Is Your Team Generative AI Ready?

Amy Vaughan

Welcome to our weekly Power Lounge, your place to hear authentic conversations from those who have power to share. My name is Amy Vaughn and I am the owner and Chief Empowerment Officer of Together Digital, a diverse and collaborative community of women who work in digital and choose to share their knowledge, power and connections. Join the movement at wwwtogetherindigitalcom. Let’s get started. Hello everyone and welcome. Today we are going to learn Katie’s step five step process for assessing your company’s generative AI readiness and basically celebrate her all around badassery. Katie Rebair wears many hats at Trust Insights. She is the CEO and has her hands deep in compliance, governance, agile methodologies and all things no mistakes data At the heart of the action. She is steering the ship, managing the ins and outs and plotting the overall strategy. Before co-founding Trust Insights, she built and grew a multi-million dollar business lines in marketing, tech, pharma and healthcare. Katie’s been the captain of marketing partner, software engineers, teams working on top-notch research software to tackle pharmaceutical abuse. With an MS in marketing and technological innovations, she’s not just an expert. She’s a published researcher, author, owner and community admin of the analytics for marketers and the corporate community manager and ambassador for women in analytics. Yep, she’s got a lot on her plate, but she’s still made time to join us today and to be here, because we are already big fans of you. Katie, thank you so much for joining us today.

Katie Robert

Thank you for having me. It’s funny. Whenever I hear someone else reading my bio, I’m like huh, who did that? I just, I just, oh, okay.

Amy Vaughan

How was?

Katie Robert

you, how was me Good?

Amy Vaughan

for me. Maybe we should all do that right. Maybe we should just every so often hand our bio to a friend and be like will you read this to me, because?

Katie Robert

honestly go ahead. Yeah, I was going to say it. I’m guessing you would say the same. It’s very empowering to hear it from somebody else, because I think we tend to forget that like, yeah, we’ve done a lot of really good stuff and having someone else read it back to you is a different experience than you reading it yourself. It’s very validating.

Amy Vaughan

I agree, I kind of get this feeling of this sort of empowerment and a sense of like not tread, but just awkwardness too. I’m like, oh, but then it reminds me we’re just uncomfortable and praise, we’re uncomfortable in having ourselves validated. We need to lean into that and get more comfortable with it. So, yeah, let’s start sharing our bios. And oh, speaking of generative AI, real quick, fun, hot tip I once took my bio and asked the generative AI tool I was using to write it as a confident white man.

Katie Robert

I was very impressed.

Amy Vaughan

I was like I wouldn’t have described myself with those adjectives or used those phrases or made those accolades. But none of it was untrue, it was really just in the tone and the phrasing. I was like all right, katie, give us a little bit of background about you, how you came to be where you are, which is the CEO of Trust Insights, and then, all around, amazing human.

Katie Robert

Well, I came out of the womb bossy. I think it’s the short version and it’s funny because we have taken back this from bossy to not be a negative. We say we’re bossy, we’re a boss, but basically I’m someone who just can’t stand not being in charge and I see that as a positive. I want to take charge of every single situation, not to be the person in power, but to help everybody else keep moving forward, and I find a lot of joy in helping other people succeed, and so I’ve always been that way. Maybe it started as super bossy, but it’s evolved into being more helpful. But I graduated from undergrad I actually had a film degree, which has nothing to do with what I do today and I kind of, you know, cluttered around a little bit trying to figure out what I wanted to do, and I kind of fell into the work, the clinical research that I was doing when we were building intervention tools for substance abuse providers and for patients, and so we’re taking these intake tools. What we did was we did research to figure out did people feel more comfortable People answering their computer honestly or a person honestly? And unsurprisingly, they answered the computer more honestly about their readiness to change in order to go through the treatment program. And so where I came in was I helped facilitate that research. And then I transitioned into product marketing and product management to take that clinical research and commercialize it. And that’s where I really cut my teeth on project management and managing development teams and sales teams and marketing teams and really just sort of fell in love with the process of management because I got to have my fingers kind of in everything. I wasn’t siloed into only marketing or only into development, I could see the whole picture and that’s something I’ve always really enjoyed and I think that that’s what led me into the role I’m in now, because I really like to have that 360 holistic view of everything, because I’m a problem solver, I love puzzles, I love seeing solutions and it goes back to I love being able to see other people succeed.

Amy Vaughan

That’s so fantastic and I very much align with you on Bossy’s since birth and sort of recognizing and acknowledging the difference of this idea of power from versus power to Like. As a leader, as somebody who likes to sort of take charge of things, it really is to me more about figuring out how do we make these things happen and how do we give power and opportunity to others, and that’s sort of my motivation for taking charge. Which others it’s like power from it’s like how can you take power from others versus giving it to them. So I think that’s such an awesome and healthy leadership mindset and again in an age when girls are still being called bossy, yeah, why not reclaim it, reown it? My 10 year old was first called bossy when she was three years old by a daycare worker and I said are you kidding me? I said you mean she’s a good leader. Thanks, I agree. And then I also love asking this question at the upfront to all of our guests, because I think it’s a constant reminder that our career paths are nonlinear. The fact that you started in film studies was, I mean, we’ve known each other for a little while now, but I did not know that about you and I just think that that’s so incredible. It makes me want to have a whole another conversation that we’ll say for later, instead of boring everybody about film discussions. But you know, it’s amazing to see just kind of how you can take a culmination of all of your skills and all of your passions and start to kind of work them towards something that really kind of makes sense for you, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a straight narrow line in which you do that. So thanks for sharing your story, love it. Let’s talk about your five process, or five P framework, because it’s pretty fascinating. Could you tell our listeners a bit about what each of those P stand for and maybe share some real world examples where applying the framework has really made some significant impact?

