Season 6, Episode 9: Abby Gabriel, CMO, NA, at Schneider Electric: Mission-led leadership, business partnership, and breaking mental ceilings

Ali Abby, thank you so much for joining us today.

Abby Yeah, Ali, it's great to be here with you and really excited to join this podcast. I've actually been a listener and heard from many other CMOs from around the world and from great companies. So really great to be here with you.

Ali It's very kind of you to say so. So as you may know, then what we'd love to do is to start off by getting to know how you became the person you are today. So to kick things off, could you tell me a story from your childhood that has shaped who you are today?

Abby Yeah, for sure. So I grew up in Rhode Island. Both of my grandfathers served in the Navy, and there's a Navy base in Newport, Rhode Island. So my family heritage is certainly from an American military perspective. I didn't travel that much. My parents traveled all over the country and the world. But one of the things very early on in my childhood that has stuck with me my whole life was the idea of setting a goal and saving for it. And it actually translates quite a bit to being a marketer and investing company dollars. So early on, no matter what I wanted to do, my parents wanted to open up the world for me and gave me the confidence to pursue anything I wanted, but I had to find the means to do it. So in high school, I wanted to go visit Europe. In order to do that, I set out to get a job. It was at a local CVS. I worked the entire summer, never spent a dime, and saved all of my money to take that school trip. That taught me that I had to work for everything I wanted to achieve - from attending a good college and earning good grades to buying my first house. I am a very goal-oriented person. And I would say that's the first part of my childhood that I think really influences who I am as a CMO. I look at myself as a steward of an outcome and it's my job to build up the organization, build up the capabilities, and invest wisely. We are a functional cost to the business, so we have to invest wisely to achieve the desired outcome, and the goal ultimately becomes the mission I want to achieve. And so that's been a big thing. Another formative experience for someone who has spent her career in marketing and communications happened in college. I had written an essay for a class, though I cannot remember which one, but it was the first time, after years as a straight-A student, a total nerd, always focused on earning good grades, that a professor called me in and said, we have failed you. Your school has failed you because you don't know how to write. You don't know how to convey a thought. You don't know how to write a complete sentence. You don't know how to structure an argument from point A to point B to point C. And I remember sitting in his office going, how did I get this far - to my junior year of university - only to hear that my education had failed me and that I could not communicate clearly? I took that feedback, and it transformed my life. I began as an accounting major, then moved into marketing and communications, and as a matter of fact, I was a good writer. Maybe it was a bad essay, maybe I stayed up all night or something like that, but that fueled me for my entire career on the concept of clear, coherent communications, listening first to understand, speaking where it matters. What do people care about? How do I convey a thought succinctly? And it's been part of my life ever since.

Ali Oh, I mean, those are lovely stories. And I think it's interesting, a lot of the CMOs I speak to, when I ask about stories that have shaped them, many of them are around learning to respond to adversity or, you know, some kind of failure at some point in their lives and how their response shaped the way they went on to approach the rest of their lives. So it's fascinating to hear you say that. I also love what you said about learning to take care of money and learn how to spend it, how to save it, how to invest it. I've actually tried something similar with my son. He's quite young at the moment. And we had a slightly unfortunate situation where for about six months we started to give him pocket money, you know, just a pound or so a week. And what he wanted to buy was things that were very cheap. So like, you know, football cards, this sort of stuff. And then he'd get money for his birthday. And no matter what we did, he never got to the bottom of his money jar, essentially. So all he really learned for the first six months of his life was that money was limitless. No matter what he bought, there was always more in the tin. So it's exactly the opposite of what we're aiming to do.

Abby You've got to set an ambitious goal, right?

Ali Exactly.

Abby I try to instil the same thing in my daughters. My oldest only saves but doesn't know what she wants to spend it on. And then my youngest only spends; she earns money for the things she wants next and she just treats it transactionally.

Ali Fair enough. I think that's, yeah, that's a very sensible approach. And it sounds like obviously you grew up influenced partly by your grandparents and their lives, but were there any other mentors or coaches or other people that changed your life when you were young?

