An employee spends two years quietly doing everything he thinks it takes to earn a promotion — and never once tells his manager he wants it. When he finally asks why it hasn't happened, his manager has no idea what he's talking about.
In this episode of Keep Moving Forward, Ben Brooks, founder and CEO of PILOT, explains why silence gets mistaken for satisfaction on both sides of the desk, why it's important for everyone working on a tech product to fall in love with the problem, not the solution, and the danger of AI coaching creating dependence instead of accountability.
An employee at one of Ben's coaching programs went two years without a promotion he thought he'd already earned. He'd never asked for it. "His boss didn't even know that he wanted to or thought he should be," Ben says.
When he finally did ask, the fix took minutes. His manager built the case with him on the spot.
"So often we assume people can read our minds, or it's obvious, or I've worked hard, they should know I wanna get promoted," Ben says. "No, they shouldn't."
The silence isn't laziness. "The way that our bodies can process rejection is similar to how we process physical pain," Ben says — which is why most people lowball their real odds of a yes by about half.
Ben didn't start PILOT with an idea he loved. He started with a list. "What I think a great product person and a great entrepreneur does is they fall in love with a problem, not an idea or a solution," he says.
His list wasn't one problem, it was several at once: coaching was too expensive per person, nobody could measure whether it worked, managers were never part of it, and the people who got access rarely kept using it. Most competitors picked one of those and built a pitch around it. Ben treated all of them as the same problem, because to the person actually trying to use the tool, they were.
The lesson travels well outside coaching. A tool that fixes one visible complaint while leaving the others in place hasn't solved the problem. It's solved the part of the problem that was easiest to name.
"A good coach doesn't tell you what to do," Ben says. Hand someone an instruction and you're an advisor, not a coach — "you don't have to do the thinking." The value was never the answer. It was the person doing the work to get there.
That's the gap most AI coaching tools miss, in Ben's view, because they're built to be liked rather than to push back. "A lot of AI is built to flatter us," he says. A real coach will risk the relationship to say "I think you're full of crap and you keep making excuses. Why don't you take ownership?" — a level of challenge a tool optimized for engagement has no incentive to deliver.
Ben Brooks:
A good coach doesn't tell you what to do. And I think that's one of the dangers of AI, is are we breeding dependence or are we developing agency?
'Cause if I'm coaching you and I say, well go do this, I'm being an advisor, a mentor, a consultant, but I'm not really being a coach because you don't have to do the thinking. And so I think the challenge with some of the AI coaching bots is if we're just spewing ideas or things at people, it doesn't always get them to do them or to own or to understand.
And so I think AI, I'm long on AI. We use AI a lot, but the idea of it being a one for one replacement for a coach or broader leader development, I think, is fraught.
Gemma Versace:
Hey everyone, and welcome to Keep Moving Forward, the podcast from X-Team for tech professionals who are passionate about growth, leadership, and innovation.
I'm your host, Gemma Versace, Chief Client Officer at X-Team.
Every company adopting AI right now is running the same experiment, whether they've named it or not. A machine can generate an answer in seconds. But someone still has to decide what to actually do with it, and most of these tools quietly fall apart right there.
Today I'm joined by Ben Brooks, founder and CEO of PILOT. Ben built PILOT back in 2015 on a bet that coaching should be democratized through technology, years before generative AI turned that into its own category. He came up through corporate HR before starting the company, and he's spent the years since developing leaders who don't usually get access to formal coaching. He also hosts his own podcast on modern leadership called The Lift.
Ben and I dig into where AI coaching genuinely helps, and where it can quietly train people to wait for instructions instead of building their own judgment. He walks through what it actually looks like for people to advocate for a promotion, or a schedule that actually works for their lives. And he lays out the one metric every HR and tech leader should be using to judge a new tool, versus the one that just looks good in a board deck and means almost nothing.
Let's get started.
Hi Ben, and welcome to Keep Moving Forward.
Ben Brooks:
Gemma, glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
Gemma Versace:
Excellent. Let's get straight into it. You built PILOT on the idea that coaching should be democratized through technology, years before generative AI made AI coaching its own category. Does what's happening now feel like validation of that bet, or a completely different problem?
