Ep 43 | New Format | OpenAi CPO job | Shopify layoffs | Microsoft, Google, ServiceNow Updates | BCG CEO Radar | Kathleen Curry from Workday joins the pod

Welcome to Unlearn, the podcast that redefines the playbook for modern business leaders. In a world where yesterday's truths are today's challenges, every episode brings you bold ideas and visionary strategies to thrive in a world where the only constant is change. Let's dive in, welcome to Unlearn. Welcome back listeners, we have been working on something super special for you all. But boy, has it been an action pack last few weeks of in the partnership industry? I had this pleasure of like attending Green Force Ignite, which are both fantastic and then AWS re-invent, which is off the charts, like there were so many cool things. And there's been a lot of time just speaking with the channel partners or like, you know, the partners of these big, big companies and it was just very illuminating and we could talk a lot a bit about that on in this podcast. But it definitely feels like in the last couple of weeks, there's like a new AI feature launch every day and in some days the AI feature is launched on Sundays, you know, and so I think it's a lot, but let's try to unpack some of that stuff here. So what we're going to do now is basically evolve Unlearn from just focusing on part of the partnerships, leaders and their career journeys and going from a interview style podcast to just covering the entire technology ecosystem. So whether it's software services, capital talent, regulation, wherever there's an intersection around partnerships and those topics will cover that. And so in some episodes, it'll be Kelly and I covering topics and in others will have industry leaders join, but actually share their point of view versus just share their journeys because I mean, I'm sure we can have them speak at any of our events to like come and talk about that stuff, but I want to get them to talk about what their point of view is and what's happening in the marketplace right now. So Kelly, how are the last few weeks been for you? Very busy, but very great. Lots of good partner conversations and like you said, a lot of partner news dropping that I think will be good fodder for our conversation today. Super. With that, let's introduce our guest, Kathleen, welcome to this show. Tell us a little about who you are. Well, thank you and thanks for having me on the show. It's a pleasure being here and I am excited to be a part of the new format and Shadley on some of the topics you're going to bring up. But yeah, so I'm Kathleen Curry. I'm based in the Bay Area in Silicon Valley and I am, I guess I'll call it a seasoned channel veteran, I go way back and went to college here in Silicon Valley and really just fell into technology and I feel pretty lucky for having done that. But I started my career at Oracle and the theme throughout all of the companies I've been at that it's I've either been directly in a partner role or I've worked in a direct customer facing role, but still leveraging partnerships. I went from Oracle to Cisco to Symbol, which was acquired by Motorola and CR by the way those three organizations have Cisco leadership in common. Had the pleasure of working for Apple for almost six years, which was a really fun time from about 2014 to 2020 and then did a stint in cyber security and McAfee. Some cloud work at AWS and here I am at work day, leading a partner going to market for us and I'll talk a little bit more about that and sure as we go on. I guess the last thing I'll say throughout that entire journey, I've had regional experience and global experience, but also feel really fortunate to have worked in environments that you know, have had open programs, closed programs, have been in overlay positions owned a PNL. So you know, I always say like it's the cause and effect that makes me valuable in terms of seeing how things just play out and it's an exciting time to put some of that to practice as we're entering or I should say in the middle of this new AI world. I bet, I mean, every CEO that I've talked to in the last six weeks is like, how does partnerships make money? Not revenue. We got that. How does it make money? Do you know how to get to that? Like, well, we'll cover it on a podcast. How about that? I still have a hard question there. All right, let's do something super spicy, so Kelly, congrats on a fantastic run. I think the only thing that's missing is somewhat if a Frontier LLM company, you know, like, and there's a much comparing, which is one of the topics we want to talk about. So, so, so I did this post on LinkedIn last week and I was surprised like why more people did not talk about this, right? But the post actually had 180,000 impressions. I mean, a lot of people viewed it or maybe 60 people like commented on it, right? But the thing that I caught my eye that was super interesting was the role for is for an executive strategic partnerships leader at OpenAI, right? In my opinion, that's basically a cheap partner officer, so they should just like collared that, right? Like, but whatever, right? But, but what's even more interesting is like this, the maturity of the thinking in the role was pretty awesome, because the measurement is part, is this person has to drive partner led revenue, it has to drive partner source, and then partner influence motions, right? So it's like this, the first time you're kind of seeing a new type of a company that is actually is sharing that type of information right in the job description, which definitely shows mature thinking, right? Then it's a, this person's got to have a proven track record operating with senior executives, EVP level or above. I'm like, fantastic. This sounds like a dream job. I should drop what I'm doing right now and go do this, right? Asher, you're not going to get this job enough. That was like a one way door, as they call it. So everything looks great, right? And this is not by any means a channel door, right? Because they want to focus on GSI's and hyper scalers and multi-nastro firms and obviously like, like, sovereignty of data and capacity issues and like all the stuff that we're all talking about, right? And then we come to the punchline. And the punchline says it has a salary of 350K to 400K plus equity. And then it doesn't say whether that's a base salary or it's OTE. So I'm thinking, wait, if this is OTE, transparent, that's what I was making like six years ago or eight years ago, you know? So like, like, I don't even know if they're going to get the right people for this, right? So why even post the job art? Now, if this is base, right, then for sure, this is extremely inspiring to a lot of future CPUs, but also transparent, like a lot of the CPUs that I know are already making that or higher, right? And so, so, so then I'm like, well, let's see what the market like, what wants to do, right? And then I got a bunch of commentary around, like, you know, think long-term and like, like, you know, you're able to take this risk and stuff. And then I'm like, I understand that, but I also know the CPUs like to go vacations on like risk alternate yachts and stuff like that. And they have kids in private schools and all this sort of amazing stuff, right? So like, like, open ads valuation is 500 billion right now, right? They're about to raise another again. And then the next thing they're going to do is get their valuation to about 1.3 trillion. That's also it's