Latest · Episode 5
AI Came for Her Headshot Business, So She Built Her Own App.
With Kristina Sherk
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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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Latest episode
Episode 548 min
AI Came for Her Headshot Business, So She Built Her Own App.
Guest: Kristina Sherk
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Kristina Sherk has spent two decades shooting headshots in Washington, DC. When AI generators improved, she built her own app with zero coding experience. If you lead a team that has AI and isn't getting much back from it, start at 32:05, where she explains how a rollout can sound to the people in it: "You cannot incentivize an employee to use AI to make their job obsolete." By her own account she has never had a corporate job, so she comes at it from outside. Her app, Generation Headshots, runs on an 800-word prompt that holds what she knows about lighting, posing and expression. She also talks with Matt Perry and Rob Cannon, PhD about the six-month build contest she would run inside a company and what people still pay for in a studio. Matt and Rob are the co-founders of Average Robot and authors of the book The Elephant in the Algorithm.
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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 book behind the podcast
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.