The Elephant in the Algorithm Podcast.
The Elephant in the Algorithm is a conversation about what AI is doing inside organizations.
Matt Perry and Rob Cannon, PhD talk with leaders about where AI is paying off, where it is producing activity and cost instead, and what it takes to bring people, strategy, and customers back into one line. The conversation centers on the people and the work around the technology.
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The Elephant in the Algorithm
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Episode 439 min
The Human Skills AI Can't Replace.
Guest: Eran Thomson
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Eran Thomson spent his career in advertising, from copywriter to creative director at agencies including BBH and TBWA, and co-founded a Sydney agency that sold in 2014. Then he built PowerProv, which uses the fundamentals of improvisation to teach business teams the things nobody else teaches them: communication, connection, collaboration, creativity, confidence. In Episode 4, Matt Perry and Rob Cannon, PhD talk to him about what AI is doing to those skills. He describes watching a strategy director produce insights at remarkable speed, then being unable to explain any of the thinking when asked a single question. He names what he sees happening as cognitive offload and cognitive surrender, people defaulting to the tools before they do any thinking of their own. And he asks the question that lands hardest: the thing that used to take an hour now takes five minutes, so did you go for a walk, or are you just busier than ever?
From the archive.
Think you should be on it?
We are always looking for people to talk to. If you are leading AI work inside an organization and you have seen something firsthand, we would like to hear about it. Start with a short call and we will work out together whether there is an episode in it.
The Elephant in the Algorithm.
The podcast extends the book. A practical, field-tested guide for leaders getting their teams ready for AI, written by your hosts.
Your hosts.
Matt Perry.
Matt's career in marketing and creative runs through M&C Saatchi in London, WPP in Sydney, Omnicom in San Francisco, and Genero, where he launched and led the North American business. He's worked on projects with companies including Google, Meta, Hilton, L'Oréal, PG&E, Michaels, and Fanatics. He has experienced change through four major technology transitions and has led teams through each of them, and saw every time that the impact on people and process mattered more than the technology everyone was talking about. Without people in the center, technology-led change fails. He studied at the Kellogg School of Management, where he completed the AI for Business Application program, before founding Average Robot, the change management firm that closes the AI Profitability Gap™ for the teams doing the work, so the AI those teams have already bought starts to pay. He co-wrote Marketing Your Creativity, and The Elephant in the Algorithm with Rob Cannon, PhD.
Rob Cannon, PhD.
Rob is an organizational psychologist who has spent more than twenty years guiding people and teams through change, usually the kind that arrives faster than the organization is ready for. His work centers on how people adapt and hold their nerve when the ground under their jobs is shifting. He holds a PhD from the University of Sydney and a grounding in coaching psychology that puts building human capability at the center of his practice. He has experienced transition from the inside, including ten years at Sony, across New York, London, and Sydney, as the music industry was remade by new technology and the human cost went almost entirely unmanaged. He is co-founder of Average Robot, co-author of Aha! A User's Guide to Creativity, and co-author of The Elephant in the Algorithm with Matt Perry.