Why Your AI Adoption Strategy Is Failing (And How to Fix It)
By: Gemma Versace
February 18, 2026 25 min read
Most AI rollouts don't fail loudly. There's no mutiny, no all-hands blowback, no angry Slack thread. The launch goes fine. The training gets done. The metrics hold — for a while.
Meanwhile, the team has already reverted to running everything on old-school spreadsheets again.
Paul Gentile has watched this pattern repeat across some of the largest enterprise environments in tech. As a former senior director of pre-sales engineering and architecture at Broadcom and author of Revolutionary Revenue: AI Powered Strategies for Sales, he's seen organizations celebrate the rollout and miss the adoption entirely. "Think about how many billions of dollars of software platforms have been sold," he says. "And yet major companies still run on spreadsheets and email and documents that get passed around and printed out."
Shadow systems aren't a new problem. But AI has made them harder to ignore — and harder to explain away.
In this episode of Keep Moving Forward, Paul joins host Gemma Versace to explain why AI adoption fails quietly, how to read the signals before performance drops, and why the gap between what organizations reward and what they say they value is the most overlooked trust-breaker in tech.
Why AI Adoption Fails (Hint: It's Not the Technology)
When people don't believe in a tool, they usually don't say so. They just route around it.
Paul has seen this play out the same way across industries and company sizes, and the pattern almost always starts the same way: a big promise to executives, an implementation that lands differently than anyone planned, and users who quickly realize the platform isn't actually solving their problem. "Most of the AI platforms I try are really good at doing one thing," he says. "Getting your credit card."
The promises are big. The delivery rarely matches it. The result is shadow systems — the spreadsheets, workarounds, and informal processes that multiply quietly while the official platform sits underused.
Most organizations have far more of them than leadership realizes. The root cause, Paul says, is almost always a gap between the people who built the solution and the people who have to live with it. "The people who implemented didn't understand the real reason it was needed, and the people who are using it don't really understand what it's going to give them." When both sides are solving for different things, the tool never had a chance.
That reframe matters: Shadow systems aren't a sign that people resist change. They're a sign that people want to perform, and they'll find a way to do it with or without the platform you just rolled out.
Change Fatigue Doesn't Show Up in Your Dashboard
Here's the thing about high performers: They keep delivering no matter what.
That's what makes change fatigue so dangerous. The metrics look fine. Productivity holds. And somewhere underneath it, the team is running on fumes while leadership congratulates itself on a smooth transition. "A lot of these people will continue to perform even though they feel like they're being crushed by all these changes," Paul says. "So it's not a metric thing, it's really more about tone."
The stability window that used to give teams time to absorb change has effectively collapsed. Leaders turn over. Priorities shift. The market moves. And not everyone will have the bandwidth to adjust as fast as the org expects them to.
The fix isn't more surveys. It's knowing your people well enough to notice when something shifts long before it shows up anywhere measurable. "If you're a manager and you think everything's great, there's a problem," Paul says. "Because it's never always great."
Develop Trust as a System, Not a Sentiment
Of all the ways organizations quietly break trust, Paul thinks this one is the most common — and the least recognized.
It goes like this: leadership announces a commitment to value-based selling, long-term customer outcomes, sustainable growth. Everyone nods. Then quota season arrives, and the only thing that gets celebrated is the number. "They will tell people, 'This is what we want to achieve, this is what we want to do,'" Paul says. "But then they will reward the opposite behavior. This is one thing that is a huge trust breaker for most organizations, and they don't realize it."
People pay far closer attention to what gets rewarded than what gets said. When those two things diverge — even once, even subtly — people recalibrate. They stop optimizing for the stated goal and start optimizing for the incentive. And they do it quietly, the same way they build shadow systems: without making a scene, without raising a flag, without giving leadership any obvious signal that something has shifted.
The antidote, Paul argues, isn't a new framework. It's consistency — between words and rewards, between good quarters and bad ones. "It's the small things every day," he says. Not one defining moment of authenticity, but fifty small ones that prove you mean what you say. "Some of these things really aren't complicated," he adds. "We probably learned most of them in kindergarten. But for some reason, we think that once we're sophisticated in business, that's not really how the world works. No — it is how it works."
For any leader who has wondered why a rollout stalled, why adoption plateaued, or why a high-performing team went quiet — Paul's answer is consistent: the technology was probably fine. The trust wasn't.
Looking for more stories from tech leaders who embody the Keep Moving Forward ethos? Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and never miss an episode.
