Moving Faster Without Breaking Everything - AI, Risk, and the Human Side of Change with Andrea Tarrell

**Michael Hartmann** (0:00)
Hi, I'm Michael Hartmann.

**Andrea Tarrell** (0:01)
I'm Naomi Liu.

**Michael Hartmann** (0:02)
And I'm Mike Rizzo.

**Andrea Tarrell** (0:04)
And this is Ops Cast.

**Michael Hartmann** (0:06)
A podcast for Marketing Ops Pros.

**Andrea Tarrell** (0:08)
And Rev Ops Pros.

**Michael Hartmann** (0:10)
Created by the MoPros, the number one community for the marketing operations professionals.

**Andrea Tarrell** (0:15)
Tune in to each episode as we chat with real professionals to help elevate you in your marketing operations career.

**Michael Hartmann** (0:25)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Ops Cast, brought to you by marketingops.com and powered by all those MoPros out there. I am your host, Michael Hartmann. Today, I'm joined by Andrea Tarrell, president of the tech services line at Trilliad and CEO of Sercante, a Trilliad company. Andrea has spent years helping organizations navigate marketing operations, Salesforce ecosystems, data strategy, and large scale technology transformation. But our conversation is going to be less about the technology itself and more about the human side of change in the AI era.
We're going to talk about why so many organizations are struggling to move quickly, how fear and risk tolerance are shaping AI adoption, why governance models may need to evolve, and what separates organizations that are actually activating AI from those that are stuck debating it. Should be a thoughtful conversation about speed, trust, process, and the trade-offs companies are making right now as AI shapes how go-to-market teams operate. So with that, Andrea, welcome to the show.

**Andrea Tarrell** (1:22)
Thanks for having me.

**Michael Hartmann** (1:24)
Yeah, this is great. Well, it's been a while for us to get this started. So when we talked before, we've talked about that for years, the hard part of operations work was building technology. But now it seems like technology is getting easier, at least more democratized maybe, while the people and process side is getting harder.
So A, do you think that's true? And then B, what do you think has fundamentally changed that has led us to that spot today?

**Andrea Tarrell** (1:57)
Yeah, we see this everywhere. And obviously, kind of being in the technology consulting space, like we have a lot of respect for the very smart technical minds and technologists that build awesome solutions for customers. But that soft side of change, like the human side, is more relevant than ever. And I think we're seeing that right now with AI and just convincing people to use the tools and to its fullest potential, that's where a lot of the hard work is happening right now. And it's not a limit of the tech platform that's holding us back, but just kind of where the rubber meets the road with the team. And something that illustrated this for me recently was, I think the stereotypical tech founder used to be the anti-social dude in a hoodie that was a coding expert, it was respected by all the developers. But the Wall Street Journal had a headline last week where Silicon Valley VCs are sending their tech founders to etiquette school to figure out how to talk at a cocktail party and social etiquette and social norms.
I think that really emphasizes how important it is to pair the human element with the tech element, if you really want to have change that sticks.

**Michael Hartmann** (3:20)
Yeah, it's interesting. It's funny that you bring that up. I didn't see that headline or that article, but having kids who are in that college age, I think it's interesting to see how the interactions for them are different than what I remember when I was their age.
Free internet and all that stuff. There's all kinds of books. I just finished reading a few months ago, The Anxious Generation. Well, just until I didn't read it, I did the audio book. But I told my kids, it's like you need to read this because this is about you.
But a big part of that is about how just in general, communication is not happening on a regular basis. There's another article I'd referenced a couple of times in recent podcasts that somebody shared with me. I haven't dug into the research, but somebody has done some research that says that something like over the last 10 years, I don't remember exact 10 years, it wasn't for 2026, but say 2024 or something, there's been a 30 percent reduction on the average number of words spoken by people. I think it's fairly global, if I remember right, but certainly in the North American space. So all that makes sense.

**Andrea Tarrell** (4:35)
That was so fascinating. And honestly, I think Ops folks have been on the front lines of this for a long time, but you can build the most perfect tech solution in the world, and if people don't use it the way that you expect, or you can't win over hearts and minds with the change that you're looking to drive, it's never going to succeed. And I think we're seeing that now more than ever.