Abby Well, young, but I would say from a career perspective, I had two real key moments in my career and individuals who absolutely shaped who I am. The first one is Rob McKernan. I worked for him for many years. He is now the CEO of his own company, and he was the first person to take a bold bet on me, surprisingly, in the communications department. In one of those classic ways a career sometimes develops within a company, I was walking down the hall and talking to him about how I thought some things could be improved in communications in Schneider Electric. And little did I know that he was getting a promotion and a new job, and he called me and said, you're the first person that I am going to hire in this role. I believe in you. I believe in what you're going to do. And it was like a bold bet on his part. I was a relative unknown, but somebody walking down the hallway with a couple of ideas. The first thing that happened was that I received an email from him that was announcing some changes that he was going to make in the organization. And I remember reading the email and feeling like there was a lot of good content in there, but I would've organized it slightly differently. And I was sitting, before officially having the job. So I did not have the job. I had just been told, you've got this job. He and I didn't know each other that well at that point in our careers. And he came and said, All right, send me what you think and where you want to go. And I had two versions in front of me. The first version, which was a nicely edited version of his words, and the second one, which was a real change of direction in how I thought he should communicate his message. And I was sitting there, wondering: Do I get the job or not? How do I work with this person? And I could have gone either way. I didn't know him well enough to know whether he had an ego or what he wanted from his communications person. And I said, you know what? I've just got to believe in what I believe in. And I sent him the version that was highly edited and didn't hear from him for days. I sat there, not knowing whether it was good or bad. Like, you know, here you go.

Ali Yeah.

Abby I was afraid of what might happen next. And little did I know, the next thing I saw was an email from him to the whole organization with some changes that he was making written in my words, and I got the job. And I learned from him - both through his actions and his advice - that you are paid to deliver on the job, not to make the people around you happy. And when you're in a marketing organization, people sometimes get confused between those two things. You are helping the business try to achieve a growth objective. Your role exists to make sure those things connect, and really coming at it as a business partner, not as a service function, was probably a major change in my career at that moment, because I probably, prior to that, given where I was in the organization, very junior, I was a support function versus a business partner. And he was the one that made business partnership real for me throughout my entire career, which is ultimately what helped me achieve my goals. In addition to that, he taught me stakeholder management. Long after I worked for him, at another stage in my career, I was preparing to get up in front of a group of leaders to talk about the plan that I had for marketing. And he called me the week before and he said, okay, what have you done to prepare for this presentation? And I said, I prepared the presentation. I built the plan. What are you talking about? And he says, Who have you spoken to who will be in the room? Do you know what they care about? Do you know their objectives? Do you know who in the room changes the dynamic of the room? You want every person in that room to understand that your plan is a reflection of them. Success comes through business partnership, not in operating like an isolated function. And that was a light-bulb moment. I spent a week talking to everyone, and the entire presentation was changed after one week. And when ultimately we presented the plan, everyone in that room felt like their perspectives were represented, their ideas were part of it, and it was actually a better, more robust plan than the one I had developed on my own. So Rob taught me business partnership. I have another important person in my career, and this is my former boss, Chris Leong. She's now the CMO of Ecolab, and she taught me about mental ceilings. At one stage in your career, you are successful to a certain point based on delivering on budget, on time, and delivering excellent work. And there's another point in your career where you have to unlock the art of the possible. Or even the art of the impossible. And sometimes the limit to what we achieve as an organization is a ceiling you impose on yourself just by means of saying, I only have this much money, or I can only do it this way, or I feel these constraints and these roadblocks. And she was the one who, come hell or high water, she was going to make sure we removed the roadblocks in my own mind. And as an organization, we've achieved far greater than we ever thought we were going to do. And I attribute her ceiling-raising expectation and her way of really unlocking the art of the possible as the reason we have done things very differently.

Ali I love that. It also feels like there's a little bit of a thread through those as well, which is that sense of agency. You can actually do things. You can share your opinion. You can make changes. You can do the job that you want to have before you have it. And I think that's such an important lesson for people to learn today, especially now that potentially individuals have a lot more leverage to do many more things. That sense of raising your own, like you say, mental ceiling, you're kind of breaking out of your own mentally created boxes, is an incredibly important lesson for people. I think one of the ways that we tend to talk about it is having a sense of entrepreneurship that you can create the value that you want to create. And what a fantastic way to learn the lesson as well in quite a high-profile moment by the sounds of it, that second one.

Abby Yeah, for sure. And just great leaders who have taught great things. And these are things that I try now as a leader to continue to instill into my teams as well.

Ali Very good. And what a terrific bet it was as well. It turned out to be. Here you are a few years later as a CMO.

Abby It's going okay.

Ali There's something else actually on that mental ceiling point, which I do think is so interesting. And like I said, it's something I spend a lot of my time with my team talking to them about and trying to get rid of. There is also the internal power of the brand. And I know we're not going to talk in detail about marketing in this part of the show, but the sense that you see the organization in a certain way, it means a certain thing to you. That is the kind of employee brand, if you like, or the internal brand, and the different ways it helps people think about themselves and what is possible.

