Episode 88 - David LaCombe

Erik Martinez: Hello, welcome back to the Digital Velocity Podcast. I'm Erik Martinez, and today I'm really excited to have David Lacombe with us. David is the CMO of Imperatives Delivered and has a fascinating background covering emergency medical care to marketing leadership. Today we're gonna talk about what good marketing leadership looks like to make sense of marketing attribution, how AI is changing the game, and why training your team matters more than ever.

Plus, David will share some great tips on growing a business and a challenging environment. David, welcome to the show.

David LaCombe: Erik, it is so great to see and talk with you again since our last [00:01:00] meetup.

Erik Martinez: I have been looking forward to this conversation ever since you agreed to come on. So a lot of you in the audience, if you're listening regularly, know I took Heroic public speaking, David was part of our cohort, and he's got an amazing story to tell.

Before we dive into our topic, would you give the listening audience a brief synopsis of your background?

David LaCombe: For sure. I took a curious path to becoming a CMO and it didn't start the way that you might've think it would. I was a paramedic for over 20 years, and in the latter part of my career, I became really very involved in, advocacy and policy, that's where you really start shaping. What does it look like when paramedics respond to an emergency?

And I felt like I was making a much bigger difference. You know, when you're a medic, you treat one patient at a time, sometimes a few at a time. When you're into policy, you affect hundreds if not thousands of lives. And that was really the catalyst for me to wrap up that career and get into product management.

Where I [00:02:00] became a product manager I worked in customer success, marketing and sales leadership, and it really allowed me to gain a viewpoint that many senior marketers don't have. It's not just campaigns, it's not just leading the marketing function. It's about holistically seeing the entire impact of a finely tuned and intertwined set of functions.

So I bring a very different perspective to marketing than a lot of my cohorts who may have come up with traditional, you know, route only in the marketing function. Doesn't mean it's bad, it's just different.

Erik Martinez: That is so cool. I can't even fathom. I mean, I've heard part of your speech and you just have this very compelling story to tell about your experience as an EMS professional. It's pretty amazing taking that knowledge and applying it to the discipline of marketing.

So, if we talk about marketing leadership today. How do you approach leadership and [00:03:00] marketing teams to balance the creativity and data-driven decisions in a fast-paced digital environment?

David LaCombe: Everything we do as. Marketers or as team members in a go to market function is really all about the business and the markets that we serve. So when we think about leadership there's any number of things that can get our attention. For me, it's really about focusing on the things that matter most.

Really being strictly aligned with the executive leadership team of like, where are we trying to go and having frank and sometimes difficult conversations of "Where are we now and what's holding us back from getting there?" When we can have those levels of conversations, all sorts of possibilities open up because we're not just working and leading to stay busy, we're leading our function on making an impact.

And that's really what it's all about for me. If I can't show and if I can't show up as being focused on a [00:04:00] particular impact that we're trying to deliver. Then then I'm not doing what I'm supposed to do.

Erik Martinez: It sounds like that goal or that objective has to be a little bit more than just about money, right? It's gotta be something a little bit bigger. I mean, at the end of the day, whether a business wants to sell or acquire those are all transactions that involve money. But what I'm hearing you say is there's something a little deeper.

Can you dive into that a little bit?

David LaCombe: Yeah, the first thing is just kind of a splash of cold water into our faces. That clearly there are some businesses that only function to make money, right? They've got an exit strategy or there's a particular growth level that they're trying to hit. And there's nothing wrong with that because usually they're transparent about it.

The companies that I tend to migrate towards are ones that are purpose driven. Money is a tool. Money enables impact and if you can keep your eye on the impact that you're promising as [00:05:00] part of your core DNA as a brand and your value proposition to your market, then if you manage things right, the money will come.

The profit will come. The sustainability will come. But as you're doing all that you're making a distinguishable difference in the lives of the people that you serve. And for me, that's where I want to be. And there's plenty of companies like that.

Erik Martinez: Yeah it's interesting you say, 'cause I remember going through the heroic process and one of the things that struck me about the speech writing process was that constant refinement towards the purpose of the speech.

And I think business is similar to that and yeah you've really gotta outlay what that future vision looks like and where you're headed in order to keep refining and improving and working towards that particular mission.