Ben Brooks:
Yeah, it's interesting 'cause I think, you know, taking something that was done completely manually and leveraging technology was a big part of it. But it was really the outcome, being people are empowered and have agency and feel more confident and, you know, get their needs met, was always what we were committed to. I think right now some of it is assuming that just we need the answers, but often what coaching is, is not giving answers, but it's helping to facilitate people to come up with their own answers. And then of course it's the behavior change, where about 90% of the value is not just evolving the thinking.
'Cause we all know a better way to do something, like get seven hours of sleep versus five. But it's the getting the seven hours that makes the difference, not knowing you need it.
Gemma Versace:
Yeah. Wow. That's a, it is a really good, it's a, that's a really good call out there. What's the actual difference between what PILOT set out to do in 2015 when you first started, and what an AI coaching chatbot promises to do today? What's the variance that you see?
Ben Brooks:
When we first started, we were focused on helping to develop people that typically don't get into leadership development programs. So earlier in career, people from underrepresented minorities, you know, that middle of the pyramid, the high potentials, the future leaders. And depending on the backgrounds they came from, they may not know the ways to advance in their careers, et cetera. And you know, what we've learned over, you know, developing over 10,000 leaders through one of our signature programs over the years is that, you know, just having good content or questions is completely insufficient for people to sort of figure themselves out, navigate the, you know, inner social relationships, the politics, the unwritten rules of work, and of course to navigate their own emotions, resistance and biases to perhaps do things differently.
And so a lot has changed because I think we assumed it was a little bit one dimensional and you could just, hey, here's a thing you could do and go do it. Humans are inherently irrational and get in their own way. And so I think while chatbots are powerful, I do think the idea of a coaching chatbot is probably a pretty temporary trend.
I think those will probably not exist in a period of time. And it'll probably be coaching, we'll get through the larger players in AI and some of the larger platforms. But you know, typically it's not the answer that people need. And a good coach doesn't tell you what to do. And I think that's one of the dangers of AI is are we breeding dependence or are we developing agency?
'Cause if I'm coaching you and I say, well go do this, I'm being an advisor, a mentor, a consultant, but I'm not really being a coach because you don't have to do the thinking. But by the way, if it works out, I get the credit 'cause it's my idea. And if it doesn't, you can blame me. And so I think the challenge with some of the AI coaching bots is if we're just spewing ideas or things at people, it doesn't always get them to do them or to own or to understand.
And so I think AI, I'm long on AI. We use AI a lot, but the idea of it being a one for one replacement for a coach or broader leader development, I think, is fraught.
Gemma Versace:
That's a really interesting insight that you talk about there, and one that I hadn't really thought about before, around it creating that dependency, that it be more like, okay, I'll go back to get told what to do, not how to develop or how to utilize, you know, your own internal thoughts, feelings, skills, and abilities to be able to work out what that next step organically or naturally should be, versus kind of AI saying, all right, this is the natural next step, with all of the information that they have available at hand.
So, yeah, really interesting, 'cause it wouldn't be as tailored or bespoke or meaningful and genuine to the individual as well in some cases. You've talked about employees, and you just kind of touched on it then, that you've talked about employees needing to move from a passive stance to taking real ownership over their careers.
And I believe that, you know, PILOT's purpose was originally to make everyone feel powerful at work, which is such a compelling purpose. I love it. Can AI push someone towards that kind of ownership, or does that specifically require a human on the other end? I mean, you touched on it in your earlier answer, but if you could just kind of elaborate a little bit more about that.
I think it's fascinating.
Ben Brooks:
Yeah, ultimately there's a sort of paternalistic dynamic that employees can fall into in a hierarchy at an employer, and that a boss can sort of look a little bit like mommy or daddy underneath the surface, and we don't know who, you know, what we're able to do or not do. There's a lot of dissatisfaction that employees will have, that well, my manager doesn't do this, or I wish they did that. And in reality, it's a partnership and it's a relationship. And so there are things that I think employees assume that HR or their manager are doing more for them than the reality, like managing their careers, figuring out their development, et cetera. And the best data source for what one's needs or wants are is the individual themselves. And to find people's voice, to articulate and advocate for those, and to know that you can do that. So often when we work with people, the question they say, as we give them examples of how other people have succeeded, they say, you can do that? There's this sense of awe and wonder, but now, you might have grown up, like one of my good friends in elementary school, he was born in Taiwan and immigrated, part of the way that in his culture growing up, according to him, and what he explained to me was, you know, your elders were people you respected, but you didn't really engage or fraternize with them, and you certainly wouldn't challenge. Whereas I've got someone else that grew up, you know, in Connecticut and would golf with his dad. And it's like, yeah, take your boss out for beers. And you know, if they tell you to do this, nah, no, I wanna do this in my career. So the cultures we come from and the backgrounds of what's normative, right?
