all of those. All of those things which are super important for your business. So the question is, and it's the hard one for leaders that get it, both for CMOs and CEOs, is actually figuring out how to train the team and how make them motivated.

And that's the thing which is bugging me a lot. Like I think a lot about that. How do we phrase the things? How do we explain, how do we make these tutorials easier to understand?

Which use cases do we, uh, do we choose? Um, former VP of marketing of emr, um, Olga, she told me when I was doing interview with her last year, she said, I asked my team what are the most boring tasks. Uh, they, they do what they don't like doing and I decided to skip everything fun for AI for some time and just show them the power of AI for doing this stuff they didn't like to do. And I thought that as a leader, she did this very smart move because she actually helped the team take off the work from the airplane so they have more space.

And that is a very strong. Thinking from a leader, and I wish more CMOs and CEOs followed that, that they didn't think about. Um, let's just change the role and then find someone new, or, uh, expect everyone to do that automatically, but create that environment in the space. And of course, one more thing, which is super important.

If there any CMO is watching, please get your team. The tools. I cannot stress enough how many times I walk into the room and. On the paper, the company has copilot access, for example, but then there is only one person out of 10 people who got the license and they're not allowed to use anything else, like literally.

And that makes me really sad. Sadly, I can't help much those companies and they can't help themselves up until they get those licenses in. But seriously, the software is not that expensive. So please do get the subscriptions.

Phil: I love the shout out for Olgo. We, we had her on the show, um, at some point last year, right when she was, uh, departing SEMrush and, and doing a lot of cool stuff with the team. She had actually like left branding and that whole team to build like AI and, and marketing ops at the company. And now she's doing like crazy stuff in, in startup plans.

Shout out to Olga. Um, yeah, I, I loved your, your point about like. You know, there are some leaders out there like Olga, who are super progressive, that are just like accepted that change and are just like writing that wave. 5.

The Fear of Automating Yourself Out of a Job - Phil: But I'm curious to ask you if you've also had like the opposite conversation, like leaders that are not like afraid of ai, but like they have this like self preservation hesitance to dive into ai. Maybe because it's like potentially automating themselves out of a role. Like have you had some of those conversations too? Tata: yes, I did.

Like, uh, last week I heard a CEO managing director of a hundred million in revenue company. Uh, tell me that. If I use a actual automate stuff, then wouldn't, wouldn't I be out of a job? Like I would automate myself out of a job.

And I had another person today tell me on the call earlier, like, this is not set up like this actually happened today. Uh, before the podcast. I was having a call and the person said, so tell me honestly while we're having a chat, are you not afraid doing all of this AI work you do, that you would no longer be needed and. I get it.

Like, I mean, um, we could giggle about it, we could have fun, uh, but it's not genuinely, I understand the fear, like I see where it comes from and especially, um, the person who talked with me last week, he had a bad, his friend had a bad experience. He got fired because he automated a lot of his job. Um, but then I have a question to all of us, and I have had existential question as well. If my job could be fully automated, why am I doing that?

Like, generally, what's the purpose? Like? Uh, and AI is not good at automating repetitive tasks. It's very good.

It taking, like, if you have a process and you know, you do. A, but then you do the B, then you do the C, and then if the C doesn't work, you do the D thing. It's a very structured process and it's a follow along thing, right? So if it's really good at doing that, uh, and that's your main job, then maybe you need to start upskilling yourself and thinking what are the other things you could do?

And that that's one part. The other part is. Are we speaking enough about what we do and explain what, uh, to the leadership of a company, how whatever you are doing could be transferable to some other area. And what I have seen is the smartest marketers I've worked with, like in incredibly talented, technically advanced, they are often also very shy and they are not necessarily sharing.

Out there. Not building in public is one thing because there could be company restrictions, but even within their company, not communicating enough as the kinds of stuff they do. Um, and also, uh, just, just being shy about their genius. Right?

They, they don't, they don't share that. And especially I noticed that with women, there are so many women who don't think that they are good enough. So my call today is just get something to do on your own. And within your work, and if you are afraid, that's very understandable.

But then think, what are the parts of your job which cannot be automated? And I could tell you example of a job, which everyone was afraid that that would be fully automated. I had so many designers on my team. Um, so designers were freaking out like crazy and fairly, I understand like completely, there are so many cool AI design tools now, but you know what?

AI cannot do. The taste, the judgment, the, that part. I still need a designer thinking about the, the flows which are gonna work UX wise for the human thinking of some really creative ideas of how to design that flow. Figuring out which color colors are gonna match better.

I don't know how those design, I'm not a designer, so for me it's like black magic, but they somehow, they do a design and you look at it and you're like, yeah, that kind of works. Right. And AI is very good at prototyping, coming up with stuff, but it's kind of generic and that ad is actually coming from designers. So I'd say the bad designers who used to Scrabble like really random stuff, maybe they're out of a business or getting out of a business soon.

But the ones who are good and who have a taste and the judgment, they have more job than anyone else. I know they are on demand, like their designers have wanna work with and they're like booked until. End of summer, and I'm like, okay, I can't, I can't work with you anymore. You're so much in demand.

So Phil: Yeah, that's great advice for designers out there that are, are freelance and like, want a new, uh, H two on their like freelance portfolio page. Like stand out from the generic output, the, uh, like everyone is using the front end skill and Claude to build the front end. Like I have spent the last 10 years building something way better. Here are examples like stand out from your average person vibe coding with with ai.

Uh, yeah. This has been super fun conversation. Tta, I feel like we could, uh, keep jamming on a, a bunch of topics here. 6.

The Voice Diary Technique for Tracking Your Own Energy at Work - Phil: I got one last question for you before we go. Uh, you're a speaker, obviously a founder, teacher, consultant, marketing AI expert. You also a dog mom, you got a ton of stuff going on on the side. One question we ask everyone is how do you decide what deserves your energy at any given moment, and what's your personal system for staying aligned with what actually makes you happy?

Tata: Um, it's such a nice and very human question. I really like that. After talking for an hour about ai, I. Uh, I do a couple of things.

Uh, one exercise, which I do. Um, I'm not very big fan of like writing a diary, but I have my voice diary and I send myself messages in that voice diary, um, and share what happened throughout the week and how that made me feel. And then I analyzed that. Old times I used to do that.

I would have to sit down and listen on a Saturday or a Sunday. I still prefer to do that many times because I could hear my voice Phil: Yeah. Tata: a little sad or unhappy at some points. And that oftentimes tells me if I'm aligned with what I wanna do.

And then the other thing is just observing my energy and how I feel about doing stuff like conversation with you and pre preparing for this podcast. Makes me feel super excited and super happy, and that's why I wanna do that. And I also do this thing, which I think I'm very blessed and I'm very lucky that I can choose where I live and I can choose who I'm surrounded with. But if I don't, it's gonna sound very weird.

But if I don't feel like I can trust the person on the call, or I feel like I'm feeling weird vibes on the call with a potential client, I would choose to walk away, even though that feels like. I might miss the revenue, but it just still, something is weird. Something is off and I have not done that before. And I have paid the price of then being really stressed.

So now I'm very cautious of that. And in any situation, whenever I feel sad, I have my Sheba, you know, to hug and cuddle with. And that usually solves 90% of our problems. So I have, I have a remedy.

Can strongly recommend anyone who is, um. Who is stuck at home, working from home for the whole day, um, get a pet. It really helps. Phil: I love it.

Tata, thanks so much for your time. We'll link out to the bootcamp and all the other courses and uh, the stuff that you have going on. Thank you so much for joining us. It was super fun.

Tata: Thank you so much for the, for the opportunity. I really enjoyed being here.