About this episode

Kurt Uhlir discusses the gap between technology usage and business transformation, emphasizing the importance of measuring outcomes over activity.

Most technology investments don’t fail because the technology is broken. They fail because leaders measure activity instead of outcomes — logins, usage, dashboards full of green — while the business itself never changes. In this episode, veteran operator Kurt Uhlir breaks down why that gap exists and how the best leaders close it. SUMMARY Donna P. Mitchell sits down with Kurt Uhlir — a CMO and operator behind an $880M IPO and 60+ funding rounds — to examine the difference between technology that gets used and technology that changes the business. They get specific: how to budget by outcome across three time horizons, why “attribution” and “contribution” are not the same thing, where AI adoption is breaking in 2026, and who actually owns adoption inside a company. Kurt is candid about his own path from being “the smartest person in the room” to losing great people — and what that taught him about leading change. Donna anchors the conversation in the human side: what gets transformed matters, but how it happens matters too. TOPICS COVERED • Why buying technology rarely changes business results on its own • The three time-window framework for budgeting technology and AI by outcome •…

People in this episode

Host: Donna P. Mitchell

Guest: Kurt Uhlir

Topics covered

• technology adoption
• business outcomes
• budgeting by outcome
• attribution vs. contribution
• AI adoption challenges
• leadership in technology

Keywords

• technology investment
• business change
• dashboard metrics
• leadership
• AI adoption
• budgeting framework
• performance measurement

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: $880M IPO, AI

More episodes of Pivoting to Technology Adoption

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• What People Know: The Gap Between the Dashboard and the Break Room · July 14, 2026 · 6 min
• The Leadership Operating System: Trust People, and the Profit Follows · July 7, 2026 · 26 min
• Innovation Portfolio Management: Linking Strategy to Execution · June 30, 2026 · 34 min

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