Greg Daniel

Verizon (Fortune Rank #30) is undergoing a major transformation as new CEO Daniel Schulman takes the helm, replacing Hans Vestberg amid intense market competition and declining subscriber growth. With Schulman’s aggressive restructuring plan—including up to 15,000 layoffs and renewed focus on customer value, operational efficiency, and technology investments—Verizon is poised for a pivotal shift in strategy as it aims to reclaim market leadership in the dynamic telecommunications sector. Visit our sales intelligence blog to see the new Verizon Org Chart and to find out where sales opportunities might be hiding. https://lnkd.in/eh_U6NA3

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A new global BCG study shows that only 5% of companies are truly succeeding with AI. Read the study: https://lnkd.in/gJixhFk6 Those 'future-built' firms are achieving revenue gains and cost savings that are up to five and three times higher than those of other companies, respectively. What is their secret? They’re not just using AI to automate tasks; they’re rebuilding how their business operates with the help of agentic AI, which works like digital employees. The result is faster growth, smarter workflows and an ever-widening gap between the few leaders and the many laggers. The message is clear: move now or risk being left behind.

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Large enterprise CMOs are facing a critical challenge: Drive AI transformation while doing right by the teams that built your organization. The C-suite wants AI transformation yesterday. Their teams—many with decades of institutional knowledge—are skeptical, exhausted, or both. Here's what I keep hearing: "I know we need to move fast. But I can't just blow up my team in the process." These leaders aren't stuck because they don't understand AI. They're stuck because they understand people. They need a plan for that first and foremost when the org gets to a certain size. They know that legacy expertise is still valuable and long-tenured employees deserve honesty about what's coming, not false promises. Transformation that breaks trust isn't really transformation—it's just chaos with better tech. This is the real leadership challenge of AI transformation - navigating the human complexity of change in organizations where relationships, tenure, and culture run deep.

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Gr8 opp to help lead the innovative, customer centric retail media product that CVS Media Exchange (CMX) is building and work for a great leadership team. 👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼

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Christopher Vollmer nails something many teams quietly feel every February: the Super Bowl exposes the gap between cultural moments and sustained growth. Spending $10M on 30 seconds is not the strategy. It is the spotlight. The real question is what happens on Monday. The creator lens makes this even clearer. Culture does not move in campaigns anymore. It moves through ecosystems. Through creators, communities, and fandoms that compound attention over time. A single Super Bowl ad can spark awareness. A culturally fluent creator can drive participation. An organization built to connect story to commerce can convert that participation into durable growth. That requires more than media dollars. It requires enterprise capability. The brands winning today are not chasing cultural hits. They are building culture into their operating model. They are collapsing silos between brand and performance, content and commerce, insight and execution. They treat creators not as placements, but as infrastructure inside a flywheel. Chris' piece is a sharp articulation of that shift. If you care about the future of growth, this is worth your time. cc MediaLink United Talent Agency

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The last decade rewarded operators. The next will belong to insight-driven marketers. Great CMOs are designed, and train over years, to build sharp points of view. In a world where growth can be treated as a commodity (where levers are limited to price x ROAS), what separates the wheat from the chaff is leaders who pro-actively de-commoditise growth. They treat growth like a craft, not a formula. De-commoditising growth may sound like a hyperbole-ish and righteous way of business building; it’s quite the opposite. It requires a mindset shift of going back to fundamentals of growth, which quite simply put, is answering the question- “how do I build on my baseline?” Price and ROAS (as proxies for performance marketing) will give you a baseline — but they cannot be your only growth playbook. Great CMOs with a clear point of view approach growth with a category-first lens. In some cases, building on the baseline means assortment expansion (as seen with most EComm companies, including service-led commerce). In others, it’s product innovation (as with many consumer brands). And in some cases, it’s channel expansion — growing beyond existing points of sale. Great CMOs, with a sharp point of view, fundamentally understand what it takes to make a step change for growth, and anchor their strategy in one or more of the above with conviction. https://lnkd.in/gai2uXXX

