The B2B Podcast Index
Index
All categories
MarketingSalesSaaSFinanceHROpsLeadershipCustomer SuccessAI & DataProductStartups & FoundersRevOpsEngineering & DevTools
MethodologySubmit
Best of:MarketingSalesSaaSFinanceHROpsLeadershipCustomer SuccessAI & DataProductStartups & FoundersRevOpsEngineering & DevTools
An independent project byFame
SearchBest episodesGuestsInsightsMethodologySubmit a podcast
Index/Living Corporate
Living Corporate artwork

How Living Corporate Supported Capgemini's Stakeholder Management Strategy with AI ! Ft. Janet Pope

Living Corporate · 2026-06-23 · 40 min

0:00--:--

Key moments - from our scoring

Substance score

25 / 100

Five dimensions, 20 points each

Insight Density5 / 20
Originality4 / 20
Guest Caliber8 / 20
Specificity & Evidence4 / 20
Conversational Craft4 / 20

Janet Pope, long-serving stakeholder for Capgemini, discusses how structural changes in organizational hierarchies - shifting from traditional pyramids to asymmetrical diamonds - are reshaping stakeholder management strategies in the People Ops context. Living Corporate supported Capgemini by using data analytics and AI-powered insights to synthesize thousands of employee survey responses and qualitative feedback that internal teams struggled to process manually. The collaboration centered on extracting five key strategic themes from employee sentiment data, which then anchored quarterly decision-making across all stakeholder levels. Pope emphasizes how external, unbiased analysis prevented confirmation bias and enabled leadership alignment. Critically, the episode contrasts leveraging AI as a sharpening tool versus deferring decision-making entirely to AI - stressing the importance of human-centered critical thinking, iterative client partnership, and the ability to articulate why errors occur. Ideal for People Ops leaders, HR analytics practitioners, and consultants working with enterprise clients on cultural transformation and data-driven strategy.

Key takeaways

  • →Stakeholder management requires clearly defining who stakeholders are and understanding how decision-making happens across different levels, as consensus-driven versus top-down approaches vary by culture and group.
  • →External data analytics partners can provide objective insights unclouded by internal bias, enabling organizations to align stakeholders around data-driven priorities and maintain focus throughout execution.
  • →AI tools should be used as sharpening instruments with human oversight at the center, not deferred to for output - errors must be explainable and traceable or the tool shouldn't be used.
  • →Effective consulting and partnership work requires continuous dialogue, critical questioning, and context-sharing rather than expecting vendors to deliver perfect answers without interrogation.
  • →Organizations should establish 5-10 key priority themes from data insights and use them as anchors throughout the year to say no to scope creep and maintain accountability against agreed commitments.

In this episode

  1. 1Introduction to Living Corporate's Services and Capgemini Partnership
  2. 2Evolution of Organizational Structure from Pyramid to Diamond Model
  3. 3Stakeholder Management in the Shifting Workplace
  4. 4Data Analytics and Employee Feedback Insights Work with Capgemini
  5. 5AI Tools vs. AI-Deferred Work: Human-Centered Approach
  6. 6Importance of Critical Thinking and Interrogation in Consulting
  7. 7Partnership Approach and Contextual Understanding in Client Engagements

Mentioned

Living CorporateCapgeminiJanet PopeZachChatGPT

Guests

Janet Pope

Topics in this episode

Data-driven decision makingPrompt engineeringLLMsStakeholder managementCapgeminiLiving CorporateEmployee feedback analyticsAI tools for data analysisOrganizational structure transformationQualitative survey analysis

Questions this episode answers

How did Living Corporate help Capgemini analyze large volumes of qualitative survey data?

Living Corporate used custom AI tools and proprietary approaches to process thousands of employee survey open-text responses and qualitative feedback, which internal teams found unwieldy to synthesize. This external analysis prevented confirmation bias and surfaced five key strategic themes that anchored Capgemini's quarterly decision-making and stakeholder alignment.

What is the difference between using AI as a tool versus deferring to AI for delivery?

Using AI as a tool means leveraging it to sharpen and improve human decision-making with a human at the center of both process and delivery. Deferring to AI means relying entirely on AI output, which often results in accurate first pages, declining quality thereafter, and errors that cannot be explained - creating trust risks.

How did Capgemini's stakeholder team stay focused on priorities throughout the year?

After aligning on five key themes from data-driven insights in meetings with breakouts and focus groups, stakeholders used these agreed priorities as anchors to evaluate scope creep each quarter and filter out misaligned initiatives, creating clarity on what was accomplished against original commitments.

