De-Siloing Your Org is Easier than You Think, with Lynsey Sweales, International Consultant & Facilitator, Founder of Cognitive Union

Transcript

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Lauren Livak Gilbert (00:00):

Welcome to Unpacking the Digital Shelf, where industry leaders share insights, strategies, and stories to help brands win in the ever-changing world of commerce.

 

Peter Crosby (00:22):

Hey everyone, Peter Crosby here from the Digital Shelf Institute. The consumer journey is under one of the greatest transformations since, well, e-commerce. As AI and agents enable consumers to ask their individual questions, it is the challenge of brands that are adapting to meet the moment and steal market share across many categories. Organizational silos are one of the greatest impediments to serving the consumer how, when, and where they want it. Lynsey Sweales, international consultant and facilitator and founder of Cognitive Union, has found a solution that has transformed the operations of many brands. Y'all need to talk to each other. It's the power of education and empathy centered on the consumer that has successfully brought silos down. Lynsey explains it all to us. Welcome to the podcast, Lynsey. So first I have to start, you are famous for hooking up your laptop in multiple countries every week.

 

(01:19):

So just to start, where are you?

 

Lynsey Sweales (01:22):

Well, thank you, Peter. It's lovely to be here with you and Lauren again. And today I'm actually at home in beautiful Norfolk in the UK, but my laptop and running trainers have been literally across the globe this year, but I'm actually sat here for a few weeks, which is a nice change.

 

Peter Crosby (01:38):

Well, we are delighted that you're joining us from anywhere, but especially from home because I'm sure you need a little bit of the break. But what we're excited about is that we're going to dive in today and talk what everyone talks a lot about, which is silos and silos in the organizational sense, not farming. And everyone has them. No one wants them, and yet it's super hard to get rid of them. And you work with brands every day, Lynsey. What are you seeing today about the silos that are really holding people back and has it changed at all?

 

Lynsey Sweales (02:13):

Yeah. So this podcast actually came off through Lauren and I chatting because we chat regularly. And as she knows, I'm a huge fan of the Digital Shelf podcast and generally recommend episodes and two episodes I've loved listening to recently is one from Aaron from Newton Baby, Matt Buffalo on the Challenger brands of Buffalo Games. So I definitely listen to those. Thank you.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (02:37):

Thank you for being a fan.

 

Lynsey Sweales (02:41):

It actually came off to listen to a few episodes and then the Jamie one. So I love Jamie as well. We've caught up and she's wonderful. And she was mentioning the S word. And I reached out to Lauren and I was like, Lauren, there are so many people talking about silos, but nobody's really talking about actually how to fix them. And so that's where this podcast came from. And one of the biggest trends I'm actually seeing isn't AI. It's not retail media. It's not even the latest commerce. It's actually getting back to the brilliant basics. And I spend my time working with brands across Europe, Asia, North America, and one thing is consistent everywhere. Teams are under enormous pressure. Raw material prices continue to rise. Margins are tight, competition and fierce, and digital native brands, brands who are small, agile, have strong brand purpose, values, know their consumer well.

 

(03:34):

There are more channels than ever before. So the journey is now hugely fragmented and with different audiences using different channels for different things. I know how super tricky it is to get it all right and show up. So everyone feels like they need to execute faster. And so the default becomes work harder, move smarter, do more. But the strategic move isn't working harder. It's to take that step back. And this is where the whole silos thing fits in because people are trying to work so hard. And this is something I say in most of my workshops. You're constantly in execution mode. You don't create enough thinking space to spot where the better opportunities are. And when I get teams to stop and reflect and simply look at what they're doing together, they're always surprised by what they discover when I get them working together. And that's really what today's about.

