Alison Gretz: Solving culture before reaching for AI

Pauline Bertry 0:13

Hi, Alison. Welcome to the den. How are you?

Alison Gretz 0:16

I'm good, Pauline. How are you today?

Pauline Bertry 0:18

I'm good, I'm good. I'm so glad we finally managed to meet. It was a lot of back and forth between the calendars, but I'm very glad to have you.

Alison Gretz 0:26

Summers yeah, summers are mad as an entrepreneur and a parent and the summer camp juggle and all the things. So thank you for your patience.

Pauline Bertry 0:36

Thank you so much. Look, you know the drill. I like starting the podcast by asking people to tell me their story. I know your story is fascinating. So I don't even know from like which part of it to start asking you the questions about. So why don't I put it as a super open question? Could you tell me your story?

Alison Gretz 0:59

Sure. Yeah, I'll tell a little bit of the story without reading you my LinkedIn profile, right? Like, I am a creative, a maker, highly strategic. I have an art degree that then led me into advertising and marketing. So I got to work with a ton of different sized agencies and firms. I moved into corporate and product design work because I wanted to build the thing, not just sell the thing. Grew in leadership, ran large teams, global teams, solving really big business problems, and then honestly totally burnt out from that and refound my creativity through entrepreneurship and figuring things out and being independent and working for myself. So the past few years I've been launching different products, doing different consulting work, and now I have this really fun portfolio. of businesses and initiatives that keep me both busy and self-employed, which is just giving me that variety and tapping into my strengths as much as possible.

Pauline Bertry 2:05

Very cool. Could you tell me more about what, what do you do now? mean, I know you have a lot of different initiatives going, but maybe

Alison Gretz 2:11

I do.

Pauline Bertry 2:13

like three or five would be very nice.

Alison Gretz 2:17

Yeah. And

Pauline Bertry 2:17

you

Alison Gretz 2:17

you know what's what's interesting, a little sidebar about that is through the entrepreneurship process and probably you know, my my daughter was diagnosed with ADHD, which led me to learn about it and then get diagnosed with ADHD as well. So when I talk about the variety in my life, it is actually, I think, in part this magical marriage of finding out more about my own neurodiversity. And then helping find work and structures for work and environments for work that help me be the best ADHD entrepreneur that I can be. So it's been this really interesting neurodiversity journey as well.

Pauline Bertry 2:58

No golem.

Alison Gretz 2:59

and yes, so the thing I think most applicable here in this conversation is I'm a finding advisor of Everdare Advisors, which is a consultancy/slash advisory. For companies seeking to like really sort their employee culture out at the intersection of technology and AI. Usually people are like, hey, we need to AI our business. We need AI to come in and fix all the things in our business. And typically, it's actually not a solution need, it's a culture need. And sure, there's gonna be efficiencies and things you can. Purposefully and intentionally use AI to fix, but that's not going to fix things if you're not solving the human problems first. So I'm really enjoying the work we're doing with clients with Everdare. Part of that is I'm our lead coach, our head coach. So as an official accredited coach, which I started doing in my leadership journey, I now advise executives on human culture problems, career problems. Making sure their career is a win-win for them with where they are working right now and where they want to go, and really just helping leadership teams gel together, which is also leveraging my systemic design skills, which I do as a UX consultant, customer experience strategist, as a freelancer. Then I also run my own product, start a business in the same space. And the the surprise one is I also started running a clay sculptured earring business. And so I use that to really fuel this creative side of me and this constant maker side. And that's like a micro business where I make beautiful bookish things and sell them at markets and people buy them. So it really is a whole portfolio. But there's this thread in this story where they each kind of feed each other, which is keeping me

Pauline Bertry 4:59

Hmm.

Alison Gretz 4:59

very, very happy and satisfied.

Pauline Bertry 5:01

I love it. And I mean, I specifically love how you framed the, the intersection between AI and culture, because I think

Alison Gretz 5:10

Mm-hmm.

Pauline Bertry 5:10

there are a lot of conversations around HR in AI and AI in HR, or like AI in specific industry. But culture sometimes is completely omitted. So for you, what is the... What is the intersection between the AI and the culture? How do they meet? How do they live together?

Alison Gretz 5:34

I think we're in the journey of figuring that out. I mean, policy and legal cases are really starting to gain maturity, right? Precedents are starting to be set legally in a policy level that then impacts sort of our broader culture. And that will have to inform how companies think about using AI when it's right to use AI, both from a moral standpoint and a business standpoint and a human standpoint. And when you're just trying to shove a technology solution into something because it's the shiny thing this year, last year.

Pauline Bertry 6:13

No.

Alison Gretz 6:14

so it's been an interesting exploration because much like one of my co-advisors with Everdare always says, like, we did this with the internet. The internet was new, it was unregulated, we had to figure out policy, you know, we didn't have age limits on alcohol sites and adult content and things, but we had to grow and learn as a global culture when we got the new technology of of internet and websites. And really that same construct is happening right now, just at a very accelerated pace. Like we haven't

Pauline Bertry 6:46

Yeah.

Alison Gretz 6:46

figured out the edges and the cultural impact, right? There's no pause button on the tech bros, you know, forcing AI into everything and then the CEOs saying, quick, add AI to everything.

