This is session eight of the IRG100 program, on organizing to build capability. It pairs IRG study evidence with learning from Google and McDonald’s, then sends participants into a coached breakout.
The evidence says overperformers train more and hold a different culture. The session then narrows to the harder question the deck states plainly: what to train on.
Key findings
- Driving systemic change to create stakeholder value splits 69 percent of overperformers against 9 percent of underperformers.
- Culture indexes point in opposite directions. Innovation, change, and entrepreneurship indexes at 129 for overperformers against 93 for underperformers, while procedures, structure, and quality indexes at 133 for underperformers against 83 for overperformers.
- AI tops the list of forces marketers expect to affect them. In preliminary quantitative results, 98.9 percent expect marketing to be impacted by AI, technology, and data developments, and 97.8 percent by digital transformation.
- Climate change sits at the bottom of that list, at 46.4 percent, below political shifts at 67.6 percent and regulatory change at 68.2 percent.
- The support gap is wide and self-reported. On a top three box measure, 82 percent say they need more support to understand and adopt AI, and 93 percent say their teams will.
How much training, and of what kind
The training evidence is presented as days per year, split between no formal training, under two days, two to three days, and more than three days. Overperformers train more.
The conditions the deck attaches to training are a growth mindset and encouragement to learn, set in the context of a reskilling revolution among colleagues.
The AI path, and the make or buy question
The deck places most companies at an early stage of adoption with a focus on efficiency, and describes early capability building. The ambition set against that is using AI to amplify a competitive advantage.
AI is described as reshaping capability strategies and bringing a hybrid workforce. That raises the dilemma the session puts to participants: outsource or insource.
One answer offered is neither. Procter and Gamble is cited for co-developing pilots.
Leading by example
The leadership model used is the Da Vinci profile, which pairs behaviors with attitudes. The behaviors are leading change, building talent, collaborating and influencing, acting strategically, and driving results.
The attitudes are courageous, open-minded, optimistic, authentic, and future-focused, held together by a purpose defined as what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can monetize.
The session’s speakers are named as Alannah Sheerin, senior director and formerly a managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group, Tariq Hassan as US CMO, and Amanda Klemm, vice president for global toothbrushes.
What participants were asked
The breakout asks two questions: where each participant stands on AI capabilities for themselves and their team, and what is working and what is not.
The session sits near the end of the program. The next zoom is impact planning, described as the last chance to spar with peers before Cannes in June.
Scope and limitations
The AI figures in this session are preliminary. Both the impact list and the support gap are labeled as preliminary quantitative results.
Source
This page summarises Zoom Session 8: Organize – Build Capability, by IRG, Oxford Future of Marketing Initiative, 2025.