being discussed, right? So net net, the while of value of the paper options might be awesome, like, the return of them is a little bit further out, right? Like, there's no telling when the company goes public and also I've been at a company where we try to go public three times. And the third time is when we actually went public, right? So I just want to open it up to see, like, is it worth someone taking a base salary here to go join a hot startup? I think there's two different questions here. And so I'm, I think the second part of it is more interesting, which is, um, but first addressed to your question, which is, is the equity worth taking us hit on cash? I mean, I think the answer is yes, but what you need to have is a certain profile as a person, right? Which is you need to have a high risk tolerance, high risk reward, right? And so this could be the lottery ticket. We are very aware of, like, the economics behind LLMs and the current non-sustainability of their finances. So it is quite possible. This could end in a dumpster fire, especially for employees, right? And so I think it is high risk, but there's also a very reasonable viable option that this ends up becoming more money. So I would talk about something else about the salary, but there's Kathleen, do you have questions on, yeah, is it worth it? Well, you know, off the cuff, I'd say, like, yeah, there's, there's something underlying there, but to me, it's deliberate, right? It's a deliberate, you know, look for a particular profile as you're selling, saying Kelly. And I think in the world that I'm seeing we're moving into, yeah, you have to have all those relationships. You've got to do all those things that they put in the description, but with a very, I think strategic sales bent to it, because in this world today, like, we're closing strategic deals with GSIs where, like, thinking differently about how AI is consumed. So to me, I look at that and say, ah, they're looking for a very deliberate person who likes the risk and who wants to take it because they know they can blow it out on the variable. And Kathleen, I think you make a really good point about that because when you think about what this role is, right, we know that the partner operating system is changing in market across tech in general, and who is at the center of that in a lot of ways? Is the LLMs? They have a chance to, like, disrupt platforms and become the new platform. But that is very risky and it requires a lot of bold moves and a lot of bold plays. And there's, they are embedded with, have partnerships with, have competitive nature with the largest tech company in the world. So who do you want leading this? You want somebody who's very aggressive and very comfortable with owning and taking high risk? So I love how you articulated that, Kathleen. I think it's a really good point is this comp structure is going to vet for that personality trait and the only people that are willing to take this are, like, I'm going to bet on myself and my ability to kick butt in this job and get it done knowing that it is high risk and I can lose. So I love that interpretation, actually. There was something else in there that you both have pointed to you. So to make these options, let's just say it's extremely heavy off, which I'm sure it is, right? I mean, actually, personally, I'd be like, if you're paying $100 million to, like, engineers, you should pay $100 million to this person as well. That would be, like, one heck of an announcement, you know? You can tell Asher's a huge booster of partner leaders that he thinks they should be paid as much as the highest paid AI engineers. Love it. Kathleen's like, I'm bored. I think about this side, right? So now, if the valuation is 1.3 million, that means at some point in time, they have to grow into the valuation, which means they have to, like, eat up a lot of their partners. So they're either just going to acquire or they're going to go build. So this person who's extremely aggressive is at some point in time going to have to, I can bet $100 on this because that's how much it allows. This person is going to burn some of his relationships. I mean, that is for sure going to happen, right? Because the product org in this company is not going to be like, oh, well, let's wait for this partner thing to figure out while we just kind of go, like, you know, hold on to our revenue because the product leaders have pianels on their heads. Kathleen, you're nodding. Like, let's see what you're thinking. Yeah, I think exactly the same thing. I mean, I think the speed in which we're working today and look, the desire to get revenue from a partner strategy has not changed since I've been working, how it's monetized, how it's measured, like, that's always been a challenge. I think this just speaks to like, there's not only the requirement to define it, but the speed in which to attain it is very, very important in today's world. Also, I would say whoever takes this job just needs to know that you're going to go into an extremely high stress environment and you may not want to do this job after 18 months. So I wouldn't be like looking at this thing as a 5 to 7 year thing. This is like, we're in, we're going to go shoot for the moon and see where we land, you know, or shoot for Jupiter and then on the moon, whatever. There you go. So I was talking with the other thing about this job that I actually found super interesting which is the looking at their other job listings, right? And finding out like the head of sales enablement has a higher salary band. The head of sales industries has a higher salary band, which, you know, that second one is a little bit more debatable. But why is the head of sales enablement getting more money than what is essentially a job described as the chief partner officer, and to me, that is kind of not a not a good sign of where we are in market and how we're thinking about this because the way I'm doing it, these LMs are at the center of needing to build incredibly strong partner arms across the board, both on the product side where they're trying to get people to ingest data into them. They're trying to do e-commerce, they're trying to build out. And then obviously just the channel, the GSI's, all the hyperscalers like those motions. So I found that to be super interesting that their executive team sat down and said, you know what? This description of a chief partner officer, this role is actually worth less to us than the head of sales enablement. >> 100 million. >> I find it interesting. How about we let the audience also come up with their, or the listeners also come up with their own conclusions on this stuff. But Kathleen, does work they have a CPO, or what is the top leader look like? >> Yeah, so we have a SEP of partners, that's who I report to, and that individual Matt Brandt, he reports to our chief commercial officer who reports to our CFO. >> Oh, your chief commercial officer reports to your CFO? >> I mean, sorry, CEO. >> Okay, got it. >> You don't have to go to the CFO. >> I just got a motion. >> Get some money from the CFO, it's a direct line, the forecast meeting is a forecast and budget coverage. >> Yeah, I'm glad you got that. >> That's great. Okay, let's talk about the next thing that's making noise right now, right? Like Shopify essentially riffing a majority of the agency partnerships team. Now again, this is what I was told, and what I kind of grabbed from LinkedIn and stuff. I'm not