Pauline Bertry 7:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Alison Gretz 7:00

And so we're getting just in shidification broadly, because we're shoving AI in places where it's not adding value. It's not supporting humans at work. It's not taking the silly tasks off their plate, right? It's not yet, and there's been recent studies on this where it's not yet making work lighter or more effective for people, it's just increasing their workload, especially when you also say, I'm gonna take a bet that AI can replace my entire customer service team. It's like, no, no, it it really can't. Like human judgment and talking to a real human is starting to become an an experience differentiator. so I think we're figuring it out. And the impact culturally right now, I think, is really mostly in the negative space when employees are being sh sh forced to use AI. But not given the time to say, what problems can AI really help me with? Where can this take effort off my plate? How do I use it as part of my role so that I can be more strategic, have better work-life balance? It's just quick AI the stuff. And we also laid off three of your peers. So now you have four jobs to do, which is really short-sighted. So it's causing a lot of damage right now. But that's more because of the human people forcing it in ways that we should know better as technologists at this point.

Pauline Bertry 8:30

Yeah. I mean, I'm part of the design community with people from all over the world. And I think it's so interesting to see how the trend is shaping the industry. Because when I was looking for a job, like 10 years ago, exactly 10 years ago, by the way, as a junior designer, my portfolio was bad. But what was important was my kind of desire and wish to contribute and communicate and people would need to take bets on me. And then I would join someone senior, learn from them, like do very operational tasks. And then this would allow me to become a bit more strategic and then grow into

Alison Gretz 9:19

Yes, yes.

Pauline Bertry 9:20

my career. Now, what I'm observing is that like this entire process of learning on the job is being skipped. And the two kind of situations that I observe is either it's someone extremely senior, as you're saying, with five colleagues who got laid off, and now they need to leverage AI to be strategic in 15 different areas, and have AI do the rest. And at the same time, there are companies who are like, we can just use AI, we don't need seniors anymore, we can hire five juniors, give them AI and it's going to be enough. And then it creates such a weird market situation overall, where people are almost upset with AI. think like if you read the LinkedIn feed, like there are very few actually meaningful use cases of like, okay, I tried this, this was the... outcome, this was the output, this is what I learned. Most of the situations is either I've built 1500 cloud skills to replace your entire team or like I completely refuse

Alison Gretz 10:36

Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 10:37

to use AI because it's bullshit. And I mean, that's crazy to me. So.

Alison Gretz 10:45

It's very divisive. very extremes. what I see in my like creative clay earring business is even like an absolute ban on AI, right? Especially in creative fields. Like if you're using

Pauline Bertry 10:59

Hmm.

Alison Gretz 10:59

AI to create your products, using AI generated stuff on your products and then selling it, that is unethical. You are no longer invited to the market to sell your. So very, very extreme. And then I'm working

Pauline Bertry 11:15

Interesting.

Alison Gretz 11:16

with clients who it's like my boss is forcing me to use AI on anything and everything. So there's no focus on where are the best leverage problems to be solved that this technology can now be a part of solving. It's just quick,

Pauline Bertry 11:34

Hmm.

Alison Gretz 11:35

use it quickly, right? And when people are as burnt out as our total working population is and having to pick up so much additional context from not thoughtful layoffs, there's no time to be strategic about it. There's no time to say, what problem is this the right technology for solving? And how will it impact our working culture if we change in these ways? It still becomes a change management thing.

Pauline Bertry 12:04

No.

Alison Gretz 12:05

And we're historically terrible at change management as humans because we don't think it through all the way. And we're just seeing it demonstrated day by day. But I do think that the companies and the CEOs and the people who are saying, I'm just replacing my whole team with AI, those companies won't be a rhyme in a year or two. Like it's too short-sighted. It's not working. So I think there's a little bit of Darwin effect where it's like, okay, the people who are thoughtful, finding it for the right solutions that really help maximize the human team, the human judgment, and then implementing change thoughtfully. those are the ones who are gonna outlast all of this chaos and be successful in the long run.

Pauline Bertry 12:47

And from what you are observing, like what are the typical situations or endless or use cases where you've seen it being implemented with success, ethically in the way where it helps people be better at their jobs and

Alison Gretz 13:06

Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 13:07

that it's kind of a win-win for the employees and the organization and the business.

Alison Gretz 13:14

Yeah, I mean, honestly, the example popping to my head is one for myself as an entrepreneur, but I think this could easily scale into workplace accommodations for all sorts of neurodiversity. I've actually

Pauline Bertry 13:29

Yeah.

Alison Gretz 13:29

trained my Claude to make sure that my ADHD sort of highly generative all the ideas I have is used as a strength, but to mitigate the weaknesses. So my my Claude will say, like, hey, are you getting hyperfixated on the wrong thing? This is a rabbit hole that you could go down and spend way too much time on. Do you want to go here? And just having that like pause and that partner in helping me manage my own ADHD is immediately changing the way that I work. so you could imagine that as a workplace accommodation, is like, hey, let's put in these. moments of awareness that put awareness of our own strengths in the individual's hands, not as a monitoring thing, but in the individual's hands to say, how can I be most successful in this role? I can leverage this to be my kind of like buddy on call to help me navigate my own neurodiversity. And then I think, you know, as As a boss for many years, what I would ask my employees was just a general like, is there anything you need to be more successful? I don't need the details, just what do you need to be more successful in your role? And I think when we're applying AI in moments like that and putting it in the hands of the people in a really helpful way, those are where I see such possibilities. The places that I see it really working at scale already in companies is when it's not like we laid people off now figure it out with AI. It's like these are help finding the problems that are good to solve with a technology solution so that it gives people more time and space to do X, or at least holding the space for employees, which is what we do with Everdare advisors a lot, is holding the space to size the problems, figure out where humans make sense, where AI or other technology makes sense, and then solve it. But it's so specific by industry. What it what are you having to repeat all the time that is just a waste of time and space for everybody that could be automated? That doesn't even mean it has to be AI, but could it be automated? And some of those things we were we were talking as well about like junior employees and like the things we used to cut our teeth on as junior employees are kind of the low-hanging fruit, obvious things to maybe give AI or automate in some way, but then you're chopping off. part of your industry and culture and the learning layer where people get to create judgment, understand craft, know how to fuel and edit their creativity. And I think that's also like a very short term look at things. We need to still let people have those cut their teeth layers.