Abby I think it's a great observation, Ali. And if I can, Schneider is a company that's been built by many different brands and acquisitions over time. And the real sense of culture and identity and brand tie together so powerfully. And when you think of bringing many companies and brands together, and ultimately deciding how the company wants to position itself. Oftentimes we talk about brand and marketing, and it can be a logo or a set of value propositions, but we really try to look at it as the position the company should hold. And it's a mission in and of itself. And it's also, to your point, an identity. And so that's something that we work on quite heavily as a team, thinking about who do we want the company to be? What do we want our people to feel part of? And what ultimately does this mean? What does this brand mean? Capital B brand versus maybe just the logo in the hearts and minds of people.

Ali Absolutely. And it's a lovely space for leadership to play as well. I'm sure the leaders you mentioned there and others you may have worked with are the kind of people who just have that ability to raise what you think might be possible. Just like, you know, people on your team, I'm sure, you know, kind of surpass expectations and are raising the bar on what the team's capable of as well. Yeah, a really rewarding feeling, I think, for doing it and seeing it elsewhere in the organization. In terms of non-work things, are there any particular non-work achievements that you're very proud of?

Abby Well, for me, the answer is easy: my family. I mean, you spend so many hours at work that when you spend your time outside of work, to me, it's going to be invested in the thing that matters most. So, I'm married. I have an amazing husband who is an incredible supporter and a challenger and just a great partner for life. And we have two girls, 14 and ten, and a dog. And pretty much anytime that I am not at work, I invest it in our immediate family, and then also spending the time with grandparents, learning about our history, learning about where we all came from. Knowing where you have come from helps you know where to go, that is probably the area for me that I am just most proud of, is the family that I'm part of.

Ali That's lovely to hear. And to pick up on probably one of the less important parts of that, the dog, I think, is probably one of the biggest life improvements that anyone can make if you're able to. I spent about twenty years waiting to be in a position where we could get a dog. And yeah, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Abby Yeah. And good news is he keeps me walking. The dog is a necessary break from work. So we walk a lot with the dog.

Ali Yes, exactly that. Yeah, absolutely. And if, you know, obviously, you've had an incredibly successful career in marketing, you're having an incredibly successful career in marketing. If you had to completely change careers tomorrow, so if it wasn't marketing, it wasn't business, have you got anything in your head about another side of you that you'd be excited to bring out?

Abby Yeah, so I talked a little bit about my parents and raising me. And while we never had a lot of money growing up, my parents were incredibly resourceful folks. They could pretty much do anything, solve anything. I had MacGyver and Martha Stewart combined, and they both had skills for both sides. So for me, if I could take a year off work, I'd go become a master gardener. It's one of those things, my parents had a vegetable garden. We learned growing up how to can tomatoes and how to take care of the garden, but I just did not inherit my parents' green thumb. So I've made lots of attempts. I sometimes have a container garden outside, but if I had one year, I would spend the time to learn about gardening, both vegetables, flowers, what have you, and I would make sure that I had the world's best, most abundant garden. I could spend all my time outside with the plants, with bees buzzing around me. That doesn't bother me at all. And just picking weeds and having dirty hands. I would love that.

Ali That's lovely. And I think you get to a certain stage in life, I think some people seem almost born with it. But for many others, certainly myself, you get to a certain stage in life and you just start to really appreciate gardening or nature, or you start to download the Merlin Bird app, whatever it is. But that becomes something that you begin to see its intrinsic value.

Abby And the peace that comes from what you produce. It's very rewarding when you figure it out.

Ali Yeah, absolutely. I was an absolutely dreadful gardener myself. I would love to spend more time to become a better one.

Abby So you can join me in my year off, master gardener.

Ali Yeah, that'd be lovely. We should all do it. We'll do a CMO retreat, a year's worth of gardening. I love this idea.

Abby I'm counting on you, Ali. Chaos in B2B marketing is not just frustrating, it's expensive. TMP's latest research shows it could be costing organizations up to 15% of potential revenue and extending sales cycles by 30%. Want to see what chaos is really costing your team? Visit tmpb2b.com/costofchaos.

Ali So speaking of CMOs, so in terms of your own career, you've talked a little bit about your first big break into executive communications, but how did you first think about getting into marketing? What was inspiring you?

Abby Yeah, so go back to college. I told you my college story. Growing up, I was actually very strong in math, so I wanted to become an accountant and I began university as an accounting major. Then, in my junior year, I took my first marketing class, and we were split into different groups and projects, and we had to come up with the launch of a new product or solution and build the presentation and the plan. And we had decided to do a project with Nike, and we built this new running sneaker. We named it the Prefontaine, which was after a famous runner. We had Born to Run as the background. And I remember as we were working on this project, I had this moment where I was like, why am I crunching numbers? The excitement that I felt for this project and the amount of time and energy I was pouring into understanding the customer, like the psychology of a customer and what would motivate them to change, to the creativity, and then ultimately really thinking about just how a product or service comes to market, to me, was absolutely fascinating. And the minute I was done with that project, I changed my major and I have never looked back. I knew it was going to be marketing. I knew I wanted to travel and see the world. So working for a company like Schneider Electric has really helped me achieve all the things that I actually really enjoy in life.