 

(04:29):

But like you've shared, Peter, helping brands today in silos and actually looking at some examples, there's a big misconception is that breaking silos requires a huge organizational structure and it really doesn't. And this is the thing I was talking to Lauren about. I'm like, it's just frustrating me that these big brands can't de-silo their organization. And it really doesn't. One of the simplest exercises I run to simply getting representatives from each function in the same room and walking is walking through the customer journey or sorry, the consumer journey together literally. So we'll map out the journey. And as an example, the consumer sees a social advert, clicks through to the website, reads the PDP, looks at the reviews, finds the product is out of stock. So they decide to search for an alternative, compares a competitor, buys the competitor's product, and the consumer buys the competitor product.

 

(05:31):

So you being the company that paid for those first bits, paid for the media, but you lost the sale. And the fascinating thing is that nobody ever owns all of that journey. Marketing owned a bit, content owned another, supply chain another, and data another. So everyone is suddenly getting that light bulb moment when I just run that simple session because they're seeing the experience through the consumer's eyes rather than their department. And so I've actually got that on a single sheet. If anybody wants it, they're more than welcome to reach out to me because I use it with leadership teams and they're like, "Oh my goodness." Just show them that. And so let's just look at one example. I was working with a team just this week and we worked through an exercise like what are your blockers? And this commercial team said supply chain.

 

(06:22):

So several commerce teams have told me that supply chain is their biggest challenge, but when they understand their KPIs, it makes more sense. So their job is to get products to market quickly. So if something goes out of stock, they say that their supply chain team say, "Well, can you market another product and get loads of sales on those?" But from their perspective, it's logical, but from ours working in the digital space, it's absolutely not because people don't want to buy that product, do they? So nobody's wrong. They're simply all optimizing these different outcomes. And the same applies to legal, R&D, finance, and so on. So rather than waiting until the end of a product project to ask for approval, bringing all of these teams into the conversation sooner by simply running a one-hour 101 that I often do, explaining the consumer journey and the impact on each department that has that quality of conversations, they don't need to become digital shelf experts.

 

(07:19):

They just need to have enough context and empathy to understand the consequences of their decisions and priorities to work better as one team.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (07:27):

I love that you use the word context because we talk about that a lot in the world of AI and LLMs, but there's a lot of context that needs to happen inside your organization to your point for all those functions to have empathy for the e-comm team, why they're asking for all these things. And I love your practice of getting everyone in the same room and running that workshop because there's so many of those aha moments. I'm curious, do you find any resistance getting those people in the room or the supply chain or the R&D team or even legal being like, "Well, why do I have to do this? Or why is this part of what I'm thinking about?" Because their metrics are also not necessarily aligned with that. So I'm curious how to get that group together.

 

Lynsey Sweales (08:10):

Yeah, that's a great question, Lauren. And ultimately what I'm seeing in organizations is they want their teams to work together and they will do a group invite to all of those team leaders across those departments. And often they'll go, "Oh, it's not relevant to me." But if the leaders are bought into it and the key stakeholders brought into it and say, "Look, you have to attend for this reason. It's going to help you because everyone's in charge of digital commerce now." Whenever they attend, they go, "Wow, that was amazing. Yep, this person, this person, this department needs to attend." So it's a cultural shift that is really important in an organization. But within the first two minutes of the sessions that I run, everyone's like, "I know exactly why I need to be here. And I now have a better understanding, context, and empathy of what we're all trying to achieve."

 

Peter Crosby (09:01):

So it sounds a little bit, Lynsey, like people get so focused on executing their role that they lose sight of the customer. And because I imagine all of these organizations have customer journey mapping and all that. I'm guessing that that exists and has been probably spent a lot of money to understand the omnichannel journey, but it's not embedded into the way that they do their work together. Is that a fair sort of summary of what you're talking about?

 

Lynsey Sweales (09:31):

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, silos don't just fall internally. I was talking and hosting a conference in Europe early this year, and it was actually delivery and logistics leaders. And I identified through hosting it and sharing back with them that actually silos was a challenge for them. But actually what they also realized, and I realized, well, actually they put the customer in a silo as well. So you've got the consumer in a silo as well. So you've got the consumer in a silo, you've got supply chain marketing, da, da, da, da, da. And then you've got no one's in charge of that journey. And then you've got the retailer in a silo as well where, let's just talk about Amazon for a second. We all know that Amazon works totally different to many of the other retailers. And if those leaders and people don't have context of that and look at that consumer journey, then you're never going to win the Amazon game.