Why is it important for consultants to ask questions and require client context when starting a project?

Consultants lack historical and organizational context that internal teams possess; asking questions prevents blind analysis and ensures insights are grounded in operational reality rather than assumptions, ultimately delivering more actionable and relevant recommendations.

What our scoring noted

Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.

Insight Density

5 / 20

The episode is predominantly a promotional showcase for Living Corporate's services, with Janet's three loosely structured tips on data presentation for stakeholders constituting the bulk of substantive content. Those tips - vet data in advance, watch for confirmation bias, lead with the ask - are generic consulting wisdom rather than novel operator insight, and the rest of the runtime is padded with pleasantries, self-promotion, and meandering analogies.

Sometimes the data is telling people stuff they already wanted to do anyway. And so you're just helping them kind of move forward with the thing.
he'd throw out your presentation if you didn't start with the reason for your ask, which in a lot of these cases was a dollar amount

Originality

4 / 20

The episode recycles universally circulated ideas - AI as a tool not a crutch, the importance of storytelling over raw data, confirmation bias in executive presentations - without adding any first-principles reasoning or counterintuitive framing. The 'pyramid to diamond' workforce metaphor is introduced vaguely and never developed into an original argument.

There's a difference in leveraging AI generative AI as a tool to sharpen delivery versus deferring to AI to deliver output.
I became a data analyst long before I learned how to tell a good story

Guest Caliber

8 / 20

Janet Pope is a legitimate senior practitioner - VP of Corporate Responsibility & Engagement for the Americas at Capgemini with 20 years of corporate experience - which is genuinely relevant. However, she functions almost entirely as a client testimonial for Living Corporate in this episode rather than as an expert sharing hard-won operational lessons, which significantly limits the value her title would otherwise imply.

In my 20 years of corporate, I think I found that like one or two or three things, two or three things are going to happen.
I have a master's in engineering management, not an mba

Specificity & Evidence

4 / 20

Concrete evidence is almost entirely absent from the actual engagement being discussed: no outcome metrics, no before/after sentiment scores, no headcount figures, no dollar impact from the Capgemini project. The only specific numbers in the episode relate to Living Corporate's own service offering rather than evidence of results, and the Capgemini work is kept deliberately vague.

we have now over 1700 eLearning modules on our platform
there were five key themes that came out of those insights

Conversational Craft

4 / 20

The host's questions are open-ended and rarely followed up with probing or pushback; large portions of the episode are taken up by the host promoting his own firm unprompted. Most tellingly, the dynamic inverts at one point when the guest has to ask the host a question to redirect him toward articulating his own differentiation, which is a hallmark of an unstructured promotional conversation rather than a craft-led interview.

I think I do want to also just give you an opportunity to talk about how you're differentiating the way that you're pulling insights beyond just the ability to technically leverage AI tools
If you could give people advice about what it means to like, leverage data effectively for stakeholder management and operational insight

Conversation analysis

Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.

Share of words spoken

  • Janet Popeguest53%
  • Zachhost47%

Most-used words

data42corporate21important16living15level14different14questions13stakeholders12janet11tools11happen11sure10question10story10context9decision9

Episode notes

Zach sits down with Janet Pope - Tech and Social Impact Connector | VP, Corporate Responsibility & Engagement | Southwest Region (Geo) Leader | Nonprofit founder with Capgemini . About Living Corporate: ⁠⁠⁠

Full transcript

40 min

Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.

Zach: What's up y'?

Janet Pope: All?