Whether it's a purpose-driven business or it's just a pure for-profit business, that future site seems to be a really important thing.[00:06:00]

David LaCombe: Yeah I like that. And I'll add that it's often that the vision, at least in the organizations that I've worked in so far, it's not that the vision changes or evolves it's how to attain the vision. There is a class of people I admire so deeply who can envision the future in ways that most of us can't.

And I'm somewhere in the middle between having a bit of vision but then also being able to interpret it with the visionary and like, "How are we gonna get there?" And sometimes visionaries are so far out in front of the rest of us that they lose us. So, surrounding yourself with good GTM leaders, such as chief marketing officers like myself and others allows us to interpret their vision with them to make sure we're aligned and then to figure out like what's next, right?

We should always have an eyeball on the horizon, way out there. But we've gotta figure out what we're gonna do in these next few weeks or this quarter to be able to get the ball down the field a little bit, so to [00:07:00] speak.

Erik Martinez: So, let's pivot a little bit and talk about shiny objects 'cause, you know, pre-call, we were talking a little bit about the elephant in the room is AI, right? And it's interesting as you start getting into AI, it's a topic of conversation in most companies yet what I'm finding in my research is that many organizations it's kind of a scattershot approach to using and deploying it to help achieve your mission.

What are your perspectives on the integration of this technology and where we sit today and what do people need to do to embrace or harness the power of these potential tools in the service of their business?

David LaCombe: Yeah. I'm gonna use an analogy for this part of our conversation. Pre-call, I was telling you about my fascination with photography. There's been periods in my life where if I wasn't taking pictures regularly, I was just down. I loved it. I loved the creative [00:08:00] process, but I also liked the technology and support of the creative process.

I always knew what I was trying to create and what I find is , whether you're talking photography or the adoption of a technology such as, generative AI, is that you've gotta really be focused on what's the problem you're trying to create?

Am I trying to, from a creative standpoint? Visualize something that's never been understood by people easily before. Is it that I'm trying to use and leverage this analytic functions to be able to push and understanding using data like that's never been done before. And if you don't have that preparatory clarity in your mind of what you're trying to accomplish everything will be a distraction.

So let's just kind of start off with the first brick that we're gonna lay down in answering your question is be really clear of the problem you're trying to solve because the greatest commodity that we have control over is our time and there's so precious little of it. If we squander our time in tinkering [00:09:00] without purpose. And by the way there's a place for that. It's not a bad thing, but it can't dominate everything we're doing. So, brick number one in this foundation we're gonna build is be really very clear of what you're gonna do.

I think the next brick that leaders need to put down is - what's the thing that we want to try to understand that we don't know now? Is it that we want to understand our team members' interests so that we can kind of merge this emerging technology with their interest and captivate their attention. Build in some workplace satisfaction, maybe even, speak to longevity at their workplace. That could be a goal, right?

Erik Martinez: Yeah, absolutely.

David LaCombe: Another goal could be like, maybe we're gonna use AI for the purpose of analyzing these dozens and dozens of customer engagements we have to look for trends. And we're gonna interpret this together with the technology to see if we can come out on the other side with a deeper or a different understanding.

So it's really just coming down to what's the [00:10:00] problem we're trying to solve? And what's the first endpoint that we're going to do? Because you can't just declare you've adopted AI, what does that even mean? I'll pause so that you can react to this, but be clear of what you're trying to accomplish and then have clarity also on the first tangible result as part of your adoption of AI.

Erik Martinez: Yeah I think that's really smart. I just sat down with a bunch of agency owners last week at a conference, and I had the privilege of running a round table discussion with two groups to talk about utilizing AI in their businesses. And it was very fascinating to talk to these organizations who, as an industry, I would feel like the agency owners are really trying to embrace the technology.

But when you ask them, what does that mean in your organization? I get this kind of shotgun approach of, " Well, you know, we're creating custom GPTs to [00:11:00] do X, Y, and Z." Okay? So when you ask them the next question - Is everybody trained in the use of those? Is that embedded in your process? Do people understand the impact of these tools that you're creating?

