New Research: Reinventing the Organization for Omnichannel Success, with Lauren Livak Gilbert, Executive Director of the Digital Shelf Institute

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. Getting omnichannel right is essential for sustained growth, profitability, and competitive advantage in today's rapidly evolving commerce landscape. The challenge is most omnichannel companies have not taken the steps necessary to transform their business to better match the way their consumers shop. That's why Lauren Livak Gilbert, my genius co-host and Executive Director of the Digital Shelf Institute, embarked on deep research to unlock the transformative strategies necessary to create the consumer experiences that will give your commerce teams the winning edge. She's here today to share the highlights of that research, reinventing the organization for omnichannel success. Lauren Livak Gilbert, welcome to the podcast.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (01:13):

I'm so happy to be here. It's so fantastic. My dream to be on this podcast, Peter.

Peter Crosby (01:20):

Oh my God. I know. I know. It's such an honor. Oh, my usual co-host is ...

Lauren Livak Gilbert (01:26):

She's a pain.

Peter Crosby (01:27):

Oh my God, what a mess. But you're here to talk about, you're in the hot seat, to talk about your fantastic, fantastic report. The feedback on it in the social LinkedIn sphere and out in the world has just been so positive. And I think what you've created is so thoughtful and I think really challenging for a lot of brands who will need to make this transition not only urgently because of the era we're in now, but the era that we're heading towards, like to be able to respond with the consumer and the experience is changing so fast and everything. There's so much to talk about. And we always talk about that three-legged stool, people, process, technology, and technology is always the least of the problems.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (02:24):

And people's the

Peter Crosby (02:24):

Hardest. Yeah, the people are the hardest, and then sort of how they work together. And then in this era and the next, how they work together quickly and with less friction and towards the same goals is so important. And in tandem

Lauren Livak Gilbert (02:41):

With AI.

Peter Crosby (02:41):

Yes, exactly. So tell us about this report.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (02:47):

Well, I have to say it was the report I wanted to write for so long. It was in the back of my brain and I finally did it and it's one of my favorites because I think it's a burning question that a lot of brands have. And so I tried to go really deep. So I did interviews with over 33 digital leaders and I tried to go outside of just e-commerce function. So I interviewed legal, procurement, HR, sales, marketing, shopper marketing, category management. I really went cross-functional and I wanted to understand from every different side of the organization how they are connected to commerce. And then we also surveyed over 90 different leaders to really just get a broad perspective of like, how are you thinking about e-commerce? Where do you sit? How are you approaching it? And I went into the conversation thinking one thing and came out with many different surprises.

(03:40):

So it was very enlightening.

Peter Crosby (03:42):

Oh my gosh, I love that. The surprises are always the best, right?

Lauren Livak Gilbert (03:46):

Yes.

Peter Crosby (03:46):

Because

(03:48):

You can go in with your idea of, okay, I just need this data to support what I think is right. Yes. And then you find out, oh, wait. So we'll dig into that. But what I loved, the report opens with that question that everyone would always ask, where should e-commerce sit in my organization? And you're saying that's the wrong question. Yes. Why did that question dominate for so long? I mean, it's a natural question. You've got this new thing coming up and you got to, oh my God, where's it going to go? But why is that no longer enough? What has changed?

Lauren Livak Gilbert (04:29):

Well, I think the challenging part about writing this research was that that question is different depending on your level of maturity too. So when you're asking where should e-commerce sit if you just started thinking about e-commerce, that makes a lot of sense, right? But if you already have an e-commerce team and you're trying to think about how you grow, it's the wrong question because basically you're just trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. That was one of the surprising factors that I learned as I went into this report. And for anybody listening, if you think I'm going to hand you a org structure on a silver platter, stop listening because that is not the outcome of this research. Well,

Peter Crosby (05:06):

Don't stop listening. But

Lauren Livak Gilbert (05:08):

Maybe don't hear

Peter Crosby (05:08):

All that. Reset your expectations.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (05:10):

Yes, yes, exactly. But the thing was that when you ask where should e-commerce sit, what you're asking is, how do I do the business that I'm already doing and then just add on digital? But that's the big challenge where you need to rethink the question you're asking and say, "Well, how am I making sure that my business matches the way consumers shop?" And that's a very different thought process. That's a mindset shift and it's a different question that you need to be asking because if you say, "Hey, where should e-commerce sit?" You are operating mostly as an in- store organization, probably the way you've operated for the past 100, 150 years, right? So you have your supply chain, you have your packaging, you have your sales and marketing that was already set up for in- store, and then you're just trying to add on e-commerce into an organization that wasn't built to be digitally first and to be more focused on digital channels.