Zach: Y' all are listening to Living Corporate's flagship podcast. If you didn't know, Living Corporate helps organizations build employee engagement and market trust through data analytics and data transformation, our elearning platform and brand marketing storytelling. We're so excited for you to be here today. The conversation you're about to hear is going to connect the dots between employee experience and go to market effectiveness. If you're not ready, get ready. Here we are. Go. Hm. We have Janet Pope. Now you know, Janet is a, uh, long term guest and friend of the Living Corporate. But for those who don't know, because everybody don't always know, I know that Living Corporate is not like this, like podcast just kind of talks about navigating the world of work. We actually are, uh, an experience management firm, right. We do all sorts of work, right. The podcast that people really know and experience really part of our, our brand storytelling arm. We work with all sorts of organizations like Capgemini, uh, global brands like Capgemini to help amplify and tell stories to drive employee engagement and as well as talent engagement for recruitment and growth purposes. We also have an e learning platform where we uh, take our podcast, we translated it into these elearning modules. We have now over 1700 eLearning modules on our platform and we leverage that content as, as an lms, right. And we, to help drive uh, leadership, allyship, career management, wellness and things of that nature. And then we have data transformation work. And uh, when we take your data and we're able to, whatever the data may be, could be your HR data, your sentiment data, your operations financial data, we're able to build, take that information, oftentimes disparate information that sits all across your enterprise, stitch it together into something meaningful, insightful. Not, uh, only to tell you what's, what's happening right now, but also build out some predictive models if you understand what's coming around the corner. And you know, Janet has been so many things to live in Corporate, but uh, you know, one thing that she's been over the last several years is our point of contact is Capgemini has been a client of Living Corporate across each of our service lines. Across, uh, Capgemini has been a prominent client and with that context, I want to say Janet, welcome to Link Corporate. How you doing?

Janet Pope: Hi Zach. Happy to be here. Thank you.

Zach: It's a pleasure to have you. Listen, you know, I think about, I think about today and I think about like the world of work, right? And it's shifting and changing so it's weird. Like I'm turning 37 this year and I remember when I got into work, you know, there was a pyramid. Right. There was. You describe work as a pyramid. You had a large entry level base of talent. Right. Talking about people fresh out of college. Uh, you have people who were, you know, if not fresh out of college, they were maybe they were reinventing. Uh, so they maybe m still new in industry.

Janet Pope: Uh-huh.

Zach: You had another layer of like, you know, frontline leaders. Frontline managers.

Janet Pope: Yep.

Zach: Um, then you had another layer of like mid level managers. These were probably oftentimes senior managers, directors. Then you had top level leadership, which were your senior leaders, your VPs, and you had the tip, tip top, which are like your, your chief officers. Right. Um, and that's really kind of like the world that I entered, I believe, when I got into work, uh, all these seasons ago.

Janet Pope: Sure.

Zach: However. Right. We're now seeing a change, uh, and we could say late stage capitalist changes. I don't, you know, you know, the, the spur of the changes or the reason for these changes are multi dimensional, frankly.

Janet Pope: Absolutely.

Zach: We don't have to necessarily get into all that right now, but we are seeing that that pyramid is changing. Right. So we're changing from like this pyramid. It's almost like a diamond. And it's not a, it's not really like a, it's not a rhombus. Like, it's not a, it's not like an equal diamond. I would say like the, it's like the, it's, it's an asymmetrical diamond, but it's a diamond. Right. So.

Janet Pope: Right.

Zach: There's less of. Not a. That base, that employee base, an entry level base is not as wide. It's actually very, it's a.

Janet Pope: Looks a lot different than it did when you and I started in the work field. Absolutely.

Zach: You also have increased pressure and expectation of that mid level manager and frontline leader. Frontline leader, mid level manager, kind of, kind of like mushed together more like they're a little more. Less distinguishable. And then you also have increased pressure at that top part. Right. At that, at that leadership level part. And I say all that to say my impression as a, as a, as a people ops expert, um, but as someone who's not in industry, is that managing stakeholders. Right. So like, you know, the idea of like managing and engaging and you know, herding cats, especially at the, at the, at that mid level leader and senior leadership level is different now m than it was five years ago, certainly 10 years ago. I'd love to hear your perspective on like stakeholder management in the People OPS context. Like, what does that look like? And just your perspective on it.

