How to Measure the Business Impact of Your AI Strategy

With a career that spans from the trenches of the NOC and SRE leadership to achieving a master’s degree in industrial/organizational psychology, Leffler bridges the gap between complex system performance and human dynamics that drive high-performing teams.

On the Road With is a Perspectives interview series that captures lessons, observations, and emerging trends from Splunk leaders as they meet with customers, partners, and peers around the globe.

For our debut installment, we catch up with Leffler to discuss AI adoption, the evolving role of the SRE, the value of the Cisco and Splunk portfolio, and the leadership lessons that can only be learned in person.

Stefanie Hoffman: You spend a significant amount of time meeting with customers and attending industry events. What is the one recurring theme or question you've heard from customers or peers on the road lately that has surprised you?

Greg Leffler: What surprises me is how unprepared people still are to deal with and leverage AI.

Everybody wants to have an AI strategy and start using it in their products. But a lot of the people that I talk to clearly are making it up as they go along.

They don't have the time to think about where it makes sense to implement, or how they are going to show its impact on the business.

But I tell people to think about something that they can tie to the business, which is generally cost. Whether that's releasing a product faster, fewer outages, or reduced Mean Time To Recover (MTTR), come up with a story that sets you on fire for AI and is having a business impact.

I think determining if it has a positive impact helps them reframe it. And it helps people feel more confident about their use of AI and less fearful that it's going to take their job.

Hoffman: As Splunk and Cisco continue to integrate teams, hwhat have you heard from customers about the acquistion?

Leffler: My entire career, people have wanted everything in one place. People want to see all of their business impacts, their network, their engineering applications, and their customers in as small as a window as possible. That single pane of glass. Cisco has a really strong vision here with AI Canvas in Cloud Control, and I think it’s going to be a game-changer as customers start to experience it

Hoffman: Is there a specific customer story or lightbulb moment from a recent event that perfectly illustrates the impact of what we’re building at Splunk and Cisco?

Leffler: Recently I was doing demos of our AI SRE in Splunk Observability Cloud. And one of the customers that I gave the demo to really helped me reframe this product’s use.

I was an SRE. I came up in the NOC and then as an SRE and SRE leader. I have a very deep connection to the importance of that job. So, my first reaction to Splunk having an AI SRE was that we shouldn't do that. SREs need jobs, and they need to be here.

But it's not about replacing the new hires. We're always going to need new hires.

However, learning where the problems are and knowing how to troubleshoot the issues is the hardest thing to do as new SRE.

The way the customer framed this was:

Where did it look? What metrics did it check?

New hires don't have to spend time during the issue to go back and learn. They can solve it quickly and then, the next day, look at what the AI SRE agent did.

Hoffman: One of the goals of this series is to capture the lessons that only emerge when you’re in the road with customers and peers. What is the most significant leadership lesson you've learned on the road that that you wouldn't have picked upfrom a data report or a virtual meeting?

Leffler: Body language says a lot.

For a lot of leaders that came up through the pandemic, or just corresponding in a remote age, you lose the ability to pay attention to body language and to really learn how much that can tell you.

If I'm in a room with ten people and I'm talking about some feature, I can glance back and see heads shaking, people on their phones, or people who are not paying attention.

On a lot of remote platforms, I have one person in the window, or maybe two or three, but I don't have the whole room.

Seeing how engaged people are, seeing if they're listening to you, seeing their head shake or nod makes a huge difference.

But if you ask a question, you'll see people glance at the person with the influence to see their reaction. Who are people looking at before they answer or before they say what they want to say? Even if that person doesn't say a word, you can tell pretty quickly who holds the influence in the room. You can’t do that in a virtual session. That's probably the biggest lesson that I've learned.

For Leffler, the road is more than a travel schedule—it's a front-row seat to the questions, challenges, and decisions shaping the future of technology. And as AI continues to evolve, the leaders who succeed may be the ones paying closest attention to what's happening in the room.

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