How to get buy in from your executives for AI and automation

In this episode, Micah Smith sits down with Geoff Cronin, former CEO of Capgemini Canada and now a strategic advisor to Tangentia. Geoff breaks down what executives want to hear when you pitch them on AI initiatives.

He explains why technology for the sake of technology fails almost every time. He shares how to frame outcomes in business language that resonates. He also discusses the real risks of shadow IT in the LLM era and why your human capital model must transform for AI to deliver value.

Practical and grounded advice from someone who has sold to, advised, and operated as an executive.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Don't just automate what you do now. Take a step backwards and say, how do we actually drive better value for we as an organization, for they as our shareholders, for they as our customers? If you do technology for the sake of technology, it will fail. 90% of the time, it will fail. If you get a 10%, I would say you probably got lucky. Don't try to sell to me based on the platform. Don't try to sell to me based on what you do versus somebody else. Talk to me about the vision of the organization. What is it you're trying to solve? What are others doing within your industry? Educate me. I'm not a big believer in placing your bet in multiple places, because I think when you do that, you end up with technology sprawl. Why is Shadow IT, why is it developed? And the answer is because we're actually not bringing the value to the business that our obligation is to do.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Welcome to this episode of Agentic Edge. My name is Micah Smith. This is the podcast where we explore the frontier of AI agents, enterprise orchestration, and the architectures that are shaping tomorrow's intelligent enterprises. One of the cool things about this role is I get to go travel around with our different user groups and meet incredibly interesting people. Today I'm joined by Jeff Cronin, and I'm gonna have Jeff introduce himself and give us some insight into what it's like to have conversations with an executive leader as an automation program leader so you can have effective conversations with your leadership team and be able to drive stakeholder engagement and investment in your program. Jeff, welcome to Agentic Ed. Introduce our listeners to who you are and what it is that you do.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Well, look, I've got a long background that would probably chew up the entirety of the time that we've got. But in the synopsis, I spent the most of my career in the professional services world delivering value for clients as a consultant working for system integrators management consultant was. I was a CEO of Cap Gemini here in Canada. I went to Grant Thornton to build their advisory practice. And then I decided for the swan song of my career, I would go to a client, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, as their CIO, and led a massive transformation there, which is fundamentally a complete application replatforming. And then at the end of January, I retired. So I am now out in the market, enjoying my best life, but helping people work and bring value.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

And maybe professional goal isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 2:16

And you know, I don't think professional, maybe seniors. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Perfect. I want to hear from you on some of the challenges that you're seeing other organizations and especially executives facing when it comes to this tension between adopting AI, trying to transform the risks that come with that. How are you advising them? What are you hearing from them?

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Look, AI isn't interesting because AI to me is an overused two letters. When we all know that come from this world, artificial intelligence has been around for a long time. But then with the maturity of Gen AI, well, people shortened that down to AI and then are using that as the momentum, the catalyst to sell more. The reality is, many organizations, and I've done this for many clients, there's artificial intelligence already in things that we've done for them. I use an example of transportation management. That's embedded with artificial intelligence. Without that, you wouldn't get the algorithms that would say, here's how you optimize your route planning, personalization. Now, the evolution though, and especially agentic AI, there is a huge opportunity for organizations there. But they get stuck in this AI and they think, well, we have to do something, as opposed to taking a step backwards and say, what do we have to do? Why do we have to do it? What's the benefit we're going to bring to the organization, to our market that we're chasing? And part of that is with agentic AI specifically, with agents, with automation, the opportunity is to really look at your processes. Don't just automate what you do now. Take a step backwards and say, how do we actually drive better value for we as an organization, for they as our shareholders, for they as our customers. And ultimately it's going to mean you're going to have to break some glass and really transform things. I don't think executives have quite figured that out yet because you got to be dispassionate in changing how you do things. And that means you're going to hurt some people's feelings that we're now going to do things differently.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

One thing that kind of comes to mind when you talk about that is as a CIO, you've obviously been a part of lots of transformations. We need to switch to a new platform for CRM or for our inventory management or things like that. But how is this similar and how is this different? Because there's lots of software and platform decisions that ultimately come up to you as a CIO. How do you look at AI and automation transformation differently and also similarly to those other replatforming?

