Timo Elliott

"Will we treat AI agents like employees?" Puh-leeze. We barely treat employees as employees. If and when agents work, they'll instantly become automation.

Pet peeve: prerecorded webcasts that pretend to be live, and then double-down by pretending to take live questions. It's not hard folks—why lie to your customers and prospects?!

#Analytics! "The writing was on the wall—if only they could decipher it."

A cartoon of a man and a robot arguing

I'm generally a curious person, and lots of ideas pop into my head, and it's been a lifelong frustration that I couldn't really talk through them with anyone. l love that ChatGPT is an excellent discussion partner, as long as you push to get opposing views. I feel smarter now!

Monday morning is like?... (demo video from new Luma AI Ray 2)

Watercolor and pen sketch of roofs of Paris

I bought my daughter some nice-quality watercolors for her birthday. I thought I’d take the old ones for a spin—it’s been a while since I attempted a watercolor urban sketch.

A businessman sits at a desk, with a burning skyline behind him, saying "But profits are up!"

Seems like a good time to re-up this sustainability cartoon of mine... It makes me so furious when people say we "can't afford" climate mitigation. Now we have to pay for all the damage AND the mitigation at the same time...

I swear I've seen the same "look! the system knows what is going on and helps me proactively optimize my business" demo every year for the last 30+ years...

I’m slightly surprised to find I’m looking forward to the coming year. I think limiting news and social media recently has helped!

And the holidays begin! Having fun at the Grand Palais ice rink, Europe’s biggest, apparently. 🙂

Tom Raftery.com - Why Your Business Can’t Afford to Ignore Trustworthy Carbon Accounting As sustainability becomes critical for businesses, accurate carbon accounting is essential to meet regulatory demands and customer expectations. Organizations must adopt new technologies, engage su…

Importance of trustworthy carbon accounting
❗️ Regs: New regulations demand rigorous reporting
📊 Internal: Carbon accounting drives operational efficiency and decarbonisation
🖥️ Tech: AI & integrated systems enhance data accuracy
✋ Trust: Reliable data builds investor & customer trust

bit.ly/3VGQxQQ

Considering an RTO mandate? Think again if you want to keep your best talent – ‘brain drain’ is causing havoc for companies pushing staff back into the office, with women and senior staff most likely ... Research suggests turnover increases at firms that impose RTO mandates

New research on return-to-work policies led by the University of Pittsburgh:
"Taken together, our findings suggest that firms lose their best talent after RTO mandates and face significant difficulties replacing them"

www.itpro.com/business/bus...

Graphic showing Public From-Scratch US and EU Companies Less than 50 Years Old with $10B+ Market Cap (the US is huge compared to the EU)

I'm a proud European. But this is painful -- a comparison of big US vs EU companies created in the last 50 years (SAP is slightly older). open.substack.com/pub/adamtooz...

Why 2025 is the Year of the Tortoise when it comes to AI adoption We’re moving from the idea that  “AI will change everything tomorrow” to  “It will change everything eventually, but only if we do it right.”

We’re moving from the idea that “AI will change everything tomorrow” to “It will change everything eventually, but only if we do it right.” #ai
timoelliott.com/blog/2024/12...

Cartoon of two elves demonstrating, with a sign that says “we demand more joy”

Xmas in France? 😂

A cartoon of a man shouting “stack ranking” vs a woman shouting “shared success”

Stack ranking is where you define a % of people that have to be designed as low performers. It turns out to be a great way to drive dysfunctional behavior, as people undermine each other to make sure that they’re not the lowest on the list, or avoid joining high-performance teams.

Time to work on my personal development goals for next year!

Even though I'm a presenter, I don't really get the point of presentations any more. Isn't it easier and faster to get that via a document? I just caught up with three video sessions I'd missed, and thanks to the transcripts I skipped the boring parts & got what I needed in a fraction of the time...

Why AI is The Secret Weapon for Change Management Organizations are racing to adopt AI to improve business processes. But the biggest opportunity is probably AI to tackle change management—the top barrier to project success. Here’s why.

Why AI is The Secret Weapon for Change Management! #BigIdeas2025
timoelliott.com/blog/2024/12...

Chart of percentage of people who trust climate scientists, by country

Percentage of people who say they trust climate scientists by country

France is that low?!

"Provide unbearable levels of sophistication" by Anthropic Claude and @emollick.bsky.social . Insisting that this isn't creative, because it's the result of an algorithm, seems like a losing battle to me. (And yes the 7th arrondissement of Paris is unbearably sophisticated 😀 )

lnkd.in/eHhD6k3W

Do you have any good links on the bad behavior that will inevitably result from the chosen comp plan, and how to head it off proactively, rather than the more typical "oh, we never realized that our sales people would do that to hit their numbers!"?

Graphic portrait of Timo Elliott, with caption: "I’m an Innovation Evangelist. My job is to cut through the marketing bullshit that dominates the technology industry, and replace it with slightly more credible, useful, and entertaining bullshit."

I'm an innovation evangelist 😀...

Harrods’ Data Analytics Transformation: Turning Challenges into Insights At UKISUG Connect 2024, Tushir Parekh, Data Analytics Manager at Harrods, gave an overview of Harrods’ Data Analytics Journey.

My writeup of Harrods' data and analytics journey, and lessons learned, from UKISUG Connect 2024:
timoelliott.com/blog/2024/12... #sap #sapbw4hana #sapanalyticscloud #analytics

Stienberg modern Art Christmas card

Saul Steinberg
Christmas Card for the Museum of Modern Art
1949

Out of all the cartoons I’ve created, my favorites are always the most cynical ones… is there any aspect of technology transformation that leaders get more wrong than this? #changemanagement #cartoon

As we gawk at the $250M Musk spent elect Trump, take a guess how long it took him to “earn” it back in the market?

It took just 15 minutes. I'm not kidding... 15 minutes. According to Bloomberg, his net worth soared by $8B just today.

That’s billionaire math for you—and it’s all of our problem.