OLC Themes — 2024 Spring Meetings
Ahh for best laid plans to log-off for two weeks. My typical annual vacation schedule is fall. The tourists are back home, everyone’s children are back in school. There is a post-event lull here at Outsell which creates just enough white space to unplug before clients’ (and our own) year-end planning kicks in.
Due to grandkids’ school schedules, we took our annual family getaway early. And let’s just say it was the absolute worst time for me to try to take-off. So, I did what any ‘working virtual expert’ does — I found an empty room in the villa we rented, enjoyed this view, and worked a couple hours each day, leveraging the time zones of Greece to be ahead of the entire team — do what I must — and then return to family.
It was bliss. We call this way of working ‘dim lights’ here at Outsell, vs. OOO&O. These two formats for time off work well. You just have to know when to pick ’em. I picked one — flipped to the other and it actually made for a better vacation. We had an amazing time. Nine of us for 8 days preceded by the Athenian Riviera. Magic.
And while I was gone, we put finishing touches on the Outsell Signature Event Program (stay-tuned next week!) and our team hosted Outsell Leadership Community (OLC) ‘spring meetings.’
What was on the minds of CEOs, COOs, MDs, and Presidents in the data, information and b2b vertical tech space? Never a shortage of topics. We solved the world’s problems in no particular order:
- Generative AI still very high on the agenda. Licensing content to LLMs is now more a question of “how”, not “whether”. Content aggregators are reassuring their providers that their content is safe. Others are striking while the content-iron is hot and licensing actively. Internally, employees want to hear that efficiencies in operations do not automatically mean job losses. And for AI-driven products and services, members are dealing with monetisation challenges and aim for new offerings that are step changes, not just upgrades.
- Strategy is often not understood or seen as relevant to employees. High level vision must be accompanied by specific activities to implement strategy. And strategy needs to pay attention not just on customer-facing issues (new products, GTM) but underlying operational model required to support them. And strategy needs to be translated. There was keen discussion on how best to integrate and communicate strategy into the fabric of the business.
- Professional Societies discussed the need to become more commercial, not just reforming governance and overcoming resistance to change but accepting that new activities will have higher risk profiles.
- Content management and the impact on audience development, how is the title of chief content officer is defined, and the impact of GenAI on editorial integrity and policies also came up across the board — it is not a sector specific phenom but one that permeates many aspects of the industry.
Oher topics included the challenges of organizational restructuring; how to keep staff engaged using non-salary benefits, such as compressing a full week into four days instead of five or nine days instead of 10; the challenges facing sales management in winning new business, forecasting visibility, and repositioning the business for existing or lost customers; and the opportunity to engage audiences with lively and relevant content.
It’s never dull around here. 30 years later there is plenty to cover and much to do. Join our peer group of leading CEOs, access Outsell analysis about competitors, markets and operating practices. And when I unplug for real later this fall, I’ll be sure to let you know. Yia mas!