And the answer inevitably was not all the time. So people seem to be gravitating to today in terms of what they want to get from AI is they wanna get all the time savings. Like you said, time is precious. They're trying to get all these efficiencies, but they're not necessarily focused on how to get those efficiencies or maximize those towards the greater good. And we had an interesting conversation about trying to flip that script and let's not worry about the efficiencies, let's worry about the outcomes.

David LaCombe: Yeah, I like that

Erik Martinez: And I think you've come from a very outcome oriented background, right?

David LaCombe: Yeah, hearkening back to my paramedic days. Everything that we do as the EMS clinicians is evidence-based, right? [00:12:00] So we're constantly evaluating, the effectiveness of new methodologies and whatnot. And so I bring that mindset to my work as a CMO. I like the story that you told about facilitating this focus group with the other agency owners, and it reminded me of a situation that I find myself in often with founders.

It's that when a group of leaders or an individual kind of declares, "Hey, we're gonna adopt this thing." My curiosity gets activated. I'm like, great, tell me more. I just wanna understand where they're coming from and link it back to a strategic process of the model of where do we play and how do we win.

So once you kind of understand your winning aspiration, where are we gonna play? What segments, what markets, how will we win? Let's just say, for example, that we're gonna be the most customer centric agency possible, whatever that means, right? And then everything that cascades after that has to be in service to your strategy of how are we going to win?

For example, if we're going to adopt [00:13:00] custom GPTs for our clients and our agencies. Then, just ask yourself like, "How does this support our strategy?" And chances are, with a little bit of deliberation, you'll get to a good answer that you can find a way to make the linkage, but here's what comes next.

And this is the part that's missing. Too often it's, we've made this declaration that we're gonna do this thing, but then you have to ask the question. So what needs to be true for this to be effective? And I liked 'cause you're basically putting out let's be effective before we're efficient.

Let's test the things to see if they're actually delivering the impact that we hope they will before we scale it. Because scaling something cruddy is just gonna mean we have a lot more cruddy, right? Interventions that don't generate the impact.

Erik Martinez: Yeah. I mean, I have made that mistake numerous times throughout my career. When I relaunched my business at the beginning of this year, one of the things we set out to do was training for the [00:14:00] team to start raising the AI literacy. And what I learned through that process was even with that training, they could see the possibilities, but then they got right back into their day-to-day jobs and the benefit of the training went away immediately.

And I was banging my head like why? We've talked about - we want to learn to use these tools so we can speak educatedly with our client base about how to use the tools. What were we missing? Was it desire? Was it process? Was it mission?

I'm not a hundred percent sure that even today I completely understand why it wasn't embraced as well as I thought. But you said something very interesting earlier, which was. What were we driving towards?

What were we really trying to do as an organization that made it imperative, right? [00:15:00] It wasn't just " Hey, this week we're gonna train on setting up custom GPTs or we're gonna deploy this particular type of AI tool in this specific way." But we didn't have necessarily that cohesive strategy. And I'll admit that was me kinda learning through the process what do we need to do better as an organization? And I see that in all these organizations.

I know you work with purpose-driven businesses. I work with retailers. And it's really interesting because when in the absence of a cohesive strategy or a purpose, people kind of default to the lowest common denominator, which right now is how do we make ourselves more efficient?

David LaCombe: Yeah, if they even jump to that conclusion it's perfectly okay in my mind to have a period of time where hey, there is no accountability. I want you just to go and interact with the chat GPT interface, ask it questions, [00:16:00] read this article, let's have a conversation about this podcast, blah, blah, blah. That's all fine.

Because I think that's a low intensity way to kind of let people experiment without feeling as if like they're already behind a power curve or whatever. But in business there is a threshold that has to be crossed at some point, and that's accountability. So we're gonna create a policy or there's gonna be a standard operating procedure, or there's gonna be a protocol, whatever you want to call it, that says, this is how we do this thing now.

And this is interesting in the creative process, like sometimes we can be really pedantic and describe parts of the creative process. But not all of it, right? We give operators and designers and creative people opportunity to practice their craft. But there's elemental aspects of it too that also have to be prescribed so that there's a standard. Like it reaches a certain threshold that by the time it goes about the door to the client, it meets our guidelines. And that's the missing piece I think right now that I see a lot in [00:17:00] organizations.

