Latest / The Marketing Brief / John & Brian Discuss AI in the Workplace & Measuring Workplace Culture (S1 E12)
Transcript
- Brian Aucoin: Hello and welcome back to the Marketing Brief. I am your host, Brian Acquan, and this is the podcast where we briefly touch on topics across the marketing landscape. always, we are joined by industry experts and we're very excited to be joined by John Betancourt, CEO of Human Intelligence today. John, thank you for joining us. John Betancourt: Thanks for having me, Brian. Brian Aucoin: John, would you like to introduce yourself to the listeners? John Betancourt: Yeah, John Bencourt from the Northeast in the US. However, I now live in Miami, Florida. Brian Aucoin: Nice. What part of the North East are you from? John Betancourt: Grew up in the DC, Maryland side and then spent time in Boston for college, Philadelphia for business school and New York, living in my early thirties. Brian Aucoin: Love it. Yeah. I'm from Boston and spent all of my twenties in New York. So got a lot of love for the Northeast. Cool. I live in Southern California right now, so neither do I. ⁓ John, you do a lot of work with Can you tell us a little bit about the product you've got in market right now? John Betancourt: I don't miss the cold. You Yeah, we have something called an AI coach. And so it's the first AI that actually does not replace people or employees. It enhances them. It basically is the future of talent management, talent development, leadership development, and team collaboration and engagement. In HR, they've struggled with the training development of employees and usually only the largest, most rich companies, the fortune 500. have programs and tools where they bring consultants in to do workshops, to work on leadership skills and all these things they call soft skills, which is ironic that so much effort's put into hard skills when in actuality, most people get promoted. It's because of their soft skills. So we focused on those soft skills, something that has really been a hand in a high touch environment. We now bring that to the world, to the masses and democratize ⁓ kinds of tools like psychometric instruments like disc and predictive index and Hogan and Laminger. So that all employees can use it and they ask an AI coach, we call it Aura. You can ask Aura any question about a colleague at work that you're working with and why you're having conflict and getting a script to work better. Or if you're a new leader, ⁓ how to manage your team. And it'll look at 400 pages of a team of 20 people of their psychometric output. And in seconds do what a coach would do in a week and you $20,000. This does it in seconds and will give you tips on how to lead, on how to communicate, on what projects to give someone to keep them engaged so turnover goes down, how best to onboard someone, how to work with somebody in a different country specific to that person, not just because they're Chinese and all Chinese people are like X because that's crazy to think that a billion people are all one way, right? Just like to think all Americans are the same way. Imagine if you could actually ask Aura, hey, given Chinese culture, how's this person Shi Wan? Brian Aucoin: Yeah. John Betancourt: Similar to or different from that culture. And let me work to that person. And so it is the first AI coach that probably everyone in the world will use in the next couple of years. Brian Aucoin: That's awesome. That's truly exciting. Congratulations on getting that off the ground. When you talk about soft skills, think that is, so important to the experience have at work too, right? It's like, I think everyone talks about culture at their office or what is the culture at this business or this organization that's largely built on how we work together, how we interact with each other. And I've always said it's something that you can build, take time and you can lose it very quickly, but is there a way that ⁓ measuring the impact that Ascora has within an organization and you can kind of read that back out to the leaders of that organization? John Betancourt: Yeah, several ways. I'll focus on two. Up until now, the only way people thought they were measuring culture was by doing an engagement survey and asking if people were happy or not. That actually has nothing to do with your company culture and the way people work. That'll just tell you that 30 % are super happy, 30 % are okay, and 30 % are miserable would not recommend the company to a friend, right? Microsoft and Apple use the same engagement survey and have the same exact results. And everyone would ever tell you Microsoft and Apple have completely different cultures because you're right. It is the behaviors of people, the way they work, their work styles, right? If they like structure or more creative, you know, freedom, behaviors with their decisive deliberate, for example, ⁓ what motivates them, their values, the values of people, if they're motivated by service or making money. We measured 28 variables, behaviors, motivators, or what people call values, work styles, which bottom up, if you aggregate one person, two people, a team, you can get the culture and dynamics of the team. You do it for two, three teams. You do it for a thousand employees bottom up for the first time ever. can actually measure the culture today. Not one company in the world does that can do that. because these tools have been too expensive since we give our our psychometric tool for free for the first time ever a company can measure their true culture and see if bottom up the way people behave, their values and the work styles is aligned to what they put on the website or not. And typically what we find is they're not aligned because it's kind of crazy that professor Don Soled MIT, former HBS professor. Brian Aucoin: Yeah. John Betancourt: Went to the fortune 500 and found scientific proof that there is zero correlation between the five things the fortune 500 have on their websites as culture and what people actually feel and experience at work. And part of the problem is you have 500 companies and 90 % have four of the five values as their culture. It's really what the executives want the company to be, not what they really