sure 100% how it's true, but I definitely saw a lot of Shopify people say, thank you for supporting us till this point in our journey, and we're now going to go look for our next role, which essentially means the contrast. But then the more interesting thing that I saw was this lady, Atley Clark, which congrats to her has basically run a bunch of different teams at Shopify, but her most recent gig was to run product partnerships, and then she's been elevated. And to me, this is a trend across the industry, right? Like Salesforce made the same move, Octa made the same move. There's a number of companies that are actually bringing their product partnerships lead. Actually, Figma would be another a good example of this with Anacone and getting promoted and stuff. And so there is a trend here as well on, like, should the leader of this org be more product focused or more or go to market focused? I know those are like read the two lovers, so what do you two ladies think about that? Well, my reaction is that any product leader today has got to be go to market focused. By the way, I don't think that that has changed. I think they've always should be, but I think it hasn't necessarily been a standard, right? I mean, sometimes I can think back products have been very separate. But today, and particularly at workday, our product leaders are like in the thick of driving the go to market strategy as well. And that interlock between go to market and product is tight. And we're even seeing, you know, from a platform perspective, you know, we've got our product leaders like right in line with our partner leads. One is V-side, for example, or developer network, very engaged, very involved, and it's a symbiotic relationship. So to me, it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I would agree with that both in terms of historicals, but I think in the present moment, why it's even more critical is that if you look at the product landscape intact and also the services landscape, it's being disrupted significantly and very quickly. So if you have a leader who really maybe comes from like the traditional channel and they just don't understand those product dynamics, it's incredibly complex. Like me as someone operating in partnerships, if I was looking at a new role, like what of my top questions would be for the product strategy and the product vision and understanding given AI disruption and how that's changing platform dynamics. What is your mode, what is your strategy, where are you going with your product? And so to have someone with that core strength to lead the partner org, I think makes a ton of sense at this moment in time. Well, we're back to the age of question. Is it easier to know, go to market and then product or is it easier to know product and then go to market? We're all the juniors out there considering their future for their bad. Think about that for a second, but I think that the thing that's making this shift. So one of the podcasts that I listened to is called the Founders Podcast and Toby Lucky, the CEO of Shopify was on it. It just got launched, like I want to say, a couple of days ago and this is a two and a half hour podcast. Hopefully someday we can get there, Kelly, with like our podcasts. I don't know if people want to listen to us, we're two and a half hours unfortunately. Well, if we go and talk about this thing, you know, I think they would have a lot, a lot to share with us, but Toby actually goes through all of the things that have happened at Shopify and how he's gone and court and court rejiggered the company for its next level of growth. So, so I would highly recommend if you're interested in this topic to just go listen to Toby's podcast with David Senderer, it's an awesome, awesome podcast. But the other thing that happened, I would say maybe like a week or so ago is Google launching the Universal Commerce Protocol and all that means for all of us regular people like myself, it's just like it's standardized language. So you basically got these AI assistants who are going to make purchases on behalf of humans, which my wife will love. And so, so maybe I would love it too because then I can be a budget controls, you know. But but but the thing was core developed with like Shopify and Etsy and Wayfair and Target and Walmart and all these amazing companies, right? And so, so in that type of world, the person who leads partnerships has to have a product major so that they can navigate these conversations because if they're out there and their team is out there, building relationships, figuring out new business models, so there's got to be a leader that is a little bit more product heavy and then then a go to market is a function of that. So that was one data point that I thought was interesting in the marketplace, which may have been one of the reasons why this org change was made. Yeah, I think I think the way that data moves between systems and who owns data is is kind of a critical battle that's being negotiated in market right now because everyone is very well aware that the power of AI and agents is heavily dependent on the information that in the quality and volume of information that the AI can be trained on. And so we live in a world on the text acts of like deeply integrated systems, right? Most businesses have at least 250 software that they're running and obviously with enterprises that gets into the thousands. And so when you think about data moving through systems, it does become an issue from the customer. They want all the data. They can get their hands on it, but who controls it, can change who owns the value. And I think there's a lot of confusion in market as to how we're going to navigate this. I know Salesforce had made a move a little bit ago where they were trying to control what third parties could do with the Slack data. And there was a lot of pushback because the customers were saying, hey, wait a second. This is my data in Slack. These are my company DMs and messages. And you're telling me, I can't put it out to notion for my use case. And so I think though that was was probably Salesforce trying to test the water and find out, hey, if we can lock this information in behind this wall garden, we have a lot of value. We can run our own AI on top of it. And of course, the customer is a powerful force to say, no, that's my data. I want to move it. So I think all these dynamics are being disrupted. And so that is why the product partnerships angle is so critical to figuring out like, who's going to be able to capture value and maintain that value. >> No wonder the CEOs are like, how does this partnership things make money here? Forget the revenue piece. All right. Got to jump in and tell us. >> No, I was going to say, well, that's an important component. But I was just going to add like this conversations reminding me of like, you know, it's a, I mean, the partnership is a team sport. And I think you kind of need that talent, product talent, go to market talent, marketing talent, like you kind of need this conglomeration of talent now in the partner organization to kind of bring this all together and make it work. So whether that's the product major in the CPO role or you just have that embedded in the most critical parts where you need that, I think it's important nonetheless, you know, when I think about how we're shaping it at work day, it's a little bit. And in that nature, I'm certainly would not say I'm a technical person, but