 

Peter Crosby (10:23):

So one of the things that I think about in that is that you say that no one really owns the consumer. And often, Lauren, and you can sort of say yes or no, but it seems like part of what we've been saying sometimes to people is that you really do need to reorganize because somebody should own that. And then the incentives and everything else should flow down to the teams that are organized that way. But you're kind of saying you don't necessarily need to do that. You just have to figure out how the stakeholders all own it together. Because that's part of what I think has come up in our conversation is that it does require a reorganization to be able to really get to that. But tell me no, because that would be much easier.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (11:11):

I mean, go ahead, Lynsey. You can share from your perspective. I think my overarching theme is you need a chief commercial officer instead of a CMO, chief marketing officer and a CRO or a head of sales, because if you have two separate leaders, they're marching towards two separate goals. So having one leader who owns the customer, but there's a lot of teams underneath it is the best practice I've seen from brands. But I'm curious on your side too, Lynsey.

 

Lynsey Sweales (11:39):

Yeah, no, I'd 100% agree because everyone's in charge and we've had that conversation. Everyone's in charge. Theoretically, it's easy, but actually it isn't. It's harder because even so, even if they are all in charge and you restructure the organization, you still need one person that has that site and is guiding their vision and goals. And accountability. And accountability for that. Absolutely. Almost like representing the consumer at the board table as such. And that's super important. But obviously global organizations are huge. They're still trapped in legacy functions where digital native brands are very agile and they're winning because they understand the consumer, their teams are working in very small teams, and they don't have the decision factors that let's just call them traditional CPG brands have. And so by the time that CPG brand has made that decision, the opportunity's gone. I mean, I spend day in, day out working with these brands and they're looking very internally, they're looking at their competition, see what their competition are up to.

 

(12:40):

And I first say to them, look, don't worry about your competition in a sense of what their PR is saying because PR teams are out to make out that they're doing everything really well. Their ducks are in a row. But I can tell you, because I work with lots of them, nobody has all their ducks in a row. Everyone has exactly the same challenges that you have, but focus on your own brand and your products. Put the consumer at the front and center and all sit around a table and just slowly start to work through this. Because let me just give you a very simple example from a perspective of just how I show that because everyone in the organization will be aware of the big gregacious goal that that company is aiming from. And let's just use the number six as a very simple example.

 

(13:28):

So when I'm doing workshops and things, I will write a big six on an A4 piece of paper and I will sit you all down. So Lauren and Peter, you might sit one side of the table and you can be R&D and legal. And then I'm sat the other side of the table and I put six face up to you guys. So we're all looking at the same piece of paper. You guys, so that's the goal. You see six, I see nine. We're looking at the same thing, but we're looking at it from different perspectives. And so just getting them to take that step back rather than execution, execution, and just look at it from a different perspective, a different pair of shoes. And I also get them to role play. So example, I get some of the teams to role play actually wearing the retailer's shoes, or I might get the digital team to wear the lawyer's shoes in their team.

 

(14:15):

And I get them to see it from different views because then it adds that context, empathy. And when they put the consumer all that, you don't have to bog yourself down in all the like, "We can't do this because of this." These simple moves of walking through the consumer journey can just be so powerful. And we have to remove those blockers because I honestly think, and I've said this to brands, if you don't make these changes, you are not going to be here in two or three years time because it's a race to the bottom if you're just competing on price. And that's not a place anybody wants to be.

 

Peter Crosby (14:48):

Rebecca, I spent a decade as a professional actor in New York and I got my master's in acting. And one of the things that we learn is as you break down a script, because acting is all about empathy, marketing is all about empathy. And one of the things you do is you break down every move in that script and it's like, what do I want? What do I as the character say to get what I want? And then what happens when I do or don't get what I want? And that's essentially what you're talking about is breaking it down into each one of those moments. And then everybody in the room that's working on this Shakespeare play or whatever it might be is getting an understanding for every moment in that play. And that's essentially what you're talking about here, which is it takes a lot of work, but it really is mind-expanding when you do it and it leads to different answers.

