The Human Side Of Digital Transformation In The AI Era

[00:00:00] Tessa Burg: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Leader Generation, brought to you by Mod Op. I’m your host, Tessa Burg, CTO, here at Mod Op, and I’m very excited to have Rohit Prabhakar. He’s the global head of digital experiences and capabilities at Visa. He’s joining us today to talk about how leading transformation has evolved in the age of AI and how we as leaders can help bring along people even while everything is changing, and we are all feeling this right now, Rohit.  

[00:00:33] Tessa Burg: So thank you so much for being our guest today.  

[00:00:35] Rohit Prabhakar: Thanks, Tessa. I’m very, very happy to be here.  

[00:00:39] Tessa Burg: So, as I said before the call, I had the opportunity to go on your website and dig into your content, and it is so rich with incredible insights to really help give people accessible tools and accessible approaches to navigating transformation today.  

[00:00:58] Tessa Burg: But what was also really interesting is your own journey. You have worn so many different hats throughout your career. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how those different hats that you’ve worn have really positioned you to help lead transformation now.  

[00:01:13] Rohit Prabhakar: Uh, definitely it has been a journey, a journey that like I personally have very much enjoyed and it all has happened, uh, not because I designed it that way.  

[00:01:22] Rohit Prabhakar: It happened because it happened, uh, by the power of association. Uh, I am, my undergrad, my background is medical science. That’s where I started. When I went to college, but I never did anything in that space. Uh, while I was doing, uh, my undergrad, I fell in love with computers because my cousin used to talk about computers and Java, especially Java programming.  

[00:01:45] Rohit Prabhakar: And I used to envy these guys and he and his friends talking about Java. And I started learning Java. I went to App Tech, which was a very, very big institute all over India. I learned Java and that was my journey into computers. And I started, I became a software engineer, started my journey over there. Uh, worked for one of the biggest companies like, uh, in the financial insur, uh, financial side, FIS.  

[00:02:08] Rohit Prabhakar: They’re the biggest company in that space and, uh, did some amazing things over there. Software engineering, pure hardware engineering. Also, sometimes, because I used to help my friends who used to lead the hardware site, I used to help them like put some servers together and everything comes together. As you move progress in your career, at that point of time, you don’t know what you are doing.  

[00:02:27] Rohit Prabhakar: You used to write test cases, use cases, but I was a software engineer. Uh, had a great time doing all those things and overnight I was shifting into sales, uh, while I was at FIS because of my great relationships with my clients and I, how I used to understand their requirements and deliver on those requirements because my passion was always not about building great products. But building great products that really solved the problem and the problem that my clients are looking forward for.  

[00:02:55] Rohit Prabhakar: And that led me in sales. I was in sales for two years. That was an amazing journey. In that journey, I learned about why it matters to really understand what your customer is asking, and often what your customer is asking is not what they need.  

[00:03:10] Rohit Prabhakar: You have to click a couple of times in and to really ask them right questions. To really find out what they’re asking for, and that was my journey also from sales. Like then I moved on to a company called Copart, which are the biggest auto auctioning company. Uh, now they are like, uh, five or maybe like six, $7 billion or more.  

[00:03:30] Rohit Prabhakar: And I was there and then I got introduced to the world of marketing because I was in the technology org and I was leading some of their products, mostly around, uh, the end user experience. And we would always find out that technology and marketing used to be on a totally different wavelength. And I said, okay, let me step in.  

[00:03:48] Rohit Prabhakar: I stepped in and I started to listen here and I came to know about like a beautiful world of marketing and that was my. From one foot inside the marketing organization while I was helping them to deliver from the technology organization. And also started working on things that now we call marketing technology.  

[00:04:05] Rohit Prabhakar: And from there, landed at McKesson, which is the biggest healthcare company. Uh, get the fortune of running their end to end, uh, transformation of marketing and sales, like first digital transformation over  

there, which was very, very impactful. Then moved to Thomson Reuters. Um, over there led transformation of marketing, sales, and service.  

[00:04:25] Rohit Prabhakar: Uh, then went to EQ Holdings where the role was unique and it was a combination of everything coming together. Um, my background in software engineering, I knew something about hardware. Uh, then I moved into sales. From sales, I moved into marketing and marketing transformation. And here at EQ Holdings, I was responsible for.  