I have a person on my team, you know, who has implemented ERP and is helping us develop our ISV strategies, you know, to make our ERP store even stronger. And while he could talk, you know, all around me about some of those technical aspects, I think it's most important that he's enabled and empowered on the team to do the work we need him to do. So I mean, you know, we could probably think of a ton of examples, but it's definitely not, you know, traditional partner management anymore. I think that doesn't, you know, that's being disrupted. It's a good point. And also they, I mean, while we're discussing, we just talk about just alliances, skill set. I know we're partnership leaders, but like we are for everyone, right? Like, and early on in our journey, we were just product partnership leaders, you know, for SaaS partnership leaders, but we learned to appreciate all the partnership leaders. But the alliance skill set is also a very different skill set, the skill set to like build solutions, you know, get those competencies done, like focus on adoption and expansion, it's a different skill set. Those people think the same thing as ISV partner managers or channel managers. You are exactly right. And I think it's an important thing to note because sometimes we just lump in partner. Yeah. Anything. And the motions are completely different. And it now reminds me back to the open AI job description, right, where it's very specific about the relationships to build. But alliances are very difficult. And I think take definitely a different level of, you know, setting expectations and commitments and investments to make that work to me, they're hard because we can make those commitments at an executive level, even investment, but if it doesn't land and go to market, it falls apart. So they're complex, but very critical. Well, this is one of the reasons why I'm killing a charge out about this on this podcast. I think the CPU's role is to like optimize relationships. And what I say that it really just means the sequence of like which partners audience do you go work with first and why and then how to build the capability, how to get your company to understand who they are, what their identity is, how they want to be dealt with and all these things. And then you learn. And so I think that the partnership is extremely complicated today. I remember when I was doing partnerships in the field, it was relatively straightforward. You know, there was like the channel people and then there was these product partner people that were sitting somewhere in the product, Oregon, and then over time, as consolidation has taken place and then we've had, you know, a supply of I would say people and partnerships that do actually understand PNLs now, right? Like this was not a thing like eight years ago, even when we first started PL. Okay. So tell us about how worked this partner orgis set up. Let's dive into the org a little bit. Yeah. So we've probably, we've got four key leaders in our partner organization. Two of us, I'm one of them, I'm drives partner, go to market in the field. So we have an international lead in I lead America's. In addition to that, I also take on the GSI global partners as well as we have an industry ecosystem team that's kind of pulling together the ISVs from a go to market perspective. And finally, I do also have a partner success for the for global and the other two key leaders in the organization are what we call innovation or innovation leader. That is where ISV partners it, but we have a whole host of technology types of partnerships and they all land there and that's a global function and role. And then strategic partnerships and, you know, obviously some of our big ISVs are strategic. But there's our strategic partnerships just tend to be a little bit different, adding value to the platform, maybe really focused on, you know, RHCM or ERP motions and again, adding more value to the platform that is driven through our go to market partnerships because we really look at it in three aspects. One is kind of partnerships to support our core, could be services partners that deploy it, which is our core software, then who is building on top of it on our platform, and then who is extending that to add value to the workforce of our customers. And that's really where our strategic partnerships fit. And today, I mean, so interestingly, when I was a partner manager work, there was something that nobody wanted to manage and I actually bet on it and then the first, what is called rising? Yes. Yes. As the first rising and I was hanging out some of the ISV booths and right next to me was the CIO Bank of America. And that was the first time I realized what enterprise actually means. I'm like, oh, this guy is here. It's very interesting to talk to him, but, so the company's main thing was HCM, right, human capital management. And then the next thing was ERP or financial management, right? Or some of the other updates, like, or are there other pillars now that are available? Oh, yeah. I mean, both on kind of our HCM, like we look at it from a OCHRO in an office of the CFO perspective. In both of those aspects, like we've built out the portfolio quite extensively, so there's great solutions in there. I would say from our platform strategy, we've got an entire build and developer strategy built on our extend product that allows developers, our customers to build on top and add value where they need it to their solutions. And then, of course, last but certainly not least, is our entire AI strategy. And that's both organic growth that we've built over time. And we've made, you know, four acquisitions just this past year, I think five in total if you go out two years. So our AI portfolio has dramatically increased over the last 12 or 18 months. So, you know, whether we're looking at, you know, agents we're building ourselves, opening up the network in their platform for partners and developers and their customers themselves to build agents on that platform. And then out of the box solutions, like we acquired a company called Eversort, right, that is, you know, totally automated and turned, you know, contract management on its head, driving immense amount of productivity enhancements and just cost out of the business in terms of managing complex contracts. So it's kind of across the gamut. So not to, I don't think I'm announcing anything here, but we're just finishing our fiscal year this month next week and certainly going into our new fiscal year, we're going to have a lot of great announcements around how that portfolio is shaping up, how our partners are going to have a much easier and simpler time embracing the developer tools that we're coming out with in the story. So I'm really excited about what's to come in our Q1. Well, first. I have a question. I have a question for you. First, thank you for spending time with us in your year end, you know, we totally feel loved. Okay. Good. Two, two related questions. So does the innovation partnerships team also report up to your boss or are they propose somewhere else? Okay. They do. So would love just to hear your thought on the processes of how you go about developing that AI strategy kind of around partner and product and like finding alignment because, you know, often, you know, it's natural for product teams. They have their own products. They're thinking about like, how can I add AI to this experience? But then as a whole, they're layer in a