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We’re all going to learn a new dual-track leadership style to manage human and digital workers: inspiring human excellence while directing digital efficiency. Inspiring human excellence remains unchanged - the centuries-old playbook of vision, compassion, and more that motivates followership. Where employee engagement scores will remain our north star as we create environments where human creativity and ingenuity flourish. But directing digital efficiency with AI agents, automation tools, and sophisticated digital workers? A playbook we all need to learn quickly. While some human leadership elements overlap - clear vision, precise goals, specific feedback - does "inspiring followership" even apply to digital workers? It's more like optimizing a manufacturing process around task accuracy and output efficiency. Think managing an AI that processes 10,000 customer queries per hour versus inspiring a human team to deliver exceptional service. The hardest part won’t be to master these two distinct modes - it’ll be to weave them together seamlessly. Balancing inspiration and connection with humans while offering extreme clarity to digital workers. And knowing when to entrust work to a human versus a digital colleague. Collaboration between humans and digital workers might actually prove easier than human-to-human - no complex emotions to navigate when humans delegate to AI. But here's where it’ll get tougher: - What happens when digital workers become capable enough to delegate work back to humans? - How do we ensure our human teams feel empowered, not replaced, by their digital colleagues? - How do we design workflows where both strengths are amplified? Leadership in this new type of hybrid world is about to profoundly change. I'm 80% excited, 20% terrified. Which pretty much sums up my entire take on our AI-Forward future. #AIForward #DigitalWorkers

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Leaders in manufacturing and industrial sectors can’t just keep pace with technology—they need to set the direction. This article outlines how forward-thinking companies are reshaping leadership to meet the demands of Industry 4.0.

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CMOs Are More Focused On Growing Revenue Than Brand Awareness https://lnkd.in/g8jyVmuY Chief marketing officers are increasingly prioritizing direct revenue outcomes over traditional brand awareness efforts, influenced by economic pressures, performance measurement demands, and AI‑enabled tracking. This shift reflects a need for more measurable impact on business performance, with revenue growth becoming a leading strategic metric for modern marketing leaders. #CMOInsights #RevenueGrowth #MarketingStrategy #BrandVsPerformance #BusinessImpact #DataDrivenMarketing

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Wise words on brand building... This article from WARC and authored by Susan Credle, creative advisor at IPG. has great insight about the effort, commitment and passion #marketers must deliver to truly build the brands they are behind. While the data would suggest that brand loyalty is on the decline, accelerated during covid and supply change shortages that forced consumers to seek alternatives, there is a clear case for the importance of #buildingbrands. Now more than ever! Interesting to see that #purpose and conflating that with #purposedrivenmarketing is perhaps a source of brand decline. They are in fact two very different things. Brand purpose sits above it all and is the reason your brand is even on this planet. Purpose driven marketing is an executional extension of that purpose and often associated with cause marketing. While I am not sure if this confusion has been the source of brand decline, I do know that it likely distracted many marketers from the hard job of creating meaningful bonds, experiences and value for the role the brand plays in people's lives. Further confusion in brand building has come from the debate of brand versus demand advertising. With so much focus on short term tactical business hurdles, performance may have taken on an outsized role on many brand plans. That said, there is enough proof now to suggest that a healthy balance of brand and demand is necessary to truly build your brand for the short and long term. The brand mentioned in the article Burger King was a great example of the balance of the two with their strong #Whopperdetour campaign several years back. This worked so well on both fronts because the idea was born out of the brand' core essence as challenger and mischievous brand. It served both brand and demand well. Brand building is hard work and not for the faint of heart. It takes a boundless passion and near blinding belief in what you are selling. It's not a job, it's a mission you are on. And when you find the right brand to build, that journey is much more rewarding than just the paycheck! Happy long weekend... get some rest, recharge and get ready for the summer of #brandbuilding ahead! https://lnkd.in/eV-yRDKh

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Vicon Motion capture + gamification @ Gillette Children's 👏🏻 The innovative video and computer technology at Gillette Children’s James R. Gage Center for Gait and Motion Analysis captures movements, muscle activity, and forces that the eye can’t see - and is one of the world’s busiest and most respected clinical gait and motion analysis centers. This is really inspirational expertise for diagnosing and planning treatments for people with walking and movement disorders. 

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For the season one finale of Piece of Work, I sat down with Sal Khan, Founder & CEO of Khan Academy, and Katrina Agusti, CIO of Carhartt, to tackle a big question leaders are facing:   How do you lead through AI-driven change without leaving your people behind?   We talked about what responsible AI adoption actually looks like. Why transparency matters more than ever. And how moving fast only works when you’re also bringing people with you.   No hype. No fear. Just a candid conversation about leadership, clarity, and building confidence through change.   And as we put a wrap on our first season of Piece of Work, I’m reminded again how fascinating and exciting it is to examine how we work. This massive effort we all show up to do in so many different, but also very related, ways. Having been in the HR and HCM space for a long time now, I’ll continue to say this is the most exciting, challenging, and transformative it’s ever been. I’m here for it. 👊   I’ve learned something new, challenged my own beliefs, and had a good laugh with every guest. That’s my preferred recipe for any day of work.   I’d love to hear what you think so far and where season 2 should go next. Drop a comment and let me know 👇 🎧 Listen now https://lnkd.in/ewUc48Ka   #AI #FutureOfWork #HRLeadership #ResponsibleAI Dayforce