Ali That's amazing. And do you think that first exposure to marketing, like you say, that sense of, wow, I just, I just love putting discretionary effort into this, you know, this is something I find real joy in. How did that translate, do you think, over the course of your career from that first exposure as you've then moved through various roles and become ever more senior? How do you think that reflects from that first experience forward?

Abby So, we regularly survey our team members. I have this questionnaire I ask the team, which is, what motivates you and gets you excited about work, right? And there are a number of potential answers, and you're never only one thing, but some of them could be, I'm ambitious and I want to climb the ladder and gain more responsibility. Another could be, I want financial rewards, and so I'm motivated by financial rewards. Entrepreneurs and salespeople are sometimes motivated that way. There are people who only work for stability and balance for other pieces and parts of their life that they care about and work as a means of creating stability and balance. Then there are people who work for the sake of the project. I learned from taking the survey myself that the people who fall into that category are generally engineers, creatives, or marketers. And when I first took this, I was in a group, it was like a leadership development program. I think there were about 120 of us in the room. I scored the highest on that. To answer your question, that project that I took on when I was in university was the thing that fueled my interest in reaching the outcome, finding the answer, and solving the problem. That was what motivated me. That is still how I operate. Thinking back to what I said earlier, I had a goal, I worked to get to the goal, and I wanted to achieve a goal. What keeps me enjoying my work - and Schneider has been wonderful about giving me opportunities - is that there's always a new problem to solve, always a new mission to go after. And there's a lot of things that marketing can do to really advance, accelerate, and drive change in the way business is done. And that has been the thing about marketing that keeps me going. It's the next project and it's completing the project.

Ali Brilliant, isn't it? There are a couple of things you almost said as asides there, one of which was, you can be many things at once. And that idea that underpins the survey that you ask, that is so important. I think that so many people get, talking about mental ceilings earlier, another form of mental rigidity is this sense that you are a fixed thing at any one time. And I completely agree with you that you are many things at once and it often helps people to remember that. The other part there is that sense of falling in love with solving the problem, which I think in a lot of what people talk about at the moment is how can I succeed in the era of AI? That sense of falling in love with solving the problem rather than falling in love with, say, your job description or what you did last week, whatever it might be. It feels like a powerful ingredient for helping people succeed over the next ten, twenty years.

Abby Yeah, I think that's a really good point, right? And there's a lot of different ways that we're using AI in marketing, but one of the best ways is almost to be your sparring partner, just to throw an idea around and explore different approaches and perspectives. I think that the idea of like solving the problem and the curiosity in solving the problem and that being the fuel, you can succeed. The next generation will succeed. Matching curiosity with the power of AI and what they could do from seeing the world in a different way, the opportunities are limitless.

Ali Yeah, absolutely. I wholeheartedly agree with that. So then thinking about marketing at Schneider Electric, what is the function of marketing? What's the role of marketing at a company like Schneider Electric?

Abby Yeah, great question. We've even sometimes internally said, like, is this even the right title for our department at this point?

Ali What a great question to ask.

Abby Yeah, and you know, sometimes if you read the news, you would think that the CMO is going away, but sometimes maybe it's just under a different name of what it is that we do. So, marketing at Schneider, I'll explain to you some of the different departments, but ultimately, we have four key missions that we try to achieve. One is to drive preference and reputation for our company, right? And that can manifest itself in company positioning, working on influence and things like that. The second is creating compelling value propositions. So we spend a lot of time as a team, we have segment marketers or channel marketers or offer marketers whose sole job is to find not just the best feature or benefit, but what solves the customer's problem and differentiates us from our competitors? And that itself is a means of discovery. It is not always immediately apparent: 'Here is this new thing; here is the value proposition.' We do quite a bit of customer listening for value propositions. The third thing is around exceptional brand experiences. So whether online or through an event, we want people to feel differently or take an action or do something differently and have an amazing impression of who we are as a company and to get to know us through the different things that we do. And then the last one is an end-to-end demand engine. So whether it's helping the company find and acquire new customers or improving the saturation of our existing customers, we work alongside our commercial teams to be able to deliver against that. We manifest that through different departments. We have segment marketing, which sits sort of in the business, if you will, but also on our team. Brand and communications, a whole demand gen, marketing communications function. I have government affairs that's under me as part of the whole positioning and public affairs approach. C-level business development sits within our group, and then we also have digital customer experience, all of our customer briefing centers, and then operations, planning, process, technology, things like that.