(06:08):

And so that's what's really breaking down. And it's even more of a challenge now because of the pace of where commerce is moving.

Peter Crosby (06:17):

And tell me if this is not true, but the trick is that at the end of the day, because when you focus on the consumer, then you're locking into the place where your growth will come from if you can get more and more consumers to buy from you. And so it's really about, if you want to think about it in related terms, it's where the growth is coming from. And the omnichannel is different from in- store plus e-commerce. Omnichannel is the sum is greater than its parts, right? And that's where the opportunity lies and people have not adjusted to doing that, right?

Lauren Livak Gilbert (07:06):

No, they haven't adjusted the way that they work. So I like to always reference the Profitaro study that came out a couple of years ago that really builds out three distinct models of how e-commerce usually happens in an organization. The first one is the sidecar model where it's like, "Hey, you have two people. " And they're like, "E-commerce is great. We're trying to work on this. " Then you have the COE model, which is, "Hey, we're building out a center of excellence. We think it's important. Here's how we're going to focus on it. " And then the third one they built out was the integrated model saying that e-commerce needs to be integrated back into the broader organization. And in my research, I actually added a fourth model and I'm calling it the reinvented model that fully supports what you just said, Peter, because you can't integrate e-commerce into a system that was built for in- store.

(07:57):

What you actually have to do is fully reinvent how you operate. And what I mean by that is instead of having a marketing team and then you have an e-commerce marketer and you have an in- store marketer and you have a shopper marketer, you just have a marketer who understands digital and in- store and can flex across the entire consumer journey. And that reinvented way of working takes a lot of mindset shifts and a lot of changes in both job descriptions, how you're working cross-functionally and how you're thinking about doing your job.

Peter Crosby (08:34):

And I would imagine the tough part about that is that that's not something that a person in the org chart can do on their own. Exactly. This has to be a leadership led model, right?

Lauren Livak Gilbert (08:49):

Yes. Well, that's one of the first kind of mindset shifts is having joint leadership. And you're seeing a lot of organizations move towards this. You've seen a lot of chief growth officers come up. I've seen job descriptions pop up for chief growth officers.

Peter Crosby (09:02):

I know. I keep seeing them and I keep slacking them to you. Getting that to me. Oh my God, Lauren, another one.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (09:07):

I love when my research actually matches exactly what's happening and predicts before it does. So that's really exciting. But some of them are calling chief commercial officers, some are calling them chief growth officers, but the whole point is that sales and marketing report to the same leader because when you have a sales leader and a marketing leader that report into the CEO, they have different metrics, they have different goals, they might not be working together, they might not see the full picture of the consumer journey, but if you have a chief growth officer, they're looking at the entire end-to-end journey, including sales, marketing, consumer experience. And that's one of those actions and mindset shifts that I was talking about that organizations need to start thinking about so that they can change the way that they operate and it can affect the rest of the organization.

Peter Crosby (09:57):

So from your interviews, what are the biggest pain points that leaders talk about when they are actually trying to go on this evolutionary journey?

Lauren Livak Gilbert (10:09):

How long do we have? No, I'm just kidding. I mean, I think one of the biggest ones is turnover, right? I think the commerce industry and digital roles are fast paced and people are moving in and out of roles. And one of the biggest things, and you say this a lot, Peter, is digital leaders wear the educator hat, right? And you might have 15 people in your organization that are dedicated to digital and they're educating the rest of the org. So when they leave, the knowledge leaves with them as well. So if you're not continuously educating and really trying to build in a program for people to understand, why should I care about this? How does this affect my job? Then when those people leave, all of that work kind of goes away. And one of the really cool takeaways and examples from the report that I love is that one organization has been very, very intentional about moving digital leaders into functions that are not as digitally native.