Janet Pope: Yeah, absolutely. So generally speaking, like you said, the model of the pyramid and many, many workforces and many, many industries is shifting and changing. And you're right, like there are many, many reasons for, for why that is happening. Um, in my own experience, and some of this is stakeholder management even when the pyramid was this original model. But there certainly are different things that we have to think about. I think the first thing, and I think you know me enough by now to know I love definitions, is just getting clear on who are the stakeholders, um, that we're managing. And so sometimes when we talk about leaders, the first question is like, well, what do we mean by leaders? Are we talking leaders at every level? Are we talking executive leadership? Are we talking people on boards? Um, where is the decision making happening? What do people feel like they need to be enabled to make that decision? And just understanding the complexity of navigating those different, uh, stakeholders to not overuse stakeholders. But what I found is, um, sometimes now it's taking a little bit of a, of a different pace to come to certain decisions. And I don't, I started to generalize and then I thought about it like some things are slowing down and other things are speeding up. And so, you know, I can't generalize in terms of the speed of the pace. But I am finding that's changing based on stakeholder groups. Um, some of how, whether it's consensus, consensus driven or sort of top down driven, that's always been different culturally and that's starting to change a little bit as well. Um, I guess I'll get into how you helped us think about this when we work with you on our. Some things related to better understanding what our own people were telling us and some data and analytics around like employee feedback to just generalize and not bore people with consulting, uh, lingo. But Living Corporate did a really good job of just helping us in terms of the data analytics component you were talking about earlier. Kind of wrap our arms around more detail because there's stuff we were doing already internally, but you enabled us to kind of go deeper. And sometimes it's just good to have an external eye so that you're not leading the witness based on like your own bias about what you think needs to change. And just say we need to ask these people who are not bought into wherever we think we're headed because you know, you'll cut the data and try to find the things that support the thing you want to do. So just the external, not audit, because I don't want to overuse that word, but just a critical eye that is looking at it without the same level of buy into the results or the output that can say, this is what the data is telling you. Um, and this is what it's telling you. We needed to understand it by multiple dimensions and different population groups. And it ended up supporting some of what we thought. But there were also things that came out of it that were different than what we thought. And I say that to only say that we were enabled to leverage the insights from that to then bring stakeholders together at the beginning of a year and let that data guide the way that we then anchored every quarter. Remember when we aligned on these decisions based on this data and we said these are the priorities. So anytime it kind of started to grow out of scope or lean in a different direction, we literally would just come right back to those five key themes that came out of those insights and say, these are the decisions that we made together as a stakeholder team. These are the things we agreed to do. Which means those are the things we agreed not to do. And it helped us just continue to say no to the wrong things and drive forward on the right things. And maybe most importantly, from my perspective, be able to point to at the end of the year, these are the things we accomplished against these five things we agreed upon so that people were really clear. Uh, especially sometimes when you have more qualitative things than quantitative things. You want to be able to point back to that agreement, um, and just be able to be very clear on what the outputs were, were. So, short answer, because I know you'll have another question, um, making sure that we could align stakeholders, have them buy into the way we define those key priorities. And there were meetings, a number of kind of virtual big meetings that happened to drive that and do that. Um, but data was a part of that decisioning. Some breakouts and focus groups were a part of that decisioning. And making sure everybody, all stakeholders, whatever level that they were at, felt like they were a part of the definition, enabled that to keep going with the right level of focus.

Zach: So it's interesting because one, I was really excited about the work that we were able to do with Capgemini, uh, as it pertains to taking this, taking the, uh, information and helping, like to kind of, to your point or graph arms around because it was so much data. And I think, yeah, so often when it comes to Qualitative data. Right. You're talking like this in this context without spilling yalls beans like you're talking about like this. A lot of survey open text responses.

Janet Pope: Yeah.

Zach: And truly that information can be a bit unwieldy. So um, sometimes, especially like when you know you want to be accurate, you want to be representative, you want to be um, you, you want to be consistent at the same time like when you task like three people to review like thousands of comments across. So a bunch, a bunch of different regions and leaders.

Janet Pope: Yeah.

Zach: What do you expect exactly? Like there's only so much I'm going to be able to really ingest, especially to turn it over in a reasonable amount of time or reasonable or a quick amount of time being like, let's say like a couple, couple weeks or a few days. Like come on, what does that look like? So I was excited about our ability to leverage our tools and our tools to deliver insight that was helpful and meaningful.

Janet Pope: I think so, yeah. I mean, yeah, sorry just to pause because I know somebody will hear this and say AI like AI can do it. And so I think I do want to also just give you an opportunity to talk about how you're differentiating the way that you're pulling insights beyond just the ability to technically leverage AI tools to kind of drive some of that. If that, if that's okay as a question. Just you know, I want to make sure people hear the value you added as well.

Zach: I think that you're absolutely right. Like, so there's a difference in. I think there's something that's. There's a difference in like allow in leveraging AI generative AI as a tool.

Janet Pope: Mhm.

Zach: To sharpen delivery versus deferring to AI to deliver output. So there's a lot of work today that is um, AI deferred work. And we see AI deferred work because typically AI, ah, deferred work has the tendency to have a really pretty front page and then maybe a decent second page and then confusing third page and then nonsense after that.

Janet Pope: Yeah.

Zach: And so, and so it's important right. When you talk about leveraging tools, um, you're absolutely right. Ah, that there's a, that it's treated as such. You use a hammer to make nail. Uh, to nail a nail in the woods. You would not let that hammer nail itself. Hammer going to everything as a nail

Janet Pope: or use a saw. Yeah, yeah.