[00:04:45] Rohit Prabhakar: Uh, not just running the technology of the organization, but also transforming all the companies that we own and operated, and also look for investment investing into new companies. We were investing invested in over 30 other companies and then landed at Visa.  

[00:04:58] Rohit Prabhakar: At Visa As, as you shared, I’m responsible for our global digital experiences, global digital marketing and marketing capabilities, which includes marketing, technology, technology, AI, data, and all those type of things.  

[00:05:10] Rohit Prabhakar: So it has been like everything I have done every job. By association, by luck, by opportunities that I saw has enabled me to understand different part of the businesses very, very well. To really understand what a customer is asking. Really understand what is business asking because they’re the customer zero, and what are they asking for?  

[00:05:29] Rohit Prabhakar: What are their pain points and what are the things that really mean to them and matter to them? And that’s have been also been the re like. The secret sauce of, uh, those amazing transformations, very successful transformations, and on top of it is an ability to build and assemble great teams, has been the absolute big reason of this success.  

[00:05:53] Rohit Prabhakar: Uh, and I hope this, uh, success continues for me.  

[00:05:58] Tessa Burg: Yeah, I mean, it’s incredible because not a lot of people. Have had the opportunity to sit in so many seats, or if they have, they may have not wanted to. But it real, like the more generalist role is also going to be the role of the future. And that skill of being able to ask the right questions and deeply understand the challenges you’re solving is really at the core of anywhere you sit now in an organization, and I think there are too many roles today where people are waiting for the answer or waiting for the expectations to be set.  

[00:06:41] Rohit Prabhakar: Yeah. And and as you said, generalist, like absolutely. Like I think that has been a core theme. We are like, I learned so many different things, but one thing that stayed as a core, which became like my vertical, where I feel like my expertise is.  

[00:06:54] Rohit Prabhakar: That really helped me move across all of these things because as more and more the connection between all of these things become technology. Technology then became, at least in marketing and sales become MarTech. And now it’s AI. And again, it’s technology. And, uh, as you talk about all of these things, like having that strong foundation, uh, with you, where you really understand how systems operate, how systems work, how systems come together to enable the business outcomes, that becomes a very, very powerful vertical to be.  

[00:07:22] Rohit Prabhakar: To have, because it’s tough when you are on the business side, but you can’t just go and learn technology. Technology needs to be there. And I think there’s a edge that people who have been on the technology side but have been very much like, uh, have love for the business side, they have an, that additional like added advantage of understand technology to bring it and to serve the outcomes that unexpected.  

[00:07:45] Tessa Burg: I’m glad you said that because I’m hearing a lot of feedback from the business side with like, well, you know, data science, being a developer, learning technology, learning technical skills is not gonna be as important because now I know how to prompt and so I can build things. But I think you’re absolutely right.  

[00:08:01] Tessa Burg: Having the understanding of the foundation, especially the understanding you had of hardware and software. Is so important because you have the perspective of what’s possible to build because of what exists and how it’s gonna be processed and served, and the governance and, and all the things that go around in that environment.  

[00:08:22] Tessa Burg: And it just makes you a more productive person. Where I think some folks feel like, well, that’s too limiting. But the truth is. Anyone can have an idea. And sure now anyone can build, but the people who are gonna be able to really dig deep into their domain expertise and have the right foundational skills are just going to build things that are more valuable.  

[00:08:45] Rohit Prabhakar: And even this thing around the notion around, oh, anybody can be a, uh, anybody can go and like code and build those products. Absolutely. Like you can do it like white coding and everything, uh,  

like. I don’t have to code now, I don’t have to code for last 10 years, like 10 plus years. I, but still, I keep myself updated.  

[00:09:03] Rohit Prabhakar: Right now I’m also doing white coding, but I think there is a very much huge difference once you start, like building a prototype is a easy thing. You, anybody can go and build a prototype, but once you go to the next step, when you really get, want to that prototype to become MVP and then MVP become like a really like adopted down the line.  

