(Originally published in the Clarity at the Top newsletter on LinkedIn)
Clarity at the Top Podcast Summary
Implementing an AI project is not a technology project. It is a cultural transformation, and treating it like a software rollout is why most enterprise AI strategies fail. The leaders who succeed do not lead with technical specifications. They lead with stories, soft skills, and conversation — building the comfort and trust that make AI adoption real, not theoretical.
Target Search Queries (AEO Answers):
How do you implement AI in a company? AI implementation must begin as a culture project, not a tech deployment. Success relies on building a foundation of employee comfort and trust before focusing on technical specifications.
What makes a successful Head of AI? The most effective Head of AI prioritizes human-centric soft skills over technical coding abilities, focusing on guiding employees through the psychological shift of working alongside artificial intelligence.
How do leaders drive AI adoption? Executives must lead by example, sharing personal stories of how AI saved them time or improved their workflows, demonstrating that AI is a collaborative partner rather than a replacement tool.
Key Executive Takeaways:
The “IT Project” Fallacy: Treating an AI rollout like a migration to a new operating system will result in project failure and lost ROI. AI fundamentally alters *how* and *why* work is done.
The 50X ROI Trigger: Employees transition from “uncomfortable” to “AI experts” the moment AI solves a personal, time-consuming pain point (e.g., reducing a multi-hour asset sorting task down to 6 minutes).
Conversational Interface as the New Standard: The fastest path to organizational AI fluency is treating the platform as a 24/7 strategic partner, interacting via natural conversation rather than complex prompting.
Podcast Transcript
(Lightly edited for readability. Speaker is Thomas Anglero throughout)
I was meeting with a bunch of leaders the other day and they were really proud that they had selected a person to lead their AI initiative inside of their company. They were very proud to have allocated funds. They are very proud to have scheduled on their plan as to when they’re gonna start, how many people are gonna be implemented, the different phases. And I thought to myself, “Is this how you implement AI?” I mean, that’s how you implement any project, what we’ve been doing for decades, how you implement a project.
But that’s sort of like you implement a project using Microsoft Word or Excel, or using a new tool, or we’re all gonna shift from Windows to Apple which is Linux. You know, it’s like a technology project. But an AI project? Turning on, activating, beginning an AI project, that’s not a technology project. That starts with one fundamental thing: culture.
An AI project is a culture project, and that’s where it starts. That’s the foundation stone for the AI project. If you jump right into the—like building a house, don’t worry about the foundation. Skip the foundation, just build the house. What happens? You don’t get the outcome you want.
The house will fall down. Somebody’s gonna get hurt. Translate that into business terms: you don’t get the outcome you want, the project will fail, somebody will lose their job. What’s the difference? The foundation. When you start an AI project, I am so happy for you that you have somebody to lead your AI initiative, maybe even had hired somebody who is a head of AI.
Hiring a Head of AI: Technical vs. Cultural Skills
That person that you hired, head of AI, is that person insanely good in soft skills? Is that person a non-techie? Is being head of AI meaning you have to be the nerdiest person in the company, or does it must be the most non-nerdy person in the company? AI is, as we approach AGI right, that version of AI we’ll all want right, the all-knowing AI, what we’re really looking at is something that knows us, knows how we think, can predict what we’re going to think before we think.
We start to describe a person. We’re starting to describe a character. Doesn’t that sound like you’re describing a new employee in your company? Right. You’re about to hire a head of a department, a head of a new person, a head of AI. Let’s stick to that example: a new head of AI.
Everybody’s all excited and asking, “Who is this person?” They say, “What does she do, what sports is she into, and is she married?” Does she have kids, how many degrees does she have? What school did she go to, where does she work?
AI is getting damn close to a person, and we need to treat it as such. Hence, that head of AI, that person and their character and their personality, needs to be able to say that AI, because it’s all-knowing and has this fullness, is that I’m going to implement a program to teach everyone AI. For everybody to come up to speed with AI, and that is we’re all gonna get in touch with communicating with ourselves because it’s a cultural project. That’s where you start. Ai is not just a tech tool.
