VTS

‘People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care … about them.’ ~Zig Ziglar

Back in home after a long travel stretch between London, Austin, and Chicago… and finally had a couple of days to reset. Austin was a highlight. It was the first time our marketing team got together in person. A true “norming, storming, forming” moment - yes, all three, at the same time 😱 - and you could feel things just click in real time. Then our Adaptive BU exec offsite in NY, followed by multiple onsite sessions with customers and partners, hosted dinners in NY and London, and working sessions with my core team and broader marketing counterparts in London. A lot of time together. Across teams, customers, partners, and time zones. And it reinforced a couple things for me: 🌎 Global teams are the norm now. And honestly, I love it. The different perspectives, the pace, the energy make the work better! Thinking globally does not mean an HQ-first mindset - and the ones that adjust to that will be the ones to win. 🧘 That just does not happen automatically. Building a real, cohesive culture across time zones takes intention. It takes showing up. It takes time together, beyond just the Zoom grid. 🤗 AI will never ever replace genuine real human connection (nor taste nor real judgment, but that’s for another conversation). 🎙️ It can help us move faster and think smarter. But it can’t replicate what actually happens face-to-face… when conversations go off-script, when trust builds, when a customer says the thing they might not have said in a formal meeting. The moments that stuck with me weren’t planned - like the honest feedback you only get in person, the side conversations that change how you see something, or the small, unstructured moments that actually build a team, a partnership, or a shared belief. Time away from family is real. I’m trying to be thoughtful about that and making sure the travel is intentional and actually worth it. Because when it is, it matters a whole lot.

If the point of all this is to live happily and do some good in the process, it looks like this for me. I believe I’ll accomplish a few more things in my career, but being a dad to kids who love the world and the people around them is my greatest pride.

Thrilled to share that I will be speaking on stage in Sydney, Australia next month at Workday Elevate 2026 Sydney! 🚀 Strategy, Vision, and the Future of AI‑Driven Planning - with myself, Vince Randall , and Eric Zimmerman ! Every important decision in your business — where to invest, when to pivot, who to hire — ultimately comes down to the quality of your planning. Yet for many organisations, planning is far more complicated than it needs to be. Teams spend so much energy managing complex processes and disconnected systems that they struggle to move beyond basic budgeting and forecasting. At Workday Elevate 2026 Sydney we’ll explore how to change that. Join us for our exclusive FP&A content stream as we explore the roadmap for Workday Adaptive Planning. Discover how we’re moving beyond traditional forecasting into the era of agentic AI—empowering finance, HR, and operations teams to move faster, make bolder decisions, and unlock limitless decision intelligence. https://lnkd.in/eawnunSy

Building and deploying enterprise-grade AI agents for customers in a fast-moving, highly competitive space takes a different mindset than traditional product and engineering roles. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Hanze Li on this firsthand. If you’re interested in learning more about what it means to be a Forward Deployed Engineer, the work we do at Cresta , or just enjoy coffee (and related analogies 😉) , check out Jove Zhong 's latest podcast interview. youtu.be/yOa60SFMN_A

One of the most interesting experiences in a (nothing, if not) interesting career was talking about the marketing lessons you can take from the OG Willy Wonka movie. Thanks Remarkable Content for the opportunity! This was shot before moving on to a new venture, so another thank you to Juniper Square for affording me the credibility to speak as a marketing leader. All the best!