Pauline Bertry 16:22

Yeah, and I mean, on this specifically, I also start observing that it's like the way junior people work with AI is extremely different from the way more experienced professionals work with AI. So for example, my process is extremely boring. So I will sit and, I don't know, I'm trying to generate like a landing page or a brochure or whatever. So I will sit and write a really, really detailed brief around what do I want to put there. And then I will ask it, OK, can you help me identify the gaps in my thinking? And what are the elements I'm missing? And it will ask me questions. I have, and sometimes I can spend the entire day just iterating on what I'm trying to build. And then it will tell, I will spend. this section first and then I'll ask it, okay, like now can you give me a structure and like with key bullets, na, na, na, na. What I see a few people are doing in my team and I find this absolutely fascinating. So they will put it, they will give it like high level brief to start with. They

Alison Gretz 17:36

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Pauline Bertry 17:37

will get the output very, very quickly. And then while we are on the call together reviewing certain things, they feel directly prompted to make changes live. And I'm like,

Alison Gretz 17:51

Mm-hmm.

Pauline Bertry 17:51

how amazing this is because we were talking for such a long time about prototyping fast, et cetera. And I think that's such a great skill that most of us haven't even learned in the past. And I'm

Alison Gretz 18:08

Mm.

Pauline Bertry 18:08

so excited also for this new generation of talent because they are actually doing the proper fast prototyping.

Alison Gretz 18:18

Yeah, and the speed from idea to something people can react to is amazing. Like you can I I truly believe any of us could launch a business in a day and figure out if it's going to work, right? If we're using some of these tools in that generative, iterative way. We also still need the skills of like really good judgment and question asking, right? And I think You already mentioned one that's something I do as a coach all the time too. It's like, all right, what are the things we're missing? What haven't we considered? where might this fail? What assumptions do you see in my work that I'm not thinking about yet? Right. So it's not just build me a website that does this, because we're already seeing a ton of websites that look very, very similar. So it's about taking that first prototype and then Having the judgment layer, iterating, moving fast. I don't know about you, I'd love to hear your perspective on this. Like, we still need to know how the internet works to build things, right? And how to connect different things and what's possible in technology. Or at least that's what makes me very fast with AI, is I can still say, like, you know. How do I connect this or go connect this to this MCP and this other software? Make sure you're capturing this information, but looking at these privacy standards, everything needs to be, you know, up to WCAG 2.0. like you still need to have the knowledge, I think. Like, sure, you could get AI to tell you all of that, but then it's just. slow and you could have maybe done it faster working with human experts. yeah, what do you what do you think that balance is between having the knowledge and the expertise and then using AI to amplify that versus using AI to teach you or guide you along the way?

Pauline Bertry 20:24

I think it depends very much on the situation and on the cost of the mistake. Because

Alison Gretz 20:30

that's a good one.

Pauline Bertry 20:33

I mean, I will be kind of teetering a bit into the different directions.

Alison Gretz 20:39

Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 20:39

Let's say I'm building a website for like our product, RON, which is like an AI performance manager, or I am building a website for a new drug on the market. Both are websites. The technology behind is the same, but the harm Ron can do is that someone will not get a good feedback because he didn't synthesize the conversation properly. And there is a proper escalation mechanics behind it, right? So if the person disagrees with it. whatever feedback they receive, they can go to their manager. There is still a very easy escalation path to the actual conversation. If I design a website or an agent that recommends me to get a specific drug, because I tell him that I don't know, I have migraines and I don't know which medicine to take. And it gives me an advice and it's a wrong one. And I end up in the hospital. Maybe a bit more significant harm versus a bad performance review. So I

Alison Gretz 22:03

Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 22:03

think for me, this is the line. more simple in human terms, the product is more you can rely on AI, but it also means there are much more people who will try to play there. So

Alison Gretz 22:24

Mm-hmm.

Pauline Bertry 22:25

you still need to have the angle or the expertise, but you can go much faster and you can kind of launch in the market much faster without iteration and without necessarily like... significant expert risk.

Alison Gretz 22:42

Risk, yeah.

Pauline Bertry 22:43

If you are designing in, I mean, let me call it like sensitive industries,

Alison Gretz 22:49

Mm-hmm.

Pauline Bertry 22:52

designing, building, promoting like everything that I think still requires a bit longer like iteration and much

Alison Gretz 23:02

Yeah, for sure.

Pauline Bertry 23:03

more like expert input.