 

Lynsey Sweales (15:41):

Yeah, absolutely. It leads to different answers. And those light bulb mobes are like, actually, it's not just about the latest trend because people are always looking at the latest trend. I'm like, get this in place first because this is the lowest hanging fruit, the biggest win you will get. And as an example of that, there's an organization I worked with in the skincare brand, and I do this with all the brands I work with. I asked the digital team to review one specific PDP and together and simply ask, "If you were the consumer, what opportunities do you see to improve this listing?" Now, this brand reviewed their listing and they said, "Yeah, it's pretty good. There might be some tiny tweaks," but they had completely missed something right in front of them. When I looked at the reviews, and obviously I'd found this PDP that they had that were missing lots of opportunities, the consumers in the reviews had repeatedly described the product as being brilliant for spot-prone skin.

 

(16:37):

Yet nowhere on the PDP was that language used. And a quick research that I'd done beforehand showed that monthly searches for that exact phrase for that product, obviously not named product, but what the product did was huge. And I called this out to them and their immediate response was, "Legal won't allow that. We're going to have to get it retested. R&D won't approve that." And so there's an example of a silo where if we get them to look at it and go, "Well, legal won't allow it because they don't understand the context. Where if we get legal as part of that conversation, why would they say no?" And funnily enough, off the back of that one piece of training, which is part of a larger program, when you look at that listing now, hey Presto, it has Spot Prone Skim mentioned on it, and the sales have gone through the roof because actually they've listened to the consumer and they've worked with their legal and R&D team.

 

(17:27):

So that's an example of you don't need to do huge amount of restructuring, but link to the point that Lauren made around having a chief commercial officer and then having that full consumer view. There is a black and white example of a brand that has one on just one simple PDP. So just think if you did that on 20% of your PDPs, how many more sales you'd create.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (17:49):

I love that example because it reminds me of when I was on the brand side, we were optimizing for SEO because AEO didn't exist at the time. And we kept getting every single one of our PDPs declined by legal and regulatory. And it was when we were in the office. So I walked down the stairs and I went and sat down and I was like, "Hey, let's have a chat. What is going on?" And they're like, "Well, there's too many words. It doesn't make sense. It's not a proper sentence." And I was like, "All right." And we scheduled a two-hour training where we said, "This is what SEO is. This is why it matters. This is why the algorithm matters. This is what we're playing with." And from that day forward, we had absolutely no issues. But it was an education gap that they just didn't understand.

 

(18:32):

They were like, "This sentence doesn't make sense. There's two of the same words." And we're like, "We know." So I think it's super helpful to really break down. People sit in their role and they might not have that additional context, but it removes so much friction. And we still need to do that today. We still need to do that today.

 

Peter Crosby (18:50):

Yeah. And particularly in what you're talking about, Lynsey, in that example, those consumer signals of how they think about the product and what it does for them is that context layer that we talk about in Agentic, that need to. Because your growth is going to come. You're going to steal market share because the market isn't growing really. So you have to steal market share for growth coming up. And in order to steal market share, you need to serve the consumer better than your competitor and faster than your competitor. Those are those sort of niche sliver of opportunities that will come from understanding almost every phrase the consumer might think about your product. And the nice thing about it is that it doesn't have to be 20%. Ultimately, we're working towards this. It doesn't have to be 20% of your product portfolio you do this optimization on.

 

(19:40):

It can literally be a hundred because AI makes that possible. So I love what you're saying because what we now have, and we've been working towards this for over a decade, is a time when you might actually be able to accomplish this at scale and at the speed that is going to happen, which I think is what's so exciting about this moment.