SPEAKER_01 4:48

So I'll answer that from, as I said, I spent most of my career on the professional services side of the house. And I never looked at any of my clients as just as somebody that was a revenue opportunity for me. It was always about how do we actually work with them to achieve their objectives. And that objective has to be we're leaving them better than they were before. It's never about technology for the sake of technology, it's about process transformation enabled by technology. So I don't look at this as any differently than anything I've ever done before. It's about what is the outcome you need to get to? Do we all understand that outcome? And when I say we all, we as an executive team, because we need to own this change that we're making. And then how do we put the right governance and the right discipline to enable that with the technology we have to implement? Right. And you got to start from there because if you start from, and we all it look, we've all seen this. If you do technology for the sake of technology, it will fail. Yeah. Right? 90% of the time it will fail. If you get the 10%, I would say you probably got lucky, quite frankly, as opposed to that it was just what the outcome was meant to be.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

One of the things that we guide a lot of our automation program leaders on is our Pathfinder framework. And as a part of that, one of the things we talk about is evangelism and stakeholder management. You're an example of a stakeholder for anyone who's running an automation program to think about, hey, I need to go and pitch my leadership team on why we need to double down on AI and automation. I'm sure you've heard lots of pitches from people within the organization who have done really well or who have told stories that were lacking in certain ways. What are some tips you would share on someone who's going to pitch an executive with something that they want to really use to transform the organization?

SPEAKER_01 6:40

It's a great question. And I smile because it was a conversation I was actually having this morning with some old colleagues of mine. And that what we were talking about, and we'd all work together in the industry, the consulting industry. And what we said was it seems that people have forgot that come from the sales side of the house, the professional services side of the house, that the first thing they need to do before they talk to a customer is understand what are their challenges, what are their opportunities? Instead of just leading with, oh, I need to get a sale. What are you trying to achieve? What are others within your peer group or your competitive group? What are they doing? What are they doing well? What are they not doing well? And let's frame what the vision is before we just try to get a deal and start something.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

One of the things I'm often coaching our automation program leaders on is making sure that they use the language that will resonate with their audience, right? So if I came to you and I said, hey, we delivered 15 automations last year, we want to get funding to do 16 more plus three agents, you're likely to say, I don't know what any of that means for my bottom line, right? And so what are some tips on the kinds of language, the terms, the phrases that really resonate with executives so that when our automation program leaders are making that pitch, they can make sure they've shown up prepared and that they're effectively being able to tell their story.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

I I consider myself, and I talk in certain things about this as well, that I think of myself as a very different CIO than most CIOs, but I am the kind of CIO that CIOs need to become. And that is people that are focused on the business strategy, the business vision, the PL of the organization. And everything we do as information technologists is to enable that strategy, to deliver those results. So if anybody is trying to sell to me, don't try to sell to me based on the platform. Don't try to sell to me based on what you do versus somebody else. Talk to me about the vision of the organization. What are your challenges now? What is it you're trying to solve? What are others doing within your industry, right? Educate me that helps we as an executive team deliver the results that our board expects from us, that our shareholders expect from us. And quite frankly, the transformation that we owe our people, because if we run a company that is not moving, is not changing, is not transforming, we're going to shrink. It's pure economics.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

Yeah. I think it's really important, regardless of where you are within an organization, from being a doer to being a leader, that you understand, like you mentioned, how do we generate profit? What are our key goals for this year? And how are the things that you're working on aligning to and enabling those objectives for the organization? I want to switch gears real quick to talk about AI initiatives that we've seen so far. A lot of organizations have started to adopt personal productivity tools like Microsoft Copilot 365 so they can have these kind of chat interfaces. Other organizations are starting to explore more like operational, backend, enterprise processes so that they can streamline and automate those with AI agents as well as automation. How do you think about that as a CIO? Are you placing your bets in multiple places? Is it all or nothing in one or the other? What are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_01 10:09

First off, I'm not a big believer in placing your bet in multiple places. Okay. Because I think when you do that, you end up with technology sprawl. Right? So I'm more of a understand what your platforms are, leverage the innovation that those platforms are bringing. If they indeed bring the value you're looking for, then that's the first place you start. If they don't, then it doesn't mean you start there. You look for, well, who does? Who's actually innovating? Who is actually going to support me in the value? And I had dinner last night with a CEO of a professional services firm, and we talked about the traction they're getting in the market and with their clients. And one of the things I asked is the customers that are getting value, have they started looking at it from a standpoint of A, the return on investment, the outcomes they're looking for? And do they fundamentally understand that this is more than likely process transformation? And part of the opportunity is you can actually start to do more with less. And when I say that, this is the piece that people just don't want to really acknowledge, I don't think, is yeah, you know, we have productivity issues, we have redundancy of process, we have work that we're doing that we do in one division, then we have another division that goes over and they're doing the exact same. There is going to be a transformation in what your human capital model looks like. And the person I was talking to said, every conversation I start off with a CEO and the board is if you're not willing to recognize your human capital is going to transform and maybe less for a while before you really identify what the new skills are, then don't even waste your time. Don't even start.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

