You do not need another AI prediction. You need a plan.
The Elephant in the Algorithm is the AI playbook for marketing, creative, and talent leaders. It is about the thing most AI advice skips: your people. The book shows you how to align your AI strategy with your business strategy and your customers, and how to bring your leaders and teams with you, so the technology you have already paid for turns into value.
By Matt Perry and Rob Cannon, PhD.
What is in the book.
- How to prepare your people for the change without losing the ones you cannot afford to lose.
- How to protect quality standards while the work changes underneath you.
- How to align people, processes, and platforms in the order that actually works.
- How to lead change in a way that builds trust instead of breaking it.
"We wrote this book for people who are smart enough to know something significant is happening, and wise enough to want a plan rather than a prediction."
From The Elephant in the Algorithm
Meet Matt and Rob.
Rob Cannon, PhD
Rob is an organizational psychologist who has spent eighteen years guiding people and teams through change, usually the kind that arrives faster than the organization is ready for. His work centers on how people think, adapt, and hold their nerve when the ground under their jobs is shifting. He holds a PhD from the University of Sydney and a grounding in coaching psychology that puts building human-capability at the center of his practice. He has experienced transition from the inside, six years at Sony Music and BMG across New York, London, and Sydney, as the industry was remade by new technology and the human cost went almost entirely unmanaged. He is co-founder of Average Robot, co-author of Aha! A User's Guide to Creativity, and co-author of The Elephant in the Algorithm with Matt Perry.
Matt Perry
Matt has spent 25+ years in senior leadership roles at organizations such as M&C Saatchi in London, WPP in Sydney, Omnicom in San Francisco, and Genero, where he launched and led the North American business. He's worked on projects with companies including Google, Meta, Hilton, L'Oreal, PG&E, Michael's, and Fanatics. He has experienced change through four major technology transitions and has led teams through each one. In each one, he recognized that, while technology dominates the conversation, the impact on people and process is always more important. Without people in the center, technology-led change will often fail. He studied at the Kellogg School of Management, where he completed the 'AI for Business Application', before founding Average Robot, the change management firm built for the age of AI. He co-wrote 'Marketing Your Creativity' and co-wrote 'The Elephant in the Algorithm' with Rob Cannon, PhD.
Advance praise for The Elephant in the Algorithm.
Marketing leaders are being told to move faster, cut costs, adopt tools, protect the brand, inspire teams, and somehow not make a mess. This book gives them the leadership framework to do exactly that: make better decisions, protect quality, and use AI to create work that still earns trust.
This book makes the future feel less like a threat and more like a leadership opportunity. Rob Cannon and Matt Perry show that the strongest AI advantage will belong to organizations that build human capability with the same seriousness as technical capability. Better culture, better retention, better decisions, better ROI. That is the play.
Matt & Rob take the AI conversation, typically as much hype as dread, and make it feel fresh, human, and more urgent than ever. And a little optimistic, which is nice. I found myself jotting down insights in preparation to share them with friends (with credit, I promise). Algorithms will keep changing; this book will keep up, because it's built on curiosity and real judgment, not trend-chasing or doom.
This book is extremely timely. Marketing leaders are facing huge challenges thinking about how AI will shape the very future of their companies and sadly no-one has the answers. In this very readable book, Matt and Rob take a clear-eyed, pragmatic look at how company leaders should be addressing AI and its likely impact on their people. The book explains the typical concerns; identifies the questions we should be asking and proposes practical ways ahead for leaders. It gave me plenty to think about.
AI is often framed as a technology transformation, but its greatest impact is on work itself — how organisations create value, how work is redesigned, and how people adapt to new ways of working. What sets this book apart is that Matt and Rob write from inside that transformation, drawing on decades of experience in creative industries and first-hand experience of previous waves of digital change. They recognise that successful AI adoption depends as much on preparing people, exercising good judgement about where AI should be applied and leading through change as it does on the technology itself. The result is a thoughtful, practical and distinctly human perspective on one of the most significant workplace shifts of our time.
Marketing, creative and talent leaders have lived through wave after wave of disruption. AI feels different, not simply because of the technology, but because of what it could mean for the value of human work. Matt and Rob demonstrate a deep understanding of that tension. Drawing on decades of agency experience, they bring clarity, credibility and humanity to the challenge. The writing is sharp and enjoyable, with the focus firmly on what matters most: helping people adapt, lead and create meaningful distinction in a world of limitless output.
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