If we're tinkering and we're amassing skills and we're deepening our competence. At what point is it expected that we adopt those things and reliably practice them. It doesn't happen by accident. And where I think leaders will fail is if they're not clear and persistent about communicating those things.

People will just go, yeah, that was the flavor of the day. Give it a little bit of time and this will go away. We have to communicate. Nope. We're on a new level now. And this is how AI is expected to be used. And look, there's gonna be some growing pains. We get that -we're gonna grow with you, but have no mistake about it. This is where we are now.

Erik Martinez: Yeah, I think that's a fair point. Probably something I haven't been super great at over the years of just consistently. Sometimes you feel like, you said it two or three times and that's enough. But what I'm hearing you say is, Hey, you just need to be consistent and persistent about the message that you're trying [00:18:00] to deliver to your team.

And so in my case. It was really like reinforcing why we're doing this, right? We're doing this to improve our skills. We're doing this to educate ourselves and start to figure out how to leverage these tools more effectively in our organization and our daily jobs to make at the end of the day, the results for our clients.

That's our mission, is to help our clients improve their results. And so if it's not in service of that, then we probably shouldn't be doing it.

David LaCombe: And yes, I agree with that. That think's very well said. But here's the dark side of what you just said. That we can adopt any technology, right? AI being the example on the table right now. And that doesn't necessarily mean that there's a correlation to its impact.

So for example, let's say that you've got a client that you're working with and you're trying to achieve this goal, and your team is using AI as part of the intervention, right? What you're trying to do and [00:19:00] now the client gets an outcome. How do we know that AI had a hand in producing that outcome?

This is kind of one of those elements of attribution that I know we want to get to hopefully today, that really when you practice a new skill, you have to be able to kind of show like it's causation of here's its impact. Here's what would've happened had we not used AI with this customer. Here's instead what did happen because we used AI and we've got this control group and we're able to show you A versus B or that type of thing.

It sounds like it's really far away and really high level next level type of stuff, but I think if you can start to approach that even as a early adopter of a technology and go, how do we know it's actually saving us time? How do we know it's improved likes and trust factor or conversions?

Erik Martinez: You know, it's funny that you say that 'cause I gave a talk in Boston at the beginning of April to a small group of people. We were talking about attribution and measurement and [00:20:00] performance. And my hypothesis has been, look, all of our attribution today, digital or otherwise, is flawed. It's flawed for a lot of different reasons.

Digital technologies are getting impacted by cookie prevention technology in the browsers and cookie consent tools are suppressing some of the results and imperfect implementations of digital pixels and stuff is contributing to the problem and the fact that every platform has its own tracking technology, which is siloed from the other tracking technologies. So on and so forth.

The whole point of that being that in order to measure the success of any program, exactly what you said, like how do we know. We gotta run experiments and we gotta run them in a way that we can measure them realistically and come back and say, "Hey, here's the evidence", right?

Here's the evidence that [00:21:00] says when we spent this amount of more money in these five channels or this one channel, whatever it is, we got this result. And when we didn't do that and we just did it the way we have always done it, this is the result we've got. And I think that's kind of what you're saying is that we have to be deliberate about trying to identify the outcomes and what we did to produce that outcome.

David LaCombe: Yeah, and listen, there's gonna be people who will listen to this conversation saying. What are you guys talking about? How am I supposed to get to that? And there's all sorts of conditions and assumptions that would have to be examined at a local level.

So let's say for example, you're an agency that's totally hitting it with your customers and they're hitting their numbers and they're growing, and clearly they're doing better than before you started working with them.

Maybe you don't need to be at this level that we're talking about. I doubt it, but maybe you don't need to be. There's a lot of other places that are on the fence that [00:22:00] stakeholders are questioning the investment with the agency. They're not seeing the results, the growth is not happening. Churn isn't being reduced. Lifetime value isn't growing as expected.

Those are gonna be the organizations that are immediately on the hook for having to demonstrate their value and look it's okay to try things and they fail. That's part of the creative process. It's not okay to try many things that fail and not know why they fail and not to have a plan of like, how we're gonna make it right.

Cause now we're burning through other people's cash, at the expense of our lack of discipline. So I think that's one way to look at it of like, when do you know, you've gotta really start to apply this type of thinking and behavior.