What's normative in the southern hemisphere versus the northern hemisphere can differ. What's normative in one industry versus another can differ. And so I think a lot of this is helping people to understand that we all have to be sort of our own advocate in our own careers. And I think that AI can be the push, but you can also have a lot of AI is built to flatter us.
Oh, you know, Ben, great question. You've said the most important thing here. You know, you can see these things when we interact with chatbots, where it really can flatter us, and it depends on how it's coded, or what our relationships are, for it to say, I think you're full of crap and you keep making excuses. Why don't you take ownership?
You can see very quickly, I could close that down. Is there permission? How do you know? Et cetera. So there's a lot of personal dynamics when it comes to challenging people or the push, that right now most people's use of AI is not for that use case. And that's a big thing to trust a piece of technology, to tell me to do a thing, is the technology being a little bit more, you know, dominant than the human being subordinate. I think that we are way, way far from that. I think certainly helping me pick out a beach umbrella, you know, and looking at reviews online to buy a $60 beach umbrella, I love getting a recommendation, but in terms of whether I should advocate for my boss or not, to, you know, take a job in another division, that's gonna be a lot dicier and more contextual.
Gemma Versace:
And I really think that you've hit the nail on the head too, that it's so situational and environmental as well as cultural, as to exactly how much power the employees feel that they have within an organization. And for those people listening, what would be your advice to say, you know, if somebody's sitting here that has been in their role for a couple of years, and like what you said, has kind of just, has felt that the professional development or training or coaching was implied just by having a job, and that it was going to come at some point for them, they hadn't really seen much of it yet. What would be some of the guidance or direction that you would give them to kind of start the ball bouncing on being able to create more ownership over, over their career and what they want next, particularly when it comes to coaching.
Ben Brooks:
I can tell you an example of one of the participants in one of our programs at Nestle, and they've authorized us to share this example publicly.
This participant had been working quite diligently. They were mid-career, family man, you know, managed a team and was sort of waiting for that promotion, right?
And long, long service with Nestle. And it came along, and he had his annual performance review, and he sort of waiting, and it was like the second year in a row he thought he would get promoted. Never had said anything to his manager, but thought he did all the things. And he said, you know, hey boss, you know what the heck? I didn't get promoted. And he said, get promoted? What are you talking about? So his boss didn't even know that he wanted to or thought he should be. And he said, yeah, I've been doing all these things. He goes, really? And he said, what does it take for me to get promoted? And he goes, well, I'd have to have, see this.
And then he said, I've done all this. He had the receipts. So there was this disconnect between him and his manager, who he had a good relationship with. And the manager said, well gosh, look, let me tell you what I have to do with HR and finance and my boss to get you promoted. And he showed his list of to-dos. And they partnered on it together, and he got a promotion. That's one of those that you could change neighborhoods you live in, like a big deal.
Gemma Versace:
Right.
Ben Brooks:
And so it was all about him, unfortunately two years probably later than he needed to, saying, hey, here's what I'd like, here's what I think I'm on track for. What do you need from me?
And his manager met him right there. And not all managers will, but so often we assume people can read our minds, or it's obvious, or I, you know, I've worked hard, they should know I wanna get promoted. No, they shouldn't.
Gemma Versace:
Yes.
Ben Brooks:
So that's a part of it, is not only just saying I want to be, but saying, what would you need to see to be able to promote me?
And what would you need to prove to your colleagues to get that approved? 'Cause typically, managers alone can't approve a promotion. There's other people involved. So I think part of that is just really making sure you sort of find your voice to know what you need or want. You advocate it in a way that's not a hostage negotiation, and you partner in understanding that they may not have total authority. Now, if it's something as simple as I want flexibility at three o'clock, because that's when my kid gets off the bus and I'd like to, you know, have them come in the house and make 'em a sandwich and see how their day went, that may be something that my manager and I can directly approve and say, block the time on your calendar.