(11:06):

So they have people on their e-commerce team and when it's time for them to rotate into a new role, they strategically might place them into say supply chain or R&D who don't necessarily touch digital every single day. And so kind of like by osmosis- Get that DNA answer. Yeah. They're helping digital get into the DNA of the organization. And that's a really great tactic and a big call to action for the HR teams to think about that. But I think another really big challenge is joint accountability. So I mentioned this a bit where sometimes the marketing team and the sales team have different metrics where maybe your Walmart lead might only have an in- store Walmart number and then the e-commerce team has the Walmart e-commerce number. And so what's the incentive for the Walmart in- store person to care about e-commerce because their bonus and their salary are not tied to it.

(12:03):

So join accountability is a huge, huge challenge and can be solved by having shared goals and just one unified North Star that people are working towards. And then I think one of the other ones that's really big is change. I mean, humans naturally don't like change. This is all a lot of change and it's happening faster than it ever has before. So organizations that are actually measuring change and thinking about how much change can my organization really take and how can I be very intentional about change management are seeing more success. But I think sometimes organizations discount the importance of change management when it's probably one of the most important things.

Peter Crosby (12:46):

Can you tell me what you mean by measuring change?

Lauren Livak Gilbert (12:49):

Yeah. So one of the organizations that I interviewed, they actually have a change in transformation office and they actually do a lot of, think about it like an NPS score internally with their staff to say, "Hey, here's the baseline of where we are today. How do you understand our goals? Do you understand what we're trying to achieve? Are you comfortable with these changes that we're making?" And then they basically continue to do those surveys throughout the year to understand as they make a change or as they change a strategic imperative, does the organization understand it? Are they positive or negative towards it? Do we need to slow down? Do we need to speed up? There's a lot more technicality that goes into it, but I'm simplifying it by saying it's more surveying the organization to understand, are they being receptive to it and are we actually marching towards our goals versus just making a change and being like, "Okay, I hope it works." Actually being intentional about measuring that.

Peter Crosby (13:45):

So you surveyed over 90, you actually humanly interviewed 33 people.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (13:51):

Yes, humanly. No AI involved.

Peter Crosby (13:53):

Exactly. I was just wondering, what is the humanity that comes across in the people that are struggling with that? And I don't know if all of them were at the level where they could affect these changes or are they the people that are trying to sort of ... Just describe those conversations to me, if you can, or what you took away from them.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (14:12):

I think out of all the research I've ever done, this is the one piece that had the most challenge to it. And a lot of people, the number one thing they asked me before I started the interview was like, "What's everybody else saying?" Because it's really hard. I can sit here on a podcast and I can write a research report and have all these beautiful lists, but in action, it's very, very challenging to implement. And I think the frustration that I heard in a lot of the conversations is they feel like they're behind and they feel like they have to change their organizational structure and the way they work so frequently. But the output of this research and the thing that I keep telling them is they most likely don't have what I'm calling a line and box problem. They have the right people and the titles might not be right, but they have the right people and capabilities.

(15:07):

It's the how. That's the hard part. And I think that takes a lot of top down, bottoms up across emphasis to get right. And it's a big cultural thing that needs to be influenced. And I think that's why there's so much humanity in it, because it really is more of a how problem.

Peter Crosby (15:27):

Do you get a sense of where the energy comes from for the ones that are pulling it off? Was there any sort of pattern of, oh, there really was a CEO that was ...

Lauren Livak Gilbert (15:47):

It's the leadership. It's the leadership fully understanding it and embodying it themselves. So it's not just them saying like, "Hey, we're invested in this. " It's them saying like, "Hey, I understand this because ... " And actually being able to ladder up between the strategy and the details and really kind of backing up their words with actions inside their organization. One example that was really cool was one of the CEOs really wanted to make sure that education was a priority, so actually paid for certification in partnership with a university for the entire organization to get omnichannel certified. And I think that's backing up the fact that you believe this is where the growth is coming from and how you're going to succeed moving forward. So I would say one of the biggest pieces was definitely having leadership that fully believes in it. And I think the other one was also just having an organization that's comfortable with change.