Katie Robert

Yeah, absolutely so, very uncreatively, I call it the five P framework because in marketing, we love to give things like cute sea catchy names and I’ve just I’ve never been good at that, and so I was like I’m just going to call it the five P framework, because that’s what it is. So the five P’s stand for purpose, people, process, platform and performance. This was born out of a reaction to digital transformation. I’m not a fan of digital transformation. I like the theory of digital transformation, but I don’t like the practice and execution. Because in my experience, digital transformation puts the technology first and the people last, and then you have process that just totally gets forgotten somewhere in the middle and it’s completely the wrong way to do things, and then you’re missing a lot of other pieces. So from there I evolved my understanding and version of digital transformation into what I call the five P process, five P framework, and it squarely puts purpose first. So purpose, what is your goal? What are you trying to do? What is the question you’re trying to answer? What is the problem you’re trying to solve? If you can’t, at a high level, say this is the problem I’m trying to solve, if you can’t answer that question, the rest of it doesn’t matter, because everything you do needs to tie back to is this helping us solve the problem? Is this helping us answer the question? And it doesn’t need to be this deep in depth like, oh, and we’re trying to do this for the sake of the, I want to generate more revenue, okay, great, that’s the problem you’re trying to solve. Everything else you do should help you solve that problem. So the next P is people, and there’s a lot of P’s in this. I purposely put people in the second place because to me, that is the most important part of the framework, aside from knowing what the heck you’re doing, because people need to know where they fit in. People need to execute it and they need to know what role they play. They have to have a sense of ownership. So when I get into the second phase, the people phase of the framework, I like to use user stories. User stories are borrowed from agile methodology. It’s a simple three-part sentence as a persona, I want to, so that, the persona being the audience, the want to being the action, and the so that being the outcome, and it all maps really nicely to the five P’s in terms of all the pieces, so you can create user stories, to understand all of the different pieces, but it still puts people first, it still sells who am I or who am I representing? And so it gives you an opportunity to think about what do my customers need, what do my designers need, what do my developers need? Because, especially when you’re talking about generative AI, it’s not just you who’s going to benefit or need outcomes from thin. You may be the only person actually working within the system, but somebody else maybe has to do something with the information or receive it or understand it. So it’s an opportunity to say who else is involved in this initiative. The third P is process Process development. That’s my jam. I think that that’s where the culmination of all of my jobs and skills has always like that sort of the common denominator is. I’m always looking for what’s the repeatable process, how do we scale, how do we teach people, how do we educate? Well, we have to have things written down. I remember in one job on my very first day, I asked the team I’m like well, you know, where do your SOPs live? And they looked at me like I had eight heads and they said first of all, what’s an SOP? I said it’s a standard operating procedure and they said, cool, what’s that? And I was like it’s your documentation. They said, definitely don’t have that. And I was like, all right, that’s where we’re going to start, and so that’s the third part of the overall framework. So you have purpose, what are we doing, people, who’s doing it, process, how are we doing it? And then, and only then, can you move on to platform, and that’s choosing your technology. And that’s the difference between my framework and digital transformation is you choose the technology last because you don’t know what it is you need to do. Really quick anecdote I volunteer at a local animal shelter and the executive director was asking me about generative AI and she said, well, I want to use generative AI. I have this problem, and in my head I was building her user story and I was like, well, help me understand what it is you’re trying to do. And she said I want to get people to our website and so they can filter through all the different resource options based on where they live. She didn’t need generative AI. She was looking for a directory plugin, but she had the technology in her brain of if this is the solution, and so we were able to talk it through and put the platform last, and so the last P in the 5P framework is performance. It’s your measurement. How did we know? We answered the question and so you go back through did we answer the question, do we have the right people, do we have a repeatable process? And did we choose the right platform? And so in a very quick, hopefully succinct way. That is the 5P framework.

Amy Vaughan

That now that was fabulous. I think if you could hear my head rattling from all the head, nods First of all as a writer, I appreciate the alliteration. I love frameworks like that that keep it simple, that don’t try to make it overly flashy, in the sense that you’re taking something that can feel on an organizational level, very complex, that can contribute to a lot of hours, a lot of brain power and, like you said, if you’re not going in with the right kind of approach, it can mean a lot of time and money wasted. I love how you flipped the technology being the last piece in the whole process, because I don’t think that’s what most people do. They get really excited about the shiny object ie generative AI and start to think where do I plug this in versus what are the problems I’m trying to solve and what’s the purpose where things like that, and what makes sense to then make this piece or platform the answer to that solution? Because I think again, your example of the shelter animal shelter was fantastic. So no, that was a fabulous answer. Thank you so much, katie. Let’s talk a little bit more as well, because I used to work in healthcare and in pharmaceutical for a hot minute. That’s how I got into marketing, as I fell in with the director of marketing, as I was working at the front desk of a pharmaceutical research company and learned there was such a thing as marketing. You know as a little country bumpkin and living in Chicago learning about the world at the time, but with your experience, how do you see the landscape of data and compliance evolving and these industries in particular, because healthcare and pharmaceutical obviously pretty rife with a ton of private information, and what opportunities or challenges do you anticipate? Because I mean, I can see a lot of. I see a lot of pluses and benefits to tech and I don’t know about generative, but tech in general helping and supporting healthcare and plugging holes where there’s a lot of gaps and holes within the healthcare systems. But I’m kind of curious, from a data and compliance standpoint, what you’re seeing and anticipating.