[00:09:21] Rohit Prabhakar: It needs lot of complex features and these. Tools, even Claude, all of those tools have a limitations to which you can do those things. There are times when you’re stuck with, uh, problems. I’ve been writing something for the last, like I would say, week, uh, two different enterprise applications in my spare time, and both of those are now stuck in a place where you need to have expertise and understanding else what Claude and these tools are doing.  

[00:09:48] Rohit Prabhakar: They’re trying to fix those errors. Without really having the understanding and the context behind how that problem needs to be solved. And I’ve been prompting it and saying, Hey, do you really understand what this problem is? Because you have tried almost like seven times and still not been able to fix this problem.  

[00:10:04] Rohit Prabhakar: And every time Claude has come back and said, oh, you are right. And then I had to tell it, can you go to like, uh, one of these developer portals and figure out what are the best. Um, ways that people have been discussing how to solve this problem. It comes back and does those very basic things that a very good software engineer will do from scratch.  

[00:10:24] Rohit Prabhakar: This has this, these tools have to learn. It’s like a long way to go. Uh, but absolutely, I’m excited. It will be like this the way where you don’t need those engineers, but I really doubt it. You’ll always need engineers.  

[00:10:37] Tessa Burg: I, I agree. And to your point, like you knew to ask that question and it is all about knowing.  

[00:10:43] Tessa Burg: What’s the right questions to ask? Where to get those resources? And I think it’s, this really ties into like the whole MarTech promise. Like back in the day we were told, you know, technology will solve problems. And you mentioned in your thought leadership pieces that now AI has a second chance Because while, and I always call that like.  

[00:11:08] Tessa Burg: Man, it would drive me nuts when I was on the developer side, or even product management side, and a VP or A CEO would buy a piece of technology and be like, all right, you know, lightning rod, flip a switch. Now this tech’s gonna solve our problem and transform our business, and it didn’t happen. So when you say AI is giving us a second chance to get more value out of our tech stack, what do you mean by that?  

[00:11:32] Rohit Prabhakar: So what I meant by that was like there were things that in marketing technology, there were complexities of the business. There were complexities around content, there were complexities around operations that were not possible for these technology tools. First of all, there are too many. It’s super complex to even figure out which ones are the right ones for you.  

[00:11:49] Rohit Prabhakar: That’s one. I’ll keep that totally on the side. Everybody knows that. But then when it comes to executing these things, because like successfully, like after leading. MarTech at so many different places, MarTech data, and in fact, like AI, the old AI and even generative like, uh, few places it, it’s. It’s very complex when you bring those systems together.  

[00:12:09] Rohit Prabhakar: When data is not connected, data continues to be a big problem and connecting data, it’s inter is itself a big enterprise task could be a very expensive task and most companies do not want to invest into it because there is no direct ROI of connecting the data, uh, for all these years. That’s one.  

[00:12:27] Rohit Prabhakar: Second thing is complexity of the systems because all systems are sitting across different, different, different leaders and uh, bringing them together in one place, like often is not that easy.  

[00:12:38] Rohit Prabhakar: And then the whole organization you have to these tools, as you said, like they cannot do, um, unless the organization is really ready. For those tools to be adopted and those tools to be used. So those are the complexities. And on top of it, like the complexities that I was talking about, the complexity around operations and the complexity of our content.  

[00:12:58] Rohit Prabhakar: Example is, uh, personalization. We’ve been talking about personalization. Companies have been selling personalization to CEOs, CMOs, people like me been selling it. To CEOs, CMOs, and we have not been able to provide it even like the best of the best, like Amazon, like one of the best examples of personalization, uh, are they able to personalize to the level of like one-to-one?  

[00:13:19] Rohit Prabhakar: No. Still not. The reason is because there’s so much, every person is different. Every, um, person who’s coming is coming with a different context. Also, understanding that context and, and then even if you understand, if you are Amazon. You understand who is the who, who is me? You’d really do it well. Uh, you also understand a lot of times the context I’m coming with if you are Amazon, but most other companies are not Amazon.  

[00:13:44] Rohit Prabhakar: Uh, there are only maybe five or handful companies that like really understand this, but other companies can’t do it because they have not connected the data. They have not invested in that foundation and then even for Amazon, like even when you have all that information, then giving a right relevant one for you.  