Alison Gretz 23:05

Yeah. And I I'm sure in your product development cycle, like you're thinking of what's a open door decision that we can easily undo and it's low risk versus a closed door decision. Like if we launch with this, it's gonna be very hard to unwind those promises or the legal risk. And I think we're even seeing the legal industry honestly wrestle with these topics. And it it's been a very interesting thing to kind of look at in parallel to creative and product. Work because the legal

Pauline Bertry 23:36

Yeah.

Alison Gretz 23:36

industry is like, all right, who's liable if the AI recommends the wrong medication to someone? Is it the company who invented the AI? Is it the company who built their software layer on top of it? Like, who owns that legal risk? And it has always been this kind of like not a not it kind of thing from companies.

Pauline Bertry 24:00

Yeah.

Alison Gretz 24:02

And service providers, right? And there's been these legal loopholes. Well, we're seeing cases now in the US where I am that are actually getting at this. Like who's responsible for the potential harm or the legal risk, et cetera? and I do think there's this interesting, like maybe it's a meta type question when you think of the software you're developing and Ron and like facilitating the performance reviews is. Performance reviews are one of the most harmful things that people can experience in the workplace. This is where feedback gets weaponized, where stylistic feedback is super biased, especially for women and people of color. So, where might Ron like step in and help managers provide really valuable win-win performance reviews that help people grow. Do less harm because managers just don't receive the training or the support that they should.

Pauline Bertry 25:04

Yeah, most of the cases, yeah.

Alison Gretz 25:06

Seriously, it's terrible. And I just saw a recent Gallup, I think it was Gallup study that talked about spans of control, which is how many direct reports does a manager have these days? And it's the highest it's ever been. It's like one manager to 12 direct reports in some companies, which

Pauline Bertry 25:21

Yeah, interesting.

Alison Gretz 25:23

I've had to the most performance reviews, like traditional performance reviews I've had to do in a corporation in one year. Or one cycle was 21. And this was probably 10 years ago. So way before we were even thinking about using AI. The

Pauline Bertry 25:36

Yeah.

Alison Gretz 25:37

amount of time to do that thoughtfully and well alongside, you know, my general team's work and keeping the business running was ridiculous. And that was a ridiculous

Pauline Bertry 25:47

Yeah.

Alison Gretz 25:47

situation, which is a story for another day. But managers are just put in these like tough spots and kind of set up for failure with things like performance reviews. So how might AI be used for good? Not only to make sure, especially in agency environments. I don't know if I ever got more than one portfolio review per five years So there wasn't that feedback loop. That that moment with my managers who could grow me as a person. And it really affected my

Pauline Bertry 26:17

Hmm.

Alison Gretz 26:18

desire to stay at that place and be there for a long time. So if we've got an AI that can take that mental load and the sort of the operations part of the review off the manager so that it actually happens, but then

Pauline Bertry 26:34

Yeah.

Alison Gretz 26:34

also make sure that it happens in a win-win way that's building people up. That's helping managers reduce bias, that's catching some of those things. This is where like the nuance of like, how do you make sure that's that's doing it for good? And I kinda wanna flip the tables and just hear from you, like how are you thinking about these meta topics as you build and think about AI for good in this problem space?

Pauline Bertry 27:02

I mean, I gave you an authorization to flip the table. So

Alison Gretz 27:04

Ha ha ha

Pauline Bertry 27:07

I mean, I think it should start maybe with a bit of a personal story. I think I was extremely lucky because I grew up, I'm what people call a McKinsey baby. So this means that I had a very small career before I joined McKinsey and I spent eight years like across. different contexts, different offices, different cultures. And I think McKinsey is amazing at growing their talent. Like there are a lot of discussions around McKinsey as a company, but that's the element that no one ever challenges. They are great at selecting and growing people internally. So I think I'm coming from an environment where performance review is not an assessment or not a weaponization situation. It's a moment in time during a year where you get to sit with yourself to think about the next steps. And that's something that is super openly being communicated by like all of the senior leaders. And also where you get time from more senior people who sit with you, not... physically with you, but who sit on your case and think about how to make you successful in this company. So I think like the entire kind of, I don't like the term performance review to start with, use it because, because that's, so we call it growth review.

Alison Gretz 28:42

I agree. Ditch it. Job growth check-in. I don't know. Yeah. Win-win check-in. Perfect.

Pauline Bertry 28:51

The problem is that in most of the context, And we were not even talking about like people performance, but we were talking about people growth in the beginning. like that's a term that is still not very common in the industry. So it's very difficult to kind of operate around it. So first of all, like for me, it's not about performance per se, it's about growth. Because if you think conceptually, I think like in the service industries and in the like mid-size companies, generally in most of the cases, the turnover is extremely high because the best way to get a new salary, to get a better salary, a better title is for people

Alison Gretz 29:38

Is to jump ship.

Pauline Bertry 29:40

to go to a different company. that's, think, where this is how we started because we wanted to fix that. I've been hearing a lot of stories from people around me and we wanted to fix that. And I think for like going back to your question on AI, I see a lot of initiative around AI being used in different people processes. In most of the cases, it's used to kind of with good intention, but to try to put objective objectivity. around someone's performance or ways of working and try to use data available to influence or even guide the decision. And this might be a super controversial opinion, but I think in every organization we take, small or big, the growth and the career growth is never objective. It's always like a people, heavily people influenced process and decision. And let's say I'm the best performer ever, but if no one in the organization wants to work with me and no one wants to open doors for me, like I will not grow there and I think The first thing that we kind of took as a basis and kind of said that we will work around that. And then we built all the AI elements and all the AI processes to make it so that different people have equal chance at getting this internal exposure and sponsorship and support. rather than trying to make it like objective measurement of someone's performance. So we want to make sure that let's say extroverts and introverts are getting enough time with their managers to have a discussion. We are working around the fact that we want managers to be prepared for the conversation with tips and like guidelines and how to give feedback instead of like just AI giving the feedback or the summary. So we really want to make like increase this connectivity moments between people because we believe that's what drives growth. And if you have someone

Alison Gretz 32:20

I love that.