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Mentorship is not a passive role. You must be an active participant and create clear a path. I shared my thoughts on the difference between sponsorship and mentorship, how to help emerging professionals succeed and more in this #CannesLions2025 panel hosted by The Female Quotient. Special thanks to moderator Michael Sebastian and fellow panelists Mark Moffat and John Starkey. 

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🔍 What are the subtle signs your customers might churn? Check out Beck Salgado's latest story for Revenue Brew featuring insights from Isabell Rashid on how she detects early warning signs of customer attrition like: 👉 Leadership changes (Apollo.io alerts her about this in real time) 👉 Internal accountability & steady communication (good one Joe Fontana 🐘) 👉 Industry-specific indicators that require proactive strategies (per John Burkhalter) #SalesStrategy #CustomerRetention #SaaS #RevOps https://lnkd.in/g67yMcZn

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Really enjoyed speaking with Frank at PRWeek about what happens after the layoff — and how leaders can respond with clarity, confidence, and momentum. The industry is changing fast: consolidation, the Omnicom–Interpublic Group (IPG) deal, and AI disruption are reshaping roles and expectations. The takeaway? Don’t panic. Get clear, get visible, invest in skills, and take control of the narrative. Worth sharing with anyone in transition: https://lnkd.in/gAY46VbJ #PRWeek #CareerAdvice #Leadership #AI #Comms #Marketing #NextChapter

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CMOs demand guaranteed delivery, lowest CPMs, strategic flexibility, and outcome-based pricing. Physics says you can't have all four simultaneously. Principal media delivers three of them. The question is which three matter most. Forrester's new principal media report from the inimitable Jay Pattisall is very much worth a read, and it's going to trigger the predictable debate. Critics will argue agencies are creating conflicts. Evangelists will tout cost savings. Both will miss the strategic reality: CMOs facing compression don't have the luxury of perfect markets. I've watched boards push CMOs for guaranteed outcomes while slashing budgets. In that environment, academic arguments about strategic flexibility mean nothing. The anti-principal media argument assumes unlimited client patience, perfect information, and rational markets. Reality looks different. Reality is: your board wants cost certainty so they can model P&L without media volatility. Reality is: your CFO wants guaranteed delivery so you're not scrambling for Super Bowl inventory in scatter markets. Reality is: your CEO wants outcome-based pricing that ties media spend to business results. Principal media trades strategic flexibility for the three things boards actually care about: cost certainty, delivery guarantee, and outcome alignment. The Forrester report shows 80% of marketers are interested in principal media advantages. That's not because CMOs are naive about conflicts of interest. It's because they're making rational trade-offs under real constraints. The criticism of principal media comes from people who've never faced the impossible triangle. They can afford to optimize for strategic flexibility because they're not accountable for the P&L impact when media costs spike or inventory disappears. Yes, principal media requires transparency. Yes, it needs contractual controls and performance accountability. Yes, clients should cap how much spend flows through principal arrangements. But the mechanism itself? It's agencies finally building inventory positions that enable the outcome-based pricing we've demanded for years. I'm a big supporter as, for two decades, I've watched CMOs demand that agencies move from billing hours to pricing on outcomes. "Put skin in the game," they said. "Share the risk." Now agencies are doing exactly that with principal media, and the industry is calling it a conflict of interest. We can't have it both ways. Forrester predicts principal media will grow to one-third of billings by 2026. Read their report, then decide which three variables matter most for your business. https://lnkd.in/eKHg5qmk #PrincipalMedia #MediaBuying #CMO #MarketingLeadership #MarketingStrategy

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While many shoppers approached the holidays with caution, #AI-driven experiences continued to fuel e-commerce growth. Amid ongoing economic uncertainty, consumers are prioritizing value, availability, and deals more than ever. To meet these expectations, retailers should leverage platforms like @Algolia to truly understand consumer search intent, highlight trusted product reviews, and deliver personalized experiences that build confidence at checkout. @Retail Dive breaks down the trends that defined this holiday season — and what they mean for 2026:

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