Transcript
Paul Gentile:
I see so many organizations, especially sales organizations, fail on this one piece, they will talk about clarity of message and they will tell people, "This is what we want to achieve, this is what we want to do," but then they will reward the opposite behavior. And I think this is one thing that is a huge trust breaker for most organizations and they don't realize it, is that when you say you're going to do something, you also reward the right behavior for that.
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. In every episode, we sit down with leaders who are redefining how technology teams work, grow, and lead, people who understand that performance begins with connection. Today's conversation is for leaders navigating constant change. Right now, expectations are rising across every organization. Leaders are being asked to adopt new technology, deliver stronger results, and move faster every quarter. At the same time, many teams are feeling the weight of nonstop transformation and unclear priorities.
My guest today is Paul Gentile, a pre-sales engineering and architecture leader. He's worked a senior director of Pre-Sales, engineering and architecture at Broadcom, and he's also the author of the book Revolutionary Revenue, AI for Sales, where he explores how AI is reshaping sales leadership and why people, process, and technology must evolve together for adoption to truly stick. Paul has spent years leading distributed technical teams through rapid product launches, strategic shifts, and large-scale AI adoption inside complex enterprise environments. In our conversation, Paul explains why AI is not just a technology initiative, it is a leadership and enablement challenge. He shares how clear guardrails can create speed instead of friction, how to recognize change fatigue before performance drops, and why trust is the foundation of high performing teams. If you are trying to raise the bar while protecting your team's energy, this episode is for you. Let's get started.
Hi Paul, and welcome to Keep Moving Forward. Thanks so much for joining us today.
Paul Gentile:
Thank you, Gemma. I'm excited to be here. Looking forward to the conversation.
Gemma Versace:
Yes, absolutely. Me too. And a good place to always start is to tell me a little bit about your background and your role at Broadcom.
Paul Gentile:
Sure. I was leading the partner technology organization, the intersection between sales and architecture for our partners. And I ended up there because I was at VMware previously for about almost 12 years, and of course, Broadcom acquired VMware. And most recently, I've exited there to focus on this, doing my own thing.
Gemma Versace:
Amazing. Talking about going off and doing your own thing, you are an author of the book Revolutionary Revenue, which as soon as we are finished today, I am keen to go out and pinch us a copy and learn all the wonderful insights and things that you've said there. But in your book, Revolutionary Revenue, you've said AI works when people, process, and leadership grow together. Where do you most often see leaders get that balance wrong?
Paul Gentile:
Sure. Well, thank you. Yeah, and in fact, actually, yes, that's the book, so for those that are wondering-
Gemma Versace:
Excellent.
Paul Gentile:
I think it's just like any technology, everyone starts with the tool, the technology, and really you have to start with the outcome. What are we trying to do and then who are the people that are going to get us there? And then lastly is the how we're going to do it. And that's where technology comes in, because if I wanted to dig a hole and I start with a shovel and then I find out, well, really I needed a backhoe, okay, well, I've got the wrong tool. Then you find out, "Well, gee, I need somebody to operate the backhoe. Oh, and by the way, this hole is going to be so deep that it needs bracing and shoring and these other things."
But in technology we always start backwards. We don't architect the outcome we want. We forget about the people, and that's really where I see leaders get it wrong. That's what I was trying to do in the book was put all those in context, that if you start with where you want to end up, then you can find the people to get you there and then you can work with the tools and the technology to make it possible.
Gemma Versace:
Yeah, I love that as a concept because you're exactly right, I think people, they find the tools or they get told by people what tools to use, and then it's a case of saying to the people, "Here's the square, fit in it," rather than, "How do we build the square?" And to your point, "What skills are necessary and what people are necessary to be able to help us build that?" So I love that focus on very much a people-first and then going and looking at what outcomes they can be delivering as well.
You've led teams through non-stop change with places like VMware. How do you personally recognize when a team is approaching change fatigue before performance drops? Because as leaders, we are often always trying to make sure that we are consistently trying to do things different rather than looking at it and saying, "How do we do it better?" And because of that, there are so many times that leaders come to their teams and say, "Now this is something," or "This is something different." And change fatigue is a real thing across workforce. How do you make sure that you are aware of that and that you can address that before there's any noticeable performance drop?