whole other dynamic to think about how do we layer in partners? Well, there's bringing in data, putting data out or enabling partners to build AI solutions on top of your own platform. So just from like, you know, almost like an organizational structure, how does everybody come together and like have those conversations and make sure partners like represented at the table? Yeah. Well, I mentioned it was a team sport and it truly is a team sport. And I think this is a really great example of how complex it can be. But with the bright organization, you can, you know, pull this together. But from what you just described and bringing all of this AI goodness to market, right? Number one is, you know, the customers at the center. And I think worked as a really great reputation of having very high customers satisfaction and we hold that very dearly. And so we have a lot of mechanisms to make sure that we are empowering our partners first and foremost to be at the ready with all these tools. I mean, 80% of the work that gets done with our products at customer sites is being done by our partners. And so I mentioned an organization called Partner Success. We work really closely with our customer success organization and our product organization. Kind of a tri-party partnership internally to work together on, you know, what we fondly call our ramp process and getting our partners up to speed on these new products. Obviously, when we're doing it organically, it looks a little bit different than when we're acquiring a company, but nonetheless lining up our partner activities and the actions we need to get them empowered to not just implement the product, but also represent from a go-to-market perspective, it takes those functions in plus go-to-market, which I didn't mention kind of coming together and shaping that. So I'm missing it, but I'm trying, I don't want to like go too deep on this because I could go on and on, but it does take that coordination and as holding each other accountable so that, you know, when customer one on that new product that comes out can be successful, we're at the table, the partners at the table, and we kind of have all of our checks and balances. So we've got a great program that stands behind that that does hold all of us accountable. We take health metrics of our partners and our internal professional services organization, you know, really seriously. And I think maybe most importantly is we don't delineate, you know, between the tooling, the services innovation, the how we're going to go to market between what are we going to put in the hands of, work day professional services and what are we going to put in the hands of, you know, a strategic partner or, you know, any partner who has met the certification level. So I think right now for us, it's about speed in getting all of this, you know, to satiate the, the partner community's desire to bring this to customers because customers are trying to figure this all out. All right, let's go to the next topic, the, well, actually one last little tidbit. Does partner marketing rule up to your org or is it separate? Yes, it rolls into our marketing organization and our CMO. Super. All right. So then the next trend that's happening right now, which would be interesting to talk about because I'm assuming you're real to have a point of view on that. So, so the new Google partner program is launched, right? Like Microsoft did a bunch of like tearing changes and incentives and designs, you know, like normal stuff. But obviously they have a big issue with ISVs and getting into the marketplace and getting the app accelerated program as they're calling it like working and then I saw yesterday a service in one of the service now articles, they were actually really just calling their partners out to like lean in and get serious, you know, which to me kind of signals that we're in a time of like fewer partners and deeper motions. And I know I've been guilty of, in the days that I was working in this stuff, being guilty of just like like talking about like how big my ecosystem is. But I think the better thing to think for our listeners to think about is like it's actually okay to like trim down your ecosystem to get to the point where you have some deep deep relationships and then that are actually progressing. So that was an interesting thing. Are you all doing anything to like maybe trim down your ecosystem or towards that effect or maybe like giving them some more resources to step up? Yeah, so it's interesting because you know three years ago we were a closed ecosystem. And so we're like almost coming at it like exactly opposite than that you know Microsoft would be or service now who's like they built their partner program for like almost inception of the company. So we have been expanding our ecosystem at the same time I would say we're still at the same point of saying like where are we going to get the most productivity out of things. And I liken it really to what's happening internally at all of our companies, which is how are we increasing productivity? How are we leveraging tools better? Like it really is very similar. And I think with how fast things are changing like we, many of us have time and resource to invest in like the hand holding that used to happen you know 25 years ago when I was deep in doing you come out with all of these resources and augment marketing organizations and it's not to say that we're not doing joint demand generation we absolutely are. But I think the impetus is a bit on the partner to to know the sound business plan they've got to be prepared to not only build but deliver. And then if that's the case then we are like off to the races in acceleration but you know we're having to like really focus on those that are like taking off. But I do think that AI is going to help us all and deliver a high level of service to partners that used to take a person that just doesn't need a person anymore 100% and I mean as I spoke with partners after just like kind of like looking at some of these trends like the services companies are under pressure to show ROI the same way that our teams inside the these technology companies are right. And so the answer I think over the last year or so has been to move towards a point space program and then put some more incentives on the adoption and expansion activities. Now when I talk to partners you know like it's not like even though they've had these resources deployed they just don't have the operations to count those activities the way that the new programs are asking them to count them and so so there's a little bit of going to be a little bit of a lag of around like hey the intention is this and now we need to get the reporting from the market back to see if it worked or not so I'm also able to talk to this guy Mike Marchand who's the VP of Strategy and Ops at Advantage Solutions. This actually is a $4 billion technology and able services from their PAPO and but they focus on outsource sales and marketing and they're known for work and consumer goods manufacturer manufacturers retailers I was actually on a webinar with them and then he said something which I'm about to share and then I was like you should do a post about this I think this is pretty cool and his whole thing was like look I'm a partner right and I really care about four things right I want predictability can you make the as a technology vendor make the work consistent for us right like we're