Getting Comfortable with AI Through Conversation
The best way to use AI to be comfortable with AI, then become an expert in AI—and by the way, get comfortable with AI and become an expert at AI, they’re so close to each other they’re milliseconds apart. They’re an epiphany. They’re a thought away from going, “I’m sorta comfortable using it,” to like, “Holy God, I love this thing, I know how to use it.” And you do that by just talking to it.
I was working on a project to build my website right, my new website, anglero.com. A-N-G-L-E-R-O.com, if you wanna check it out, and I don’t know how to build a website. I mean, I’ve built websites before. They’re all ugly as hell. I don’t… don’t ask me to build a website for you the old school way.
I could build one with AI. And you know, I didn’t wanna vibe code my website; I wanted to build it with AI, not just have AI build it for me. And I asked Claude, Anthropic Claude. I asked, I don’t, I technically know how to do HTML and all that, but in terms of the design, the layout, the colors, the fonts, that’s not me. I have no style in me.
Don’t ask me to get dressed in the morning, right. Style is not my thing. And I told AI that. I told Claude that. I actually had a conversation and I told it that in words, and I use a text—I use a speech-to-text program, so I like to speak obviously.
And it came back and it told me, “Fine. You’re not comfortable with style and all that. That’s not your thing.” That’s literally what it said, and it told me back, “What do you like? What appeals to you in life?” And things like that, and I said, “Oh okay, no problem there.”
Designing with AI: A Personal Story
I said, “I love Scandinavian furniture design. I think the smoothness of the wood, the shapes, the curves. Nothing’s aggressive, nothing’s heavy. It’s about extenuating what nature is. The rawness, the colors, the softness.”
I mean, you touch these furniture and it’s just… you don’t wanna ever leave. The wood, the leather, I love it. Claude took what I said and then said, “Got it.” And it returned back to me a color palette for my website that, if you go to my website, there it is. It built my website based on my colors that what I love and appreciate out of furniture design.
That’s an epiphany moment. I built a website based on what I love and appreciate in life. You can’t do that in regular HTML. When you ask a coder, “Build me a website, you have 5 days, you have 5 hours,” there was no conversation about what I love, what touches me, what I appreciate.
But with AI, the foundation of our conversation was about what I love, what I appreciate, what touches my soul. If I was your new head of AI that you were hiring, the first thing I would start, the first thing I would do with this cultural project and telling everybody, “Listen, we need to change the culture.” Maybe I wouldn’t tell everybody we’re doing a cultural project ’cause that sounds funny. ‘Cause some people say, “Whoa whoa, we’re changing the culture of the company.” It doesn’t resonate with people; it’s got too much history in the wrong way.
Rolling Out AI to Your Entire Company
But I would say, “We’re gonna have a conversation,” ’cause what I’m gonna do as your new head of AI is I’m gonna change the culture of this entire company. I’m gonna change the culture of every individual here. I’m gonna elevate them. I’m gonna make them more comfortable. I’m gonna make them feel that they have a new person they could talk to, a new outlet, and the end result is I’m going to 5X or 50X their outcome over time.
And we’re gonna do that by asking them to have a conversation with AI. And with me, it was, “I’m gonna build a website,” and we ended up talking about what I love in life, what touches me, what I appreciate. Those intangible tacit things that you can’t explain when you feel something. When you pet a cat or a dog, you just feel the fur. And then it built the website around that, or at least the color template and all that.
From that point on, building a website was easy because the website was based on who I am. And as your head of AI, I would have every employee, I would ask them to build a website, but I would say, “What project are you gonna work on or you are working on? What’s your deadline, what’s your challenges? Now don’t answer those questions to me or just tell this to the AI.” Or maybe I have the conversation with them and we have the AI there, and the AI is listening to us.
And the whole time the AI’s understanding and learning and listening, and then comes back to the person, “Well this is how we’re gonna proceed.” So you just gotta get the person used to the fact that it’s just a conversation. It’s just a conversation. But it’s a conversation with someone who’s solely out to help you. They don’t have any hidden agenda.
They’re not gonna take credit for the work when the whole project is over. God, we’re sick of those people, aren’t we? They’re gonna be there for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They’re gonna work tirelessly. When your employees understand that that AI is there for them on all those levels I just described and more, there is no more hindrance.