[00:14:00] Rohit Prabhakar: Even Netflix like yes, they are amazing when it comes to personalization, but do they really make it happen every single time? No. Like there will be times when they will be recommending something. I’ll say, why should I watch this? Uh, and now with generative and all of those things, like with everything that we are talking about, this is the second chance because now, first of all, still the foundation is data.  

[00:14:20] Rohit Prabhakar: You have to connect the data. If it is not there, nothing is going to happen, and it becomes more important, more urgent in the world of AI. That you need to have data connected. But once you have that, now you can create content on the fly. You understand the context, you understand the person, and now you can go and create that content on the fly.  

[00:14:39] Rohit Prabhakar: That content can be served instead of like, you have to store multiple copies, you can just rate that content. And in fact, I’m planning to write on this, I’m planning to call it as market of one because I, we feel now you can go off from market of one. You don’t have to go around. Okay. We’ll go after, um, a group of, like a persona who has like a segment.  

[00:15:03] Rohit Prabhakar: Uh, instead of segment. You can really go after one, one to one, maybe next one year or so. And I’m gonna write about this. So that is the reason that is the biggest game changer now using generative AI and agents because agents can help you understand. I was talking to somebody like Wla wla, he’s at Salesforce and he was giving, he gave me a very good example about like the age, like different age of even fully autonomous vehicles. You, when, when you, uh, you see Tesla, then uh, you see, um, the other car that, or like is, uh, in San Francisco. I’m, uh, sorry.  

[00:15:38] Tessa Burg: Waymo.  

[00:15:39] Rohit Prabhakar: Yes. So Waymo, these are older generation of autonomous vehicles. The new generation of autonomous vehicles like cab, like Tesla Cab or even the new Waymo and like the next ones that are coming, they’re absolutely, there will be no need of even like having, uh, glasses or, or so many of those different, different like, uh, big things that you see on the cameras on the top of it because the entire interface of these cars is like something that is.  

[00:16:06] Rohit Prabhakar: Uh, understanding and reading the environment and based on that environment on, on the fly there, there are AI systems that are trying to understand what’s happening all around and then like it is making its own decision. Doesn’t need the steering wheel, those type of things. Same applies to these systems because now you can have those agents that agents are trying to understand what is the context, what is.  

[00:16:27] Rohit Prabhakar: The person doing, who is this person? What are they trying to achieve? And once they understand on the fly, like you, you can have a agent that is creating that content, generative content for you, and you can create that experience and push it out.  

[00:16:42] Tessa Burg: Yeah, I love. That analogy because what you are kind of pushing people who are listening to this to do is think about two to three years in the future, what is it gonna look like. Instead of what I see sometimes people fall into the trap of, even when they’re selecting technology, is they’re selecting it for what they’re doing today.  

[00:17:06] Tessa Burg: So they’re like, well, here’s the data I have. Here’s what I’m doing today. Here’s the things I wanna automate. Where things are moving so quickly, you kind of have to think about, well, what is it gonna look like in two to three years? How will I be working then? And then what will the context be? Because you want to enable, whether you’re licensing an app or standing up a platform, building your own agent, you want to enable it to understand and read your, your, your context, single signals.  

[00:17:35] Tessa Burg: And it’s the consumption of those signals that then personalize the experience. But. I, you made that leap so naturally, and I’ll just say like, that’s like a really hard thing for people to do because even traditional digital transformation processes, tell us and start with, well, let’s you know, what are you doing today?  

[00:17:58] Tessa Burg: What are your problems today? And a lot of things are grounded in today. And to, and to kind of imagine and start thinking about as  

far ahead as you just did can be a challenge. Like how do you, how do you navigate those conversations?  

[00:18:15] Rohit Prabhakar: Most of the times, like when I think about transformations like I, and now, like the model that has changed in last, I would say one year or so, it’s like I look at it from two different lenses. Like one is what can you change in the current process?  

[00:18:36] Tessa Burg: Mm-hmm.  

[00:18:37] Rohit Prabhakar: And the second one is. How can you reimagine? And that’s why like I overuse this word of reimagine.  