Don't answer calls at that time. We're all good. But if it's something that's bigger, you may need to help your manager advocate on your behalf to other people.
Sometimes people will not ask their manager for something or even share a need 'cause they assume they'll be told no.
Gemma Versace:
Mm-hmm.
Ben Brooks:
And this said simply is fear of rejection, and the way that our bodies can process rejection is similar to how we process physical pain. And so there's this sense of, if I don't know for sure that I'm gonna get it, I'm not gonna ask. And so oftentimes we're negotiating against ourselves because our prediction, and there's a lot of research about this, of our, what we, our likelihood of approvals is typically about half as much as it actually is.
So basically we assume our batting average is not nearly as good as it is.
And so, so much of this is being able to also have the psychological strength and the resilience to maybe be told not now, or no, or never. 'Cause if you're waiting for that promotion and the company has made a decision that they're not gonna promote anybody for the next three years, 'cause the business is in decline.
Gemma Versace:
Mm-hmm.
Ben Brooks:
Better to know that sooner, even though you didn't get the promotion. It's good to know, rather than waiting for three years for a thing. 'Cause you might want to go elsewhere. You might wanna do, you know, figure out a different path within the company that would work. So getting that confirmation of status isn't a bad thing, even if it's not what you want.
And look, if you, to your point, you may have a manager that's not that supportive or not that helpful. Well, it's better to advocate multiple times in a reasonable way and not be met with support, because then when you leave, you're not gonna have them say, well Ben, why didn't you say that you were unhappy? Gosh, why didn't you wanna avoid ever being in that position, 'cause it feels like a betrayal. And you can say, hey, I know we've talked multiple times around where I wanna take my career. And it didn't seem like there was like a lot of receptivity or support or possibility here. So I'm wanting to let you know that I took a job elsewhere, or I'm gonna go work in a different part of this division. And that way there's never a betrayal of you withholding what you wanted or how you felt, or what you need, which is a part of trust in a relationship. 'Cause ultimately you don't want people surprised. And so that's where even not getting what you initially asked for is still net positive. And sometimes you'll ask for something, and they'll have a much bigger idea or different idea that was better than yours. So that's what's happened to me in my career. Hey, could I do this? And they're like, well, do this, let's do something much bigger, much better. And so that's where, again, part of it's that collaboration, but we need to stop making decisions for our managers, and we need to start being vulnerable and taking an at that, because if you haven't been told no in a while, you're not advocating enough.
Gemma Versace:
Really fantastic advice. Really fantastic advice to just really take, kind of matters into your own hands. And it is interesting because somebody's career is one of the most important things in their life, which obviously brings money to the table, allows families to be able to live, pay their bills.
But there is still this trepidation at an individual level of, oh, I don't wanna look like I'm being too pushy. Or if they were going to give it to me, then they would've let me know. But you're right, there's a lot of leaders, I mean, I myself, as a leader, you can't read people's minds. You might have one perception of where they're wanting to go with their life, and they might have a completely different idea.
So yeah, for everybody listening, get vocal, be collaborative, as you've mentioned as well, with your leader, to be able to help develop what your, what your next opportunity is gonna look like. Or, as you've said, I really come to a realization that potentially there isn't any more opportunities at your current role, and it creates the impetus to be able to look elsewhere.
Pivoting a little bit, when you are advising HR leaders on evaluating tech platforms, AI or otherwise, what's the metric that actually matters versus the one that just looks good on a board deck?
Ben Brooks:
I think in this day and age, with so much accountability and transparency and focus on performance, checking the box to buy something that could do something is not gonna work, because oftentimes we are buying technology in order to create some sort of outcome. So as an example, if you bought a mentoring platform, an internal mentoring platform, you're probably not just trying to say, we have an internal mentoring platform, you actually want people to be mentored so they're engaged and retained and get smarter and get developed. So buying a platform that perhaps doesn't get used or isn't solving that well doesn't actually get you the enterprise value that you want it. So I think, and it's very easy to get sucked into a feature hole, and oh, this demo, they show this, oh, wouldn't it be cool if we do that? Or this integrates with this, et cetera. There's a, I forget if it was Jim Rohn or Zig Ziglar, someone said the main thing is to keep the main thing. And so part of that is, no shit, underneath all of the Gartner quadrants and the G2 and everything else that's out there, what is the core value you're trying to create, and how would you measure that, ideally in a single metric?