Zach: What are you talking about? We got it. We gotta. So we have to be responsible. Um, and so when it comes to living corporate. Absolutely. We have um, Our own custom AI tools. We have some things that we've done that are proprietary and how we, how we leverage certain LLMs. Um, certainly things that we've also built, some things we've also coded. Um, but within all of that work, there's a human at the center of it. And so not, um, only is there a human at the center of the delivery, but there's a human, um, at the center of process. So when we're, we're leveraging information, we're leveraging these tools. Um, we have, we have, we do have check ins with our clients. Like we have like we had checks with Cat Gemini. Right. This was not like a, um. Because. And here's why. Right. First of all, you're gonna make mistakes. Right? So consulting, it's funny, like consulting. Consulting culture. And I can say this now, Janet can't say this y', all. I' ma say it. Consulting culture is, uh, is. It's, it's, it's a lot of um, perfectionist culture. Right. So there's a pressure, uh, where everything has to be absolutely perfect all the time. There are no mistakes. And, and that's important, frankly, especially when you talk about big four and big four adjacent, talking about auditing and accounting work. Accuracy is important. You get paid millions and millions and millions of dollars for accuracy. At the same time, typos happen. At the same time, formatting issues happen. Um, and what's important when issues and mistakes happen or incongruencies occur? It's not that. It's not that they're not going to happen. It's that when they're identified, you're able to articulate why and where and why. Like what, how that, how it happened.

Janet Pope: Sure.

Zach: The thing that, that, that drives anxiety for me when it comes to AI tools is that there can be errors that happen. And then you, you. If you can't articulate why that error happened, that is the problem. Right. And the error can't. And the why can't be all. It just made it up. Well then if you have a tool that's just making things up, that's a tool you shouldn't use.

Janet Pope: Yeah.

Zach: You need to have. There needs to be a reason and a rationale and a logic as to what happened. Otherwise you lose trust. You burn trust with your, your, your stakeholders, with your clients. Not to over stakeholder.

Janet Pope: No, no, you're good. And I mean one of the things you said without saying is how important it is for, for people leveraging these tools to really be able to think critically about the outputs that they're receiving, how to, you know, not just take it on face value, um, how to really think through things. And I mean maybe this was getting into your example of the first page is good, the second page is okay. The third page, by the time you get to the fifth page is trash is you know, just continuing to. And I mean I guess that's the whole art of prompt engineering, like really evaluating. I've been thinking a lot more this year than last year for sure in my own prompting with um, the different tools that I use about the questions because I want to say when everything first got launched and I was learning about LLMs and, and using ChatGPT like the rest of the world, I use it a little less these days. I use some other tools more. Um, I was just giving commands, you know, like give me the best places to eat in Houston, top five barbecue places in Houston. Um, and lately it's really been more questions, um, and understanding like frameworks and putting the tools in the role of an auditor, um, to just get more critical in terms of the solution. So all of that to say, I think um, you and your team do a really good job of just continuing to make sure with stakeholders together, your clients that you're working with, you're really thinking critically and asking all the right questions. Like I remember one call like it was last week where it was just question after question after question after question to just make sure what you're diving into um, has the correct scope and um, is you know, going to be focused on the right thing so that the output isn't trashed. Your, to your Elliot example, you know,

Zach: there's something to be said about, and there's something to be said about working with people and working with clients who, who understand there's going to be questions and inquiry. And I believe though that the idea of, I think sometimes technologists and I mean it's just part, it's also just part of selling, selling the work. Right? But there's this assumption that clients don't want to answer questions that people don't, people don't know, they just want you to take it and do it. No, like the right, the right counterparts understand that there's no way that you're gonna be able to do this work without some degree of interrogation. And also um, out of respect to them and their work over the past few, you're coming in as a consultant or as a partner, right? I think about like living corporate. We came in, we came in to your partner earlier without historical buy in or or any sort of like political agenda or incentive, even, even incentive to sway data one way or the other, our bonuses and performance scores, anything like that? We don't have any of those things, I think. And so we also. And look, I'll say this in another way for like other consultancies, there also wasn't like some carrot being dangled of like an extension or additional work in the future if certain things are found. So, so we're coming in, you know, eyes wide, just fresh. So two things there. One, yes, we're going to be objective, but then two, we're going to be likely going to be more objective naturally. But then two, we're not, um, we don't have, we don't have historical context. So how could we come in without any of that and then like be able to do something that uh, other teams have been working through for several years or quarters or whatever? Yeah, we obviously are going to need to engage you out of respect to the work that you've already done.