Yeah, that's interesting. One of the things I think of a lot, and I think this is going to be a challenge for CIOs in the next couple of years, is this concept of shadow IT, right? Previously I worked at a financial services organization. We had people who were creating VB scripts for key operational functions within our organization. And one guy would go on vacation and he would give his laptop to someone else along with all the passwords so they could keep running this VB script. And this was before the emergence of LLMs, right? And now we have situations where that same guy or girl could use any series of LLMs to be able to create scripts that are extensibly larger than whatever Key had created. And I think that represents a fundamental risk for a lot of organizations because everyone has this tooling. Everyone thinks they're a good problem solver and has the ability to build these solutions. What does the CIO do about that?

SPEAKER_01 12:45

Look, it it's a really, really good point, right? Because as much as we try to shut down shadow IT, and what I would always say to my folks is why is shadow IT what why is it developed? And the answer is because we're actually not bringing the value to the business that our obligation is to do. So instead of just thinking through the lens of being a technologist, you need to think through the lens of being a business problem solver. Are you actually delivering the value to the organization in an agile, rapid fashion? Because if you're not, then they're going to find a way to do it. Right. So that's where it starts. Now, to your point, it is huge risk now because A, they start to write God knows what the outcome is because they're actually driving that without anybody any kind of oversight. So now it becomes even more important that if the CIO is not at the executive table, is not making sure that his or her peers understand the risk to the organization. If it's not part of the risk register that the board is looking at, and you allow that to proliferate, we thought it was bad before. It's going to create significant risk because God knows what outcomes you drive because now you don't have the same kind of governance that used to be there.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

No, I don't disagree. I think the other challenge with that though is how do we continue to enable innovation? We want creative problem solvers to be able to solve interesting problems that benefit themselves, their teams, their functional areas. But at the same time, we don't want them just building whatever they want with no oversight and no visibility. I'll say that one approach to this is within Automation Anywhere, what we do is we think about enabling citizen developers. We want them to be able to create solutions. We want them to be able to build agentic and AI-powered automations. But at the same time, we do have them check that content into our control room. So there's visibility, there's code reviews and things like that happen. I'm not saying that's the end-all be-all solution for everything, but I do think it's something that should be on the radar of every CIO who's Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Look, I think the way I would answer that is we're we're all old enough to remember this, that IT was the no one knew what it meant, right? So they just it got it kind of operated in a silo. And that was because the other execs, they didn't understand what it meant. They didn't understand the terminology. As professionals and as especially accomplished professionals, you never want to admit, well, I don't understand that, right? But it was also on the quote unquote IT folks, the CIOs, that they needed to speak the business language. The days of isolation are long gone. Convergence is here, right? Every organization is an information technology organization. Every organization is a data organization, and it's incumbent upon every executive to know they have a role to play in that. And if they're not running their division enabled with very powerful and transformative platforms, then they're not doing their job. So it now becomes a responsibility. The governance is at the executive team where they all need to understand and they need to all participate and know that speed to value is everybody's job.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

I like that. Jeff, thank you so much for your time. It's been great to sit down with you. One last question for you. For someone who is an enterprising individual running an automation program, wanting to drive more AI adoption within their organization, what is your piece of advice for them to find success in being able to establish that vision and drive that vision forward within their organization?

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Make sure the outcomes are defined and that you can drive to the outcomes because the more you can show the people that are running the business that what you're doing is driving a more efficient, more profitable, better top line, better customer retention, whatever it happens to be, then you will continue to get the investment because you're delivering the value the organization needs to see. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

If you want to learn more about some of the things that Jeff's talking about and that I've been talking about, head to Pathfinder.automationanyware.com. You can find our Pathfinder framework. If you're running an automation program, you can take our maturity assessment to understand where you're at and get some of these same lessons learned, tips, tricks to be able to have a effective conversation with your executive leadership team. Thanks for watching and go be great.