not the guinea pigs like figuring out how to make the work work consistent with us now I was also another AWS webinar early on today where they were talking about pattern partners which is really equivalent to like a design partner which again if you're going to do that just don't spread your program wide and then I you know it's I know the post he's talking about and it's it's so funny to me now if you have the same experience Kelly but like those words like it's so interesting how like the the technology changes over the years right and certainly I some way different than some of the technology shifts we've seen or maybe more advanced it's like more aggressive than cloud but the dynamics the predictability be consistent we need profitability like none of that has truly changed I'm going to present I was so many the dynamics are saying and that's what I was going to ask you to since you know you have so much experience outside of work days like for the longest time there's been in market this concept like 80% of the partners are driving 20% of the value or sometimes you see it 90 10 10% or driving 90% that all my personal theory on on like that is companies in general are not very good at supporting the long tail like two partner marketing is not a strong motion programs tend to be kind of all right I'm back well we were having a better conversation without you know for you to have more tech problems I was like wait I'm finally going to tell the four piece of partners channel partners perspective and then you hijacked my thing okay all right well it's like you to finish and then I can just share the four piece again I was just asking Kathleen about the concept you know in all her roles across the industry of the long tail partner experience and whether a huge part of the problem which this might be partly solved by AI and technology is our partners are organizations just not that good at figuring out how to engage motivate get you know drive value from the long tail and in fact the experiences tend to be pretty subpar a lot of companies are like hey we spun up this portal you have no reason to log into it but it's there and we're paying a lot of money for it but it's lame and so you you that's my take that really it's something that the industry has not developed to the right operations systems content and experience to power the long tail so my theory is it's actually a big opportunity now more than ever that we have these AI experience but Kathleen what's your take do you think that that's part of the problem yeah I agree with everything that you just said and it has been a long standing problem I do think that you know the promise of marketplace is something that's trying to address that and you know I I think why I stayed in the channel and I remember being in a channel enablement session like early in my career and they said you know how many of you raise your hand if you've had a like a parent or a family member who like own their own business and like you know that was me you know and so you watch that and I love this concept of watching small businesses build off of like you know ingredients that you've given them and if I take that out back to the marketplace I firmly believe that is the promise of channel that is the promise of one plus one equals more than two that we all continue to try to unlock so if the marketplaces that that I know many many of us and including including us are building if that can deliver more than just you know the words that it actually can open up markets for partners who have a good solution you have a good you know unique industry perspective or whatever their strategic leverages if that can open up canvas for them then I do think that could be an amazing answer I don't think we've seen no matter who's marketplace you talk about I don't think we've seen it yet but perhaps now with this age of AI we're going to see something a little bit different and that's hard to accelerate so I'm kind of looking at that as it is an all big opportunity for us all right can I tell my four piece of partnerships yes you can I just like I wasn't listening to anything you were saying because I was like you're waiting for me but it's already going back to me well I just thought it was it because like we hear so much like at least in the circles Kelly and I sit in like definitely I'm I'm from the technology providers like work day and stuff but like listening to what the partners are the channel partners are saying whether they're a side partners or whatever it's it's very interesting like their problems because if you look put yourself in their shoes they have 10 strategic partners right yes we have one program and they have 10 programs to manage right and so so so when Mike was on the guy from advantage solutions said the four piece I was like actually you know like like we should think along these lines because this is someone who's sitting at a very large company right like a four billion dollar services firm is nothing to sneeze at right so but but the thing that that he said was was I'll share the four piece so it's predictability make work consistent profitability help us get our time to money faster participation involve us in designing and scaling partner processes and then progression you know like how do we now use AI to grow the entire ecosystem and so so those are like the things the things that he said I drop I mean those are them you know I think the question is is are we listening yeah you know and our inner we serious about delivering that because that is it's that simple the hard part is across all of our complex organizations is getting that level of understanding yes I worked it when I was it I won't I won't say so I won't put this person on the spot they're probably not going to listen to this podcast it was a product leader at a former company okay and we talked all the time about what does it mean to be channel first and they we go through these conversations like well I am channel first and I was like six months went by and he's like I realize I wasn't channel first I realize now what you meant and that was having the conversation about the partner at like product inception we know it's going to go through the product don't wait until we're working out pricing or working out like our delivery method like right from inception how is this going to go to market and anyway but I won't go down that road too far just to say like back to the four P's I do think it's that simple it the hard part is just us like implementing that in every single organization inside our company to make it reality and to your point of getting your orgs aligned if we this is like I didn't pay I'll say to like bring this segment up in like wait a sec this is aligning so well to the the docket that we have but we just launched the state of partnership leaders right this is the annual report that we launch as a service to partner professionals around and to give them the benchmarks right now the interesting thing is that when we did this last year you know 73% of their respondents to last year's service said that their partner strategy and their company strategy was aligned right and we're like amazing like every CEO is talking about partnerships and the partnership leaders are getting hired they're getting budget and all this stuff right and then we said wait a sec there's a lot of different ways to look at the maturity of your partner program but how about we flip