are. That's one way we measure our impact is we actually let companies know where are you on that journey? Of where you are literally and where you want to be. Okay. Second way we measure it is we, we allow people to, track the change of that culture over time as an individual, how you change as well as the team, a division and the company. And so ⁓ kind of doing longitudinal tracking so that companies can, can set a goal and say, Hey, we want to be more decisive as a division this year. ⁓ and we want to be more strategic. so we can track that now weekly, annually. And so that's never been done before. Brian Aucoin: That's really interesting. Yeah, I mean, you typically have to go to a glass door to really understand how employees feel about a company culture versus what the corporate website says. John Betancourt: Right. Which, which, what is glass door? I always say on the bell curve, that's the most disgruntled, miserable, shouting, screaming. I hate this company. just got fired. And then the company gives incentives to counterbalance that to the other half of the, of the, uh, funnel, which are like, you know, these are the ones that get paid this, how great the company is. And you're not really getting the reality of the average. Right. And so, you know, unfortunately glass door, think it's, Brian Aucoin: Yeah. John Betancourt: It's the extremes, not, the reality. Brian Aucoin: Yes. Yeah, you have to get volume usage to kind of get to that mean. And I think you said this, but people use it typically a lot during the day. Like how does a typical employee engage with Ask Aura like on a daily basis? John Betancourt: Yeah. So they have two ways they can be of the things that we realized five years ago was if you're not Microsoft, if you're not Google, you're not ⁓ of the standard platforms people use every day. And so we built the platform and the company as a plugin into Microsoft teams, outlook, zoom, Slack. So ⁓ it it on Monday morning. An email goes out to all employees saying, take this assessment. It's 10 minutes or upload whatever personality tests you already have. you could get 10,000 people up and running Monday morning. So now 10,000 people when they're in, let's say Microsoft teams working, ⁓ can literally just click on this little butterfly. That's our logo. And it'll say, what do you, what questions do you have? And you can either like chat, GPT, just say, Hey, I'm having conflict with Brian. Why, why is that? And give me a script to avoid it. And it'll go through your 20 pages of psychometrics, my 20 pages. And in one second say, you're having conflict with Brian because you know, most likely he's decisive. You're deliberate and you're probably taking too long on an answer for him. Or he's very conceptual and you're too detail oriented. Are any of these the things you think of the problem is? And it'll kind of like a coach guide you. If not, what else, what does give us context? You can type in context. That's one way where it's kind of a open bar. Some people though need to be guided even on the questions. So the other way is see lists of questions you can ask. Brian Aucoin: Mm-hmm. John Betancourt: And they open up that menu and it's, what can we do for you today? Are you having conflict? you having questions about leadership of a team? Are you asking leadership questions of yourself? And you want development questions. Do you have cross cultural questions? Do you have DEI questions? And when you click in any of these tabs, it then opens up with like six subcategories and ⁓ leadership questions, like, you know. how am I as a leader? And you click on that. Like what are my work styles? What are my, or if you're having conflict, pick the person and then it'll say, you know, are you collaborating with them? Are they your leader? And then you click and it'll just start to kind of guide you through questions. If you're a leader of a team, ⁓ like you can, you just got promoted, you click on, you know, team and then you'd say, okay, what's the culture and dynamics of my team? Boom. Just click the button. And also as a bar, if you have a specific question, Brian Aucoin: Mm-hmm. John Betancourt: And it'll go through, let's say your team of 20 and 20 pages per person, 400 pages in a second. And it'll tell you, Hey, here, your team, like working fast. they're very maverick and idea oriented. Don't straddle them too much with constraints. you can ask what's going to ⁓ keep ⁓ drained. What would motivate them? you could, the, the head of HR might be looking to create a project team for this new thing called AI. Give me the three people. Brian Aucoin: Yeah. John Betancourt: In my company of a thousand employees who are the most strategic, but really quick and decisive who understand change and are agile for this new AI project. And today there's no company in the world that can find people just with those kinds of descriptions. Our tool will instantly go through a thousand people's 20 pages, 20,000 pages of psychometrics. And in a second say, here are your three employees for that project. It's impossible today, other than Ask Oro. Brian Aucoin: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. you're clearly deep into AI. What is your own personal use of ⁓ Maybe kind of how has it evolved for you since you've been involved with it ⁓ long? John Betancourt: You know? I know where some people have taken AI already in personal use and working at a company. I would say that I'm really, you know, an advanced user. ⁓ Brian Aucoin: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. John Betancourt: ⁓ I think that's kind of where I am. Even though I run an AI company, I let my developers and ⁓ I CTO figure out all the high lift AI stuff the hood. ⁓ I just kind of keep it high level. So, you know, I use chat, JPT. ⁓ 20 times a day now, I almost never use Google anymore. So my usage of Google flipped all to chat GPT. I use it for planning my trips. I use it for ⁓ random facts and questions. I always have random fact questions. Brian Aucoin: Yeah. Right. John Betancourt: I'm having a pain in my heel. So medical questions on what kind of doctor I should go to, what would the service be? My son was having surgery. I was trying to find out what hospitals