Paul Gentile:
Sure. That's a really good question because it's real in all size businesses. If you're a small business today, change is dictated by the marketplace, what you're trying to do and achieve, and your marketplace keeps shifting. If you're in a large enterprise or large company, change ... I'd say there's probably maybe a two-year stability window in any type of business, but that's probably even today would be a long window, because leaders change, priorities change, the marketplace changes. And when you have a team, especially a high performing team, they could be very sensitive to that, because in the high-tech world, they're very smart people, they're good problem solvers, but they don't always have the ability to adjust really fast.
So I think first, as a leader you have to recognize that change is the constant. Two, you have to know each of your people. Where are their strengths, where are their challenges? And as the leader, it's the responsibility to make sure they can do what they're good at doing and that you have the systems to enable them to do that. But usually what I see, some leaders will look and say, "Well, we're going to measure the metrics." A lot of these people will continue to perform even though they feel like they're being crushed by all these changes. So it's not a metric thing, it's really more about tone and sometimes it's more guttural, it's more feel. So, one, I think constant communication, making sure that there's clarity of message in both ways. We're not just dictating to the team what they need to achieve, but we're also hearing back that it's the same.
And in fact, any of us who've worked in large corporations or have worked with customers who are large corporations and large enterprises, you can quickly see how fast an organization can get disconnected. You can talk to frontline people, whether they're in IT or marketing or wherever, and by the time you get up two or three levels, there's just a disconnect of what that message is. So that also insulates the change and that crush that sometimes these frontline people and these teams can feel.
So I think the first thing really is, one, focus on the people. Understand who they are, what drives them, and then look for changes in how they're interacting and the communication coming back from them. I think that's some of the keys to handling that type of constant change.
Gemma Versace:
I love what you just said there too, about your being such an authentic leader and being able to lead with your gut and be able to, if you are having an interaction with one of your team members and you're picking up something that they're letting you know exactly how they're feeling, to actually be able to take a pause and digest it and say, "Is this something that we need to respond to that could potentially change for either that individual?" Or it has the potential to be really impactful across your whole team. It is such a wonderful thing saying that, because I think a lot of leaders, as you said, is that instead of just kind of mandating and saying, "This is what we will do," and being very top-down, to be able to have that collaboration and engagement with your teams to really understand what's driving them and what their thoughts and feelings are, it's such a collaborative way of thinking.
I love that.
You mentioned enterprise environments, whether it be the business that you are currently working in, or your clients, in those environments, in enterprise environments, leaders often default to control things when things start to feel really complex. How have you learned to use guardrails instead of mandates?
Paul Gentile:
Lots of prayers. I think first it's trust. You have to trust in the people you're working with, so you need to hire people and find people that have a shared value base. That's one. But two, I think you also have to trust in the systems you put in place. I think the reason we move to a lot of times as leaders, a command and controls type structure, is because it's easier for us. It takes away that anxiety. It really can put in place what we believe is a better way to execute. The reality is, then it's putting on us as the leader, we have to think of everything. We have to be the one who thinks of every scenario, every situation. But when you have the right people and you have the right systems and then you have clarity of message, now you could say, "Here's the objective. Are we getting to the objective?" Not at any cost, of course, but those are non-negotiable.
So if our objective is we want to go out and we want to bring ... I don't know, let's just say we want to solve this problem in the world. Let's say it's a medical problem. "We want to solve cancer." If I'm the leader of that organization and I've got to think of every way to solve cancer, it's going to be really short. I know I'm not that smart, but if I can hire people who also all agree that this is the objective we've signed on for, we've got clarity of mission, clarity of message, and we also have our non-negotiables, we're not going to do it in a way that, say, hurts people or is not ethical. So those are those things, and I think those are all our systems. The message drives everything else, but the systems drive what we can do.
So as the leader, it's really just about setting the objectives and having that clarity of mission, which is our message. I've seen it over and over, I'm sure you have, we can see it everywhere, there's so many adages or things that say, "The tighter you grip, the more control you lose," all these types of things. And I think they've been around forever because it's the truth. The more you try and control things, the less control you actually have.
Gemma Versace:
You've built distributed teams across regions and time zones with your career today. What do initially, what did you, I should say, initially underestimate about leading teams that you don't physically see every day, because there's different cultures, there's different attitudes, there's different time zones? If you had a wonderful crystal ball that if you could go back in time, what are some of the things that you did underestimate about not being able to be eyeballing in person your teams every single day to help keep them on track?