(16:47):

It's hard to measure that, right? But all the companies that I spoke with that were doing this and being agile and being more of an omnichannel organization, when they got told, "Hey, we need to change our strategy," they're like, "Okay, let's figure it out. " They weren't like, "Ugh, just another thing that I have to change and I don't know what to do and I'm scared for my job." It was like, "All right, everybody in, hands in, let's figure this out. " And that's a very different mindset.

Peter Crosby (17:15):

And that's a mindset that already existed before. I mean, that just doesn't spring up, so that suggests-

Lauren Livak Gilbert (17:23):

The how problem, the cultural piece. Yeah. I think that's what makes all of this so challenging. I think one of the forcing factors can be shared goals because we're all human and what gets measured gets managed. And if your bonus is reliant on making sure that the e-commerce number hits, you're definitely going to do your job. So I think it's a forcing function and it's something that needs to happen regardless that can help move the needle on culture. But I think another big piece of it is taking those change makers who really understand the why behind digital and making sure that they work within the organization to explain it and to say like, "Hey, why does your job matter in what we're doing and how can we all work together to make sure that we are being

Peter Crosby (18:10):

Omnichannel?" Well, and I would also imagine in an era of slower growth where for a lot of ... Well, let me ask you this, if it is in the research, for a lot of companies, their consumer base isn't growing, and so all growth has to be stolen from somewhere. And that business pressure, I would imagine, has a lot to do with creating the fires for change.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (18:48):

Yes. And I think that's why we're at an inflection point and why this conversation is so important now. We've been talking about org structure for years. I mean, I've been asked this question every year since I was even on the brand side, but it matters so much now because the pace of change is so much faster because the small ankle biter digital brands are beating out some of these larger players because like you said, growth isn't free anymore. It's harder to find growth. Retail media is also challenging the status quo and retailers are asking brands to spend more and spend differently. Agent commerce is now here, so it's a different way of discovery and it's a different way of shopping. So I just think all of those pressures are happening right now and it's so much more important for you to get the inside of your organization right so that you can actually see the growth externally because if you don't, then you don't have a chance of getting any of that growth.

(19:49):

I mean, I think one of the funny stories that someone told me in one of the interviews was they were on a joint business planning conversation and they had four different JBPs, I think as one company with one retailer and one person promised, I don't know the amounts, I'm going to make it up and sound dramatic, but a million dollars on like a retail media JBP. And then there was like an executive leadership JBP and they also promised a million dollars, but they didn't talk to each other. And so they were over budget because they didn't account for what the left hand and the right hand was doing. So those are examples of like you can't afford those kinds of mistakes and it's very easy for those to happen in the environment of organizations that exist today because they're naturally siloed. So the faster you can close those silos and build bridges between all the different functions, the easier it will be for you to show up as one company and not make those mistakes that maybe before still were not great, but you could afford, you can't afford them now.

Peter Crosby (20:53):

Yeah. And the vast majority of people involved in those mistakes- Intention. Yes, had the right intention, but is existing in a system that did not allow visibility and communication and collaboration and coordination. So I know you're not going to give everyone their org chart on a 40 minute podcast, but out of your research came sort of characteristics of a profitable, successful, growing omnichannel organization, walk us through those.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (21:31):

Yes. I like to paint the picture of what it could look like. So I think the first one is channelist interactions. So I think I've said this a couple of times, but you don't approach in- store and then online and then social and then every other channel and then agentic as separate channels. You just look at how does my consumer shop and how are they touching all these different touch points? Deep consumer and- Sorry,

Peter Crosby (21:53):

Can I just ask a quick question about that? So it's not just sort of how they shop, it's how they get, it's how they ...

Lauren Livak Gilbert (21:59):

Discover.