Katie Robert

It’s come a long way. So I started in healthcare maybe 15, almost 20 years ago. So it was a very different environment at that point, like we were still using floppy disks and CD-ROMs to transfer data. Like I can tell the story now because I think the statute of limitations has expired and so, you know, our clinical trial participants would actually send me these physical disks and I would have like three laptops set up up my computer and I would be uploading their clinical trial data into one probably not as secure as it should be database. And so that’s where I started, knowing that you know there’s got to be a better way to do this. And so at one point in my career I could probably list off all 128 different markers of a hip and compliant de-identified string. I can’t do that now. It’s no longer a party trick that I’m able to do, but there’s so much mishandling of data governance, I mean, so it goes back to I always go back to the 5Ps. That’s a big part of the process. And so you have, you know, cdp systems, customer data platforms that are supposed to be the single view of the customer. You have these big walking like systems that are supposed to sit on top of small practices and unify all of the data from different you know disciplines. So your behavioral health data with your, you know, primary care data with your PT data all supposed to be in one place. But again it goes back to their choosing platforms first and then thinking about what do we do with the data. I have a customer who is trying to build a customer data platform and they chose the platform first and this has been going on for about three years and there’s still no sense of where does all the data live? How do we get the data to talk to each other? Is there a unifying key that we can say this is all the same person, because the data in every single system is different. Now this is something that generative AI can start to help us with, with the big disclaimer asterisk caveat that you don’t want to put personally identifiable or protected health information into generative AI unless you have built your own secure, custom model. But generative AI can help you start to build the code much faster. That is going to help you unify the data or assess your overall data sets to say here’s what you’re missing. So it’s going to be beneficial. In that way, it’s like having a really fast development assistant to sort of see the plot holes in everything that you’re doing. So I feel like it’s going to be very helpful that way and in the customer side of things, theoretically we should already be here in the healthcare system where we’re not bogged down with paperwork and intakes and being asked the same questions six times and by the time that someone actually sees you, they ask you the same questions again. You’re like I’ve already answered these questions. Okay, your time is up. That problem is supposed to have already been solved. That’s actually what I was working on 15 years ago and it’s still not seen. Really it’s not gone the way it’s supposed to. So I feel like if we’re thinking about generative AI the right way and not just as a shiny object, we can do some really good things in healthcare. But we have to be thinking about our data governance and privacy. We can’t just throw data into a system and say what does it tell me? Because then that’s you know, if you’ve never been part of a HIPAA violation inquiry, imagine your personal health and then multiply it times 10 and then by a hundred, and then you can go through it.

Amy Vaughan

Yeah, yeah, it sounds no, bueno, it definitely does. Oh, my goodness, yeah, again, just having been in healthcare for a minute again it’s, it has such promising possibilities. But yes, governance and in protection and using it in the right times and the right places in the right ways is so very important. And again, we all get that lovely shiny object syndrome when it comes to this tech, new tech. I mean I’m sure I’m just as guilty as anybody else. I also love your emphasis on people first when it comes to the 5p framework and I’m kind of curious how does this more human centric approach contribute to more effective decision-making, especially when we’re all very much because another thing and the other shiny object we love is data. Right, we want to see the numbers and the data tells the story and the data’s are facts. How do you kind of balance?

Katie Robert

that you know it’s tricky I’m not, you know. So I’m going over the 5p framework in a straightforward way, but there is nothing straightforward about it when you start to introduce it, you know, outside of your team, to other people because they, understandably and in a very human way, want to skip right to the platform, want to skip right to the data. What does the data tell me? I’ve been going through this exercise with a different client of mine. They are migrating their web analytics system and it’s a big enterprise system and they’ve had it in place historically for about 15 years and in go in talking with them, we realized collectively that there were never really any requirements built for how this system should be collecting data, who’s going to be using it, and so you know they’ve already started, like they have their consultants, they’re already building the thing, and I was like, can we just maybe hear me out, slow down for like a hot second? I’m going to introduce this concept called user stories and I was sitting with them on a call yesterday going through this user story exercise. So, as a persona, I want to so that and I was just going one person at a time and I learned so much in that 30 minute session. I was like I didn’t know you had to use this data for HR purposes. I didn’t realize you had to share this data externally with customers who knew that you needed the development team to. You know, build custom things. No, like oh yeah. And I was like, so is that part of the technical requirements? And they said I don’t think so. And I was like, okay, so here’s what we’re going to do. You know, very calmly, very rationally, I was like here’s what I would suggest, respectfully, as a consultant for you, is that we introduce this exercise to more people, because and then I can bring all the data into generative AI and, you know, summarize it, but I still need the humans to tell me what they need. The technology can’t tell me what the humans need. The humans have to tell me what they need, and when you have especially the enterprise size pieces of technology, it gets so convoluted and nobody knows how things are, you know, being built. Could there be automated reporting? Did I even know that you needed automated reporting? What goes into the reports? Do we even collect that data? I made assumptions that we could collect that data. Well, now I’m checking five other places to validate the data that I’m getting and just it becomes a snowball, and this is where my bossiness comes in of. I just want to see people succeed so that they can move on to other more valuable things. Being stuck in reporting hell, it’s just not a good use if anybody’s time and there’s got to be a better way, and one of my missions in life is to find that better way.