 

Lynsey Sweales (20:03):

Yeah, absolutely. And just to build on what you and both Lauren have shared, obviously the senior leaders need to understand this as well. And now many of those senior leaders are important factors in terms of the decisions they're making. But many of those senior leaders didn't grow up in digital commerce. They grew up in branding, PR, traditional marketing. And so when they ask their teams, can we just launch TikTok or can we just add another retailer? Or can you just do

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (20:30):

AI?

 

Lynsey Sweales (20:31):

Yeah. Can you just do AI? They're not being unreasonable because they're thinking, well, we need to do this, but they simply don't understand the resource involved. Now, one way I've helped teams and leaders to bring this to life is a little short video. Obviously I used AI to create my little video. It's a short video of someone running in a race with lots of spinning plates. And then you give them another spinning plate and eventually one crashes. And then I ask the room, every team member, I ask them all, "Who feels like that?" And first of all, they all laugh because they're like, "Yeah, I feel exactly like that." And they all raise their hands. And the leaders then already start to see the challenge their teams have. And so this is really useful for the leaders to understand. They need to have empathy and understanding and context of not all of the channels inside out.

 

(21:24):

They don't need to be digital experts, but they don't want their team to say no to them and the team don't want to say no. So I've created this very simple simple effort versus reward framework, which again, if anybody wants it, more than happy to share. And it's not about saying no, it's just about helping leaders to understand where the greatest commercial return comes from first, i.e. Strong PDP foundations for search, agentic and so on. Great content, search, availability. And those fundamentals always almost outperform chasing the latest shiny object. And then once leaders understand the consumer journey as much as you can do it, because it's very fragmented, the resource involved and the effort versus reward, they start asking smarter questions. And so it really helps the leaders to understand the effort it takes to just launch a TikTok account or just do AI because that's not a just, is it?

 

(22:18):

We all know that. The huge amount of resource. And again, the leaders don't want their teams to be over-resourced and their teams don't want to say no to their leaders, but they're spinning all of these plates and you simply, no one can spin that many plates. So it helps them again to work together and understand it from both perspectives.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (22:35):

So Lynsey, we talked about education. So I think that upskilling part is really important when it comes to silos. How do you encourage brands to think about ongoing education, even in the world of AI too? Fundamentals, brilliant at the basics, but some of the new things that are coming up. How does that muscle continue and who owns that piece?

 

Lynsey Sweales (22:59):

Yeah, I mean that's a really great question as well. And again, with teams, in particular, CPG brands under more pressure, obviously cost cutting is going on and people think on-demand training is fine and that people that are working at more than 100% capacity can fit in training. It's a cultural challenge that a company needs to invest in. And typically training would come from your learning and development team. But what I'm seeing more now of actually head of digital, head of global, I'm working with presidents now who are actually getting involved in the training because although they know their learning and development team want to invest in training, they don't necessarily understand it. So it's not that we're cutting out learning development, we're just doing it in a more agile way. So we work with the learning development team and the senior leadership team or global presence to think about that training.

 

(23:54):

Now, of course, with budgets being cut, time being precious, and obviously COVID has to be mentioned in every podcast, doesn't it? People think, "Well, we could just do remote training on demand," but nobody gets the interaction from the examples that I've just shared. And so training needs to be thought about as a culture in terms of to get here, we need to invest in ourselves as individuals and within the company. So whenever there's training, I always say to the team leaders who I'm working with, "What do you want your team to think, feel, and do after training? Have you spoken to them? What are the challenges that they have? Because I don't want to be creating training that you think they need and they think they need something else because that has happened a lot." And ultimately it's not a one-off piece of training because as you have said, Lauren, it needs to be ongoing, but you can't over-resource the training because people just can't implement it.

