Ainslie Simmonds

Does your community bank have a plan for generative AI? If not, now's the time to start thinking of how to incorporate it into your broader strategy. Check out this article below from Banking Dive to learn more about where to wisely place your bets on AI.

6

Large enterprise CMOs are facing a critical challenge: Drive AI transformation while doing right by the teams that built your organization. The C-suite wants AI transformation yesterday. Their teams—many with decades of institutional knowledge—are skeptical, exhausted, or both. Here's what I keep hearing: "I know we need to move fast. But I can't just blow up my team in the process." These leaders aren't stuck because they don't understand AI. They're stuck because they understand people. They need a plan for that first and foremost when the org gets to a certain size. They know that legacy expertise is still valuable and long-tenured employees deserve honesty about what's coming, not false promises. Transformation that breaks trust isn't really transformation—it's just chaos with better tech. This is the real leadership challenge of AI transformation - navigating the human complexity of change in organizations where relationships, tenure, and culture run deep.

18

2 Comments

“Product marketing is a team sport.” That’s how Rebecca Geraghty, SVP of Product Marketing at Publicis, framed one of my favorite moments from our conversation on Embracing Erosion. She talked about how the best partnerships between PMs and PMMs happen when both sides lean in - when PMs think deeply about positioning, and PMMs embrace the product as much as the message. When you stop worrying about who “owns” what, and start focusing on shared outcomes...that’s how you get to great. Sometimes the best positioning does come from a PM. And that’s a good thing! 💡 Collaboration over control. (link to full episode in the comments)

24

2 Comments

💥💥BREAKING💥💥 A team of technical aces just dropped a 500+ page book on how to design and build Agentforce AI agents using common patterns. Here's why it's a holiday Kindle must-have: Co-authors Cynthia Q. and Andy Forbes (from Capgemini) do a heroic job moving the Agentforce conversation to another level, detailing primary patterns for AI agents, how they differ & thrive ... [FYI: I wrote the foreward ... and another holiday must-have book called "Agentforce: Harnessing the Agency of AI to Grow, Scale and Win Any Industry" (Wiley).] The patterns apply to Agentic AI in general as well as Agentforce. As they say the patterns are "abstract enough to apply anywhere" and reference common tools and frameworks beyond Salesforce like LangChain, Microsoft AutoGen, OpenAgents / CrewAI, #MCP etc. Since launching Agentforce in 2024 SF has been chanting "Don't DIY Your AI" -- which just means that agentic success is not as easy as it looks. Startups can show incredible brio but not a trusted, grounded, audited, governed, multi-#LLM platform that provides tools to help build and test agents & a Command Center to monitor the hybrid human-robot workforce ... such as Agentforce. Among the 8 patterns presented there are: 💥💥Sentinel (monitor-react): as an example, could monitor internal channels for policy violations and alert HR 💥💥Conductor (orchestration): coordinate the creation of a marketing campaign from brief writing through audience definition, media planning and optimization 💥💥Presenter (UX optimization): pull data from multiple disparate systems and present a rolled-up real-time view 💥💥Action (Task doer): automatically handle routine returns for an online retailer 💥💥Coach (insights/advisory): analyze a salesperson's upcoming pitch and suggest improvements And for each the authors provide detail around use cases across the enterprise -- Finance, Customer Care, HR, Marketing, etc. -- and event sources, evaluation logic, agentic actions, tools and tech. The latter spans platform events, Apex/Flow, Agent Builder, MuleSoft, #APIs and more, at times including actual code. In some ways, this is the design-thinking "handbook" that Agentforce users have been looking for ... And after detailing patterns, the authors delve deeply into topics like trust, handling memory and context, designing & governing multi-agent systems; and some sage hard-won counsel on deployment & staging ... There's no doubt Marc Benioff is right and the Agentic Enterprise is the present and future of business. There's plenty in here for readers from the merely agent-curious to the agent-adept, business-line users to architects and admins. Happy agentic holidays! (Link to buy Kindle edition in the comments; hardcover coming soon.)

153

9 Comments

Founders build companies. Ecosystems build founders. 🚀 Behind every "overnight success" is a powerhouse of support, the people who provide the capital, the coaching, and the connections to bridge the gap from a raw idea to a fundable venture. The Reed Smith LLP ROCKY Award by Tech Coast Venture Network (TCVN) is our way of recognizing these pillars of our community. As a Founder’s Choice Award, it is unique because the winners are chosen by the entrepreneurs themselves and the TCVN board. Who we celebrate: We honor the "rock-solid" individuals who help founders become investor-ready, including: * Angel Investors: For providing the critical early-stage belief and capital. * Mentors & Advisors: For guiding founders through the highs and lows of the journey. * Community Champions: For building the infrastructure that makes our ecosystem thrive. By honoring our champions, we ensure the next generation of innovators has a foundation to build upon. Watch this video for a behind the scenes look at the pre-show set up. 👉 Want to see who's leading the way? Check out the full press list to see this year's incredible winners and nominees. #TCVN #ReedSmith #StartupEcosystem #AngelInvestors #Mentorship #FoundersFirst #CommunityChampions

13

Babak, your comments in Joao-Pierre Ruth InformationWeek piece from Davos, and your BBC News interview this morning, really struck a chord. That article made a strong point that AI was front and centre for business leaders at Davos, while still feeling more peripheral for many politicians. The commercial world clearly sees where this is heading, but the reality on the ground is moving far more slowly. The Wall Street Journal recently noted that AI adoption across companies is still “slow and uneven,” with most organisations stuck in pilot mode rather than real, scaled deployment. Lots of noise. Plenty of decks. Not nearly as much real impact in the day-to-day customer journey. That idea that the future of AI isn’t one giant assistant, but lots of specialised agents working together behind the scenes, feels exactly where things are heading. The retail leaders and agency teams I’m speaking to aren’t asking if they should use AI anymore. They’re asking where it improves service, conversion, and customer confidence right now, especially across the direct-to-consumer journey, and who ultimately owns the first-party data coming out of it. Working from London with the Silicon Valley-based team Mind Over Media , I’m seeing real traction from practical, brand-owned agents that sit inside the customer journey, remove friction at the exact moment it matters, and keep the relationship and the data with the brand. As founders Andy Anderson and Jamie Parker put it: “As commerce moves toward agents and agent-to-agent interactions, every brand will need its own intelligence representing it. We build for the brand, not the channel, so that brain sits with the company, and they keep ownership of the customer relationship, the data, and the commercial outcome.” And this isn’t about replacing people. It’s about giving teams better tools that actually work in the real world. As someone who’s dyslexic thinker, AI has genuinely transformed my day-to-day working life. As Sir Richard Branson often says, it can be a powerful co-pilot, but human creativity still matters most. That balance between human judgement and agent-driven systems feels like the real direction of travel. Much of the work around Mind Over Media AI sits right in the middle of this shift. Let me know what you think? #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #GenerativeAI #AgenticAI #Davos #CustomerExperience #DirectToConsumer #FirstPartyData #DigitalTransformation #Retail #Ecommerce #MarketingTechnology #FutureOfWork

9

1 Comment

Most companies today still give lip service to the idea of putting customers first. They resist making the transformational changes required to truly improve CX quality. Until they are willing to become more stakeholder-centric, argues renowned CX expert Michael Lowenstein, they will struggle to win greater customer trust. https://lnkd.in/gdq9mz9h

8

1 Comment