Peter Crosby (22:00):

Journey. Yeah. And then it's buy online, pick up in store, therefore whatever. Correct. Okay, cool. I just want to make ... It's really the whole omnichannel shopping

Lauren Livak Gilbert (22:09):

Journey. Process, journey, yes, 100%. And

Peter Crosby (22:12):

Channels, it's not siloed by channels. It's what is their objective? How do they discover? It's all the way through those sort of steps.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (22:22):

Yes. I think about it for anybody who knows the agile pod model, which is one of the examples in the research, you think about it that way, right? You have a pod that's encompassing all of the functions you need to for that specific need state or category. And you're all moving as one instead of having your in- store sales team and then your e-commerce team and then your shopper marketing team all separately not talking to each other.

Peter Crosby (22:44):

Got it.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (22:46):

The second piece is really deep consumer and customer personalization. And when I say customer, I mean retailer in this example. So from a consumer perspective, are you providing them with the kind of product they want and the kind of information that they want? I always go back to gluten-free, like, "I'm gluten-free. Please do not show me something gluten-free." How are you personalizing those consumer experiences and how are you showing up to your retailer or your customer in a personalized way as well, sharing category insights, sharing insights about your consumers that you know, and then influencing the category on that retailer site. There's so many opportunities to really be your retailer's best partner by sharing data and making sure they understand more about your consumer and your category.

Peter Crosby (23:34):

And in an omnichannel context.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (23:37):

Correct. Not as an in- store team and an online team. Yeah.

Peter Crosby (23:40):

Yeah. Okay.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (23:42):

AI powered everything. I mean, I'm excited as someone who used to sit in seat and could not hire 15 more people to create all the content I needed. Now you can do that at scale with AI. And there's so many opportunities for AI to power a lot of things that brands are doing today. And in the research, I build out an example of an org structure and what that could look like. But things like demand planning gets so much easier with AI, content creation, briefing. Yes, it takes work to train it, but it needs to be a part of how you plan for the future and how you're thinking about being able to scale. AI is a really big piece of that.

Peter Crosby (24:23):

It's that agility piece of it, the ability to be able to research faster, analyze faster, make decisions faster, create faster, address more use cases, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and unlocking

Lauren Livak Gilbert (24:38):

That- At

Peter Crosby (24:39):

Scale. Yeah. And that goes back to your education piece because so much of it is fluency and comfort with that and the right guardrails. And again, collaboration with your data and AI and security and legal teams to make sure that you have all the right guardrails in place to be able to do that effectively and some way of driving those processes that can call on it, but then make sure that it all gets governed is super important. And that takes a lot of thought. I was

Lauren Livak Gilbert (25:16):

Just going to say, that's the other inflection point. You can't just add headcount. It's just not possible. Most organizations are lean and in order for you to do more, especially when it comes to the digital shelf, you need support to do that. And it used to be human support and it's just not possible to add 15 people to your org, but now you can actually do that with AI powered support.

Peter Crosby (25:40):

And were you talking to people? Did you interview people that had already experienced some of that?

Lauren Livak Gilbert (25:46):

Yes, it was really exciting. The example org chart that I put in that's AI enabled, people are doing that today. People have AI briefing agents. They have data agents who are ingesting all their data and they can have a conversation and ask like, "Hey, what are you seeing with this product at this retailer? And what is the insight?" It's actually happening today. I wouldn't say that there is one organization that I interviewed that was fully AI enabled, but they had different pockets of the organization very specifically around content creation, briefing, demand planning, things like that where they were being fully supported by agents. Cool. And that leads into the next one, data driven decisions. So being able to not only have the data, because I think we all have too much data, but actually understanding what that data is telling you, and I think this is heavily connected to AI, what are the insights that you can actually pull to make that next decision and make sure that it's the right one?

(26:45):

And then the last one, which is my favorite one, is iterative planning and budgets. A lot of brands plan their budget for the year, and then they set it, and then at the end of the year they say, "Okay, let's plan next year's budget." That's not how our industry works. I mean, think about all the announcements that have come out this year alone around OpenAI and ChatGPT. Those are affecting the way consumers are shopping. They might need to affect your strategy. Think about all of the retail media networks that have been popping up. Maybe it's a big retailer for you and you want to test that out. If you planned for the year and you didn't account for that, you can't add it in, right? So how can you think about more iterative planning maybe on a quarterly basis? That's where I've seen most brands try to get to a quarterly basis to say, "Hey, can we adjust this?