Pauline Bertry 32:22

kind of rooting for you inside the organization, of course you will perform well. Why wouldn't you?

Alison Gretz 32:28

Yes, of course. Yeah. When you feel more belonging, when you feel your manager is investing in you, tons of research says you're totally right, right? Then I'm going to be able to do my best work for that person. I'm going to be able to ask the tough questions of my manager. I'm gonna be able to push back safely where that's needed. And I I think Your example of using AI to actually solve a human problem, right? Of like staying connected, having rich conversations about growth or literal performance when it's needed. those are hard conversations that managers don't get training on and employees have to deal with this power dynamic. So you're solving some of that by using AI as a facilitator and to try

Pauline Bertry 33:19

Yep.

Alison Gretz 33:20

and make sure. I always think One thing I've always done as a as as a leader of people and kind of as a designer of teams is

Pauline Bertry 33:30

Yeah?

Alison Gretz 33:30

I the promise I've always made to my teams, like anyone I'm delivering a performance review to, or for when I've managed leaders and leaders of leaders, my expectation is nothing is a surprise in that once a

Pauline Bertry 33:46

Exactly.

Alison Gretz 33:46

year thing. And it so often is, and it's so harmful. Because it's like, why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell me? How did I go around, do my work for a year, and you didn't tell me the specific thing that I could have been working on improving that is now the blocker to my

Pauline Bertry 34:06

Yeah.

Alison Gretz 34:06

growth? So I think anything we can do to make those conversations and like the radical candor and direct, rich, fruitful, meaningful conversations more accessible in all directions. is only gonna improve workplace culture, right? And it's not about using AI as the the intermediary. It's about putting both people up for success to have those conversations and making sure that the one-on-ones aren't constantly getting rescheduled and the conversations aren't happening. Or if there are patterns of avoidance, like calling those out and saying, hey, this will become a workplace harm and a workplace toxicity. thing if you don't do this.

Pauline Bertry 34:52

Yeah. And for example, you were mentioning specifically on the biases towards women and people of color. I don't know the exact stats, but that's definitely true. But there is even kind of a layer on top of that, because most of the, like, if you think about it again, in like, organizations that are like 40, 50, 200 people, you are already starting to have some kind of internal dynamics, internal groups of friends. And if the organization functions well, like it's great if people have groups of friends. Then the challenge behind it is that in most of the companies, the leadership is heavily male. So this creates a situation where they make themselves male friends, even if they're more junior. So a lot of those one-to-ones are happening in extremely informal situations around like a beer, in a bar, in I don't know, football. I don't know very much about guys.

Alison Gretz 35:58

I haven't moved enough. There we go.

Pauline Bertry 36:03

And

Alison Gretz 36:03

Yes.

Pauline Bertry 36:04

that's also part of the equation. We want to make sure that whoever you are, that you get... time and exposure to the people who will be eventually helping you grow. And I mean, I know a bit less about the specificity of like never divergent people, but same, like I know having like some bullet points prepared for you and like even a reminder around what was the last conversation about is helpful. And that's something that is like super cheap to build. and generally extremely helpful to people.

Alison Gretz 36:44

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I mean, even if you think of me as a mid-level manager suddenly having to deal with 21 direct reports, I d I eventually knew all of them personally and you know would remember what we were talking about, but that's a lot of context switching. So in order for me to show up well as a manager, I even had to think about what does that mean differently, right? Like how do they help me be successful for them, right?

Pauline Bertry 37:14

Yeah.

Alison Gretz 37:14

So they're in charge of the notes. They're taking the lead on things like their own performance review.

Pauline Bertry 37:20

No.

Alison Gretz 37:21

you know, I had to abolish one-on-ones because if I spent my week doing 21 one-on-ones, I wouldn't be doing anything else. So I had to rethink how to lead what structures I needed in the workplace to be successful there. And this was way before I knew I had ADHD, by the way.

Pauline Bertry 37:38

Yeah.

Alison Gretz 37:40

So there there's something that you said that I really want to put a fine point on because I think the reality is we exist within patriarchy, we exist within capitalism. These structures of workplace are so entrenched. We as leaders and software makers, agency owners, you know, anybody, we can choose to not do those things that we know don't work for humans, all humans. Maybe Performance reviews or growth plans. Maybe it shouldn't be every year, maybe it's every six months. And I loved what you said about having a committee of people who are literally responsible for growing somebody else. So it's never on one person because we've all

Pauline Bertry 38:23

No.

Alison Gretz 38:24

had managers that we just don't gel with, right? Like, and

Pauline Bertry 38:26

Yep, yep.

Alison Gretz 38:27

they've got direct reports that they just don't gel with. That is just being humans working with other humans, right? But having a committee of people helps keep that accountability of like, are we treating this person differently? how are we leveraging these moments of conversation in the way that makes sense for our own culture versus just what we learned when we were at Target or learned when we were at McKinsey? What decisions are we making that take the script we have just inherited and say,

Pauline Bertry 39:01

Hmm.