Amy Vaughan

I love it as you were telling that story. It sort of gave me this like visual analogy of deciding to build the world’s fastest train but like not making sure all the bolts and the screws are tight and just setting it off and expecting it to perform and then also not putting seats in it for people to come and like, sit, but it’s the fastest train, it’s going to be so fast but nobody can sit on it and there’s a likelihood it’s going to fall apart because it’s not bolted together, because clearly I know a lot about engineering trains that requires bolts and that’s about it. Anyways, I it’s such a great example, a sense of like your story and what you’re sharing in the sense of you know this user focused sort of you know and again, like your internal team, are your users and I love that. I added that down. I want to blank, so that blank is definitely something I’m going to start using more often because I think it’s again such a simple but very telling framework. Let’s shift roles for just a minute and talk about your role as CEO balancing growth, setting strategy, that’s. That’s no small feat, as you were just saying, with sharing with us before we came on live. You just finished a conference on the West Coast that you were speaking at. You know you’ve got a lot on your plate, but I’m curious what you? I feel that you’re such everything I’ve seen and heard. You’re such an effective leader. What are some strategies that you have found effective in aligning your team with the broader vision of trust insights? And if you want to give a little bit more background of the vision and all that of trust insights, I’d love to hear that as well.

Katie Robert

Yeah, absolutely no surprise. It’s a people first approach. The mission and vision of trust insights is to help people make better decisions with their data, to get out of the weeds and really do the more valuable work. So a lot of what we do for our clients is we clean up their data. We help them understand what data they even have. A lot of companies are sitting on piles and piles and piles and years and years and years of data and then they go, but I can’t make any decisions with this. And that’s where we come in. We really want to help people just say I know exactly what I need to do because that is the story that my data is telling me and I am confident in my data. And a lot of it is around building that confidence with the data, but also the awareness that sometimes the data is going to tell you things that you don’t want to hear and you have to take the good with the bad. That’s just the facts of life. That’s what they tell us in the song. That’s the motto that I live you take the good, you take the bad, and it’s really educating around that language of data. So that’s a lot of what we do at trust insights. We also do general consulting and infrastructure audits. We help you build things and so on and so forth. Basically, like your data analytics, data science handyman general contractor, like, we’re here for you, we’re going to support you, big or small In terms of you know you’d be, maybe you wouldn’t be surprised, but you’d be surprised how unfocused a small business can be. We are also victims of shiny optic syndrome, so my primary role is keeping the team focused on but this is the direction we’re going. These are the products we’re selling, these are the services we offer. And so when someone on my team says, oh, but I have this really great idea, I want to do this thing, the first thing I say to them is what’s the user story? And it slows them down long enough to say, as the data scientist, I’m like okay, that’s great, that’s your perspective, what’s the customer’s perspective? As the customer, I want to sew that and it helps have that conversation without saying that’s a terrible idea or that’s a great idea. Let’s put a pin in it and put it in the back lot and come to it later, like those are not, to me, effective ways to communicate, but if you can put it in the context of a user story. It helps people really think through. What is the value of the idea? Is there more to it? Is it half baked and does anybody want this? And it’s having that understanding of first we need to know what our customers want from us. We need to understand their needs. So a lot of what I do is constantly check in with my community. How’s it going? What do you need? What are you struggling with? It’s like free market research, which is fantastic, but the community members we’ve built up such a trust and report that they’re willing to tell me their entire life story, and so I use that information to really focus the services of my company Because, again, my whole goal is to help other people succeed, and so I really like that. For me, is the common thread.

Amy Vaughan

I love it. I think that something I shared yesterday one of our live events was this whole thing I’ve been doing for Together Digital since the pandemic, which is doing a 15 to 20 minute one on one onboarding with each of our new members and I love to kind of learn and understand, like how did you hear about us? Like what brought you here and what does it you need to get out of this. You know, because you’re investing your time and your money, like I want to make sure whatever we’re building, creating in the way of content and experiences, are going to answer that and I have been so impressed with the amount of data that I’ve been able to receive. We still do member surveys, but I still would say, anecdotally, those one on one conversations are so helpful and so insightful and sort of bringing those together and so having those regular customer conversations, whatever role you’re in, I think so critical because, at the end of the day, we are trying to help people solve problems and I think it’s easy for us to get more, fall more in love with the idea of a product than the problem. For me, it’s like how can I stay impassioned about the problem I’m trying to solve, not the product that I’m trying to build.

Katie Robert

Well, and there’s something so satisfying about seeing someone’s problem solved, and so I’ve worked for companies where they’ve had solutions in search of a problem, and when we created trust, insights, when we founded it, we really wanted to make sure that we were solving existing problems, not creating solutions in search in, you know, in the hopes of finding someone who had that problem. And it’s hard because, you know, we have a lot of big ideas and we want to do these things. The challenge is that a lot of people aren’t recognizing that that is the problem that they’re currently having, and so that’s where a lot of my work comes in is trying to meet people where they’re at. I know what problem they’re having, but until they can recognize that they are having that problem, me telling them that I have a solution is useless, because they’re like that’s great, I don’t need that. I’m like, yes, you do, if you would only use the thing. And so you know I do a lot of the relationship management, people management and really just generally understanding this is the language that they’re using. So how do we meet them where they are so they can resonate, so they can see, oh okay, this is the problem that I’m having, and so that really informs our content strategy. It informs everything that we’re creating and building and educating on and not saying you need to learn gender. They may I, because you’re a marketer. Well, okay, great, what does that mean? So what we actually call our live streams. So what? Because it’s the phrase that I say at least a dozen times a day when someone and not in like in a circuit way, but just like what’s the so what? What am I getting out of it? Why am I giving you 30 minutes of my valuable time? What, what, what is the so what of this? And it’s become our unofficial mantra of what’s the so what?