Ali Fantastic. One of the things you said early on, which was around the importance of value propositions and the fact that does sit within your remit, and it does sound like you have a broad remit. It triggers something I've been thinking about for a little while, which is this sense of product. So we often talk about how the four Ps now plays out across organizations, how a lot of responsibilities do sit across different teams within organizations. So almost the function of marketing as it might traditionally be conceptualized with the four Ps and that sort of thing. is no longer necessarily the same or completely one-to-one with the marketing department. And that's just, that's the reality of modern businesses and part of scale and all these other things. But your point there around the value proposition, I think is really interesting because unlike in B2C where, and this is a kind of, I find the B2C, B2B distinction very blunt and often quite unhelpful, but in B2C where often the buyer is a user, in B2B, often the buyer might not necessarily be the user of the product. So many of the products you sell might be things that the decision makers never even really see, let alone use. And that sense where actually in that case, the value proposition as you framed it is to some extent creating a psychological product, I think, where you are essentially creating the product that people are buying, even if the physical product is something quite different that sits elsewhere and is used by somebody else. So I just think that's quite interesting. It's a distinction which isn't really captured in the traditional conversations around where the four Ps sit and the role of marketing, but it is quite peculiar to B2B as well, I think.

Abby Yes, you're absolutely right. And, you know, Schneider is a big company with many different offer portfolios that we can sell to the same customer. Sometimes we look at ourselves as the chief integration officer, and maybe our value proposition work is almost more like a traditional portfolio marketing role where you're looking at a customer type, you are understanding their problem statement. Sometimes their problems might actually not have to do specifically with the product we're selling them, but it's how quickly we can get it to them, how it's packaged and delivered, how we ultimately bridge two technologies together to create something new that solves a problem they did not know they had. And it's our job to do the listening, the learning, and really work across the offer teams, the sales teams, our partners. For example, a value proposition may need to work for an installer, a distributor, and the end user who ultimately operates and maintains the product. And we try to look at the full lifecycle of a customer project, a full lifecycle of how the customer uses our stuff. And ultimately we find those less obvious sources of value to our customers and try to make sure that value comes to life through our campaigns.

Ali Absolutely. It reminds me of a conversation I had with a CMO this morning actually around ABM. In that case, a CEO of a fintech, they're looking to start ABM seriously, and talking about the value of it. And there's kind of the immediate revenue value it's delivered, but also the kind of silent or very hard-to-measure value of orienting sales and marketing and product and other teams around a customer and seeing the world through the customer's eyes. And actually, I've worked previously with large ABM programs, one of which was into financial services, but we did actually create the product that became the financial services product for that business, simply because it was the kind of ABM actors at that focal point where enough of the organization came together to create this new thing that could then be scaled up into a different product.

Abby You got it. I mean, isn't that incredible, right? And then just given the complexity of our business, so we do ABM as well. ABM is often focused on the end user, but the buying group is so wide, includes so many influencers and partners, our ABM campaigns can ultimately become a multi-decision maker, multi-influencer campaign. But I love the fact that even the ABM campaign can be almost like the seed of what the offer could become at the end of the day.

Ali Yeah, absolutely. You also mentioned one other thing in terms of the marketing remit that you have around the end-to-end demand engine. And I know that's something that pretty much every CMO, every marketer listening to this will want or have some form of. Is there anything you can tell us about how long you've had that and what it took to build it, any advice you have for other marketing leaders looking to maybe join up a few different pieces to build something similar?

Abby Yeah, so I've been with Schneider for twenty-one years, and actually our first CMO was a gentleman by the name of Aaron Davis, and he had taught us very early on in any sort of marketing that there is no marketing without a demand engine, and he was a very analytical guy who was always testing and comparing against how we were going to win versus our competitors. In fact, a lot of the marketing from that group, APC, was just award-winning and so advanced for its time. And in that, it was always about four things, and we were testing four things as part of a demand engine across every channel. And the first one was, what is the message? Like, what is the message you're saying? What's the value prop? The second was: what is the creative? I'll use that term, but take that in the wider form of the definition of the word creative. The third one was, where are you saying it? Is it an event? Is it in a piece of media? Is it through an internal employee activation or something like that? And the last thing is, what did you ask them to do? And those four things quite simply form the foundation of a demand engine when you optimize against those four things. Then you add in all the technology, all the changes over the years. You could say nurturing, marketing automation, lead management, AI, GEO, you can add all the things. But those to me are the four fundamentals of understanding your customers, testing and measuring against what you're doing to ultimately achieve a particular outcome. I feel like I've seen many iterations of our demand engine. In fact, we are now getting to the point that something as simple as what a lead used to be, which was a response of some sort. Then we went through the whole path of, you know, filtering them and creating algorithms and decision-making and giving them points and stuff like that. We have now changed our definition of a lead to something quite simple. They want to hear from somebody from Schneider or see a demo or do a trial, or they're downloading and buying specifically. We have redefined a lead, which changes all those things that you do beforehand so that we are doing a whole different engine with our commercial team than we have in the past. And we're creating a different way of looking at marketing. A lead used to be anyone who responded. Now we're looking at it in a much more stringent view of the world.