Alison Gretz 39:01

what actually works about this? For our culture? What how do we make saying the hard thing out loud to people in positions of power more accessible? Because it only makes our businesses stronger. so there's just there's something that gets me so excited about like, sure, that's the way business is generally done. That doesn't mean we have to keep doing it that way. And how do we think about redesigning the structures of work? And this goes back to AI. How do we think about leveraging something like AI to redesign the workplace, the feeling of work, the regenerative aspect of work instead of the burnout aspect of work and actually get it working for our people?

Pauline Bertry 39:50

Exactly. I think that's a little bit of the philosophy. don't know if it's the right word. But I think, for example, the process we are now building around drone is very much inspired by what we saw at McKinsey. One of our co-founders is at Microsoft. And they have amazing people processes. The thing is they have the entire team behind to run them,

Alison Gretz 40:19

Hm.

Pauline Bertry 40:19

to facilitate them, to build them. And my kind of perception on that is, I mean, of course you cannot expect the same, the exact same like process and rigor from a 40 % company, 40 people company and... 40,000 people company when you have the entire team behind the process. And this is why, like for me, the right philosophical usage of AI is to plug it where it creates, where it allows you to borrow something from the places that are great that you couldn't afford before. Because There is a lot of conversations between should we use AI to replace people or not? And I think that that's a wrong dynamic because it creates a very negative space for it. But should we use AI to put people or employees where you couldn't afford one before because of how your business is structured? For me, the answer is absolutely. Like, hopefully you grow because you hired this AI and then you will be able to create more job opportunities for people to do your kind of core part of the business.

Alison Gretz 41:54

Yeah. Yeah. I think there's been probably I was gonna say irreparable damage. I don't know if it's irreparable, but I think it will take a lot of time to regain employee trust because of this knee-jerk reaction of to pay for my investment in AI, I'm going to reduce the cost of my workforce

Pauline Bertry 42:15

Exactly.

Alison Gretz 42:15

and lay off these people. That has done has Caused such distrust now. And it was the wrong thing. You're actually like, again, one of my founding advisor partners at Everdare says, like, you're balancing the ledger wrong. Your people are your asset, not your cost center. So, how do you actually use AI to empower the people to reduce the costs? How do you move

Pauline Bertry 42:39

Hmm.

Alison Gretz 42:39

the human touch to where it's extremely valuable and actually a business asset versus just see the people as a cost reduction? Way to then fund AI, which was overhyped, overpromised. Like the skills to actually execute that in the workplace are l are with the people that you cut

Pauline Bertry 42:58

Hmm.

Alison Gretz 42:59

to afford the AI. So like it just doesn't make sense. And I I think it was it may have been Gallup again, that was saying, you know, by the end of 2027, we'll see most of these AI layoffs actually be reversed. People are going to

Pauline Bertry 43:11

Yes.

Alison Gretz 43:11

have to undo those, rehire people. and I think that's employers' opportunity, especially at small places actually, to grab amazing talent because the big places have been the least humane through this process of us all reckoning with this new technology and the opportunities. people getting laid off by text, by email, like that should not happen at a small firm. So all of a sudden you're going to get people who don't want to go back. To big tech, but have the big tech experience able and available and interested in working for places that feel more human, that

Pauline Bertry 43:49

Yeah.

Alison Gretz 43:49

treat their employees as assets. so I think there's gonna be a huge shakeup talent-wise over the next couple of years.

Pauline Bertry 43:56

Yeah.

Alison Gretz 43:57

And I think the companies, again, like a little bit of Darwin effect that have treated people really poorly the past couple of years are gonna be the ones who have talent shortages. they've lost trust with people. So Yeah, what do you think about that?

Pauline Bertry 44:12

I mean, I'm sorry, I

Alison Gretz 44:14

Yeah, no, I love it. Keep going.

Pauline Bertry 44:16

want to ask you a question because, mean, we spoke about AI a lot, but there is one another topic I wanted to touch with you from the very beginning.

Alison Gretz 44:24

Yes, pivot me. I love it.

Pauline Bertry 44:27

So, I mean, I think we saw it with internet, we saw it with social media. I mean, AI will change how people work. AI will replace certain people done poorly, done well. It will happen. Like certain roles are going to either like shift completely or will not exist anymore just because they were very kind of manual and now AI can can do it. And in most of the cases, it's like extremely difficult for both organizations and people to kind of find the healthy path forward when there

Alison Gretz 45:13

Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 45:13

is the situation happening. And I know that you have some very interesting thoughts on how to design a win-win in a company when someone either needs to go for those reasons or someone outgrew their role. So how do we design a win-win when we need to split paths?

Alison Gretz 45:39

Yeah, and I th I think you're totally right. With every with the industrial revolution, with internet, like we've seen not people being replaced, but roles no longer making sense. Tasks

Pauline Bertry 45:52

Hmm.

Alison Gretz 45:53

no longer making sense. I actually think we're probably headed towards a titless workforce because titles put people in such strict boxes that then their performance is measured against, their salaries are measured against, etc. But people are so amazingly multifaceted that if you put them in a title and then you force them to stay in the roles and responsibilities, you're not maximizing them. so that I kind of am answering your your question a little sidy ways, but I

Pauline Bertry 46:22

Mm.