Amy Vaughan

I love that Co hatch is a new kind of shared work, social and family space built on community. Members get access to workspace amenities like rock walls and sports simulators and more, to live a fully integrated life that balances work, family, well being, community and giving back. Co hatch has 31 locations open or under construction nationwide, throughout Ohio, indiana, florida, pennsylvania, north Carolina, georgia and Tennessee. Visit www co hatchcom for more information. I want to stay on this whole leadership topic for a minute, fellow bossy baby, and talk with you about the. Sort of as a woman leader. You know you’re in a very male dominated area and arena. What challenges have you come up against personally and how is it that you tend to work through them?

Katie Robert

I, by nature, am very quiet, I’m very introverted. I I can laugh about it now, but I love telling the anecdote that when I was in high school I was sent off to a leadership conference, I’m assuming, by the school counselors to like come out of my shell a bit, because they saw like I have these leadership qualities but I’m just not a talker. And I went to this leadership conference it was like a whole week away at a college campus. We all slept over. And on the last day and this didn’t even occur to me I said something in reaction to somebody and everybody screamed and I was like what’s wrong? They said we thought you were a deaf mute, oh my gosh. And I looked at them. I was like why would you think that, like you’ve literally not said a word this entire week? We didn’t know if you knew how to speak. And I was like I speak just fine. I just I listen more than I talk. You know and so that’s sort of like counterintuitive when I do interviews like this or other sessions. But I can go, you know, 23 hours out of a day and not say a word, and I’m totally fine. I’m just taking all of the information and I’m constantly taking in data and constantly listening, and so it’s. I mean I lost my train of thought. That’s okay. I was just going to interject for a moment.

Amy Vaughan

I was going to call you out earlier and saying, like I know, having spoken with you in the past, that you’re, you know, a self-proclaimed introvert and I think that’s one other thing I admire greatly about you is because you model such great leadership and I think I want our introverted listeners to know that, like you all make fantastic leaders you don’t have to be extroverted, you don’t have to be introverted, you can be amoevert. Like me, I think what’s beautiful about introversion is that there’s like that power and strength, like you said, to be able to listen. You know people say you have one mouth and two ears for a reason, but it gives you a different perspective and a different view. And then I also think in that case, when an introverted speaker speaks, you tend to listen more because you know what they’re going to say is very valuable and if they’re going to take the energy to say it, it means it means something big. You know you need to be listening. So I love that. You know you own that and you’re always willing to kind of speak to that, because I think there’s just not enough of us, you know, kind of acquainted with sort of that more introverted leadership style. But I think there’s a lot of benefits to it.

Katie Robert

Well, and it’s definitely and now I remember what your original question was. It just took me a second. It has presented its own set of challenges because I am not the loud, boisterous presence Like when I walk into a room. People are like, oh, she’s here. It’s like, oh, did someone just enter the room? At least that’s my perspective anyway. But you know, it’s been more challenging to be taken seriously in terms, not in terms of my authority, but just as my presence. So I have a very large persona, counterpart in my company, and a lot of times people assume that I am his personal assistant because I’m so soft spoken, because I’m so quiet, and I’m fortunate, very fortunate, and I realize how rare this is that he, he is the first person to say actually, she’s the CEO, she’s in charge, she’s the one who’s going to decide whether or not we can work together, not me, and so I’m very, very fortunate. But I’ve been. It’s taken me a long time to be to find those people, because you have to find the people that are going to constantly support you and I’m very picky about who I bring into that circle, because I’ve been burned so often just by showing up as a woman. They’re like oh well, I used to have a VP who said that I wasn’t, even though I was the product owner and knew the most about the product. I wasn’t allowed in conversations unless there was someone on my level also in that conversation. He was like so there’s no other project managers in that conversation, so you can’t be there. I’m like you don’t even know the URL for our website, dude, how am I not allowed? But you don’t even know where the product lives, and so it’s those kinds of challenges. It’s the constant overthinking of am I dressed appropriately? Am I dressed in a way that is authoritative but so feminine, but maybe not too feminine? Are people judging my hair? And that’s been challenging being in a business with mostly other men, because they can’t relate to that. So I’ve been able to find other female leaders who are like no, I totally understand what you’re saying and it doesn’t matter as much as we have been conditioned to think it matters, but we’re still stressing over it, and so just showing up as a woman has been the challenge. Quite honestly, I’ve gotten a lot of pushback of well, when we actually, when we founded the company and tried to get an investment which we didn’t end up taking, they didn’t want a female CEO, they wanted a male CEO. And wait what?

Amy Vaughan

They actually like said that out loud oh wow, go ahead, continue, I’m sorry.

Katie Robert

So it was. That was really hard, and we second guessed the way that we were structuring a company for a hot second and we actually started to change all of the documentation to put my male founder in the CEO position and me in a Lester position. And then I remember I called him and I said you know what, through that, we’re not going to do that. This is exactly why we’re starting this company, so that we can do it the way we want to do it. I may not be the loudest voice in the room, but I know exactly what I’m doing, I’m confident in my leadership skill and I don’t have to be the biggest voice. There’s too many people talking already, not enough people listening. It’s probably a good thing that I’m not just talking for the sake of talking, like you should be grateful that I’m not doing that.