So if you're buying recruiting technology, it's like, well, this will improve the recruiting experience. Well, for whom? How? Like what is the problem with our recruiting experience? Oh, it takes too long, we lose candidates. You're buying a scheduling software so we can get people into interviews faster. Great, right? Then it's like, we don't wanna lose good talent, so we're gonna fix the scheduling process. But everyone tends to focus on these operational aspects and not the things that an owner or shareholder would really want. And they don't always have the business case down to a single sentence. And the higher the executive, the bigger the font. They don't want all the fricking detail, right? You wanna be headline, right, bottom line on top. And so I think for those HR leaders, also realizing that often in B2B software, what's good for the administrator or the buyer can be not good for the end user. And I think we used to think, oh, well I'll, you know, we'll do this 'cause they have to use it.
They have to, whatever. Well, employees have a lot of choice, and a lot of people are using what's called pirate AI. Okay? You give me AI at work and you dumb down the tool, and you don't let me do all these things, but yet my division president wants us to work in twice as much output, 'cause there's all these performance constraints. But it, and HR, you know, dumbed down this tool 'cause legal and compliance told 'em they had to, and I'm not blaming anyone in particular, but they're gonna go use their own tools, and that could violate data security, privacy, all sorts of different contractual obligations.
And so I think part of it is you also have to look at that end user experience, which typically you don't bring end users into buying enterprise technology, which is a mistake, right. If you're gonna have a salesperson use a CRM, having a bunch of IT people go to buy it, or the senior executive of sales who never keys in deals and call notes, you're gonna be hosed when they're like, what do you mean this doesn't work on mobile? You know? Have you ever met a salesperson? You ever seen 'em at a desk? No. They're on the road, they're moving, they're this, they're in an airport. So I think so much of this is you've gotta start with that end user in mind. And often in this day and age, you actually don't need a platform. You might need a point solution. You might be able to spin up something sort of internally, but typically platforms are selling on volume, not always value. Look at the 90 features, look at all these reports you've got, look at, and it's like, you're right, that can slice, it can dice, it can do a million things, but I might not need a Swiss army knife.
I might need a pairing knife, right? I just want to cut a piece of fruit, not put in a screw, and open a cork and fix eyeglasses and scrape wood and all these other things. And so I think it's also make sure you don't overbuy for what's needed. And it may be that you just need to create a really good spreadsheet with fixed fields in it so people can calculate something versus going to buy some auto magic calculator.
Gemma Versace:
Yes. Yeah, that's again, Ben, you've been brilliant with lots of advice for our listeners today, but that's some really critical advice, I think, in relation to being able to identify what products, what technology products are going to be beneficial for that end user. And you're right, there's different requirements for the end user, and I think we've all worked for businesses that get very excited about rolling out a new system.
And then we, as the end users, start to be quite critical about, you know, what potentially isn't going to be useful or isn't as advantageous as what was first thought during the sell. Absolutely. So you came up through corporate HR before building your product PILOT. What did you see in large organization coaching that made you really sure that, you know, your product could scale without losing what makes it work?
Ben Brooks:
You know, I think oftentimes the buyers and end users have great insights, and it's not about, oh gee whiz, I have this cool idea. What I think a great product person and a great entrepreneur does is they fall in love with a problem, not an idea or a solution. And so I thought that the problems were, it's too damn expensive on a per person basis, so not enough people get it. There's no measurement or transparency around it. It's not connected to the organization's standards or needs. It doesn't involve people's managers or other executives. It doesn't bring other employees close together where there's a stickiness. People don't often stay consistent around it or don't often use it. So what we really did is it was not just one thing, but it was many things. We said, okay, well these are all of the problems, and so how do we innovate to solve the problems that create dissatisfaction? And so it wasn't just that it was too expensive, because we had competitors in the space that said, oh, we're gonna do this, you know, all you can eat, you know, development or coaching, and all of your employees can get it and they can use it as much as they want. Well, one, the quality of it was not great, right? 'Cause it was an all you can eat buffet, and their average usage was 1% of the employee base used the service. So if you had, you know, a hundred people, one person used it, well, all of their, you know, per employee per month pricing, right?