Ali One of the things I love about that, kind of a sign of sensible thinking there, is how jargon-free so much of that is. Like you said, the four things you could explain in very simple, plain English. Exactly when you talked about how you're now finding a lead, there was no sense of, well, we multiply the number of engagements by the number of— it's just like, do they want to engage with us? Do they want to hear from us? And I think that's just, it's wonderfully refreshing to hear a marketer talk about structures and systems like that using such plain language. I think it's a real mark of sensible thinking, like I say.

Abby Well, thank you. I often feel like marketing is the most misunderstood function in a company. It's sort of like this black wall. What do you do? Sometimes, oh, it could be an arts and crafts department, or, oh, you're the people that do events, or, thank you for that lead, but it didn't work, or like, oh, can you cut your budget? Like, it's like a misunderstood function. And plain language is the language to just get people to understand fundamentals. Like, what are we here to go do? What are we trying to achieve? All the things that we talked about before, what's the goal? And here's the things that we can affect to ultimately deliver against that.

Ali Absolutely. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the potential complexity of what's available to us in terms of the tools and the systems and the theory that actually we forget about the importance of the simple first principles of how businesses work, how markets work, how people work. Yeah, wholeheartedly agree. Is there one particular marketing challenge that— you said you've been at Schneider Electric for twenty-one years. You haven't been CMO for all that time, obviously, but what's your next big marketing challenge that you'd love to change or overcome?

Abby It is a great question, but the answer is ultimately the transformation with AI. AI is ultimately going to transform every piece of business, not just marketing, but certainly with the way that AI is working, written text and imagery and stuff like that, it certainly is advancing particularly quickly in our department. We're looking at AI through three fronts. The first is AI enabling people. So, leveraging tools to make us smarter, faster, more productive, sparring partners, things like that. And we've, as an organization, run toward it in a super positive fashion. Town halls where we're doing prompt-a-thons, like, how can we change from one strategy to the next? How do we use this? And we have one of the highest adoption rates of AI tools in our group that we work within. 95% of my people are using AI every day for some sort of support of the work that they are doing. Number two, we look at AI as AI becoming a decision maker that's changing the journey, the buying journey. So, we call it GEO, some people call it AEO, but generative engine optimization. Another thing that we run toward, I think it was the first time in my career, twenty-one years, that I had said to my boss, I'm not asking you for the budget or the people to do this. I'm telling you that this is what we're going to do, because it will fundamentally change the way that people interact with our company. And I remember I was like, okay, that's what we're going to go do. You— this is the first time you said this. Congratulations, you got it. I was like, I'm not asking. This is happening. This is what we're doing. And we've worked with some great partners. We're learning a ton. We've got a plan in place. And we know this will be a continuous learning journey, right? Like, it will constantly adapt and change. And then the third area is agentic AI, right? And agents performing tasks on behalf of the organization are doing things differently. And one of the things I love to do is spend time exploring its innovative potential. I'll give you an example. You know, we roll up the pain points from our team members, and one of them involves customer listening. We have a customer listening tool for everything. You know, you've got a tool for social, a tool for PR. We have the, you know, customer satisfaction tool. We have web feedback coming in. And our first iteration of this tool, this agentic tool, was simply to listen across all these sources and come back and tell us what our customers are saying and organize it for us, because that's what we used to do. Then the second iteration of it is, have we thought about how powerful this feedback is? And have we turned customer listening into personas against which we can test our messages and get feedback, while leveraging external information plus internal information and really fundamentally changing the game of the way that we do marketing by thinking differently about agents. So, that's the work to come. That's the stuff that I think is super exciting about the innovation of marketing, and I can't wait to continue to build out those capabilities to really transform the way the function is delivering.

Ali I've spent the last three, four years now working with marketing leaders on AI and AI transformation for a large part of my time. And one of the things that struck me as you were talking was that a lot of the challenges that people have to navigate are, what are the changes we have to make? And how do we change how people think about something or how we're operating or whatever else? What people may spend less time asking is: what do we already have that will help us succeed? You had alluded to it previously, but the Schneider Electric culture, which is, you're recognized as an extraordinarily innovative company, do you think that's helped? As you said, as a team, as a business, you've been quite quick to start using this technology. Do you think part of that is due to the culture that was already there that you could have kind of used to your advantage?