Erik Martinez: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And it's sometimes easy to do. Sometimes you don't get the clarity of mission.

I had an interesting experience with a client over the last couple years. They've been family owned. They have [00:23:00] been very conservative and rooted into the ways that they have been doing business for a very long time. And then the business was sold to a private equity firm.

It's fascinating 'cause I've had a fair number of businesses that were acquired by private equity firms over the last couple years. And one of the things that's very interesting about it is. It takes about six months, but after about six months, the private equity firm generally comes in and says, "Okay, here's what we're changing," and then they start changing it fast.

And number one thing that gets changed in that process is how everybody thinks about their numbers and performance and efficacy of those numbers. You know, you put a budget out there, you're expected to hit it sometimes in a privately held traditional business. Yeah, we're within a couple percents and that's okay.

In a private equity scenario no we're really mission driven and you guys need to hit. Here's the budget you laid [00:24:00] out, here's what we expect you to hit or exceed.

David LaCombe: So that's a great segue maybe to marketing leadership. So irrespective. Now I'm really talking to like, if you have any early stage marketers listening to your podcast, this advice is for you. Behave always, right? As if you're working in a private equity firm where you have to demonstrate causation in everything you do for an impact.

If you do that, you'll stand out from your peers. When you do that, you'll deliver results that are reliable and consistent and you'll have a future. If you're burning through cash and you're not able to do these things, you're gonna find yourself on the wrong side of disruption. Like when we hear tragically about all these layoffs. This didn't happen necessarily accidentally.

This has been building for a period of time. The organization wasn't making an impact. They weren't achieving their goals. It's just a matter of time before the hammer falls, like when that [00:25:00] situation's happening. So go into each day thinking of like, "How will I make the best value out of this investment that I've been gifted?"

Erik Martinez: Yeah, I think that's really good advice for all of us doesn't matter what kind of business you're in. You really need to pay attention to your numbers and have that really clear sense. And I know I've struggled with this over the years, but have that really clear sense, like what is it we're really trying to accomplish and be relentless about pursuing that.

And to a certain extent that relentlessness and that persistence will drive all the changes that you need in order to achieve that mission, whatever that mission is for your particular organization.

Let's pivot a little bit. I'm curious as to what you think about this. So, I listened to the artificial intelligence show and the two gentlemen that run this podcast, they're kind of at the forefront of AI education, literacy news, and one [00:26:00] of the things that's been popping up as a theme lately in their discussions is the idea that we as a society seem to be losing our critical thinking skills.

That there's direct evidence that the talent coming into the market today. And this isn't just limited to the field of marketing, but specifically in a field of marketing that we're seeing this drain of critical thinking skills because the technologies to a certain extent, and AI being one of the tools that in this scenario. Are starting to replace our ability to think. What do you think about that and what are you seeing when you evaluate the companies that you're talking to?

David LaCombe: My first thought is that this is not a new problem, that generations have been critical of following generations, saying things like, critical thinking is declining. It's always at [00:27:00] risk for declining. And my view today is that I think I'm a better critical thinker with AI than without.

And here's why I think that. All of my thinking, all of our thinking is really based on memory. We probably have very few original thoughts on a given day. Our brains are miraculous supercomputers that remember all sorts of details. I mean, I remember some things going back to my youth and I'm like, why do I still hold onto that and what am I not remembering because I hold onto that thing?

My point is that if I can learn to ask curious questions and be exposed to a much larger repository of information, I can learn at a faster rate. Now where I think it goes wrong is if you don't, and I'm not talking about AI hallucinations, I'm talking about just critically evaluating the believability and the factualness and the cultural appropriateness and, the other [00:28:00] counterfactuals that are involved in any decision, right?

If you ignore those things, then you're just gonna have like maybe a new piece of information that you start running with and it's going to flop. But if you can ask critical questions based on a business need or a personal interest and be exposed to lots of different things, and then to challenge it like, " Who won't agree with this point of view? And, " What else am I not thinking about?" Or "How will the CFO look at this point of view?"

If you can start to leverage the technology to look at problems from a 360 degree perspective versus just a single angle of attack that's your daily focus. Then I think that your critical thinking ability will attain previously untold levels.

