{"id":1054,"date":"2026-06-09T14:10:40","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T14:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1054"},"modified":"2026-06-09T14:10:40","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T14:10:40","slug":"why-dbt-labs-ceo-views-ai-efficiency-and-creativity-as-the-same-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1054","title":{"rendered":"Why dbt Labs CEO views AI efficiency and creativity as the same thing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>These types of efficiency numbers are real and easy to regard as progress, but CEO and cofounder Tristan Handy believes many leaders are thinking about them all wrong. Inside his organization, he\u2019s found that the biggest benefit from AI isn\u2019t captured in efficiency measures or time savings, but rather in the creativity and iterative power they unlock.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1052\">\u2018We expect it to leak\u2019: OpenAI is frontrunning the narrative around its $1 trillion IPO<\/a><\/p>\n<p>As a growth-stage startup company whose technology powers the very AI transformation companies are seeking, the opportunity for dbt Labs as Handy sees it isn\u2019t to use AI to reduce costs or slim down\u2014it\u2019s to seize market opportunities. AI efficiencies are the vehicle enabling the organization to take more shots, solve more problems for customers, and use those learnings to improve quality, not just increase quantity.\u00a0<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cIn a business context, you\u2019re not creative because you want to sell novels,\u201d said Handy.\u00a0 \u201cYou\u2019re creative because you want to come up with better ideas to drive the metrics that you\u2019re accountable to.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>Top line versus bottom line<\/h2>\n<p>The pressure on business leaders to demonstrate measurable success and ROI on AI initiatives continues to grow. In a recent survey of 660 technology executives conducted by Deloitte, \u200b\u200b79% said driving measurable business outcomes is a top priority in 2026. There are two ways to go about it, Handy noted.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it\u2019s about, are you trying to measure the upside that you get from AI as a cost-cutting measure, or as a revenue enhancing measure?\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The companies finding the most success are doing both. A study by McKinsey that analyzed almost 2,000 companies\u2019 AI transformation efforts found that while 80% of respondents set efficiency as their objective for AI, it was those that also set goals around growth and innovation that have seen the most value from the technology. Specifically, the report notes organizations with growth-led AI goals were more likely to report achieving a range of qualitative enterprise-level benefits from their AI efforts.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The right way to measure success for these different facets of AI transformation goals is not one and the same, however.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1047\">Merlin CTO: autonomy can rebuild the foundation of aviation \u2014\u00a0and national security<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe first question you should be asking for every single AI initiative is: Do you want this to, at the end of the day, grow top line or bottom line?\u201d said Handy.\u00a0<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Efficiency as a creative catalyst<\/h2>\n<p>Measuring cost-cutting AI efforts is fairly straightforward, which Handy believes is why many leaders are focused on it. Driving gains on the revenue side, however, requires creativity.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>On the revenue side, if the question is how to refactor the work to make lines go up and to the right, \u201cthat actually does require creative thinking,\u201d Handy said. \u201cIt requires new products. It requires operating in different creative ways.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>For example, in a recent meeting where dbt Lab executives were discussing the company\u2019s data lake product, Handy asked if they knew the reasons why the company\u2019s top 20 customers that use the product chose it. Nobody knew, so they prompted an AI agent that plugs into the company\u2019s internal data\u2014including all the quantitative data and sales call transcripts\u2014to look into it right then as they continued the meeting. The agent went off and did the research, and came back a few minutes later with all the reasons and relevant information. Handy doesn\u2019t see the time saved on answering the question as the win. The real benefit, he says, is that the AI allowed the group to continue pursuing a path that the conversation had suddenly taken.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the room, that conversation now becomes more creative, because we\u2019re not stuck putting that in the bucket of things to follow up on later,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can actually fully explore the idea and get into it without being blocked.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Put another way, shrinking the time it takes to accomplish tasks allows companies to get more work in front of customers, which allows them to learn more in the process. Handy, however, emphasizes that it shouldn\u2019t be about simply increasing output. Inside dbt Labs, he is aiming for a steady increase of quantity and quality together, rather than a burst of production.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1045\">How Michael Saylor\u2019s preferred stock gamble could trigger a death spiral for Strategy<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou have to think of efficiency and creativity as the same thing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThe first question you should be asking for every single AI initiative is: Do you want this to, at the end of the day, grow top line or bottom line?\u201d CEO and cofounder Tristan Handy told Fortune.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1053,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-efficiency"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - 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