 

(24:50):

So what I'm seeing works very successfully is almost like over a two-month period, you create this program and it is just short. You set the scene upfront in a sense, "This is the journey you're going to go on. This is how it's going to help you. Here are some real examples." So they buy into it because they go, "I can see how it's going to help me in my job to work smarter, not harder." And so I'm very honest with them because having worked for lots of brands, I can empathize with them straight away. And they then go, "Okay, yep, I'm willing to invest in this." And then just short 90-minute sessions, either once a month or every couple of weeks in the short term, and actually working on their products, they get buy-in and they can see that actually they're applying it to their organizations.

 

(25:34):

They see the value of the training. And then they're like, "We want more. We want more. What next? What next?" And when you start to bridge that in a sense of who needs training at what level, it's where it becomes normal in an organization. It doesn't have to cost a fortune. With remote training like this, it can be really powerful. And also it can be done globally. So the company I've been training just recently, one of the companies I've been training just recently, they actually, I mean, I know this, but they called it out, which I like. They're like, "Oh, we work across Malaysia, Thailand, Russia, Saudi, and Turkey." I mean, all very different markets. And they all think their challenge is very different. But actually, when you boil it down, they have exactly the same challenges, but they never get together to hear from other teams across different regions.

 

(26:20):

And actually, what's the saying? A problem shared is a problem half. So actually, you're not just investing in training, you're investing bringing your teams together where they're talking. They're not talking about another brand launch or another product. They're actually sharing challenges, building the community, building the relationship stronger. And actually, of course, at the end of the day, the consumer still wants the same thing. You're still working with the similar foundations at retailers. So that can be really powerful, and you start to build momentum there, and that's where the success is. Where it goes wrong is on-demand training and leaders are not, what's the word? Setting the scene of how important it is and the difference it's going to make and how they're investing in you. So that's how I see, I know it's a bit of a long-winded answer, but that's what works typically very, very well.

 

(27:06):

And then what I've seen off the back of that is obviously the impact is really good. And so you do cohort, cohort, cohort. And that's a lot of my work. I'm redoing, delivering the same sessions, but to different cohorts globally to bring all of that together because they see the physical monetary impact of that work.

 

Peter Crosby (27:23):

So Lynsey, I'm thinking of our listeners, some of them are global presidents, but many of them are not. And they see the need in their organization for something like this. And have you seen that sort of bubble up from lower in the organization to cause an executive or learning? How can they be advocates for this kind of transformation, this kind of upskilling?

 

Lynsey Sweales (27:51):

That's a great question. It can come from both factors. Sometimes it's from top down. So it's from senior presidents where they're like, "We really need to help our team." And sometimes it is from a frustration of team members that are doing the doing and they understand the pressure of it needs to be done at scale, but they don't feel they have the right knowledge around them. And so that conversation, obviously that person that's doing the doing wouldn't necessarily come direct to me, but they would have a conversation maybe with me to see what are the opportunities? What can we learn? What examples have you got? But then they would have a conversation with their senior leader and say, look - Kind of make the business case. Yeah. If we want to win, we can't keep doing what we're doing because it's just simply you're just sticking plasters on things at best.

 

(28:35):

And AI is not going to fix any of these things in what we're specifically asking to do. AI can help us scale this, but we need to get the right foundations in place first.

 

Peter Crosby (28:45):

Yeah. And I mean, speaking of AI, beyond making inspiring videos using it, do you feel like AI can be a partner in this process? I mean, what you're talking about is human to human interaction, and that's not something that AI is very good at at all. No,

 

Lynsey Sweales (29:05):

Absolutely. It creates great images, which Lauren shares on LinkedIn, which look lovely, but although she's lovely in a human being as well. I do. I genuinely do, but I don't think AI is the solution. I think AI is the accelerator. So one of my closest friends, actually, Lauren knows him as well, and he said say hi. I'll say who it is afterwards. He asked me yesterday, he's like, "Lynsey, you work with so many organizations. What's the biggest trend you're seeing?" And he expected me to say AI, and I didn't. I said, "Actually, the biggest trend I'm seeing is organizations realizing the importance of brilliant basics. So consumer journeys, PDPs, shared goals, cross-functional cross-cabilation. AI hasn't replaced those. It's simply shone the mirror on them, and it's exposed where organizations don't yet have strong foundations. And if teams are still working towards different KPIs, AI won't solve that.