Janet Pope: Yeah, I'm going to take us off topic for a minute, but there's a lesson in there for managers and leaders in general and maybe even people who are just entering the workforce or re. Entering the workforce. Because I've been having so many conversations with people in other organizations that are telling me that their manager just expects them to come in with no context and deliver the work and they ask questions and it's like, well, you should know how to do whatever, whatever. You're supposed to be an expert or whatever. And so you're talking about it in a client consultant relationship. But there's a lesson in what you said for human to human relationships where we got to give people context, but we got to give people the space to ask questions. Good questions. Please, please ask good questions. Um, but we got to get people to the space. We have to get back to critical thinking. Um, yeah, so I just, I didn't want to let that fly by without getting that human to human lesson out of there too.

Zach: You know, I think that there's something to be said, um, there's something to be said. Be said about like having the right partner is important. Right. So we have been privileged, right. That we have clients, including Cap Gemini, that welcome inquiry, they welcome questions and they know that questions going to happen. That if, if you hand me a challenge and you say, look, this is a sticky, tangled mess or this is a ch, it's reasonable for you come back and say, okay, well what is this made out of and how did this happen? Or what was the start of this.

Janet Pope: Yeah.

Zach: You don't expect me to take it and come back like I'm not magic, like I'm magical and I might, I might be magical. Let's just say I'm magical, I'm still real. You know what I'm saying?

Janet Pope: I'm a real person.

Zach: So we have to, we got to figure this out.

Janet Pope: So I'm just, I mean you're, you're going to come back with something that might not, it might be an answer, but might not be the most helpful answer because you did it blind. Um, like if I gave you a Rubik's Cube and no context, uh, maybe you break the whole thing apart and get it back to me all m. Matched up. Right. So, yeah, I mean, yeah, uh, it's, it's still fascinating to me that again, if it was a one off, I think I'd be, oh, like maybe you had a bad manager. But so many people lately are coming to me saying like, you know, they're not getting any coaching, they're not getting any guidance. People, people just expect them to magically know how to solve something. And if they ask questions, it's almost like they're met with resentment about them asking the question. Um, I don't know if you're hearing that from other people in other pods, but it's just interesting how much that's bubbling up to me again outside the walls of my current company.

Zach: Historical and organizational context is always important and. Absolutely. So like, you know, we'll come back. We'll like oftentimes we'll come back. That's why even like when we do the work that we do with caf, um, we recognize that the first pass we take, whatever our analysis is, it's going to be an answer. Uh, it's not going to be the answer because it's not going to have the historical and organizational operational context that would, would come with, with working inside of Capgemini. Right. And I think that's important when you talk about insights work. And it certainly insights work, but any type of just consultative work that you're missing a lot of color when you're um, when you're coming in and you have to trust folks around you to uh, bring the crayons, bring the paint, bring the construction paper, whatever case is.

Janet Pope: Yeah.

Zach: So I think there's something to be said Right. About making sure that you're partnered with your client, you're partnered with and it could be an internal project or if you're working as a vendor, um, as a, as a consultant, that you're, you're being honest and like both parties have to come together and say, hey, here's what this really means. This is how we're leveraging this data. Here's the information I'm still going to need from you. It's not going to be perfect. We're going to have to massage and get the is. Right. Um, I think with Living Corporate we get excited because we're able to, you know, go from ideation to delivery anywhere from like four to six weeks. And that's on like the long end. Um, and we're very upfront. I mean it's still going to require a couple of meetings with you, right? As a, as a partner, that's going to require probably 30 minutes, three or four times. And um, most people find that to be really reasonable. Especially when you think about the fact that these folks that we're talking to have been knee deep in this stuff for several months, if not years. Right. So I, I think like, if you could talk to folks about, if you could give people advice about what it means to like, leverage data effectively for stakeholder management and operational insight, um, especially in working, working with, with a living corporation, corporate or not, like, what would those points of advice be?