Amy Vaughan

Yeah, I agree. I mean, Katie, I feel so much of what you said and I feel like a lot of our listeners in our community would definitely relate. That kind of extra societal pressure plus the internal narrative that’s been kind of placed there by society that does take up so much mental energy and space, and it’s just, it just floors me like how brilliant women can still be despite all of that going on inside us constantly, nonstop, and I do think, kind of surrounding yourself with peers and others who are in similar positions of power and authority, but do sort of struggle with those things. Sometimes it’s good enough just to know you’re not alone in that experience. And again, kudos to your partner and for being such a tremendous ally. I remember a story as well of another female founder of a VR tech company who told the story about how, like her, all male team decided that they were going to start shifting their body language into meetings, because what they found was again same thing. They’d walk in, they’d take a seat. Everybody looked at Myra and thought she was the one that was supposed to be taking notes. She was somebody’s admin, she was the owner and CEO, they were all working for her, and so what they started doing was actually shifting their body language. Even before the meeting would start, they kind of turned their chair slightly in towards her and whenever there would be a question asked, they would glance to her and wait for her to make that response. And I just allies if you’re listening, I think you know kind of having those sorts of conversations and a little bit of a plan of attack when it comes to entering those rooms in which women are not always seen, heard and welcomed. It’s such a tremendous thing to do, so kudos to you and your partner for having those hard conversations and then showing up for each other. That’s amazing.

Katie Robert

And it’s. You know it’s not a one and done. It’s something that we’re constantly working at because we are. I know I’m always finding new ways that I’m being put in a less than category and so it’s never a okay. Here’s the one solution. Here’s what we’re always going to do. It’s always evolving. As technology evolves, as different people come into positions, they’re finding ways to make other founders, ceos, anyone feel less than so. It’s a constant. Okay, this is the situation we’re faced with. How do we handle this one? There was definitely some constants, like if someone’s asking a question, don’t even say she can answer it, because then it still feels like you’re giving me permission to answer the question. Like, please stop talking. When I’m ready to answer the question, I will answer the question in my own time. Don’t feel like you have to fill the void on my behalf. And it’s. It’s hard because you have to constantly pull from this well of self confidence that may or may not exist. It’s the whole. You know I hate the whole. Fake it till you make it, but in some ways, you kind of have to fake that self confidence until you actually believe it, and I’m fortunate that I’m at a point now where I actually believe it, but it took a long time to get there and it was surrounding myself with a really strong community of people who helped me, reminded me that I had value.

Amy Vaughan

I love that, as you were sharing there that whole fake it till you make it. I’m with you on that sort of like. I I get it. But then it also kind of rubs me the wrong way because I think in my mind a simple reframe would be practice until you make it.

Katie Robert

I love that.

Amy Vaughan

You’re putting into practice confidence, because it doesn’t just happen. It takes time, it takes effort, it takes being present, it takes practice. You just have to kind of get out there and do it. So you’re not faking it, you’re just practicing it. It’s like that would be like going out and saying I’m going to become a professional basketball player, but until I hit professional level I’m just going to fake it. No, you’re going to go practice it.

Katie Robert

And that’s exactly it, and it’s not a linear like I’m going to practice it every day and it’s just going to keep going up and to the right. You’re going to have those setbacks and that’s where you really have to rely on your community and say, hey, this just happened. They’re like cool, this is what it means and now we can move forward from it so that you’re not alone. Any leader, anyone who tells you that they’ve done something solely by themselves is lying. There is no such example, unless you literally live in the woods by yourself, completely isolated, but then you’re not telling anyone anyway.

Amy Vaughan

Yeah, no, I agree, I agree. I feel like we can have a whole another conversation on leadership. We’ll keep moving along. Also, I want to give our live listening audience the chance to ask questions. At the end I’ve got a few more questions for Katie. So, listening audience, if you have questions specifically for Katie that we aren’t getting to, we want to hear from you. Drop them in the chat. All right, let’s talk about collaboration for a moment, because we kind of touched on a bit of collaboration and conversation and obviously it plays a pretty critical role in the work that you do steering the ship. Did you share an experience where effective collaboration led to positive outcomes and highlight the importance of teamwork, especially in this very hybrid, virtual, remote, digital age?

Katie Robert

Yeah, absolutely. When I was younger, when I was in my early 20s in my career, I was very hotheaded and very much the definition of the bossy like the negative bossy, and I thought that I knew everything. I didn’t need help. I didn’t need people giving me their opinions. I’d collected enough of my own information that I could just make decisions. Long story short, that didn’t go well. That was not sustainable, because there’s no possible way that any one person can know everything. But also, you only have your perspective. Even if you’ve talked to other people, you still only have your perspective. And so I’ve learned along the way that it’s again it’s listening more than you’re talking. To be an effective leader, to be an effective collaborator, you need to go into a conversation not thinking about what do I need to get out of this, but what is the other person contributing? And so it could theoretically be the same thing, but it’s just sort of a mind shift, and so when we do planning meetings for the company, I usually get the ball rolling, but it’s never just my thoughts. I take all of the information, all of the feedback from everybody and say this is what I’m hearing. Is everybody in agreement? Now, at the end of the day, I’m still responsible for making these things happen, for overriding ties and all that stuff, the unfun stuff that a leader has to do. But I would be doing my company a disservice if I didn’t take into account that everybody else on the team has thoughts and opinions and ideas. It can’t just be mine, because if it was just my idea we would all be at the animal shelter petting puppies, making probably no money, but I’d still be okay with that.