[00:18:43] Rohit Prabhakar: Like I have projects like reimagine of digital experience going on. I have like, uh, like concept of reimagining like almost everywhere. So it’s like a, it used to be how you fly the plane while you build a plane.  

[00:18:59] Tessa Burg: Yeah. I use that phrase a lot.  

[00:19:01] Rohit Prabhakar: But I think now in this new times, in these exciting times of AI.  

[00:19:07] Rohit Prabhakar: That is no more relevant. It is how you upgrade your plane while you are flying, while you design the new plane. And that plane may not look like a plane. It may look like-  

[00:19:21] Tessa Burg: Right.  

[00:19:22] Rohit Prabhakar: Right. Like, uh, starlink, uh, like the big mothership. That we’re all excitedly looking forward for or something else, I don’t know.  

[00:19:31] Rohit Prabhakar: But it’s very, very different. And that’s what we need to have that mindset. That’s the mindset flip I have made, and that’s why like almost everything I’ve been running in two tracks. One is how can I create incremental changes using the best abilities that are possible from these new models, agents, and all those type of things.  

[00:19:56] Rohit Prabhakar: And as you do those pilots, and you can run those in pilots and you can test them, and you can test them if they are applicable, practical, and you do these on the existing operations. So you pick  

some area and you say, example could be, Hey, uh, every time we do a marketing campaign, there is a process around.  

[00:20:14] Rohit Prabhakar: You come with an idea, you brainstorm that idea. You put a strategy around that idea, and then you think about what is the best go to market for that. Once you have that, then you start thinking about what is the best content? We’ll go with this. And this content could be text, video, or uh, images. Uh, and then once you have all of that a high level concept, then you put together a brief and brief, then you pass it on to your team or the teams that are helping you.  

[00:20:42] Rohit Prabhakar: And this could be internal or external teams. And at that point of time, you then go and build that campaign and then execute on that campaign. So now as you think through this process, you can automate a huge amount of this process. Using some of these technologies that are already available because these models are more like commodities.  

[00:21:02] Rohit Prabhakar: Now, when you bring the organizational operations and the organizational data and how you do things, then you can really create some amazing pilots that can help you understand how can you create some big wins out of those pilots. And as you do these and you learn from these, there are some signals that come out that will clearly tell you that, hey, in future we are not gonna do it this way.  

[00:21:27] Rohit Prabhakar: They’re gonna skip these three steps, or we gonna fast track these five steps or we gonna do it very, very differently. And that’s what you have to think about. Reimagine and I feel about reimagination. It’ll take some more time. Uh, none of us is at a place where we can say, oh, this is how marketing will happen, how this sales will happen, or this service will happen.  

[00:21:47] Rohit Prabhakar: But that’s what I highly encourage myself and my teams around to look at those two from those two lenses and execute on those two lenses.  

[00:21:56] Tessa Burg: So in, when you’re running things in these two parallel tracks, the reimagining and looking at it from today, what can incrementally get better? Do the people who are in the improving what we do today, ever get super anxious about what they’re seeing happening in the reimagined track, because we’re having a little bit of that on some of my projects.  

[00:22:25] Tessa Burg: And how do you reconcile that? ’cause I will say they’re strong leaders in both, and I agree with you that both are necessary. Sometimes you feel like this anxiety, that there should be a prioritization, there should be a hierarchy one over the other, and how do you keep them being parallel?  

[00:22:50] Rohit Prabhakar: It’s tough because as you said, there’s anxiety in the system and the anxiety in the system is not about just about these two tracks.  

[00:22:59] Rohit Prabhakar: It’s also about what happens to me.  

[00:23:01] Tessa Burg: Yes. Yeah.  

[00:23:02] Rohit Prabhakar: So there is anxiety and I think we have all have to acknowledge there is anxiety in the system. That’s why like I see the systems as companions. These are something that really help us. Enable us, and I can, I’ll, this is a personal learning as I’ve been spending a lot of time on these tools and I’ve been spending a lot of time on these tools.  

[00:23:25] Rohit Prabhakar: I have automated a lot of what I used to do with these tools, but still I struggle to find time in my life.  