(27:33):

" But that takes a lot of collaboration with your finance team, with your legal team, and having a very clear unified P&L in order to get that picture.

Peter Crosby (27:45):

Easy. Easy peasy. Easy

Lauren Livak Gilbert (27:46):

Peasy. This whole podcast, just go implement it.

Peter Crosby (27:50):

So those are the five. I just want to tick them off one more time just to ... So channel less interactions, deep consumer and customer personalization, AI powered everything, data-driven decisions, iterative planning and budgets.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (28:07):

Yep. That is the picture of a profitable omnichannel organization.

Peter Crosby (28:11):

Well, in ticking those off, you can see the cross team, cross org collaborations that are required, and that's where that singular leader comes into play because they can drive the priorities through incentives and through how they choose to make the budget flow wherever it can have the most

Lauren Livak Gilbert (28:38):

Value. And that's where shared goals matter too, right? If the legal team is accountable to making sure that your content is accurate and up on your PDP, they're definitely going to do it. But right now, I highly doubt that that has anything to do with any of their goals and objectives. So I completely agree with your point, Peter, and I think that other thread is making sure that all of those functions understand why they are important in this and are accountable for it.

Peter Crosby (29:06):

Exciting and daunting.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (29:08):

Yes. I don't want this to sound so daunting, and that's why, and I know we're going to get to this next, but that's why I detailed out the mindset shifts. And I think it's important, no matter what stage of maturity, pick a couple of them. And in the report, I actually write low level of effort, high level of effort, and you can think about what would make sense to do now versus like, "Hey, let's build this into our strap plan for the next five

Peter Crosby (29:36):

Years." And we'll get to that. I wanted to ask, because a lot of our listeners, a number of them are in the position to heavily influence maybe what is ... Because you were talking about the need for leadership to be aligned, and that's something that's hard to fashion from Three levels down the organization, right? So what is in the control of a person that would report is currently reporting to a person that really shouldn't be the leader of ... I don't know. When you talk to the ones that have done it successfully and you talk at that level, any secrets there? Any behaviors?

Lauren Livak Gilbert (30:28):

I mean, be a member of the DSI, obviously. No, I'm just

Peter Crosby (30:31):

Kidding. Of

Lauren Livak Gilbert (30:32):

Course.

Peter Crosby (30:32):

No, you're not kidding.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (30:34):

Well, not kidding actually, but yeah. I mean, I think a big piece is storytelling and when I've spoken to people that are trying to make this change inside their organization, they always come to me and they're like, "Hey, what's the one story nugget that I can share? What's going to move them needle and make people think about this differently?" And what I found in a lot of these interviews was they picked one thing. One person went to their leadership team and was like, this was before Agentic Commerce, right? So it's a little different now. But they were like, "Okay, if we don't focus on search, our product doesn't get shown up on the first page of Amazon and no one will buy it. " They made a very simple story and they shared that with their executive team and then that opened the door to a broader conversation.

(31:17):

So I think if you're not in an executive role and you might not be able to make those decisions, you can help influence because you understand, but try to build out a simplified story that makes it real for them. And it doesn't have to be anything complicated. It can be that one liner and it's like a light bulb goes off and they say, "Ooh, I need to think about this. " Or show them a competitor and show them how they're doing it versus how we're doing it. Another really cool example that someone brought up was they actually, they went on a field trip. So they took their leadership to an aisle. So they went to a store and they did a walking tour of the aisle. And then they brought them to a computer and they said, "Do the same thing on Amazon." And they didn't see their product on Amazon.

(32:02):

They actually had them go through a digital walkthrough. And I think it's underestimated how impactful that is to actually have your executives sit in a room and try and find your products online and actually walk them through an exercise. And that was something that was really impactful. So I think storytelling is really big and also bringing all of your cross-functional partners to the table with you. So if you can get your legal team on board, if you can get your supply chain team on board and you can come collectively to all of your leadership and have a conversation, it's way more powerful in numbers.