Paul Gentile:
Sure. Actually, it's what you just said, is seeing them in person. I think as humans, we crave connection. And I'm just as guilty as what I said in my very first answer, that you think the tool or technology can replace that. And as much as Zoom and WebEx and all these tools we've had over the years can connect us with our voice and with images, I just think that simple act of meeting somebody in person, sharing a smile, sharing a coffee or a drink of water or just a conversation to understand who they are, is so much more valuable. And we could do some of that through technology, but the actual presence of being with them, I think we definitely have something in our being that says we want to feel connected. So I think that's probably the biggest challenge when you run multinational teams.
And again, I don't think it could ever be perfect. It's hard to get from, say, New Jersey to Tokyo on a whim, or to London, but I think you do it by planning and making time for them. Just like you would for a family. I like analogies and my wife obviously is in the ... If you don't know, she's a chef and has a restaurant. We work together as well, and we came from the restaurant business. And in the restaurant business, they call it family. We always talk about family meal and they call it a house, and I think more businesses should think like that. We should think about business being more about family, not, "It's business, not personal." No, it is personal. These are people, and no matter where they are in the world, they have the same thoughts and feelings about work and life and family, and they want to feel safe and secure. And they also want to feel noticed, they want to feel heard. So I think creating that for everybody is one of the big keys to a successful team.
Gemma Versace:
Yeah, absolutely. I love what you say there, because it is that whole, "It's business, it's nothing personal," but it's humans that we're dealing with. I mean, obviously with the emergence of AI and AI agents, that's a little bit different, but right now the majority of our teams are humans with feelings that we need to support and look after and be really conscious of. One of the things that you just said there that I thought was really interesting is, when you do have people that are onsite every day, you are able to celebrate those small wins because you can overhear a conversation that they had that they might've turned around a potential lost sale. Or there might've been an irate customer that you can hear started off really horribly, and then they've done all of the wonderful things to be able to make sure that they can maintain that customer, because you are actually there to physically hear it and see them work through and deliver the success.
Talking about AI and new AI platforms and tools that are out there, when organizations roll out AI tools or any new platform, what do you see as the earliest signal that adoption is going to fail? Whether it be that you're not getting the buy-in from the team or there's not an understanding as to the benefits or the value that the AI tool or the new platform's going to deliver, what has your experience been that has made a light bulb go off in you to say, "Hey, we're going off the tracks here"? And how do you get back on the tracks?
Paul Gentile:
By the way, I always preface this by saying anything about AI is also about any technology and any type of transformation. This is really just a new transformation. This is the AI transformation. But I would say the number one indicator is shadow systems. I think people are very good at, they want to perform, they want to do their best in their role, for their team, for their company, for themselves. And anything that impedes that or they don't see as valuable, they will quickly go around. I think of years ago there was a meme, I think before we called it memes, with the tire swing. And it's what the customer wanted, what the architect designed, what engineering built, and what was delivered. It's completely different. And that happens all too often with AI today.
Candidly, most of the AI ... I try a lot of different AI platforms all the time, and I'm talking beyond when you start getting away from the OpenAIs and the Anthropics, to these other ones who get into the specialty. And the number one thing I find most of them are really good at doing is getting your credit card. And they're really good upfront at saying what they're going to do, and then once you get into them, they're really not delivering. And I think that's true even in enterprise AI projects. I think there's a big promise to the executives and that's what they want, and then what gets delivered and implemented ends up being slightly different or completely different. And so the users all of a sudden realize like, "Wow, we need to have some other shadow systems."
Most companies have so much shadow systems, they don't even realize it. Think about how many billions of dollars of software platforms that have been sold, but yet major companies still run on just simple spreadsheets and email and documents that get passed around and printed out. I won't say where, but there's somebody I know for a lot of years, we used to work together and they work at another organization today, that they don't even send email. They literally still print out memos and put them on people's desks. And I'm like, "Wow."
So it's not an AI thing. I think it's the reality that people are human, and if people don't see value in something or they don't understand it, I really think that's the real issue. The people who implemented didn't understand the real reason it was needed, and the people who are using it don't really understand what it's going to give them, and maybe it's really not giving them what they need. So you see shadow systems pop up everywhere. It's something we've tried to solve for years, but it still happens.
Gemma Versace:
That's a really interesting take on it, and the phrase that comes to mind is, "All the gear, but no idea."
Paul Gentile:
Yeah.
Gemma Versace:
Because people, they've got it available to them, but they don't get the cut through. It doesn't resonate exactly how they're going to be able to benefit from it or how they should be interacting with it to be able to really drive that value. So yeah, it's a really interesting take.