Was like assuming everybody was gonna use it. So all of a sudden it's only 20 bucks, you know, a month, right? Was actually 2000 a month per actual usage. And then it looks very different than 20 bucks. So the adoption equation is really important. So, so just providing it is not enough. And so also, is it relevant enough?
So I think a lot of it is, you know, making sure that you really understand what those practical problems are, because there's a lot of people that wish work were different. But you have to know how work is and start from there and evolve it forward, rather than create a utopia and invite people on a unicorn to another planet, because that's just, that's a bridge too far.
Gemma Versace:
A lot of engineering leaders are under the same pressure. You describe what HR is, as, as for some of the answers to the questions that we've posed to you today. You know, by the AI tool, show the adoption numbers move fast. What would you tell a CTO who's about to make that same mistake with their own team?
What, what advice would you give them?
Ben Brooks:
So, you know, dumb metrics, dumb behavior. Some of us have heard of token maxing, where organizations were saying we're gonna create a leaderboard of who's using the most, you know, compute or tokens. Well, especially with engineers, you have to be careful. Engineers are clever. I started my career at Lockheed Martin.
I was with the CTO this morning. I love engineers. But engineers will outsmart your game if it's a dumb game. So you have to be careful in particular, but also generally speaking, and I'll tell you a very brief story, when we had Salesforce that we adopted about 15 years ago in my corporate career, and we're one of the largest customers in the world, and Singapore office had the highest adoption across our 400 offices globally.
Well, I was over in Singapore for work, and I sat down with the office manager, how do you do it? She said, oh, well, you know, we know the usage is based upon monthly logins to the system. So on the 27th of every month, everyone has an Outlook voting button, and they all have to confirm that they log in on the 27th of the month. So they gamed the system. No one was really using it. She just made sure everyone logged in on the 27th of the month so they would get their count. Right. And she wasn't trying to be nefarious. It was just like, this is the measure, this is the easiest way to get the measure. So, so I think that if you're gonna bring in these tools, I think usage of the tool is not a business outcome, right. It is consumption. Right. What would usage of the tool provide if the business case, we're proved out, if it was ROI positive from the sponsors who funded the technology, including if it was IT for it's sake. So are you able to, you know, reduce errors in your code? Can you get bugs and patches fixed earlier?
Can you know, find trends and things? But I would focus not on the input or the consumption, but, and not on the output, but the value. 'Cause I think one of the things that we also, you know, just like if you had a consultant that wrote you a thousand slides in a slide deck, you'd be like, wow, this person, she worked her butt off, thousand slides. Well now you can make a thousand slides pretty easily with AI. So production does not mean value. It may be you need a single slide. A single slide that has, here's the problem, here's what we're doing about it, here's the risks, and here's your part to play. And that's what needs to go to the execs, not a thousand.
So you wanna make sure when you look all through this, kind of have X-ray vision, that's technology lists, that's engineering lists, right? Like you have to forget about the engineering side of it and say, ultimately we put money in over here to buy this fricking tool.
How much money in value did it create over here?
And if you don't know or you can't quantify it, you should probably pause the tool or limit the consumption, rather than burning money on fire with tokens.
And so this again is like you wanna make sure you're incenting not just consumption or compliant usage. There's another large consulting firm that, you're not getting promoted to this, this most senior title, unless there's this much adoption. Well, people started creating scripts that would just log on every morning and it would do stuff for 'em. And none of it was valuable, and none of it they used, but they would look like they were using AI for three hours a day.
Right, and it's a, it's an IT services company. And so, and this, it's in the public domain.
And so that's the kind of thing, you just have to be much smarter than pure consumption, because the cost of consumption is gonna go up by probably an order of magnitude in a period of time, because this is being heavily subsidized. I heard that on a max plan for Anthropic or OpenAI, and the personal plan is like 2, 250 a month, US dollars, that it's somewhere between eight and $14,000 in actual cost if it's used at its full capacity.
