Chief Growth Officer (CGO)
Tom Mescall
Growth Office
- San Ramon
- 925-790-2812
Celebrate the success you have but keep moving forward and making progress.
Celebrate the success you have but keep moving forward and making progress.
Bio
As Armanino’s Chief Growth Officer, Tom oversees and drives strategy for the firm’s integrated sales, marketing, industry development and product innovation functions, including Data & Analytics, Blockchain and AI Lab. He guides the development of Armanino’s industry approach, including innovation that builds industry-specific products and solutions.
Tom is an expert in digital transformation and technology, as well as market trends. His background includes serving as the leader of Armanino’s Consulting practice, hands-on experience in management consulting, marketing, product strategy and leadership in the software industry, roles that have shaped his perspective on growing businesses through a combination of an industry-forward approach, software solutions and outsourcing critical business processes.
Experience
AI will be a significant and profound form of technology that every company will need to develop and build management experience — not IT — strategy around. Leadership teams should plan for how they will leverage AI to stay relevant in their industry and how AI can be a differentiator in how they serve customers, especially with digital transformation changing customers’ expectations of how they interact with products and services. Every company needs an AI strategy to future-proof their businesses. Those that do it well will become winners. Those that ignore it or see AI as an IT project will not be able to remain relevant in the future.
My father. He was a great guy and a successful businessperson who had incredible insights on people and motivations, and his viewpoints have been very influential in my career. Among the lessons he taught me, the most important is this: I wake up every day and tell myself that not every day is going to be easy or fun; you have to stay positive and move forward. Celebrate the success you have but keep moving forward and making progress.
Look out into the world and identify areas where the biggest changes are going to be made, then build your career around those things. Right now, there’s tremendous opportunity in areas such as AI, blockchain, crypto/decentralized finance and cybersecurity.
One of the things I’ve faced as a senior manager in a number of companies is that there’s an overwhelming feeling of “people aren’t ready.” Whether it’s a sense that people aren’t ready to be pushed, promoted or moved to the next level, so many organizations want to slow down instead of going faster. Being able to move people out of their comfort zones and convince other managers to do the same is tough. I’ve found when you push people, however, they excel and excel faster in every case. Smart, motivated people must be given the chance to take on new things; they’ll surprise you in many ways.
Fast-paced and very clear with communication. I strive to make my expectations easily understood. We are goal- and results-oriented, so I’m always focused on progress and results and how we measure them through things like our net promoter score, productivity and marketing/sales effectiveness. These metrics help me get clarity on the most important things and make sure our team is focused on what’s most important to our organization and our clients.
