By Amy Blasco, EMBA '18
When I attended MIT Sloan in 2018, I expected to sharpen my understanding of strategy, analytics, and leadership. What I didn’t expect was how deeply the faculty would shape how I see organizations, teams, and transformation itself.
Today, as Managing Director of Marketing Transformation for North America at Accenture, those lessons influence how I structure teams, approach complex change, and define my leadership signature. Several professors in particular continue to shape how I work every day.
Many of the perspectives I describe here build on the research and teaching of the MIT Sloan faculty who shaped my experience.
Amy Blasco, EMBA '18
We are also living through one of the most significant technology shifts organizations have faced in decades. Artificial intelligence, agentic systems, and automation are fundamentally changing how work gets done, how decisions are made, and how companies create value. Every industry is being reshaped by technologies that allow organizations to move faster, scale intelligence, and operate with new levels of precision.
Nowhere is this shift more visible than in marketing, where AI is transforming how organizations understand customers, create experiences, and measure growth.
MIT gave me the foundation to operate at the intersection of these forces—not only understanding emerging technologies, but understanding the organizational systems required to adopt them successfully.
Over time, I’ve come to define transformation in a specific way. Transformation is not a new strategy deck or a technology implementation. It is the deliberate reinvention of how an organization creates value—across its operating model, technology, processes, talent, and culture—to achieve step-change improvements in performance, customer experience, and competitiveness.
MIT helped me understand that real transformation requires changing not just what organizations do, but how they are designed to work.
Transformation Happens Through Integration
One of the most influential ideas I encountered at MIT came from Deborah Ancona.
We often think of high-performing teams as tightly aligned internal groups focused on execution. But Professor Ancona’s research showed that the most effective teams spend significant time managing the boundary between the team and the broader organization—building relationships across functions and bringing insights back into the team.
That idea fundamentally changed how I think about leadership.
In large organizations, innovation rarely happens within a silo. The most successful teams operate as connectors, linking strategy, technology, data, and business units.
In my role leading marketing transformation, I see this every day. Transformation rarely succeeds when functions operate independently. Marketing, technology, data science, product, and finance must work together as an integrated system.
My role is to integrate functions into a cohesive system that can move faster, learn faster, and create value together. The most impactful transformations occur when organizations move beyond functional silos and begin operating as interconnected teams working toward shared outcomes.
Leadership in transformation is not just about guiding a team; it is about creating alignment across the organization.
Leading in a Global Context
Another professor who left a strong impression on me was Roberto Rigobon, who teaches during the Leading in a Global Context module at MIT Sloan.
Rigobon’s work focuses on global financial dynamics and the interconnected forces shaping economies and markets. What made his class memorable was the reminder that organizations never operate in isolation.
Markets, supply chains, policy decisions, and technological shifts create ripple effects across industries and geographies. A change in one part of the world can reshape competitive dynamics everywhere.
That perspective is incredibly relevant in transformation work today.
Organizations are transforming while technology, regulation, and economic conditions are shifting globally. Rigobon’s teaching reinforced the importance of leaders continually scanning the horizon and designing strategies that are resilient in an uncertain and interconnected world.
Analytics Only Matters if It Changes Decisions
Two professors who deeply shaped my thinking about analytics were Dimitris Bertsimas and Georgia Perakis.
Both emphasized that analytics only creates value when it improves real-world decisions.
Professor Bertsimas’ work in optimization and machine learning demonstrates how mathematical models can improve decisions in fields ranging from healthcare to finance. Professor Perakis similarly applies advanced analytics to challenges like pricing, demand forecasting, and revenue management.
At MIT, analytics was never presented as an academic exercise. It was always connected to decisions: how organizations allocate resources, manage uncertainty, and optimize outcomes.
That mindset has stayed with me in my current role.
For many organizations, marketing analytics historically focused on reporting: dashboards, campaign metrics, and historical analysis. But the real power of analytics is not explaining what happened yesterday. It is shaping the decisions that drive tomorrow.
As AI becomes central to marketing capabilities, organizations have an opportunity to move from intuition-driven marketing toward decision systems that continuously learn and improve outcomes.
The lesson I took from MIT is simple: If analytics does not change a decision, it has not yet created value.
Organizations Run on Networks
Another professor who had a profound impact on my thinking is Roberto Fernandez, whose work explores networks and power within organizations.
One of the key lessons from his research is that organizations rarely operate according to the formal org chart. Instead, they function through informal networks of relationships, trust, and influence.
This insight is incredibly important in transformation.
Large-scale change rarely succeeds through mandates alone. It spreads through networks of credibility: people who believe in the vision and influence others around them.
In my role, building those networks is often just as important as designing the transformation itself. Real momentum occurs when the informal organization begins moving in the same direction as the formal one.
Organizations Are Systems
One of the most eye-opening experiences at MIT was studying system dynamics with John Sterman.
Sterman’s work shows that many organizational challenges are not caused by poor leadership or flawed strategy. They are the result of system structures that produce predictable behaviors.
Feedback loops, incentives, and decision processes shape how organizations behave over time.
This perspective changes how you approach transformation.
Rather than focusing only on launching initiatives, leaders must examine the systems surrounding those initiatives —the metrics, incentives, governance, and processes that shape behavior.
If those structures remain unchanged, even the best strategies struggle to gain traction.
Strategy Only Matters if Work Changes
Nelson Repenning’s work reinforced this idea by focusing on the gap between strategy and execution.
Many organizations understand what they need to do. They develop strategies, invest in new technologies, and launch transformation programs. Yet the day-to-day work of the organization often remains unchanged.
Repenning’s research on Dynamic Work Design shows that meaningful change happens when the structure of work itself evolves.
Teams must change how they prioritize work, make decisions, and measure progress.
Transformation succeeds not when people understand the strategy, but when their daily work begins to reflect it.
The Leadership Perspective MIT Gave Me
Looking back, MIT Sloan didn’t just teach me frameworks. It taught me a new way to see organizations.
From Deborah Ancona, I learned that leadership requires integration across teams.
From Roberto Rigobon, I learned to understand the broader global forces shaping organizations.
From Dimitris Bertsimas and Georgia Perakis, I learned that analytics must ultimately drive decisions.
From Roberto Fernandez, I learned that networks often matter more than org charts.
From John Sterman and Nelson Repenning, I learned that organizations are systems — and transformation requires redesigning those systems.
Those lessons continue to shape how I lead today.
As AI, automation, and agentic systems reshape how work gets done, this kind of systems thinking becomes even more important. The organizations that succeed will not simply adopt new technologies; they will reimagine how their organizations are designed to create value.
MIT helped me understand that transformation rarely succeeds through isolated initiatives.
It succeeds when leaders understand the systems, networks, and structures that shape how organizations actually work—and have the courage to redesign them.
Amy Blasco is MD, US Marketing Transformation Lead at Accenture Song and a member of the MIT Executive MBA Class of 2018