Abby Absolutely. Nothing can sit on top of a shaky foundation. Right? So one of the areas that we actually have a lot to improve on is just operational excellence. Over many years, we have tried many different technologies, piloted them in different areas, and brought in new people. We're sort of a tribal knowledge company type of thing. We have a lot to do in marketing to improve on the foundation, improve on the data. That is one important workstream. Then you take the people side of it, the culture, the ability for us to be hungry, to be curious, to not be afraid to drive transformation and change. That has been part of who we are for a long time. I mentioned Chris Leong earlier. It's part of like how the organization sees itself. She used to say the definition of the marketing department is transformation. I like to think that it's transformation and acceleration at scale. And so the team sort of operates with that culture at hand. It doesn't come without burnout, being tired, too many things moving, too many balls in the air. And that's our job as leaders to try to make sure that we're pointing everyone in the right direction. It's the thing that actually keeps me up at night. Sometimes my love of the project and the mission can, you know, overwhelm the practical work of removing bottlenecks and stuff like that. But there is a cultural foundation there that I think makes this group incredibly special to be able to go try these new things and ultimately build whatever the future will be.

Ali That's very lovely. Staying with this theme of kind of what does not change, because like I said, I think a lot of ink has and will be spilt on what does change. And I firmly believe, like you do, that I think it will reinvent almost everything in terms of how we do things. But I do also think that there are fundamental principles of marketing that don't change so much. So I spoke to Antonia Wei from PwC recently, and this is one of the things that we talked about was actually the importance of holding on to what doesn't change. Are there things, principles that you have, which you think are going to help you and have been guiding principles for you previously and will continue to be moving forward?

Abby Yeah, for sure. So one thing I'll say is that we spend a lot of time talking about what the AI experience will be, but at the end of the day, I actually think what's going to differentiate a company is choosing what the human experiences will be. The companies that define the human experiences that matter most will stand out. So think about when you're on a call with support and you just need to talk to someone, and you're at that moment where you feel quite desperate, and the person on the other side is capable and aware and knows how to help you. Like sometimes you also reach a point where even the person cannot help you, I think the way companies deploy their people - and the care they take in doing so - will differentiate them more than how they deploy AI. So fundamental number one to me is around people who work with people and ultimately get business done, and applying those resources where they matter most. Number two, I think in any marketing scenario, one of my mantras is, how do you get to a yes? You often get a request from someone, oh, I need an event, or I want to get a press release for my product being launched. And they're jumping to a tactical conclusion that doesn't actually get to the heart of what the objective is. And the art of getting to, well, what are we trying to achieve? What is the best way for us to go do this? I call that getting to a yes, because ultimately you end up serving your constituents. You don't just say like, no, we can't do that, but you're actually better solving their problems for them. That's the mantra that I think that as an organization, it really helps us better achieve the goals that we need versus just simply receiving requests. And that was what I talked about, a service organization versus a thought partner or business partner, is ultimately what I think that the department will continue to do. And then I think you have to be customer and growth focused at all times. There's a lot of times that you can get caught up in things that actually don't matter to the customer and spend a lot of time on details that don't actually matter. It's one of the reasons why we have experience as a pillar, because we ultimately, at the end of the day, want to make sure that regardless of what we're doing, that the customer experience is the heart of what it is that we're putting forth.

Ali As a strategist, I think I might borrow that getting to a yes framing of trying to understand what the objective is in the first place. That's a lovely way of spinning it.

Abby If you mentally tell yourself that I'm going to say yes at the end of this, but I got to do this the right way, you actually behave differently and have a completely different outcome. And so, I have to say, 'It is not an event.'. No, that's not what you needed. You actually need this, right? And then you pull out your marketing toolkit to be able to really help them achieve the goals.

Ali Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So are there any particular tips, practical tips or tricks you've learned that could help aspiring CMOs?

Abby Yeah, so many. I think that in a company, the more you look at the world through a mission-based rather than a hierarchical lens. As you grow as a leader, many of us have been conditioned to think: here is my boss, here is what I must achieve, and here is my objective. And the way that I would describe it is you treat the whole company like they're your tribe, not just your own team. And you take a mission-based view of the world versus a hierarchical. And I think all leadership should do that. But I think, again, marketing as a department, the more it can view itself that way and take a broader view of its role versus just the objectives that we're looking to go do. I think as people advance in their careers, that broader perspective becomes a leadership superpower. It means moving beyond, this is what we do, this is what you do, what's our SLA? Like sometimes, like some of the things you can get caught up in being a department of I'll respond to you in two days. And that sort of stuff I sort of throw out the window. And you look at it like the mission is the boss, I think is a really great mantra for leadership and it unlocks a different level of thinking as a marketing individual.

Ali Great way of keeping perspective, like you say, and making progress possible rather than getting stuck on the less important details. So we've got a couple of minutes left and I would love to ask you the quickfire questions, if that's all right. So five quickfire questions. So, first is to complete this sentence. The qualities I look for in my next exceptional hire are—

Abby Culture and curiosity.