It would've taken before the common person's access to AI a lifetime to accumulate enough knowledge and perspective to be able to be truly wise. So I think the long answer to your short question is - yes, we're always at [00:29:00] risk for not applying critical thinking, but we've never been given more tools and opportunity to think critically than what we have today.

Erik Martinez: I love that. I was sitting in a session last week at the conference and one of the speakers addressed this very specific point, almost exactly the same way you did. In that, we have an obligation to a certain extent, to really challenge every idea from every angle possible. Especially those that seem to be the most strongly held beliefs within our psyche.

To just make sure that hey, yeah, we do have the conviction and we do have the evidence that this is the right path. So, David, as we talk about educating and training our staff, what is it that you would do or what would you recommend we do to make sure that the critical thinking skillset is embedded within the culture of our organizations.

David LaCombe: You [00:30:00] first have to know a little bit of how I operate. I'm not really terribly interested in small incremental improvement. I'm looking for larger than expected improvement in anything that I'm involved in. And I do get right that high quality is always the result of iteration.

So I'm not discounting that, but I don't wanna be involved in brands that release a couple of new features in a technology every couple of years. I want them to be solving bigger problems for their markets.

And so, if I was leading a team. And I was wearing kind of my education hat and I was the guide for helping them to learn the application of a new technology. I would probably work backwards with them from a desired state. Look, we want to go to this place that's not really visited all that often right now, but we believe if we can get there with our clients, this is going to be the result.

So I want us in our tinkering to always be anchoring our experiments, our measurements, our [00:31:00] mindset around this future destination that we're trying to get to. And then it becomes almost like a rubric or the word I'm really looking for is a mantra. Like, Hey Dave I tried this new thing today and let me show you. This is fantastic. Can you tell me more?

Then you can use this mantra of how does that get us to our future destination? And sometimes they may have the answer, sometimes they may not. They might say, well, it doesn't get us there entirely, but it gets us to the next step. Because we're at the next step.

We can then look to a horizon that's further out. I'm like, fantastic. So what are you gonna do next? That type of thing. And if you're listening - what I believe that this mindset, this methodology brings to the table is that we're not tinkering for the sake of tinkering. Do that on your own time.

If we're investing our time and our cash, to go learn, which we should be doing. It's while trying to get to someplace collectively together that's [00:32:00] previously unattained.

Erik Martinez: I think that's pretty profound.

David LaCombe: That did get a little deep, so sorry if

Erik Martinez: Yeah. So if, I'm thinking about it in terms of the one word that keeps popping in my head, as you said, all of that is BHAG, right?

David LaCombe: Big hairy goals.

Erik Martinez: Yeah, the big hairy, audacious goal.

And what you're saying if I may paraphrase, is if we're interested in the incremental growth, there's nothing wrong with that, and it's a choice. But you, and I see this in your posts and your thread on LinkedIn too, that what you're saying- Hey, in order to accomplish something amazing, you have to go after something amazing. To a certain extent, and that every action you take within your organization needs to also be working towards that amazing thing.

I mean, we've said this a couple of different ways throughout this conversation, but I think for me this is really resonating in that, "Hey, you can't accomplish big things if you're thinking [00:33:00] incrementally all the time."

David LaCombe: Yeah and there's a safety note on this, right? That it's tempting to kind of think that maybe that mindset should be pervasive in an organization. And I think there's actually some danger to that. We do need people waking up every day and doing the methodical, thoughtful, planned business as usual work.

Those are the things that pay the bills. The things that differentiate us strategically are the sub cohort of people who are empowered and expected to be. You know, I used to be a Star Trek fan, not a Trek, but a Star Trek fan, right?

Erik Martinez: I am one. I admit it.

David LaCombe: To go boldly where no man has gone before, or person.

So I just want to be cautious. If one day we wake up and everybody's wildly experimenting, the wheels will come off and there'll be a problem. It's like defining which groups are empowered and expected to think that way and which groups are expected to maintain the flywheel that's been shown to [00:34:00] work. Just turning it day in and day out.

Erik Martinez: In your experience, how do you define that? I mean, how do you go about deciding which people in the organization are empowered and which ones have to maintain? Is that a division of labor based on a skillset or, how do you get there?