it how about we give you all a maturity model and we give you some questions and then you go have conversations with your executives to see what they think partnership how how poor partnerships is to this strategy right and so the results are here now right so 37% off the the people that serve it said that their executive team views partner ecosystems as core to their strategy right which means like they have a focus on central hubs like they have marketplaces they have certifications they have APIs you know they they've got services companies they've got developers resellers like like like if you're in that type of world like that's who who you are but but the majority again six almost like 60% of the market is not there right and and I would say if we were to go even further down like 44% the market is actually at partner source still right so so so so we we deaf there's definitely a lot of work that needs to be done the other thing that was interesting is 70% of the respondents said that they had teams that were less than 10 people so to me that's like well we got to get ready for the digital human age you know like if we can't get headcount as bodies we just got to get these agents and then and then figure stuff out but the thing that's even more interesting which will be I'm awesome news to all of our channel friends you know is that almost 40% of the people said that the channel is their highest revenue generating partner type and they're going to focus on it now this is like wild for our audience because it's more CISVs and not necessarily like the channel partners and stuff but but that was a very interesting interesting and the last one was which is was also surprising because when we did this webinar the guy who runs AWS marketplace was actually on the webinar you know and then and then we have like all this audience right and then half of them say they have no plans of doing marketplace there's like 600 people on this webinar right but but also 50% of the audience had marketplace listing and almost all of them saw less than 5% of their revenue coming from marketplace so this is like a huge huge like like like I really see an opinion like problem that we all need to go fix I don't find the channel answer surprising because I think the reality is the channel is on the most solid ground in terms of how companies capture revenue generation and so I think for companies you're also hearing partner sources still like the dominant best trick that a lot of these companies are sourcing to that track right because if you're looking at the value of like ISV partnerships it's going to be a lot more complex and now the channel can be too right you can have them have entire impacts across the customer journey but I think I think that would align with what you hear in market and where we are in terms of the maturity of how we measure the value of partnerships well I was always taught that hire the leader and the org sets itself that's why I'm like we need more cpOs you know if it's not clear already helping a fandom of cpOs it should be pretty clear um but it folks if you want the accesses report um we you can just go visit partnership leaders I'll comment we have enough information there but the other thing Kelly that is I would say even more interesting than this stuff is catalyst our big conference turns five this year and uh and so this thing started off as I wait I feel like it's just like it's getting isn't getting scale isn't played out now and five we're doing it in NYC because people say that's pretty so for folks that don't like the reason why we put on a conference is because when we started the community covid was in blue right and then as covid subsided people said let's go meet in person and 420 people showed up to it and then that's where this thing started then we said well the there is no ces for partnerships there's no one place where let's call it technology partner people or product partner people and channel people and alliances people all come together for the sake of partnerships not because then when they go to other conference other industry conferences you're lining your executives you're lining like like your customers you're lining the partner like like where's the one place where let's call it triparty partnering happens right and then that's essentially what we've created and so we're gonna have a thousand people at this thing this year I'm sure Kelly's gonna be there hopefully now they can't even know about it she may be there that's also okay if you listen but but work has been there before like like work this for sure been there uh our good friend Ty and Lingley has been a big proponent of uh uh of supporting partnership leaders in the workday cap I would say oh awesome well perfect well we should definitely be there all right Kelly if you have to run you're welcome to jump off uh because I and we want to be respectful of your time but if you're welcome you're also welcome to stay so we can finish this uh the I have two amazing other talking points that I wanted to share with the audience but if you want uh how are you doing a time I could stay out 10 more minutes okay great sweet that's all we need unless Kelly interrupts me and then we'll need more so just kidding we've done this for a long time but I only interrupt you when it's much you need it Asher 100% I need that I need that you know so all right let's talk about book recommendations right so the um Kelly actually you introduced us to the guy the what was it the platform revolution platform revolution I highly recommend that book now Asher and I interviewed one of the authors I think that was a year or two and they said they were coming out with an updated version that was very focused on b2b but it has not yet dropped okay well we need to call it original is amazing so everyone should read that book and then the other co-author ended up DJing in cactus denver do you remember that and so then we were like whoa whoa whoa what's the third co-author do right and turns out the third co-author just wrote a book called reshuffle it's making the rounds right if you haven't read it I would highly recommend because the core focus of the book is don't think about how AI will replace me think about how AI will rewire the system that I work in so an example from the book is like Google Maps didn't exist because we had better maps right it won because it coordinated a lot of different people in real time on a map and so before Google Maps like drivers now we get it independently traffic data was static or delayed uh I know I had you yeah I remember using Yahoo Maps at one point in time uh but then after Google Maps you know every driver became a live node right like they could transmit information back uh routes guarded just dynamically so it wasn't about the the driver it was actually about the system that got created and so for us in partnerships I would say you know think about agent driven motions uh I know we did and did another survey last year last year where I believe 85% of partner people were already using some sort of a lm tool but I don't think they were building agents right and so if you use agent agents or you can start thinking about utilizing them to you know let's say automate referrals right or provide embedded guidance or you know automate coastal workflows right like these are the things that you can actually do but I highly recommend the book if you haven't read it but let's flip