Case Study 5: A Car with Brakes
The Italian restaurant Allegria in Napa is festively decorated for Thanksgiving. Near the entrance, a cornucopia overflows with orange and red fruit, setting a cozy tone for a delicious meal. As you walk through, you admire the pumpkin centerpieces with golden leaves and rich, deep-colored candles. Wreaths of orange, red, and yellow foliage hang around the busy salon, reflecting off giant wine bottles.
Julie River, CFO is having a friendly discussion with Ken, CRO as you approach the round table, say hello and sit down.
“There are so many choices for AI agents, we need another million dollars in AI investment,” Ken says, forcing a smile.
Julie shakes her head. “You crack me up. Every time we have a nice meal, you ask for more money. Why didn’t you ask for a million dollars when we dined at In-and-Out?”
You laugh. “It’s so great to see you two talking about AI.”
Julie smiles at you. “Great to see you, Marie. How is your memory? Did you do any AI research?”
You smile back, putting a napkin on your lap. “There are days I hallucinate, just like AI. For the research, I sent an email so that your future isn’t dependent on my ability for instant recall.
Ken laughs. “I can’t imagine living in a world where memories can be manipulated and sold. I’ve been following a new role model, Scott Brinker who is the VP of Platforms at HubSpot, a great Marketing tech company.”
Julie takes a sip of her sparkling water. “Let’s see your AI landscape, Ken. We can leverage AI to compare to Marie’s.”
Ken looks humble. “The TL;DR is:
Technology without modelship
is like a car without brakes.”
Julie and you smile at Ken’s ability to apply role modelship.
Ken continues, “There are huge opportunities to responsibly and ethically re-imagine the services business through AI. We’re entering the era of service-as-software. A typical service business is supposed to have a 50% margin. With software, it could be more. There are hundreds of AI agents [1] and they broadly fall into ten categories: AI agent builders, productivity tools, coding tools, customer service, digital workers, personal assistants, data analysts, workflow, content creation, research. To manage and network multiple agents, an agentic mesh [2] is needed.
Julie nods. “We can start with data and move up the stack.”
You chime in, “Try the Artificial Intelligence Business Development Representatives (BDRs). Many companies are trying them and they’ll improve your growth rate.”
How do coach post this meeting, leveraging career and role modelship as your lenses to the world?
You look at your HeroMash watch. Einstein would have said that the distinction between the past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
You are Marie. How would you encourage and coach Ken (CRO) and Julie (CFO) to channel their best role models to demo new windows to social change?
[1] https://aiagentsdirectory.com/landscape
[2] https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7261018246311460864/