Alison Gretz 46:22

think we have to fundamentally expect that roles, responsibilities, titles will shift. So the old way of thinking about our org charts and disciplines and titles is probably no longer going to work. In the future of work in five, 10 years, and that's all being accelerated right now. So then we have to look at skill sets, people, things that they excel at, the strengths, and put people in positions where they can be successful on the thing that's in front of them. It it reminds me of my agency days. Like there was one large, very well-known agency I worked for. I had three business cards. I was a I think associate creative director, a UX lead, and a digital strategist. And I literally would just

Pauline Bertry 47:11

Very nice.

Alison Gretz 47:12

and they allowed me to be all those things, which was so wonderful. It was still incredibly confusing for people. What do you mean Allison can wear all these hats reasonably well? you know, and I think it's like taking that mental model and saying, like you mentioned with McKinsey, identify talent, grow talent, build trust. And an actual like win-win employment relationship with that talent. And what I mean by win-win is it benefits the company and it benefits the individual. What we find is a lot of lose-lose situations, or even like it benefits the company, but the individual is losing either through overwork, burnout, lack of growth opportunities, it becomes a lose-lose. I think it's really important for managers to learn, and this is what I Do as a coach as well, how do you have those conversations really openly and directly about how to keep things a win-win or how to, hey, is this still feeling like a win-win? Or what do we need to wiggle on here or pivot here to make sure that it is? it's very short-sighted to think that your employee will stay with your company forever and that them leaving is some kind of betrayal. So you can never talk about that. Because you just want them to stay static. Like

Pauline Bertry 48:34

Hmm.

Alison Gretz 48:35

that's not how humans and workplaces work. That's not incentivized anymore the same way as it was for like my father who worked at the same place for 35 years and then retired well on a pension. Pensions barely exist anymore, especially in the US. So like there's not a win-win scenario for a for an employee to stay somewhere for a long time. When we acknowledge that and actually think about that in the growth path of that employee. it bigger, better, richer conversations can happen. What skills are important for this employee to grow that helps them with their likely next best step in their career? What stretch opportunities are they interested in that are a win-win because it takes something off your plate and lets you actually go on vacation if somebody else can do that while you're gone, especially in small companies, but it also is setting them up for success to be an excellent candidate for something Maybe at a bigger company or a different company and helps them grow. We we expect too much of our workplaces, I think, in terms of growth, and our workplaces expect us to stay too small. We need to have these win-win conversations that lead to happier employees, better work, better business outcomes, for as long as it's a win-win for that employee to be with the company and then make those conversations about like, Is this still feeling like a win-win accessible for people so that they can tweak what needs to be tweaked? And if, you know, something like your software is helping facilitate those moments and making it more accessible and okay to have those conversations, you know, maybe your software will replace me as a coach someday where I'm like training. I'm not worried about it.

Pauline Bertry 50:21

No, no, no, no. That's not... Our intention is for him to tell you... For him to tell the people when they need to go see you. Not to talk to him.

Alison Gretz 50:33

No, I I'm making jokes. I'm making jokes. Your software will make the skills that I have that not everybody can afford more

Pauline Bertry 50:43

Yeah.

Alison Gretz 50:43

accessible to people, which will reduce workplace harm globally, which I'm a huge fan of, right? Like people will still need experienced leaders who are also trained coaches who can help reduce harm in the workplace. And when they can afford an Allison or an Everdare advisors to come in and do that with them, great. But if you're a tiny startup or a small agency with really thin margins, you probably can't afford us. So then you call Pauline, right? And you use the software that is the sort of micro version and the right sized solution for that part of the puzzle.

Pauline Bertry 51:23

And we were, mean, I will have it in my post in LinkedIn at some point, because when we built a demo version for Ron, of course we asked a few people like, okay, he's a talent manager. He can advise you on like how to run the performance review cycle. And we gave him like to 15 different people to chat with him. And like a lot of people were trying to play with him and like, okay, I want to fire someone.

Alison Gretz 51:52

Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 51:52

So we were running those same tests internally. And in the

Alison Gretz 51:55

Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 51:55

very first iterations, Ron helped Alexei, who is my co-founder, build a case to fire me because my impact wasn't very

Alison Gretz 52:03

Amazing.

Pauline Bertry 52:04

clear. So I will now have it in my LinkedIn post. But these are the elements that we are now also cutting out saying, no, no, you shouldn't be talking about that. You should go. You should kind of escalate and let people go talk to each other rather than helping them do the exercise.

Alison Gretz 52:26

Yes. And why is it so hard to talk to each other? Especially I can't tell you the number of times, both as a coach and as a as a leader of big teams, where the first question is, have you spoken to that person about this? And 90% of the time the answer is no. Which to me is a skill gap. It's a training gap. It's that we've done a disservice to our management layer the past like 10 years. And, you know, there has been this like, I don't know if it's McKinsey or other, you know, companies saying like, spans of control, make managers do more with less, right? And then we've been doing that

Pauline Bertry 53:07

No!

Alison Gretz 53:08

so long. And these are the consequences of that. We've been removing the human element and people can no longer have those conversations in a really healthy, productive way. And I almost I mean, you can tell me if you disagree with this, but like a software like you're building will be great for the maintenance mode, right? Like we just need to keep doing this, we we

Pauline Bertry 53:29

Now.