Ali Love it. Curiosity. I don't keep a tally of this, but curiosity has to be number one in people's response to that. And I absolutely love that it is. Second question. I often say the only problems that worry me are the ones I can't see. So, I try to be open with my team about any challenges I have to create the space for them to do the same. What's a mistake that you've made in the past couple of months?

Abby Oh God, I've made so many. So, I would say, I remember one of my previous bosses, Annette Clayton, asking me this question is, If you left the job tomorrow, what would you regret never having done? So, the thing that I haven't seen is probably the things I say I want to do and I just haven't been able to do. That's the thing that keeps me up at night. That is always my regret. Did I get those things done? What if tomorrow were it? I won the lottery and I left. What would I wish I had done? And so I know you want what that thing is, which I'm not going to tell you, but I will tell you that I think that way often. Like, you know, maybe once a quarter or twice a year, I am like, what would I truly regret? And it changes your next move. It really changes your next move when you ask yourself that question. Credit Annette Clayton on that one.

Ali That's good. That's great. What a lovely piece of advice as well. Third, what is something that most people get wrong about you?

Abby I am a very approachable, informal leader, so people may assume I am easygoing. But my team members will tell you that I have what I call - these are my words, not theirs - a founder's mindset. I'll relate it to Elon Musk who sleeps on the factory floor to get the product out. I'm the type of leader who will sleep on the event floor to make the event successful. And I get into the details with my team in order to coach, inspire, and get the best out of them. And that's probably something that, right or wrong, that people assume that because I am nice, I am not intense, but actually I'm quite intense about the work that needs to be done.

Ali Very good. I firmly believe it's possible and important to be kind and driven at the same time. So this one's an interesting one that people have one response to most of the time, but I do push for three. So what are the three technologies you're most excited about over the next ten years?

Abby So I would be remiss if I did not mention energy technology. I actually think that when you look at, especially here in the US, the demand for power and energy right now is greater than it's ever been with AI and data center growth and things like that. And that's a space that Schneider uniquely plays in. And with that, I think that energy, from generation through transmission and distribution to consumption, is going to have to change dramatically for us to be able to have efficient energy, reliable energy, and ultimately sustainable energy. Those three things should not conflict with one another. We should ultimately achieve all three. And it's a mission that Schneider's on, and it's a mission that I'm super passionate about because it affects my day-to-day business, everything that I do, and it is also central to the work I do. So energy technology is number one. Number two, I love smart home technology, and I am a bit of a smart-home technology nerd. I think that as two working parents with kids in the house, the more your house can be a source of comfort, but at the same time more responsive to you, I think there's a lot in the smart home space that just makes your life better. And more interesting.

Ali What is your favorite piece of smart home technology then?

Abby Well, I mean, obviously for Schneider, we do a great deal in smart-home energy. And ultimately I think that's great. But I mean, I have an app for every one of our appliances. What I hate is that I have too many apps, right? We have a calendar that manages everybody's schedules. I've got two babysitters on the calendar alongside me, all connected to how our smart home works. I love having anything that can open and shut with the touch of a button or at a glance. But I ultimately think that at the end of the day, if I could walk out the door with my kids, shut everything down, close it, and the thing that I forgot, if I forgot to turn off the coffee pot or the iron or whatever it may be, to be able to make sure that the house is taking care of what it needs to, I'm excited for that. And then you need a third one, right? So I'm actually really looking forward to driverless cars. Most people are afraid of it, but I look forward to the day it becomes a reality, and I think the world would be very different. I'm not looking forward to drones dropping things off at my door every day. I think drones will eventually make the sky very crowded, and I love my sky and I love my garden, but driverless cars I think will be pretty cool.

Ali Yeah, I'm all for that. I love every time I go to San Francisco, getting into a driverless car of some sort and just enjoying that tranquility. And certainly I have elderly relatives and the thought that they could be transported relatively easily from one place to another is very joyful indeed. So finally, what's one piece of advice or one idea either about marketing or about life in general that you keep coming back to?

Abby So my father said to me very early on, the more you know, the more you don't know. It is a reminder that when you think you have reached the pinnacle, you may only have begun to learn. And when you keep digging and you learn more, you ultimately realize that the world and its knowledge are endless, and there is always more to discover. So I consume a great deal of information and media - naturally, given that I work in marketing, but I love learning and I attribute that directly to my father. And I never assume I know the answer. I think I am still searching for it.

Ali What a fantastic place to leave the podcast. There is so much in there that people can carry forward over the next few years, both as marketers and as people. So Abby, thank you so much for joining us today.

Abby Yeah, Ali, it's been a great discussion. Thanks for having me.