Amy Vaughan

Same Well and you bring us such a good point. I was listening to your podcast this morning during my workout and honestly, I don’t think I quoted another podcast in every one of my podcast episodes. But hey, you know, I’m a consumer of the content, not just a maker of, and I’m going to try to find it here in a second as I’m talking. But what you just said was really critical and it’s again. I love frameworks because it’s just something easy to remember and my brain full of already lots of things. Oh, it’s the Good Life Project. I love that podcast If you guys haven’t listened to it before. The episode I’m listening to is how to connect quickly and deeply with anyone, and I mean this would obviously include personal and professional relationships and of course, I’m always fascinated by connection and networking and doing it more meaningfully and intentionally. And what you said was actually like in the podcast. It’s that saying of this is what I’m hearing, is this accurate? And how that really empowers others to provide feedback within show that you are actively listening and you’re not working within an echo chamber and it just automatically deepens the relationship when somebody is sharing something with you and you sort of say reinstate, reaffirm and say this is what I’m hearing is this right or wrong? Because now you’re giving them the chance to say yeah, no, no, I mean you’re kind of right but you’re kind of not. So, yeah, I love that you said that again, I love that you said that, katie. I was like, oh, this sounds familiar. I just heard this this morning. What a coink-ing.

Katie Robert

Well, and in terms of collaboration, letting people know that they’ve been heard also gives them more of a sense of ownership over it. So I’ve been in a lot of situations where people have solicited for ideas. They’re like, well, what do you think about this? And then you tell them, okay, great. And then they walk away and you’re like, well, are you gonna do it or not? And then you sort of check out. You’re like, well, this has nothing to do with me, it was always my time. But in a true collaboration, you really need to make sure that people have that sense of ownership. And so, to sort of bring it back to where we started, this is why I really love user stories, because I can ask you, amy, like, what do you think of this? Can you give it to me in the structure of a user story? And in that user story, you’re telling me what you need and why you need it, and it’s giving you that sense of ownership. And then I can acknowledge I’m hearing you. This is what you need, this is why you need it. In your own words, let’s see where this fits into the larger initiative as a whole. And you’re like, wow, this is great, I am participating, I feel like I can collaborate and you now have a sense of ownership. But you also have a better context of where you fit in to the process as a whole. It’s not just, amy, I’m gonna you know, I need your time. You’re like why, what do I need to do? How does this benefit me? It’s a very clear structure as to where you, amy, fit into the project as a whole.

Amy Vaughan

Yes, I love it. Love it so good, katie, seriously. All right, I’ve got two more questions. I could keep going and talking to you forever, but this is why we’re gonna hang out again soon. Let’s talk about agile methodologies. There are obviously a specific aspect of things, something that you specialize in. What advice do you have for teams that are looking to implement agile practices and digital marketing domains, based on your experiences?

Katie Robert

So I learned agile methodology, like the standard, proper agile methodology, when I was managing software development teams. So that’s where it’s borrowed from. You know, there’s a whole agile manifesto, it’s a whole movement, it’s a culture. When I left that job and moved into managing marketing tech team, I realized I could still borrow a lot of that methodology and bring it into a team that wasn’t a development team, and so I was able to, you know, institute daily standups and basically they call them scrums, and so it’s a short 10 minute meeting where everybody stands up, says here’s what I did yesterday, here’s what I’m working on today, here’s what I’m blocked with. And just introducing that very small structure, it increased transparency and took out the need for like these long team meetings that you know. Everybody’s like oh okay, we get a break from work, but then I have to catch up on all the work that I missed because we sat in this meeting where nothing really happened, and so finding smaller, more iterative ways to work is really, you know, I don’t like to call it agile in marketing because people get very defensive about the term agile, but it’s really more of that. How do we make it more iterative? How do we break these big tasks down into these smaller milestones where we can see progress and things moving forward. So we’re still feeling motivated and we can collaborate easier because it’s not this big you know black box of a 90 day project. It’s this small, you know four hour block of work that we can say at the end of it we’ve done something, we have something to show for it. So it’s borrowing the ideas and adapting them into what works for your team.

Amy Vaughan

Yeah, it’s kind of like what you were saying as a little bit of a mind bender there. For me, a moment of like it’s an inception moment. Things are coming into themselves where it’s like you could almost look at agile as a part of a process slash platform in your 5P strategy. As far as like what you’re putting first, like why are you introducing agile? What’s the purpose? Like, let’s start there to make sure that it really is the solution, because I do even think certain aspects of process can sort of feel cool and sexy. And, yeah, you can go like so far down the path of like everything agile, everything scrum, to the point that it becomes overwhelming to your people and to your resources, because if it’s not the thing that addresses the problem that you’re trying to solve, you’re just kind of making up stuff to. You’re making up stuff to make up stuff to not solve problems that are really there. Kind of reminds me of and don’t anybody send me hate mail over this but like traction. I love traction and EOS, the entrepreneur operating systems, but if somebody was to look at the way an impollunter was to look at the way in which we implemented it for our business, they would be a hoard, but we use it in a way that works for us. It gets us the results that we need, and it’s not by going whole hog in, it’s by taking pieces and portions of the process that make the most sense for us in our business. And I think that’s just sometimes a ledge it’s hard to talk leadership down from, but that’s why we have leaders like you, katie, that are there, willing to listen.