Alison Gretz 53:29

know how to do it well, like we need that help. But you're still gonna need an expert with the judgment to come in and say, like, here's the things that are still the gaps. How do we actually get the humans to talk to each other? How do we make that more okay? How do we assess across the entire culture of the business to say, why is this not happening? And what do we need to put in place to triage that to get it to a better

Pauline Bertry 53:57

Of course.

Alison Gretz 53:58

spot so that we can then hand it to a software to maintain it. And that just allows us to do better work, like for Everdore Advisors to do more work where it's most needed and then be able to say, okay, now you're good. Call us if you need us. But we're gonna go work on a different thing, you can use this.

Pauline Bertry 54:20

Of course, because, I mean, there are different layers. You can have the framework, you can have the bullet points, you can know what to say, but then you need to actually say it. And I think AI can help with the first three, but then until you say it for the 15 times in front of someone and actually hear yourself saying it. And before you kind of have the reaction from a coach or someone who is helping you learn that, you will still be at the like theory part. So definitely I'm fully with you on that.

Alison Gretz 55:06

Mm, mm-hmm. And there's so many pieces, I imagine, in your product roadmap that you could be considering adding, right? Like

Pauline Bertry 55:15

I mean, we may need to have a separate session on that. Let's do this.

Alison Gretz 55:18

I would love to. because there's an observation I have as a coach. Like sometimes people don't say the thing out loud until they're saying it to somebody else or something else, right? So, like if I as a new manager could practice my performance review delivery and have that critiqued, or even just have the space where I hear myself saying it out loud and go like, that sounded terrible. I would feel awful if someone said that to me. And then it gives them an opportunity to hear it, raise awareness of that thing, whether it's judgmental language or bias or whatever it is, and then iterate on that. And I I again I think it's something that managers just aren't given the space to learn and grow and do. I certainly was not good at this my first few direct reports. I was a terrible manager, but through exposure and experience, have learned a lot,

Pauline Bertry 56:16

You'll learn.

Alison Gretz 56:17

right? but you'll never get that unless you give people the opportunity to do the thing.

Pauline Bertry 56:22

I agree. mean, we've been experimenting a lot. So what we have now found works pretty well is that yes, it has the voice entry. So you can kind of say stuff.

Alison Gretz 56:36

Mm.

Pauline Bertry 56:37

You can also have like a practice persona. So let's say like I'm a role and

Alison Gretz 56:41

Mm. Awesome.

Pauline Bertry 56:44

then a practice persona. What I think is still not working very well is the feedback part. because it can give you guidance on how to kind of, where to lead the conversation. I think the feedback it gives on your actual communication is still like 50 % good, let's say.

Alison Gretz 57:11

And that may not even be a an issue in your software, right? Like AI, we know the system has been trained on bias data in a patri. Yeah. Yeah. So like,

Pauline Bertry 57:20

No, no, that's exactly the models,

Alison Gretz 57:24

hey, bad input in, bad output out, right? And so

Pauline Bertry 57:28

Exactly.

Alison Gretz 57:29

software is like the one you're building that can say, no, no, no, no, no. Like, let's evolve from the bad inputs. Cause we don't need to do that anymore. Like we know these old systems of work don't work for anyone. They're not good for business and they're not good for humans. So let's

Pauline Bertry 57:46

for people.

Alison Gretz 57:47

stop doing that and actually take

Pauline Bertry 57:49

Exactly.

Alison Gretz 57:50

the moment to redesign work that works. And this is where, like, especially the creative design product industry, I see so much potential for the humans who have grown up through these industries to be the ones facilitating.

Pauline Bertry 58:06

Yeah.

Alison Gretz 58:06

the future of work and saying like, hey, that's not working. So let's actually create and innovate and do something differently. and then be able to scale those learnings. So that's why I'm I'm so excited with the portfolio of work in front of me and getting to do it at all these different levels and scales is

Pauline Bertry 58:24

Very cool.

Alison Gretz 58:25

then all the learnings just translate and cross so that I can help clients with more of the things without a title. Yeah. I don't need a title.

Pauline Bertry 58:33

I love I love it.

Alison Gretz 58:35

Just just hire me to do stuff and it will be good and it will be better.

Pauline Bertry 58:39

I love it. I mean, I was going to ask you for the closing thought for the podcast, but I really love the last piece that you said.

Alison Gretz 58:49

Yeah. Yeah, I truly believe we are headed to a land of work where titles are completely meaningless. To, you know, and to demonstrate that actually in in my most recent business venture, which is called the Glimmer Network, my co-finder and I purposefully call ourselves untitled co-finders because we realized

Pauline Bertry 59:10

I love it! Very cool.

Alison Gretz 59:12

like it's it's it's the old system of work. We could have any title we want and it varies day to day. Like some days I'm doing, you know, the janitorial work and other days I'm doing the incredibly strategic CEO work. Like no title encompasses it. So we actually try to demonstrate this through doing it, which I think is a key leadership lesson as well. So every time we host a workshop or we do a thing, we introduce each other with a completely made-up title. so I think the last The last time my coworker Nicole introduced me, it was like, Allison is the chief officer of saying the difficult thing out loud. You know? Our titles

Pauline Bertry 59:52

Very nice.

Alison Gretz 59:53

are meaningless and they keep us so trapped in old systems of work. Make your title whatever you want.

Pauline Bertry 59:58

Very good. I love it. Thank you so much. Thank you, Alison. was very lovely to have you. Bye-bye.

Alison Gretz 1:00:03

Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah. Bye.