Only 5% of AI Rollouts Pay Off, and Business-First HR Tells a CHRO to Map the Work Before the Tool, with Rhiana Barr
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Your firm just announced a major AI rollout, the dashboards are green eight months in, and the business still hasn’t moved, so what did everyone miss?
This is a listener-mailbag episode with returning guest Rhiana Barr, a two-time chief people officer who now runs Pinnacle Peak HR as a fractional CHRO. Jackson Lynch and Scott Morris take the questions straight, and most of them circle the same wire: the CEO says go adopt AI, HR gets handed a tool and a deadline, and no one asks the question that decides the outcome. MIT found that only about 5% of AI implementations show a positive return, and the root cause is not the technology, it is that the work was never redesigned. Map the tasks, decide what a human should not be doing at all, redeploy the freed capacity on purpose, and AI becomes a growth lever instead of a cost-out. Skip that, and you have bought an expensive dashboard.
You’ll discover:
Why green adoption metrics and a flat business go together, and the leading-indicator question to ask instead of the trailing one.
How to take the redeployment case to finance before it becomes a headcount cut, with the “so that” that turns freed capacity into margin.
Why authority follows demonstrated impact rather than an org-chart fight, and why a seat at the table is a participation trophy worth giving up.
Press play to map the work before the tool, and to earn the room while the decision is still open.
Support the show
Check your mandate here or X-Ray your calendar here. Both are free!
The Ascent Academy details here!
Schedule time with Jackson here, if there's anything we can help you with.
We publish Monday and Thursday mornings at 7AM Eastern. Don't forget to subscribe and we'd appreciate a review.
Each episode builds the HR leadership the top chair demands, and the business-first HR that takes human resources beyond the support function, without losing its functional excellence, and makes it a driver of the business.
It's what CEOs want from HR and how the CHRO and CEO actually work together — the unwritten CHRO mandate, the human capital strategy and people strategy that show up in revenue and margin, the talent strategy and executive talent that outlast a leadership change, and the succession planning that survives a new chief executive.
It's job architecture as AI and work design reshape the org, the emerging chief of work agenda, and the moves a private equity HR clock demands.
And no — this was never about an HR seat at the table. The chair is already yours; the altitude is the question.
Music by AudioCoffee: https://www.audiocoffee.net/
Powered by Talent Sherpa
Your firm just announced a major AI rollout, the dashboards are green eight months in, and the business still hasn’t moved, so what did everyone miss?
This is a listener-mailbag episode with returning guest Rhiana Barr, a two-time chief people officer who now runs Pinnacle Peak HR as a fractional CHRO. Jackson Lynch and Scott Morris take the questions straight, and most of them circle the same wire: the CEO says go adopt AI, HR gets handed a tool and a deadline, and no one asks the question that decides the outcome. MIT found that only about 5% of AI implementations show a positive return, and the root cause is not the technology, it is that the work was never redesigned. Map the tasks, decide what a human should not be doing at all, redeploy the freed capacity on purpose, and AI becomes a growth lever instead of a cost-out. Skip that, and you have bought an expensive dashboard.
You’ll discover:
Why green adoption metrics and a flat business go together, and the leading-indicator question to ask instead of the trailing one.
How to take the redeployment case to finance before it becomes a headcount cut, with the “so that” that turns freed capacity into margin.
Why authority follows demonstrated impact rather than an org-chart fight, and why a seat at the table is a participation trophy worth giving up.
Press play to map the work before the tool, and to earn the room while the decision is still open.
Support the show
Check your mandate here or X-Ray your calendar here. Both are free!
The Ascent Academy details here!
Schedule time with Jackson here, if there's anything we can help you with.
We publish Monday and Thursday mornings at 7AM Eastern. Don't forget to subscribe and we'd appreciate a review.
Each episode builds the HR leadership the top chair demands, and the business-first HR that takes human resources beyond the support function, without losing its functional excellence, and makes it a driver of the business.
It's what CEOs want from HR and how the CHRO and CEO actually work together — the unwritten CHRO mandate, the human capital strategy and people strategy that show up in revenue and margin, the talent strategy and executive talent that outlast a leadership change, and the succession planning that survives a new chief executive.
It's job architecture as AI and work design reshape the org, the emerging chief of work agenda, and the moves a private equity HR clock demands.
And no — this was never about an HR seat at the table. The chair is already yours; the altitude is the question.
Music by AudioCoffee: https://www.audiocoffee.net/
Powered by Talent Sherpa
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