Katie Robert

But the example you just gave is exactly how the 5P framework is meant to work. So if you loosen the restrictions of what a platform is, the platform is really a substitute for a solution. Like, what is the solution? But I couldn’t find a good you know key for a literation, so I called it platform. But you know you go through the whole 5P framework to figure out is Agile the solution? Is it the right platform? And it might not be. Maybe you’re more of a waterfall, maybe you’re more of a this, maybe you’re more of a that, but going in saying Agile is the solution is the same thing. That’s wrong with digital transformation. So you’re creating the same issues. So really, my goal is that 5P is a foundation. It can be used in any context to really walk you through what is the problem I’m trying to solve and what is the actual solution I need versus what do I think the solution is supposed to be?

Amy Vaughan

Right, and so a lot. In a lot of ways, readiness isn’t really about you know, do you have all your ducks in a row? It’s more of like are you actually using generative AI to solve the right problems, Exactly.

Katie Robert

In the talk that I gave, I was giving the example of. You’re not saying what is the problem I’m trying to solve with generative AI. It’s what is the problem. I’m trying to solve Hard stuff. Leave generative AI out of it and maybe that’s the solution. Maybe it isn’t, but you have to figure out the rest of the things before you invest in this piece of software.

Amy Vaughan

That’s fantastic, katie. All right, I’ve got my last question for you and then we got a wrap because this hour went so fast and I think you’re probably gonna take a nap after this. I hope maybe. Probably Awesome, all right. Staying current in our ever-evolving tech landscape Obviously like we talked a lot about shiny object syndrome today, but it’s still critical for all of us. How do you approach staying up to date on emerging trends and what role does continuous learning play in your professional journey?

Katie Robert

I rely a lot on my community members, and so they come from all different walks of life, all different backgrounds, all different jobs, and so I actually run a free Slack community analytics for marketers, and every day I ask a question of the day, and their answers to those questions are what helped me stay informed. And so I’m not just asking the question, I’m really paying attention to their responses because they’re telling. Every single day. I’m learning something from this community based on what they’re working on, their experiences, and to me it’s better than any news feed could possibly be, because these are real humans who are going through the thing. And so I just thought asking people that’s how I stay up to date on things. I do the same in the women and analytics community. I just ask people what’s going on with you, because to me that is more relevant than reading a news article about the next five pieces of software. Well, that’s cool, but if nobody’s using them, then why do I care? And so that’s how I stay up to date is I actually just talk to my community and say what’s going on?

Amy Vaughan

I love it 100% right there with you. Because, again, how much of that stuff are you reading that’s probably paid, and how many things become like a buzz and a fad that you put time, money, effort and energy into and then you all of a sudden realize, oh, it’s going away. Ie, I was just thinking about this yesterday. I was like man, all these brands, everybody was trying to jump in on Clubhouse. Yeah, what happened? Did you guys get into Clubhouse? Anybody know? I have not checked it.

Katie Robert

I’m an intro user so I never actually got access to it. Oh, no I got in and I was like I mean I?

Amy Vaughan

don’t know, it’s all right, but I’m still happy on Instagram and well, we won’t even talk about the dumpster fire that is Twitter slash acts. But, yes, I wholeheartedly agree with you. Again, running in an organization like Together Digital, we have an Asks channel. We have lots of folks saying you know, like what it is, it’s just so good to get people’s unsolicited but unsolicited in the sense like they’re not getting paid to, like you know, vouch for this company, but they will speak to you truthfully about what their experience is and, again, based on the application, it could be vastly different. So, I agree with you. I think, rather than kind of trying to follow all the trends, slash potential fads everywhere else, kind of find that trusted source of community and like-minded people who are in similar spaces, that you can sort of ask for those things. Because, yeah, we all, we don’t have that much time, like we’re busy ladies, we can’t go jumping down every rabbit hole.

Katie Robert

And it still. It feels still like, if you’re like relying underneath me, that still feels like solutions in search of a problem 100%, you’re right. Versus, like if I ask you, I’m like, hey, amy, what’s going on in your world today? Like, what are you doing? You’ll tell me and I’m like, okay, those are problems in search of a solution. You know, and still like I can’t take in all that extra noise. I have to focus on what’s happening with people today. I can’t worry about what might happen, you know, six months from now. What’s the problem today that I can help you solve?

Amy Vaughan

Absolutely Well, Katie. I feel like you probably helped some people solve some problems today. I have some of our listeners are in the chat telling you thank. You loved all the things that were touched on today. So thank you all for listening. Katie, this has been great. I’m excited to keep talking with you, Keep learning from you and keep seeing what you do. Next, we need to get a link to your Slack community so we can share it with our group. I’m sure people would be really interested. We’ve got a lot of women in analytics who’d love, love to be a part of that so they can hear and learn and share from one another. So, yeah, we’ll get that from you. I will include it in the show notes. Thank you again. This was a lot of fun. I hope you enjoyed it as well.

Katie Robert

I did. Thank you so much for having me. I mean, I love talking with you in general, so this was it was just like a fun formal way to hang out.

Amy Vaughan

Absolutely right. We will do it again soon. Everyone else, I hope you join us again next week in the Power Lounge. Until then, keep asking, keep giving and keep growing. We’ll see you next week. Bye everybody.

Katie’s LinkedIn

Katie’s Website

Trust Insights

Women in Analytics

What is Shiny Object Syndrome

So What Livestream