it to Kelly and Kathleen what is your what would be a good book to recommend to our audience I already just recommended one so I'll flip it to Kathleen all right okay well I'm almost I'm listening to Bernade Brown's book Strong Ground um and it's awesome I mean I think for any leader out there um she has such great stories and I think just such a strong perspective um there's some really amazing I think advice in there uh especially leaders going through lots of change so I love it um I don't want to give any of it away because she's like I said she's got so many great stories in it but um easy read super all right yeah let's move to the CEO corner right like I was thinking of like we've talked about a little bit of roles we've talked a little bit about programs in my opinion like if you want to be a senior partnership leader you have to have a direct relationship with the CEO it's very important because the CEO has so much pressure on them on things that they need to get done and they're thinking a lot of so many things they made inadvertently deprioritized partnerships versus intentionally right there are plenty of cases where they've done it intentionally but you've got to have a direct relationship with them so if you want to think a little bit about that type of stuff right I think it's important to understand that they and something like this point on uh at what in what are the double section sessions this week that you know if you look at the world's GDP right where the the technology spend is still a fraction of the world's GDP which I think is like somewhere around 120 trillion or something like that but and then it's going to grow so these these narratives that we're seeing in the marketplace are not zero sum like like there's a lot of workloads and a lot of stuff that has to be digitized and technology can enable that but then if we go down to one level down um Kelly saw this this article which said 4,500 CEOs in a survey by PWC saw the uh wait 56% of the 4,500 CEOs saw no cost savings or revenue gains with AI and then and then I guess I saw another article from BCG which said well the CEO is the new chief AI officer so I guess the way I interpret it is like if they're not seeing it and their boards are telling them to go figure it out then they're like well I guess there's no chief AI officer it's me. I think I think CEOs right now are absolutely on the hook for both internal AI usage was in their companies and then whatever their services or product strategy is um and it has to be at that level right like to use AI beyond the more simple use cases of like hey let's generate content on the marketing team that we can then edit these like agentic use cases things that are structural and require people processes change within an organization you need you need top down support so I think there's a lot of truth even if you have a dedicated like you see people hiring both internal and external leaders at a high level and you own the AI strategy for the company but ultimately the CEO it's it's make or break and you think about like the market right if the CEOs not telling a compelling AI story to the market their stock is going to be punished or their financials will be punished because people need that belief right now. Yeah I worked as CEO's top priority like tell us a little bit about that. Yeah so well AI is one of them but I'll start by saying I woke up this morning to an email from my CEO Karol Ashabak on a follow-up with a partner he met Adavos and uh what happened there so I mean I to your point about the CEO being involved like it's really important and not only important it's incredibly helpful um so um we're lucky uh we've got someone really invested um but yeah I think you know well by the way like I mean you have a killer you know I mean you had like Anil and Dave do I feel we're awesome like as Dave is such a like like like I think they they they also had like people stopped pedigree but they just had a way to create culture like like those those two guys did an amazing job but cars phenomenal too by the way. Oh yeah and uh and yeah the culture lives on so um yeah he is phenomenal but uh you know I think we're living it on the AI on both sides because we're both developing AI you know products and tooling uh we acquired a company called SANA our internal people are developing you know agents to do processes internally themselves but at the same time as a you know a company ourselves running I think likely Karl is facing the same pressures that every CIO is facing which is how do you yeah how do you get the return so lots of productivity happening a lot of experiments um and how do you drive that return so I think um I'm like excited I mentioned a couple products earlier like we're seeing real return I think we're just going to stay focused on that um but I think 2026 is going to be the year of going from experiment to real returns inside the companies and I think our partners have a lot of those opportunity to lean in there and a lot to gain well I mean the SCAT is like like 75% of CEOs now personally only I decisions and 50% say their job is on the line which really then if you go back to some of the stuff that we've discussed like as a partner leader I would be figuring out my incentive strategy would be an adoption expansion like everything else is cool and great but if this stuff doesn't go from like pilot to like project to production right like or pilot to production like like everybody suffers right yep all right well we're almost done like you know I have three minutes left and then both Kathleen Kelly just gonna hang out the phone on me but two things that are very interesting one is our good friend Ross Brown who's been on the unlearned podcast it was also the author of the famous six roles of a channel chief has been busy at work I've also been you know encouraging him lightly and Kelly's probably going to roll her eyes you know because when I say my day it just means I'm calling him every weekend but but you don't give Ashley your cell phone you know I don't ever hear the end of it Kathleen okay well that was the last question Kelly you know it's like it's like that one guy YouTube that goes it's all these billionaires and it's last question it's kind of anyways back to the point so Ross is writing the chief partner officer a guy to become an effective partner leader as a sequel to that and this thing is like extremely long and I've been working a little bit with him but I'm super excited like like hopefully he can like finish it up and like launch this thing but that is something that is coming and it's also also because like Ross between Ross and Colleen they are the people who came up with deal registration right like they were the pioneers then they were fixing all these problems and now we're just facing different problems so I'm excited about it hopefully you two are and with that we are at the very first episode in this new format so thank you to our listeners for sticking with us I know we have a lot of anecdotes a lot of data a lot of stories and then thank you Kathleen for being brave enough to like spend this time with us especially in when it's your year-end later well thank you it's been a pleasure super all right folks until next time see you later thanks for listening do us a favor subscribe to the podcast on your favorite player or YouTube share it with the colleague or tell us what you thought of it or linked it see you next time