To pivot a little bit now, you talk a lot about trust as a prerequisite for performance. What are the small, everyday leadership behaviors that actually build trust? You talked a little bit about before around being able to call out the successes so your teams can trust that you're aware of what they're delivering, and they can trust that you're looking at how they're behaving and they can trust that you have an awareness as to the good things that they're delivering. But what are the everyday leadership behaviors that leaders listening to the podcast can take on and start to incorporate into their everyday interactions with their teams?
Paul Gentile:
It's one of those things that I think is so important in a team. Another way to discuss trust or define it, I call it safe space. The team really needs to feel that when they show up with their authentic self, whether they're agreeing with what's going on or questioning it or executing on it, that they're in a space that they can trust. And I think how you get there, it's not big gregarious things, it's the small things every day. It's, one, letting them know that, as a leader you're fallible as well. I'm not perfect. And I think it's also about, we said clarity of mission or message, but it's also clarity of roles. Sometimes because how people have come up through their career, maybe I'm different, maybe I look at this differently, but people will want to take and put all that onto the leader. "Oh, you're responsible for everything I do. Just tell me what to do." And I think that strips away trust, because what they can say next is, "Well, it was wrong, so it's your fault." And so they automatically start without trusting.
So it takes a lot of little steps. One, getting to know them, who they really are. Again, showing up every day with the small things. I said clarity of message. And it's got to be consistent. And I think consistency is another, that you're always the same. When the business is good, you're not one type of leader, and then when it's bad, you're another type of leader. You're the "Arghh," you're going to freak out. But I think the other piece of it too is, and I see so many organizations, especially sales organizations fail in this one piece, they will talk about clarity of message and they will tell people, "This is what we want to achieve, this is what we want to do," but then they will reward the opposite behavior. And I think this is one thing that is a huge trust breaker for most organizations and they don't realize it, is that when you say you're going to do something, you also reward the right behavior for that.
And the great example I'll use in sales that happens almost all the time across so many organizations, they will say, "We want to be a value selling organization. We want to go out and talk about our customers' outcomes and deliver on those outcomes." But then when it comes to rewarding how sales actually happen, they only care about the number. So where do people gravitate? They gravitate towards the number. So you've broken trust there, because you have to say one thing, but you're actually doing the other. So I think that's another key, is doing what you say and saying what you do. I think some of these things really aren't complicated. We probably learned most of them in kindergarten. But for some reason, we think that once we're sophisticated in business, like, "Oh, that's not really how the world works." No, it is how it works. We just don't want to admit it. Again, I may be a little hard on that.
Gemma Versace:
No, I love it. It's really refreshing to hear, because as you've said, there's so many different theories out there. There's so many different sexy new leadership ideas that people think, "Oh, this is how we have to be interacting with our team," that most leaders do feel awkward and clunky doing it, but because they're getting told this is the new way of leadership. A lot of what you have shared today, which I think is absolutely brilliant, is also just stripping back all of that. And you said it a little while ago, like, "Just lead with your gut. Be true to yourself. Be making sure that you say as you do and do what you say, as well as bring things back to basics."
It's a really good point that you say that from a sales perspective and in client success teams that leaders are about, how do we create the value to clients? How do we create that stickiness? How do we make sure that the clients love us and continue to work with us? But that all goes out the window if somebody's doing that, but it might take a year to get that sale, versus someone who goes out and gets a sale immediately and that's where all the praise and attention goes. I love the idea that you're saying it's all the small things that build a really strong foundation that allows your team to be the main characters and go out and shine, because they're able to grow in that safe space. I think that's amazing.
In the roles that you have looked after within from a sales perspective, in pre-sales and architecture roles, teams sit at an intersection of pressure and possibility. What's the difference between healthy pressure and destructive pressure? Because you've mentioned a couple of times here that it's not about mandates, you want a safe space, there needs to be collaboration. But also, leaders do need to deliver and there's pressure on them. How do leaders make sure that when they are sending the message down or making sure that their teams are delivering, that it's not destructive pressure, that you stay in the healthy pressure zone?
Paul Gentile:
It's a fine line, and I think every organization culturally is obviously different, but also that fine line I think moves. If we look at it from the big picture, let's say a sports team, the pressure being in the Finals or the Super Bowl or the World Series puts a lot of pressure on the team and everybody on that team to perform, that's a very positive pressure because they all kind of focus. And I would say this, if the pressure helps everyone focus on a clear objective, that's a good thing. The opposite would be, let's say a coach or a team manager who is just coming up with what the team would perceive as, say, random or hurtful culture or metrics or measurements, and they just don't want to show up and play. They're kind of demotivated. That's the other end of the spectrum. They've got a pressure because they've got a paycheck and they've got to be there, but they don't really want to. So I think those are the ends of the spectrum.