So I mean, these plans are being, you know, you know, subsidized insanely, which is part of the venture playbook, et cetera. And this is emergent technology. And if you charge the full rate now, and we will have some Moore's Law effect, and you know, the unit costs are coming, and the compression will come, and the chip efficiency, all these things will happen, but you can just assume it's only gonna get more expensive.
So, treat it as if the AI tool costs 10 times as much 'cause it likely will in the future. And make sure you're on track to get that kind of ROI.
Gemma Versace:
That is brilliant advice, and I think that everybody listening is taking pen to paper right now, saying, what a brilliant way to be able to, you know, start as you mean to finish with these tools, as well as you said, you can, well, you know what the playbook's going to be. You know what the output and the opportunity is there, sitting there. Take it from the start and learn how to really capitalize on it. Very early. That's brilliant. Great advice there, Ben. Thank you so much for joining us today. We are now at the, the final question that we do like to ask all of our Keep Moving Forward podcast guests, is what keeps you moving forward, Ben? What gets you out of bed in, in the morning every day?
What, what keeps you moving forward?
Ben Brooks:
I'll mention two things. The first has been getting to do what you're doing in your chair, which I launched a podcast last year about modern leadership, and we're helping people navigate the world in a much faster pace and helping them solve challenges, like how to fire people that are good, not bad, or how to manage more conflict at work, or how to, you know, get along with people that you hate at work.
All sorts of topics. So we, the Lift is the name of the podcast, liftpod.com. And that is one of those things that it's not just a passion project, it's something that I'm finding very useful to a lot of our customers and end users, but it's also forcing me to grow and think in very different ways, sometimes in a way that exhausts me, the vertical learning curve on some of it.
The other thing that keeps me moving forward is what's possible with all of this new technology and innovation, and whether AI becomes, and it just delivers an evolutionary benefit or a truly revolutionary, it's too soon to tell, but I think that, you know, what I'm seeing of how it could change work, and there could be some absolutely devastating effects in certain industries and roles, which we need to be mindful of and thoughtful and ethical about. But I think that there is so much potential. And so I'm just really excited to not get sucked into, you know, vibe coding into the middle of the night or anything like that, but really thinking about, you know, what are the practical things that have always been hard for me and my company to do for our customers that we can now do faster and better?
What is the additional value that we wish we had two hours in a day to wow our customers or to wow our end users that we never would have, but we've always had the ingenuity, the creativity, the striving to do that. Now we have a way to time hack and get, you know, as if we were able to augment our team by 30 or 40% without hiring additional headcount. But that's only possible if we have the customer centricity to know their unmet needs, to know what would anticipate or delight them, and to know what we should prioritize. So that's the thing that keeps me moving forward, is thinking how we can so much better serve customers that are already quite happy with us, but how we can be sort of a second to none provider by combining technology with thoughtfulness.
Gemma Versace:
Amazing. Amazing. It has been a pleasure talking to you today, Ben Brooks. Thank you so much for joining us on Keep Moving Forward.
Ben Brooks:
Thanks, Gemma.
Gemma Versace:
A good coach doesn't tell you what to do. That's the line from Ben that's going to stick with people in this space, because it cuts against almost everything the AI coaching pitch is selling right now. Get someone an answer faster, and you've built a shortcut. Build a coach, and the person still has to do the thinking.
That same logic runs through everywhere Ben looks at leadership. Take the employee who waits two years for a promotion that never comes. They never told anyone they wanted it. Or the manager who assumes silence means satisfaction. The employee's frustration was never on the manager’s radar because nobody put it there. Ownership doesn't happen by accident. It gets built one direct conversation at a time.
Ben brings that same discipline to how leaders should evaluate technology. Usage tells you people are logging in. It doesn't tell you the business got anything back for it. A team that shows up every day and a team that gets measurably better at their jobs are not the same team, and the tools that win long term get built around the second one, not the first.
What ties both threads together is a refusal to confuse activity with progress. Whether it's a person hoping their effort gets noticed, or an organization hoping adoption numbers translate to value, the fix is the same. Get specific about what you actually need, and go ask for it directly.
Join us next time for more conversations with technology leaders who inspire us to grow, lead, and innovate. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your network.
We'll see you next time.