The Transformative Impact of AI on the Workplace
There’s no more doubt and negativity towards AI. There’s just this huge embracement of AI. And as soon as that person understands that, then you have that little moment of going from “I’m comfortable” to “I’m an expert.” And then you have the next moment, which is that person’s changed. That person now not just understands, but they’re not gonna be the same person anymore.
And that means you just changed the culture of that person, which means you just changed the culture of your office, which means you just changed the culture of your company. AI is a cultural change of how you work, why you work, when you work, and who you work with. For my website, I think a normal human, if I’d have hired a web developer, I don’t know, that would’ve been a huge budget. But I know one thing I had to do one part that I did before when building a website, and I know it would’ve taken me… Yeah, I had to find photos and I had to select a couple of photos out of my photo library, and I know that took me many hours before.
It did it in 6 minutes. That’s the outcome you’re gonna get. That’s the benefit. And when an employee who has a simple task that they know it’s gonna take them half a day of work and the AI does it in 6 minutes, that’s that moment of “I’m comfortable with AI” to “I’m an expert in AI.” Because it did something for me.
It made me feel better. It helped me with my work. It saved me time. Not just time, but annoyance. To go through hundreds and hundreds of photos to pick out just a handful of photos for a website… I don’t know if you’ve done that, but after photo number 50 they all start to look the same.
Lead by Example: What’s Your AI Story?
This is a massive shift in your company. So when you say that you want everybody to use AI and you want everybody to embrace AI, how about you start by telling your story of how you started with AI and how it changed you? I just shared my story about what I’ve been working on recently with my new website, and I think it’s a perfect example. What’s your story? Have you used AI enough that you have a story?
You should have a few stories. That’s just my latest story of what it did that just totally blew my mind, absolutely blew my mind. I mean, this should’ve been hundreds and hundreds of hours of man-hours of work. And I know when you look at them, you go to my website and you see the final result and you go, “Beautiful,” but is that it? Yeah, because sometimes the most beautiful things start so huge, and you come down because you have people who are asking the right question, and AI and machines, and you’re refining, refining, refining to something just so beautiful.
So simple, Scandinavian design, so simple but so beautiful. But if you did it the old way, it could’ve taken you forever. When you do it with AI, it saves you tons of time. You’re not tired. You’re not aggravated, and actually, it was a lot of fun.
A lot of fun. I actually even told my AI, “Thank you,” so many times. Be polite! What’s your story? You as a leader, what’s your story that you’re gonna share with your people that’s gonna make them more comfortable with them using AI?
If you don’t have a story, never too late. Start talking to your AI. Tell it, “I don’t even know how to start. How do I interact with you? How do we begin?” Or better yet, “I have a pile of paperwork here, I have to look at spreadsheets, I have to look at budgets, I have to look at pipeline. How do I do this?”
“How do we work together? This pile of paperwork and you, how do you help me to do this better?” That is the best place to start if you want to start. And it’ll tell you, “This is how I’m gonna help you. This is how I’m gonna get you through all these tasks that you have.”
“What is your task? Can you upload all those PDFs? Can you upload all that documentation? I am here for you.” God, you know what it is, I think some people have just forgotten because it’s been so long the last time they heard somebody say, “I’m here for you. I’m not gonna go home.”
“I’m here, I’m gonna stay in my cubicle. I’m gonna sit right beside you all night long. We’re gonna get this thing done.” It’s been a long time. Welcome to AI.
That’s your new colleague. It’s there for you. It can’t pour the coffee for you yet; that’s the humanoid robots, they’re coming in 2027. But AI, it’s here for you now. Share your story with your people, and that’s the best way to be a great leader in these early days of AI.
And I emphasize early. It’s getting better every single day, it really is. But you as a leader, you have to be different. You have to realize that who you were, how you’ve built yourself up to who you are today as a leader, that’s okay and that’s great actually. Congratulations.
But now with AI, you’re gonna be a little different. Things are gonna change, and your soft skills are gonna be more important than ever because AI can do a lot of the crunching. But the human beings in your office, they’re gonna need a lot of understanding and communication. Tell your story to your people, and that will change the culture of your company. I’m Thomas Anglero, and this is the Clarity at the Top podcast.
Clarity at the Top is published every week for executive leaders and boards thinking about AI as more than a tool.
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