 

(29:57):

AI is not going to fix that at all. But What AI can help us with is when we've got those solid foundations in place, it can help us do that at scale. So AI can help join the dots in terms of the data. So I work with many global brands and many organizations I shared earlier can create that impression that we've got AI sorted and we're using AI, but instinctively what I'm hearing and seeing is senior leaders are outwardly saying and sharing with their teams, we are further ahead in AI than what these people think they are. So the people doing the doing, they've actually shared with me, our senior leaders think we're further ahead in AI than we are and we're not. So AI can absolutely help, but these solid foundations are absolutely critical. But when you get these solid foundations in place, then AI can take those bits of data and help with the answers and help guide you on that.

 

(30:54):

But you simply can't replace, and this is my view, you simply can't replace that human to human and actually not replacing with an AI tool, actually looking at physical reviews sometimes as an example, because AI might not have picked that up, probably didn't pick it up. So AI has a place, but it is there to help accelerate the good foundations you already have.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (31:16):

That's great. Lynsey, I'd love your thoughts on this because there's one area where I do think that AI can really help with silos, and that's just informing what is happening in other functions. So say for example, I'm the digital shelf team and I'm working on optimizing a bunch of PDPs. And so I have this plan. They're going to get great enhanced content. We're going to redo all of the carousel images, all of that. Now the retail media team's over here and they're not talking to the digital shelf team and they're like, "Hey, we're going to run this awesome campaign on this SKU." And if there was an internal AI that was ingesting all of the information about all the different functions, all of the campaigns, all of the media that was happening, then it can flag, "Hey digital shelf team, did you know that this retail media team is actually working on this campaign?

 

(32:05):

You should talk." So things like that, that's where I do see AI can really be a catalyst to bring people together. Where I was telling this story to someone the other day when I worked at J&J, I had not met the person who led the e-commerce category management team until maybe five months into my role, and we met in the hallway. And I was like, "How have we never talked before?" So there's a lot of those moments where I do think that it can really help bring those pieces together if you set it up correctly, but I'd love your thoughts on that.

 

Lynsey Sweales (32:38):

Yeah, I agree. And I know you asked me about that the other week. You're like, "Is there any organization that you know is doing that?" And I was like, "No, it'd be magic if they did." And actually, Lauren, not that you have time for a side hustle, but if you did, I would highly recommend that one as a business opportunity because that would be really cool. I love it. And so I agree. I think if you can feed that in, but they need to have an understanding, the teams still need to have an understanding of what that means for them, and that's where the education comes in. So build the solid foundations, then use AI to accelerate. And I think that's a great example of what could happen if people want to do it.

 

Peter Crosby (33:13):

Well, Lynsey, throughout this episode, you've been very generous about saying, "Hey, I have this framework or I have this example and people could get it from you." What's the best way for folks to reach out to you?

 

Lynsey Sweales (33:25):

Probably the quickest way for them is LinkedIn. So look me up on LinkedIn. Lynsey Sweales, there's not many of us around. Or they're welcome to email me, which is Lynsey@comtiveunion.com.

 

Peter Crosby (33:36):

Terrific. Lynsey, so grateful and honored to have you on this podcast to share. You have such a depth and breadth of experience. And you understand all the silos, you understand everyone's point of view, and the empathy that you drive, I think can be meaningfully impactful on brands and also on just people's wellbeing, frankly. So thank you so much for sharing all of that with us. We're really grateful.

 

Lynsey Sweales (34:04):

Oh, thank you, Peter. It's lovely to chat to you and Lauren, as always. So thank you for having me back.

 

Lauren Livak Gilbert (34:09):

Thanks so much, Lynsey.

 

Peter Crosby (34:11):

Thanks again to Lynsey for explaining it all. So much more impactful info is at digitalshelfinstitute.org. Become a member and keep on top of it. Thanks for being part of our community.