Janet Pope: Yeah, it's a good question. Uh, first, I think let me just say something around just having the opportunity and partnering with you on this particular topic and the work that was done so the speed of delivery and the ability to be agile in the delivery is something that, I mean maybe is based on just the entity and the team and the size and the ability to operate a bit like a startup, if you will. Um, but also appreciate it because you and your team have operated in corporate, you've been consultants, you, um, just kind of understand the lingo and the pressures and um, the expectation around deliverables and what those deliverables look like. And that's appreciated because it's not something that you have to explain in the way that you might have to explain to someone that did not have, or a team that didn't have that particular experience. So I think people who are looking to partner with you would really appreciate, um, what you're bringing to the table around that. I also already said it's good to just have an external eye, um, somebody that's coming to it from a different frame. And I very much appreciated that in working with you. And then, you know, you have other clients, you have other partners, you aren't breaking any confidentiality but are aware intuitively based on conversations and projects of how Other organizations are doing some of these things and you're enabled to kind of bring the best of that and just the way that you are executing and the types of projects that you're delivering. So anyway, all that to say that was all appreciated and you know, it's always a pleasure to uh, partner with you. And you know, I, I like the way you think about the world. I don't know what it is about me and my character, but I seem to draw to me people that people seem to really love and, or really hate. And um, again, I don't know what that says about me. I think people love you or they hate you, Zack, and more and more people probably love you. Uh, but I think you're very self aware of this as well. Um, so people will love working with you. Let me answer your question. Why is it important to bring data to key stakeholders and insights to enable them to make decisions? So I mean it's business like I hate to give kind of this, maybe it feels like a consulting answer, but it's business like you're not going to come to the right decision. And most leaders with, you know, any experience aren't going to come to any decision unless they have the right information to make that decision. And so in my 20 years of corporate, I think I found that like one or two or three things, two or three things are going to happen. So you're going to bring data and either people are going to send you on a wild goose chase to get clarity on some of the data points. They're like ah, maybe that doesn't feel right. And so if you can go into it and before that wild goose chase happens, just say ah, ah, actually we vetted this or um, we've actually talked to your team and they're good on this data or whatever it is in understanding the stakeholders that are going to be in the room. If you can be ahead of some of that data stuff, that's always going to happen, that's helpful, right? I've learned the hard way, um, to just prepare so that you aren't defending it because that always gets you on a tangent and then you sound less credible actually, even though everything's right. But if you start to get into a debate about the data with someone, it sounds less credible for whatever reason. So if you can just do your due diligence and, and be really clear and vet it all out so that when somebody challenges, because they will challenge it, that you can already say we worked with a third party or we vetted this with operations or like whatever the right answers are. Um, that's always a great way to just stop the data churn, analysis, paralysis, ridiculousness. That can't happen. Um, second, sometimes the data is telling people stuff they already wanted to do anyway. And so you're just helping them kind of move forward with the thing. Hopefully it was also the thing you wanted to do. But sometimes you're just helping them move forward with the decision they already made. Um, there's, uh, a. What do they call that, Confirmation bias, I think. And so it is important to, I say that, to say it's important to think through what could someone latch onto in the way that you're framing or presenting this data? Because what you don't want to happen is you're mentioning something like as a one off, but it steers the whole decision in a completely different way because of the way someone could kind of latch onto that piece of data and do whatever they wanted to do. And that's not aligned actually with what the direction you're trying to take people on the decision. Um, so being really, really careful and trying to think through some of that, I think is important as well. The third thing is maybe just, um, the frame, right? Like in. I was in business school classes, masters, um, of engineering management. I always get careful because I don't want anybody to think I'm claiming to have an mba. I have a master's in engineering management, not an mba. Um, but we took business classes. And I remember a professor always like, you would literally, he'd throw out your presentation if you didn't start with the reason for your ask, which in a lot of these cases was a dollar amount. So, like, I'm here for you today because we need a million dollars investment to do. Da da da da da da da. So I, uh, my brain kind of got trained to like most people, or before I was putting that at the end, it's like, oh, this is the whole buildup. And the ask is a million dollars. Um, and he was just like, nope, start with the ask. So framing what it is you're really trying to get out of this entire conversation. And then giving people the data versus burying them in data, and then they've asked 25 questions about it and don't even remember why they're here. But they don't like something they saw in your chart, which maybe was the only decimal point off, and now they threw the whole thing away. Um, the frame, like getting really clear on your story, your storytelling, which, if I'm honest about my own kind of Lessons learned in my career trajectory. I became a data analyst long before I learned how to tell a good story story. And so making sure super technical people are also just continuing to build that muscle around storytelling. Especially in the day where we probably are starting to feel like it's the humans versus the bots. Um, the better you can get in your connection over storytelling and framing your story and thinking about what you're leveraging this data to say is really, really important at any stakeholder level and figuring out the way you tell that story based on the stakeholders that you're trying to articulate something to is really important. The way I would tell a story, leveraging data to a broad employee group is a bit different than the way that I would tell that story to an executive board that I'm looking to make a decision. Right. So I don't know if I'm being helpful, but those are the three things that come to mind for me when I think about the importance of data and ah, how to leverage it for stakeholder management.