were covered and the, the, the, the, own insurance company couldn't figure it out. So I had to go to Chetjubete, which had access to all the same databases and I got the answer quicker. So, you know, I'm using it for, as an individual like this much more as a consumer, but the usage to create a gentic AI and like agents to do things for you where they make calls for you. Brian Aucoin: Right. John Betancourt: Like I'm using for the company for marketing and agentic AI that's going and scraping LinkedIn. And I just tell it all the types of people I want it to meet and send out invites. And I created a sequence of seven messages and once they accept my invite, then it'll just automatically send out. So I spent two hours doing the whole campaign. And now instead of spending 40 hours a week, trying to connect with a hundred people, 200 people, it does it all. It sets up the meetings and every meet every week, I don't get five meetings on my calendar. For the last seven, eight months, I'm getting five minutes and that's like hundreds of out bounds back and forth, back and forth down to getting a meeting set up. I just show up for the meetings. mean, that would have taken two full-time employees a year ago. Now zero employees just happened for me. I'm, but I'm still a light user compared to most tech savvy people. you know, Brian Aucoin: Yeah. Yeah. Sure, I would consider myself the same, but it does sound like you consider AI technology as leverage. And I know you think it enhances people and that chives with kind of your overall mission statement for. Yeah, yeah. John Betancourt: Yes. It's, it's the calculator of our time. It's, know, like, just think about my, I have a five and a seven year old. mean, just with the internet, 18 year olds over the last 20 years knew more at 18 than I did at 30, just because I went, I didn't have a phone till business school. There was no internet. had a typewriter through college for me to learn something or answer one of the, I about 30 questions a day of just like interesting questions. Most of them went unanswered. And if I wanted something really important to be answered, I had to go to the library, 20 minute drive and have to ask for a book. have to research on like microfiche. I mean, it'd be four hours to find one little answer. Now in two seconds, you can find thousands of answers. So if eight year olds in the last 20 years knew what I knew at 30, my kids at 18 are going to know things that I know at 50, right? It's like the Brian Aucoin: Yeah. John Betancourt: The amount of knowledge and experience like, like there's no need for college unless you're going to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer. The other 90 % of people in this world, they should be going to AI agent schools. Like how do you manage AI agents? That's the future of education to get what you want out of life. My kids, the minute I find an AI agent camp or school, that's where they're going. They're not going to college. And my wife and I built into Harvard and we're convinced our kids are not going to go to college. Brian Aucoin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's beautiful. Okay. Yeah, it's pretty remarkable. Well, something I'd like to ask everybody who comes on the pod is what's something you're excited about? It can either be in your professional capacity, it be in your personal capacity, but what's something you're excited about right now? John Betancourt: a new dad with a five and seven year old. I'm just really excited of going through the journey of life. It's seeing through my children's eyes. I've always believed that the greatest learning curve you can have, not just about life, but about yourself is through your children's eyes. ⁓ so, mean, I'm, I'm embarking over the next 20 years, the steepest learning a human can have. And so that's pretty damn exciting. Brian Aucoin: Thank John Betancourt: Next to that is watching my company grow because it's been 10 years and there was five, six years, no AI. And we were making software and SaaS and products that were ahead of their time, but without a marketing budget, really never got traction. then COVID hit when we did get traction, we got to 3 million and 25 employees as recruiting software. then COVID hit and we lost everything. And I would have rather have been a restaurant. Restaurants did not lose demand. They just lost how to get food to the customer. We lost all demand. Brian Aucoin: Right ⁓ John Betancourt: So, you know, I'm excited about this growth journey now that the market has finally come to where we are and everyone now, when they get on a call, they know what an AI coach is. and so we're pretty excited about the growth. So my kids, the company. And then I think thirdly, just where humanity is going. mean, you see these Chinese robots, humanoid robots doing flips. You hear, let's talk about everyone's going to have money and no one's have to work. Like work will become a hobby. You, you see AI just taking over everything. Like it's scary, but it just happens really exciting because there will be more chains in the next 10 years than the last 2000 years. think. That's exciting. And doesn't mean excitement means good or bad, but it's exciting that you can't, but be on the tip of your toes to see what's coming. ⁓ Brian Aucoin: That's awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that. How do people get in touch with you if they're interested in Asgora or human intelligence? I can find you on LinkedIn, but should they hit the website? John Betancourt: Yeah, they can go to john.bentoncourt at human intelligence.com. can go to website, either human intelligence.com or ask aura. That's a u r a dot AI. they can find me on LinkedIn as John Benton court and, ⁓ happy to respond and interact and answer any questions about AI coaching or spirituality or whatever they want to chat about. Brian Aucoin: Yeah, it sounds like you got some answers. Well, thanks for joining us, John. I really enjoyed our chat. Thanks for coming on the podcast. John Betancourt: Thanks for having me, Brian. This is great. Thank you. Brian Aucoin: Awesome. This has been a brief marketing conversation with the Marketing Brief. I am your host, Brian Aucoin. Stay curious.