Peter Crosby (32:37):

Love that. So you outline 11 mindset shifts.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (32:42):

It's okay.

Peter Crosby (32:43):

Quite the biggest dozen and actions that brands can really start thinking about to move their organization in the right direction. And obviously we can't cover all of them here. I'll have a very cool URL in a moment where you can get the rest of the report. But if you were picking two or three, what would you pick?

Lauren Livak Gilbert (33:04):

Well, I already talked about the shared goals one, so I'm not going to beat that one over, but that's a really important one. I think using AI to free up time is a really big opportunity, right? So identifying on your teams, where is hands-on keyboard work? Can we replace it with AI? Can it supplement what we're doing? Because I can tell you that your competitors are probably thinking the same thing, and if they can do it and they can do it faster, that will give them more opportunities and more selling days. So really thinking about that- And

Peter Crosby (33:35):

Can I ask you a question there?

Lauren Livak Gilbert (33:37):

Please.

Peter Crosby (33:41):

I kind of think about the potential of AI is to make things more efficient, so you're saving time to free up, expand scale, and so cover more use cases, build deeper content, all of that. And then ultimately that being used to drive growth because it's a better experience that converts more. Kind of the way that I think about it, I'm sure I'm missing things or oversimplifying it, but to think about where AI can be applied, I feel like you need to have that kind of mindset of what it is, what is the business-

Lauren Livak Gilbert (34:34):

What problem are you

Peter Crosby (34:35):

Solving? Exactly. What problem are you solving? What's your most important problems to solve? Is that what you're seeing as being successful?

Lauren Livak Gilbert (34:44):

A lot of people are figuring it out right now, and I think you called it out perfectly, Peter. I think the challenge is people are just saying like, "We need AI." And then they're coming up and being like, "Well, it didn't really do anything." So you need to figure out what is the problem that I'm trying to solve. So I brought this up a couple of times, but think about demand planning. So for anyone who's ever done it, it's quite tedious, right? And you have to look at last year and you need to look regionally and it's usually like an Excel spreadsheet or maybe you have a software that can figure it out. So the way I look at that is can you automate the analysis of past years of the data that you have that can free up time? And the problem that you're solving is your demand planner doesn't have time to understand what's happening in this region or how should we prioritize this or how can we think about a new launch because they're spending so much time focused on just kind of like keeping the lights on.

(35:38):

And if you can free up that time by automating it, then they have more of that time and energy to be more strategic. That's just like a small example of how I would think about it. Is the problem that you can't focus on new initiatives because you're only focused on keeping the lights on? Okay.

(35:55):

Can this be an opportunity to get those people out of the weeds and think more strategically? But you just need to be very clear about what it's going to do for you rather than just say like, "Hey, we need AI."

Peter Crosby (36:07):

Right. And know that it's going to be measurable or what's the point?

Lauren Livak Gilbert (36:11):

Exactly.

Peter Crosby (36:11):

Okay. So deployed shared goals, use AI to free up time for omnichannel thinking. Do you have a third on you?

Lauren Livak Gilbert (36:17):

We talked about the joint leadership. I think the other one, and we talked about flexible planning cycles. I think the other one I would just hit on, and I think this is, I'm going to target it at the HR team, but I think it's everyone's priority, is to really rethink career planning and talent planning. So I mentioned that there's a lot of rotating people that come in and out of digital. The future leader of tomorrow is very different than the leader of today. And unless we prepare for what that looks like and start training people inside organizations to become that leader, it's going to be really hard to continue to advance the way we need to at the speed that we need to. So the call to action in the report is really to the HR teams to think about like, how are you educating every single function?

(37:06):

How are you planning for talent? Are you allowing people to rotate into e-commerce and is that part of your rotation program? How are you planning to recruit for the commerce leader of tomorrow? But I also think it's a call to action for every single employee inside the organization to say like, "Hey, how am I staying up to date and how am I understanding what's happening and how am I connected to the overarching goals of the company?" It's just like a different way of thinking. When I was on the brand side, we used to call it the business owner mindset, like put on your business hat to say like, "Hey, this is my company and this is my money, what would I do with it? " And so I keep saying mindset shift, but it's a call to action to HR and then it's a call to action to everyone involved to just have that mindset shift of how do I focus on moving all of these dollars if they were my own?