Zach: Janet, you're being very helpful. I appreciate you taking the time, uh, not only to um, just sit down and live in corporate today, but also just to be a client, um, and to provide really great work and use case for us as we strive to deliver insights to um, and help organizations, especially global enterprise organizations such as Capgemini, solve some really complex challenges. Uh, yeah, really appreciate your answers and your thoughts around um, how folks should show up and thinking about certain types of data and then also like the underlying pressure around some of this work as we have AI and it's being its presentation or positioning as something that can supplant a lot of this uh, human driven work. So thank you.

Janet Pope: Listen, and you and your team's ability to not just give us a bunch of data and, or a bunch of insights but also help to start to think about what is this actually saying and what's the story that we are shaping based on what the data is telling us. Like that is always, always, always going to be an important differentiation because anybody can give you the data, some people can give you the insights from the data, but not everybody can help you start to craft what is this really telling us and what do I need to convey based on what the data is telling us. So you said thank you to me. I also want to say thank you to you.

Zach: Thank you Janet. You're absolutely right. Storytelling is important, right? If you can't put the story together, most executives, um, I dare I say even including you Janet, are not really going to be thinking about. Oh, well, this market was 0.2% higher over the past six quarters than this market. They're going to be thinking about the story and the experience associated with these numbers. They're going to be thinking about the impact and the so what of all of it. And that is. That goes beyond what a m generative tool can tell you. That goes beyond what Nick Excel document can tell you. Um, that that requires effective partnership. Listen, it's been Janet Pope. This has been a spotlight. Some of the work that we're doing at Living Corporate with some incredible brands. Shout out to Capgemini and shout out to Janet Pope is the vice president, corporate responsibility, engagement for all of the Americas.

Janet Pope: Okay?

Zach: All the Americas. And she be doing a bunch of other stuff. You know what I'm saying? She's wears mad hats. So thank you. And, uh, until next time, y'. All. Oh. Click the link in the show notes. Learn more about Janet. Learn more about Ken Gemini. Learn more about our students. We get our case study on our website, living-corporate.com until next time, y'.

Janet Pope: All.

Zach: Peace.

Janet Pope: Living Corporate is a podcast by Living Corporate llc. Our, uh, logo was designed by David Dawkins. Our, uh, theme music was produced by Kim Brown. Additional music production by Antoine Franklin from Musical Elevation. Post production is handled by Jeremy Jackson. Got a topic suggestion? Email us@livingcorporatepodcastmailuh.com youm can find us online on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and living-corporate.com. thanks for listening. Stay tuned.

Related episodes across the Index

Other episodes covering the same guests and topics, from across The B2B Podcast Index.

  • Why B2B Brands Are Using AI to Write Sales ProposalsThe Growth Operator with Fexingo · on Prompt engineering85 / 100
  • Episode 018: Season 2, the $75 Consult and the Frankenstein StackAI Tools for Practicing Lawyers · on Prompt engineering84 / 100
  • Episode 111: Building Your Defences Against AI MisinformationValue Driven Data Science · on Prompt engineering83 / 100
  • How B2B Marketers Use AI to Personalize at Scale for EnterpriseB2B Marketing with Fexingo · on Prompt engineering82 / 100
  • 477. The Nitty Gritty of AI From an Attorney and AI Expert with Mike BrownThe Game Changing Attorney Podcast with Michael Mogill · on Prompt engineering81 / 100
  • PayPal Ads’ Big Retail Media Bet: Why Shoppable Ads Could Finally Work (And The Future of Commerce in an AI World)Retail Media Breakfast Club · on LLMs80 / 100

More from Living Corporate

All episodes →
  • Why Your Voice Still Matters ! Ft. Alexis White & Desy Osunsade63 / 100
  • Effective HR Functions in This Moment ! Ft. Joey Price54 / 100
  • Leadership in 2026 With L. Michelle Smith67 / 100
  • What Is DEI in This Moment? Ft. Nicole Sanchez
  • Talking with Akilah Willery
All Living Corporate episodes →