David LaCombe: Well, let's first take the word empowering isn't like a binary thing, meaning you're empowered or you're not. Right? That we can empower people who are responsible for turning the daily, flywheel to bring in some level of creativity, and you put some guardrails on it. Like you can experiment to this level. Anything more than that is gonna require some consultation.

Then there will always be based on your strategic roadmap of where you want to go a group, maybe this resides in an innovation group, depending on the size of your organization or product developers. Maybe it's around a subset of customer experience or business development. And maybe it's even cross-functional. Like there's representatives from a few different places who have a different set of rules.

[00:35:00] So I think the higher you go in the organization, you have to think multi-modally. When you're the director of marketing or you're a product manager, your focus is much more narrow, than executives who are at a very high level who have to look at this as a sum of all the parts.

And not every part, just like every cell in the body doesn't do the same thing. Some live longer than others. Most have a very specialized function. Organizations are the same way. So it is about clarity of who does what and then just being observant. Like the things that we do today that we think are avant guard and like future. Blink, in our lifespan Right now the rate of change is so fast that you could be on the bleeding edge today and lost in the dust in a short period of time if you're not paying attention to the changing landscape and technology, that might be a differentiator.

Erik Martinez: Yeah, that was a theme last week in the conference I attended that.

David LaCombe: I'm bummed I missed this conference because it sounds like there were so many interesting

Erik Martinez: It was so many [00:36:00] interesting things. But the one of the keynotes that stuck with me addressed the fact that uncertainty is also constant right now, and you combine change and uncertainty and it's almost paralyzing if you think about it. And you get mired in the details and the worry of those two things happening at any given point.

And, basically the message of the speaker was- really what we need to do is say, okay, we acknowledge that change is constant. Uncertainty is constant in our environment. So how are we gonna just navigate our way forward and make a conscious decision to drive towards a future? We don't necessarily know what that future's gonna exactly look like, but we can help shape it.

David LaCombe: I like that and I'll add to it then. People do business with other organizations when they perceive that organization as having a capability that they don't. So if you take a client organization who says, I'm gonna reach out to an [00:37:00] agency, they're reaching out because they believe the agency is further down the road, has a greater perspective and a capability than the client does.

In that same gathering of people, there might be people within the agency who believe that they're falling behind and that they're trying to imagine the next thing. But as they're trying to imagine the next thing, their client still needs the reliability and the confidence of the things that they can execute well today.

So I guess things like capability and friction and all these other things are relative. Whenever you think that you're behind, think of all the people who are further behind you who you can still help knowing what you know today. They can't take the thing that you're looking at two years down the road because they're not ready for it, but they're ready for what you could do with them today.

And it's our job, I think, to help them to understand like, we know how to get you there and this is the way that it's done. Then it lowers the uncertainty for them. So uncertainty is a relative state [00:38:00] for people and for organizations.

Erik Martinez: I think that's beautifully said. So David, we're just about out of time and I want to be respectful for you today since we're recording on a holiday. Is there one last piece of advice or a another thought that you'd like to leave the audience?

David LaCombe: Well, I think in the theme of what we've talked about today. It's most great things come from a belief that something can be done even if we don't know how to do it, and persistence. So, whatever change you're going through right now. Help people to understand your level of conviction and why you're there and why you want them to come along with it.

And then share it with them. Let it become their vision too. And you will have blind spots, right? Ask them like, how do you see this? And the more that you open yourself up to other people helping you to interpret your vision and your path to get there. You may not always agree with them but it becomes the conversation that dominates all other conversations when you involve other [00:39:00] people.

Erik Martinez: Yeah, absolutely. David. What's the best way for someone to reach out if they'd like to get in touch with you?

David LaCombe: Follow me on LinkedIn, simply David Lacombe, and I would love to hear your reaction to the conversation today or to talk with you. I love meeting people and understanding different points of view. David Lacomb on LinkedIn.

Erik Martinez: Yeah. Folks you should follow David. He has almost every single day some beautiful insight or way of thinking about the world that just kind of gets you thinking in a different way. And it is very appreciated for you to share all that wonderful knowledge.

Well, thank you so much for joining us today. If you found this conversation with David valuable, be sure to subscribe and share the podcast with your network. Thanks everybody and have a nice day. Thanks, David. I appreciate it.

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