Peter Crosby (37:59):

And also when you talk about these qualities that you talk about that people need to have, right, they are the exact qualities that people who came up through e-commerce already are.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (38:20):

Exactly. Yes.

Peter Crosby (38:22):

And to me, that's exciting because it means like, it's not to say an in- store person can't also be that, but in terms of who has an edge in the agility, in being able to sort of see around corners and create new systems and figure out ...

Lauren Livak Gilbert (38:43):

It's digital leaders.

Peter Crosby (38:44):

People have been doing that. Yeah. People have been doing it.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (38:45):

They've been doing it. Exactly.

(38:47):

Yeah. They're agile, they're entrepreneurial, they are okay with change. They can pivot quickly. Those are all the features of the leaders of tomorrow. And when I think of like a traditional CPG kind of rotational program, like you usually have like a leadership development program and you sit in sales and you ladder your way up to sales and you can maybe become a general manager and then maybe you're in marketing and you're a brand manager and you ladder your way up. That like very siloed leadership development program also doesn't work because you're not getting the cross-functional expertise. And one of the other things I talk about in the research is that generalists are really going to be the future leaders of tomorrow because if you think about AI powered everything, you need generalists to understand the bigger picture and the consumer journey. And you might have AI agents who are doing the execution in more of the kind of specialized skills, but generalists can see, to your point, Peter, like around corners and can see the full picture and that's what the future leader of tomorrow is.

(39:53):

So how do you inside your organization, excuse me, inside your organization prepare for that?

Peter Crosby (39:59):

So the report is called Reinventing the Organization for Omnichannel Success. Yes. You've only heard three of them. Imagine what the other four, seven, eight. We don't do math on the podcast. Well, I don't do math on the podcast. The other eight hold in store for you. So you can get this report at digitalshelfinstitute.org/omniorg, O-M-N-I-O-R-G, digitalshelpinstute.org/omniorg.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (40:32):

And there's so many other pieces coming out. Like supporting the

Peter Crosby (40:36):

Whole thing?

Lauren Livak Gilbert (40:37):

Yeah. So there will be a report coming out soon around cross-functional engagement. There's some example existing org structures today. So that website, as we launch new research around organizational structures, it will all be there.

Peter Crosby (40:53):

And I always say this in the outro that nobody ever listens to of the podcast, which is that by becoming a member at the DSI, you really do get notified about all of these things coming out. You don't want to miss it. So I will say this again in the outro, but digitalshelfinstitute.org, become a member. And by the way, when we are recording this, we just got our 10,000th DSI member and- So exciting. And

Lauren Livak Gilbert (41:20):

Her name was Lauren, which was so cool.

Peter Crosby (41:22):

No, I have a feeling you just chose-

Lauren Livak Gilbert (41:25):

I didn't. It was exactly the 10,000th member. Yeah,

Peter Crosby (41:30):

We featured her on LinkedIn. It was so cool. I think she's probably overwhelmed, but- Will

Lauren Livak Gilbert (41:36):

You be the 250th member? No

Peter Crosby (41:37):

I'm just kidding. Oh my no. Let's go for it. Lauren, thank you for putting in all of the effort to soldier this research to life and to share to the world. I know you've been on other podcasts talking about, so you've been out there in the world really putting your time and energy into sort of spreading this gospel. And it's fun and it's really well-written report and very thoughtful. And I can't wait to see how it evolves over the next year so that we can help more and more people kind of put these things to work. So

Lauren Livak Gilbert (42:16):

Thank you, Lauren. Same here.

Peter Crosby (42:18):

Thanks for having me on the podcast, Peter. Delighted. Maybe I'll have you back again sometime.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (42:23):

We'll see. Till next time.

Peter Crosby (42:25):

Thanks to Lauren for submitting herself to my grilling and more importantly, delivering this research to our members. Keep on top of everything coming out of the DSI bit by becoming a member at digitalshelfinstitute.org. Thanks for being part of our community.