[00:23:34] Tessa Burg: Yep, me too.  

[00:23:35] Rohit Prabhakar: It is like, there is a term, like there, there’s some law principle that they say like as like you end up doing more.  

[00:23:41] Tessa Burg: Mm-hmm.  

[00:23:43] Rohit Prabhakar: Right? So, so the message I give myself is, there is no way, because people have been talking about, oh, there will be no CMOs in the future.  

[00:23:51] Rohit Prabhakar: These things like there’ll be agent CMO. As I’m spending more and more time, I don’t buy it. Our jobs will change. Everything will change. That’s, I think, one of the big anxiety factor in all of these things. Uh, we need to use these systems to really come to that conclusion. Where I stand now is like, Hey, we’ll be different doing different jobs.  

[00:24:13] Rohit Prabhakar: But these are systems that will enable us. That’s one. But now about like the question, going back to the question you had, how do you find the balance? Hey, there needs to be a prioritization, and that’s why like having. Understanding what is the organization capacity and what is the, at  

the peak of that capacity that you can think about the things that you can do on the pilot side, you have to start with pilots, and these pilots have to be aligned with business outcomes.  

[00:24:38] Rohit Prabhakar: These cannot be about, Hey, we are just gonna test tool. I think it’s better for us to go and pick areas. Example I gave to you around was product marketing. And product and B2B marketing, or maybe I did not give it to you, but like it’s about go and talk to different organizations like in in your own org and figure out, hey, where do we spend majority of time?  

[00:24:58] Rohit Prabhakar: Where if we can do an incremental like investment of 20%, that can have give us an uplift of 80%. Because these are the most important areas. I would go and do few pilots in that space.  

[00:25:10] Tessa Burg: Mm-hmm.  

[00:25:11] Rohit Prabhakar: And I would not wait on these pilots to be three months long, four months long, or two months long. I would try to do these pilots in a very agile way where like these pilots are happening because these models are very simple.  

[00:25:23] Rohit Prabhakar: Like you need to just bring in right. People who understand how to bring these models together. And in fact, like. You can do it pretty, very, very fast. Like I, I’m, I’m not talking about days, I’m talking about hours. You can bring some of these tools together. There are tools like N eight and now almost every company like Open Claw recently, uh, open AI went and like brought in Open Claw.  

[00:25:45] Rohit Prabhakar: Other companies are trying to do the same. You can start hacking few things together and start testing those pilots and those will give you confidence about where you should invest and not, and you need some of those lessons also for you to inform. What are you gonna reimagine? Because reimagine is going to be a bigger problem, but for this, like you can easily prioritize based on business outcomes.  

[00:26:08] Rohit Prabhakar: And what would you like to see?  

[00:26:10] Tessa Burg: I think you said something really important in your last answer, but then also throughout this interview, which is. You are building solutions. You are tracking the trends and seeing what is available, what can, what value can you extract in your own life and in, in your business from that  

availability of tools and skills and tech, and you are not creating a massive plan right at the start.  

[00:26:41] Tessa Burg: You’re, you’re taking a few hours to test and that is unlocking. More potential and more possibility and more ideas. And I think that’s really different than a lot of le a lot, there are still a lot of leaders sitting and watching and getting stuck in planning or shooting holes in what they see that’s already been planned in strategy and they, they haven’t taken the time to test a few things, a few things, not one thing.  

[00:27:12] Tessa Burg: Not just, I use ChatGPT, I use AI but a few different things to just even pull out more of their own personal expertise.  

[00:27:22] Rohit Prabhakar: Now, a hundred percent. And it’s very, very important because ab, the planning will not work because everything changes every week. How can planning work? Secondly, how can you sit on the sidelines and not do something?  

[00:27:35] Rohit Prabhakar: Your competition is already doing 10 things.  

[00:27:38] Tessa Burg: Yeah.  

[00:27:39] Rohit Prabhakar: So it’s important that leaders like us, like, and every leader who is in any capacity running any part of a business needs to understand that AI is gonna touch every single part, like part of every enterprise.  

[00:27:55] Tessa Burg: Yes. No, I totally agree. And what have, how have you brought C-level executives along to.  

