Tech Icon Spotlight: Marty Brodbeck

CTO, Priceline

Many tech leaders discover their passion for technology early, building their first PC or programming their first app many years before college or entering the industry. But tech wasn’t part of the plan for Marty Brodbeck.

“I was never going to go into tech; I was a speech communications and leadership studies major on the path to becoming a lobbyist. My training was in critical thinking, data analysis, speech writing, conflict resolution, and management. Only after I started experimenting with writing code in college did I figure out that I didn’t want to become a lobbyist. Instead, what I really wanted was to solve problems,” he said.

After getting his master’s in information systems and computer science, Brodbeck combined his passion for communication and technology to launch a career solving business problems as a technology leader at Merrill Lynch, Pfizer, Diageo, Pearson, Shutterstock, and Priceline. Brodbeck spoke with Riviera Partners to share his insights into the role of tech leaders, his approach to AI, and the evolution of his leadership style.

01

Tech leaders
lead people,
not technology

02

Become a
Chief Collaboration
Officer

03

Build a culture
of change

04

Leadership isn’t
about answers

01

Tech leaders
lead people,
not technology

For tech leaders, the technology side of any business problem is often the easiest to solve.

“In order to develop great products, it requires team chemistry,” Brodbeck said. “When you have a problem, 99% of the time it’s not technology-related. Building technology is easy; building a high-performing team of diverse thinkers is much harder.”

As such, a successful CTO is one who focuses their attention on building a culture of innovation, nurturing their team chemistry, and putting their people in a position to fail fast without fear.

“If you want your team to succeed, it takes a lot of failures over time. It’s the only way to understand what works and what doesn’t,” he said.

“Building technology is easy; building a high-performing team of diverse thinkers is much harder.”

02

Become a
Chief Collaboration
Officer

A good tech leader not only understands tech, but understands their business. Rather than get stuck in the weeds, it’s their role to help their non-tech colleagues on the board, in the C-suite, and across other business units to understand the role technology plays in helping the organization achieve its goals.

“Explaining the value of Kubernetes to the board of directors isn’t something you should do as a CTO,” Brodbeck said. “You should be talking about the value of creating a technology organization that can iterate product features and functions based on your business strategy. Your job as the CTO is to be the chief collaboration officer, synthesize ideas, and make them simple for others in the business to understand what it is we want to do and why it’s important for the business.”

That conversation looks different at an e-commerce business like Priceline, where the value of technology is often evident in product performance, compared to a non-tech product-based company where technology plays more of an enablement role.

“At Pfizer or Diageo, the role of the CTO is to help the business re-engineer processes to increase speed to market or make teams more effective,” Brodbeck said. “In both cases, the CTO is focused on velocity, getting buy-in, and execution from a technology perspective. The playbooks are similar, but how you communicate the value of technology depends on the CTO’s understanding of the business.”

“Your job as the CTO is to be the chief collaboration officer, synthesize ideas, and make them simple for others in the business to understand what it is we want to do and why it’s important for the business.”

03

Build a culture
of change

PCs. The internet. Mobile. Social. Cloud. If history is any guide, seemingly every generation of tech leaders will get their own once-in-a-lifetime technology revolution that allows them to influence how that technology is integrated into business, and ultimately society. When it comes to generative AI, Brodbeck is excited about the opportunities it will provide businesses and people to create richer experiences and foster deeper relationships.

“AI helps us create a greater level of personalization and immediacy for customers so they not only know the hotel they are booking, but points of interest, events, restaurants, and distances to locations on their itinerary,” Brodbeck said. “We just celebrated our first anniversary of Penny, our AI chatbot on the website that handles all kinds of customer questions about our products and their trips. By giving people real-time answers about the trip they’re planning, we’re able to help them build better vacations while giving them the confidence they need to check out.”

Priceline is also leveraging AI to provide more responsive customer support, in addition to improving the productivity of its developers. As with any nascent but impactful technology, it’s all about experimentation.

“We’ve made huge investments creating a world-class data infrastructure to give us a strong foundation to iterate off of, but while a lot of companies have legacy infrastructures that may hold their AI progress back, culture is the real key. The reason we’ve had so much success is not just the technology, but the culture of the company in terms of testing our way to find what works best for our customers and employees.”

“The reason we’ve had so much success is not just the technology, but the culture of the company in terms of testing our way to find what works best for our customers and employees.”

04

Leadership isn’t
about answers

Brodbeck believes the job of the CTO is not to have all the answers, but to ask the right questions.

“In my early leadership roles, I thought the value of the job was to be the smartest person in the room, which is a pitfall many CTOs or tech executives fall into,” Brodbeck said. “My leadership style has evolved to always try to hire smarter people than me. The real value of the job is to unblock challenges and enable people so they can learn, grow, and think freely to solve problems.”

“The trick of any good strategy is to facilitate your team to execute the strategy. What doesn’t work is telling them exactly what to do; you have to guide people to get to the answer on their own while making sure they don’t fall off a cliff getting to it.”

“The trick of any good strategy is to facilitate your team to execute the strategy.“

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