Where it happens in the middle, especially in business, can be a challenge, because you do need people to perform. Just because it's a safe space doesn't mean that you can't perform. What the safe space allows is everybody to have their own thoughts, their own opinions, their own self in the achievement of that single goal. Years ago, and I'm sure we've all done it, whether we've done it in school or through training, whatever, you talk about the four stages of team development. Forming, storming, norming, and performing. It's not a new concept, but I think throughout there, that's where you can see where pressure gets applied. When a new team comes together, everybody's got their own idea of what the objective is, of what the mission is, but what overcomes that is all ... It's kind of like the honeymoon period. It's just that elation, that joy of being together. There's an emotional feel, so nobody really notices it.
And then all of a sudden you kind of hit that wall, and that's the storming phase. That's when you realize we're not all aligned. We don't all really have the same mission in mind. Maybe I believe, if this was a basketball team, I believe I'm the superstar. No. The real goal is we want to win the championship at the end of the year, not you being the star. So now we're storming. We've finally realized we're not really on the same page here. And then you start to get to normalize. You start to come through, and this is where the leader, this is where pressure I think is really important, because you step in and you help your team to clarify what the mission is. Each one of them is going to have to individually overcome whatever has kept them from focusing on that mission, and you start to normalize. And that's when you get to performance in that step four.
So I think how do you recognize it? The first thing is, are we moving the mission forward? Or like I said, are we playing in the World Series or the Playoffs? Is that the type of pressure that we're under? Or is this an artificial pressure because everybody is in disarray, and we're just going to push down more metrics on them, we're going to push more activity on them, we're going to push more results we want from them? And you can usually tell really fast. That again, goes back to what we talked about, getting to know your people and who they are and how they perform. They'll tell you really fast, especially if you create that safe space. Now, if they're not telling you, that's another key indicator. So if you're a manager and you think everything's great, there's a problem because it's never always great.
Gemma Versace:
Love how, as you said, pressure is something that you need to work through, but you can also harness it, and all of those great ideas and strategies that you've just talked through, for leaders listening, I think is some really sage advice. I could talk to you all day, Paul, but this is the last question. I wanted to get your thoughts on this. So for those people listening, as you think about the leaders who are listening to the podcast, who are looking for different ideas, who are looking for advice, who are looking for strategies from somebody like you who has worked across small, medium, and large enterprises, who have led large distributed teams, who are navigating constant change that you've been through and what you've delivered successfully, what's one belief or habit that has helped you keep moving forward when things are difficult?
Paul Gentile:
You have to believe it's possible. If anybody else on earth can do something, so can you. And two, don't take yourself so seriously. Don't be so stuck that your thoughts are correct. And I say that because most of the time our thoughts are around how we can't do stuff. So don't believe that you're the expert on not doing stuff, because you're not. It's just your brain trying to trick you and protect you. So believe it is possible and don't believe it's not possible. Don't take yourself so seriously on that.
Gemma Versace:
That is just such a fabulous way to wrap up. I think the feeling of this whole discussion and podcast today as well is that, the people listening today could walk away with a really large amount of fantastic ideas and advice that's going to help them create a really amazing foundation for repeatable processes. And I just think it's been so refreshing to hear from you today with your honesty and transparency around how you've been successful, but some really fantastic foundations from the people listening today. So, thank you so much again, Paul. Thanks for joining Keep Moving Forward.
Paul Gentile:
Gemma, thank you. It's been a pleasure. It was an absolute joy of a conversation. Thank you.
Gemma Versace:
My conversation with Paul reinforced something we see every day at X-Team, high performance does not come from pressure alone, it comes from clarity, it comes from trust, and it comes from leaders who build systems where people can experiment safely, take ownership, and grow together. What stood out most was Paul's focus on guardrails instead of mandates. When expectations are clear and teams feel supported, they move faster, adoption improves, ownership increases, performance becomes sustainable instead of reactive. In distributed environments, trust and communication are not optional, they are foundational. When leaders actively manage change fatigue, instead of ignoring it, they both protect results and people.
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 Music. And if this episode resonated with you, please share it with your network. Until next time.
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