[00:28:06] Tessa Burg: Seeing the vision of what it looks like to start small because I, I have also found like this challenge of. There are some really awesome visionary CEOs and they, they actually can see the future. They’re like, this is where we’re gonna go. This is what we’re gonna do. But they want to move fast. And when we’re talking about coming down to this person level and running the reimagine and the pro, the productivity, we call it productivity track, but the incremental value track and parallel, how do you help them see.  

[00:28:37] Tessa Burg: That the value of starting small, starting and testing and building that confidence first?  

[00:28:45] Rohit Prabhakar: I think it depends upon every different organization and every different leader, and that’s why the answer could be very different. One, I haven’t come across a leader at this point of time. Okay. At any company that even I talk to, uh, outside of what I do, we’re.  

[00:29:05] Rohit Prabhakar: The CEOs in the C level is not thinking about this. I think everybody’s thinking about it. That’s a good part. Uh, the second part, the bad part about that is everybody has their own viewpoints. And it all depends upon what’s happening in the market that week, what people they are meeting, connecting, and what they are seeing.  

[00:29:27] Rohit Prabhakar: That becomes. Quite challenging because that’s why everybody has a difference of opinion. Just like my opinion. Everybody else have their opinions.  

[00:29:34] Tessa Burg: Mm-hmm.  

[00:29:36] Rohit Prabhakar: So is there a so short way how you can manage those executives like level up? I don’t think there is a common standard answer for that, and that’s why having discussions with your leaders and trying to understand what is their viewpoint and then helping them understand your viewpoint.  

[00:29:56] Rohit Prabhakar: Is often the road I have taken. Has it worked or not? I don’t know. But main thing is you share your perspective because your perspectives are also not mature at this point of time. Everybody’s experimenting, everybody’s learning, and if everybody comes across and says, oh, I have figured it out, I think that is absolutely the biggest BS that anybody can, um.  

[00:30:21] Rohit Prabhakar: Make at this point of time. Uh, it’s, it’s a phase where we all are trying to understand where it is going, but the main thing is one place where everybody agrees to is that there is a huge role of AI in improving each business and the life of everybody working in that business. Everybody believes that and how you bring then leaders around it.  

[00:30:46] Rohit Prabhakar: I think that’s more important. So whether you are thinking five different ways of doing the same thing, but when you can bring them along with you on the same common objective that they all agree, I think that it becomes a lot easier for you to move on those projects. That’s what I’ve seen.  

[00:31:03] Tessa Burg: Yeah. No I agree.  

[00:31:04] Tessa Burg: When you have, when the values are there and then people. All agree on how it will be measured together. And you talk a lot about, you know, data as a foundation and the need to break down data silos. And I feel like maybe for the first time in my career at least, people are understanding that it’s not the having of data that’s really important.  

[00:31:27] Tessa Burg: It’s do we know why we’re using it and do we have the right data at our disposal to see, hey, what’s a leading indicator that we’re getting traction and. We all say we want ROI, we all say we want margin, but that’s really, that’s gonna take some time. So what are some other things that we can measure that help us see progress, not perfection and, and continue to build that confidence and that trust in the journey and in that shared value perspective on where the business is going?  

[00:31:57] Rohit Prabhakar: You said it very, very well. Like I think, uh, the first place where I would start tracking around like these initiatives, the first one is adoption. It’s a bare minimum. There is no ROI. That’s why I do not use the word ROI when it comes to AI these days. ’cause there’s no point of like, there is no way you can figure out ROI.  

[00:32:17] Rohit Prabhakar: This is so early. You can’t talk about ROIs. So the first one is adoption. What you are building or what you are rolling out, even if you are very basic, like let’s not talk about building, you’re just rolling out ChatGPT or Claude to your organization or some other model to the organization. The first one is, do you see people using it?  

[00:32:37] Rohit Prabhakar: And if they’re starting to use it, are they adopting it and adopting it in like improving the ways? How do they, do they do their job today? Do you see that? If that is not happening, nothing is happening. That’s the first one. And then the next one comes, like, next one comes is like how much time the people are saving in their life.  

[00:32:54] Rohit Prabhakar: Uh, how much possibly. MM. Investments you are saving that you can now start investing somewhere else. Uh, tho that would be the second one. And then talking about ROI, I think we are a couple of years out from that, but those are the first two ones that I would say. First one is, hey adoption. If adoption happens, then the next thing will happen.  

[00:33:14] Tessa Burg: Yeah. And I think that’s a really freeing statement because. I know for us, a lot of our clients and a, a lot of other businesses are  

kind of obsessed with ROI. And every study you see come out from Gartner, Forrester, McKinsey, it always has these insane stats that no one has realized ROI. And it causes people to stop to pump the brakes and stay well.  

[00:33:40] Tessa Burg: We gotta halt all these AI pilots and it’s. That is a detriment. That’s really you’re, then you’re, you can’t halt it. Should you revisit it? Sure. Should you come up with a different metric and start with adoption? I think I totally agree with you. That’s where you should start. And, and not, don’t stop though just recalibrate where you’re going to progress.  

[00:34:03] Rohit Prabhakar: Yeah.  

[00:34:03] Tessa Burg: Towards, you know, towards the productivity lane, towards getting that incremental value and then, then that will unlock that reimagining.  

[00:34:11] Rohit Prabhakar: So, so true. And also I would like to reference back to like one of the articles you were talking about the same article or maybe like the next one, like maybe in two weeks or so from McKinsey or it was one of the big companies.  

[00:34:25] Rohit Prabhakar: Yes. They said like. Like almost of these are failing. But at the same time, they also shared more people, more C-level executives are planning to invest more in these uh, uh, programs because everybody is understanding. Like the point is, hey, we need to invest into these programs before we really get to understand what will be the real outcomes of these programs.  

[00:34:47] Rohit Prabhakar: So even when these fail still, like I would highly encourage everybody to invest in these because out of these like. 10 different, uh, pilots that you may be doing. You may find one that will be a biggest, uh, ROI project that you will, uh, give to the whole organization.  

[00:35:04] Tessa Burg: Yep. I think that sounds perfect. So we are right up on time, but I have one more question to squeeze in.  

[00:35:12] Tessa Burg: When you look ahead at this year, at 2026, what are you most excited about?  

[00:35:19] Rohit Prabhakar: There’s too many things to be excited about, uh, because AI is changing every day. I think what I’m excited the most is about that this will enable our forced businesses to connect their data. Because once  

data is connected and data is available to all of these different models and all the agents that we are gonna build, like so many more things can be done in the coming years.  

[00:35:41] Rohit Prabhakar: So I think this is the year of foundations where all enterprises will understand. Uh, why we need to invest into data and connect the data.  

[00:35:49] Tessa Burg: Yeah, I, I completely agree. That is what I am most excited about data, my love of data and the unlocks that it, it gives people the opportunity to experience the, what’s possible is really what got me into marketing has, I started in backend data management and the closer you get.  

[00:36:11] Tessa Burg: To understanding the outcomes, to being a part of the experience that really the data delivers. Uh, it is exciting. I’m glad more that AI is giving more people that opportunity to get closer to reimagining and getting closer to, to building. So, Rohit, thank you so much for being our guest today. This was an amazing conversation.  

[00:36:34] Tessa Burg: Where can people find you? Ask questions and find your content.  

[00:36:40] Rohit Prabhakar: I’m available through my blog, uh, and my email is also over there. it’s R-O-H-I-T-P-R-A-B-H-A-K-A-R.com. rohithprabhakar.com.  

[00:36:52] Rohit Prabhakar: Also, like I am absolutely open to connect with people on LinkedIn. I think the best place would be my blog or LinkedIn.  

[00:36:58] Tessa Burg: Awesome, and we’ll have that link on our website. So visit us at modop.com. That’s modop.com/podcasts.  

[00:37:10] Tessa Burg: Or you can search Leader Generation wherever you listen to podcasts. And Rohit, we’ll have to connect again at the end of the year and see, you know, what has come with this landscape changing so quickly.  

[00:37:21] Rohit Prabhakar: I look forward and thank you for having me on this.  

[00:37:24] Tessa Burg: Thanks.