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Why AI Implementations Fail – and How PEOPLE Can Fix It | Barry Eustance & Mark Blackwell

• Mark Blackwell • Episode 39

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Most AI projects don’t stumble on models or math—they stumble on people. We unpack the research behind those eye‑watering failure rates and show how human needs predict whether AI turns into momentum or frustration. With Mark Blackwell of Arkaro back on the mic, we trace the biggest missteps to six essentials from Hilary Scarlett’s SPACES model: self‑esteem, purpose, autonomy, certainty, equity, and social connection. From job threat and thin training to “shadow AI” at the desk, pilot hell in the corner, and a tidal wave of change that erodes predictability, we connect the dots between psychology and adoption.

Then we rebuild the playbook with the PEOPLE framework. People‑centric leadership treats objections as design inputs. Empowerment brings process owners into problem selection, tool choice, and rollout. Optimisation focuses on clean data, the right use cases, and a dual structure where the steady hierarchy is paired with a volunteer innovation network and an energetic executive sponsor. Purpose‑driven vision ties local wins to a story that unifies a decentralising organisation. Learning closes the loop with short cycles, clear measures, and public celebration so progress compounds and sticks.

You’ll hear why ROI often appears first in reducing admin load, how to turn shadow usage into safe standards, and how to move from hype to habit by solving real bottlenecks. If you want AI that your team trusts, uses, and improves, start where the work lives and build with people, not around them.

Enjoyed the conversation? Subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with someone wrestling with pilot fatigue. Your feedback helps more leaders find a practical path to AI that actually works.

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Barry Eustance:

I was I was rambling on a little earlier on about about sort of easy messaging. That's the point. When you've when you've been through the people change management change leads uh framework, you go, well, what does it spell? It spells people. It's about people. And the processes, as we go through it, it's all about people. And it spells people and it's there for everybody to see. It's simple messaging. Everybody can understand it and get on board. And that's the critical element of change. It's not difficult. It does need to be structured. It does need to have that processing of all the key elements in there, the disciplines rather than the process, perhaps. But it's about having that engagement, the critical element of the emotional two million-year-old brain and associated systems that are crucial. And you'll see that the two of them, the people change leadership management framework and the spaces framework from Hillary Scarlet, completely align. Hi everybody, it's Barry Eustace here from the Just Great People podcast. I'm delighted to be joined again by Mark Blackwell from Arcaro Consulting in Geneva. Mark and I, you will probably remember, have been talking about AI and strategy. And today's topic is very topical. It's going to be about AI and execution, or as Mark's about to demonstrate, AI and lack of execution. Mark, welcome once again to the Just Great People Podcast. Delighted to see you again. And let's let's roll out the conversation because this is a fascinating one and I think will surprise many people.

Mark Blackwell:

Thank you, Barry. Good morning. Honored to be here for round two. Last time we spoke, I came across this paper that a number of people have been talking about on the internet, which said the headline story was something like up to 95% of AI implementations fail. And I and I heard people were a bit scoffing at and so forth. So I think I thought I'd go and do a little bit of research. So I've collected this paper and a number of others, which suggests that this is not an outlier. There are quite a few data points from Gartner and many other sources suggest that for a number of reasons we've got a problem implementing AI in organizations. And I thought it would be a great chance to discuss that with you guys.

Barry Eustance:

I've read the document and it's a great read, everybody, when you have the opportunity. And the link to it will be here on the show notes and also on the Arcara site, and obviously it um we'll be discussing it here today. What is the headline figure? Because I think that may stun people when they hear what the headline figure is and the context around it, Mark.

Mark Blackwell:

Well, but 70 and 90%, 95% of AI implementations fail. Now, we'll also see there's a there's just a huge reasons for this. No, uh let's get the data away. Now, obviously, there's a lot of it is to do with, you know, some well not some of it is to do with data quality. Anyone who's done any IT implementation knows that garbage in equals garbage out. Uh uh, and that's you know the failure to address that. But there's also uh a lot of strategy issues. I think that many CEOs have been persuaded by perhaps CTOs that the shiny new thing has to be bought. And uh we'll we'll get into that in discussions, but a lot of shiny new things have been bought, mainly because CEOs and boards don't want to feel that they're missing the AI gold rush. And so they've been putting things in. But this AI gold rush is a bit of a fool's gold rush, I think.

Barry Eustance:

Well, I we're surely we're surely not talking about organizational and corporate FOMO, fear of missing out, surely. In fact, in fact, Mark, it's very interesting because for those for those dear listeners and and and dear viewers who have read Change by Cotter International, Dr. Cotta, and Vanessa Akta and Griov Gupta, the um one of their entire well, reversing the lamentable rate of successful AI implementation and how to do it, how to do it properly. And actually that feeds very much into what Mark's about to say. So there's a there's already a body of work there by by Cotter International, and our own our own research and Mark's research um will come at it with similar authority. So, Mark, back to you.

Mark Blackwell:

Can I just make one big preface? And it's a preface that I think both of us made on the last podcast, in case anyone's half listening whilst they're walking or driving the car. We are not anti-AI. We are not Luddites. No, I no, funny. This is something that really organizations must have for the future. So don't go away in any misunderstanding of the AI.

Barry Eustance:

Well, it's in fact, in fact, I would I would I would actually say the converse. We use AI a lot as a tool, but we use it uh with discretion, and uh we uh we find it very, very useful. So far from us being AI Luddites or anti-AI, we're actually very pro-AI, used in the correct context and executed correctly.

Mark Blackwell:

But uh absolutely. But as with so many change initiatives, it's the people factor is forgotten. So what I thought I would do is take a framework that you and I both love, which is Hillary Scarlett's spaces framework, just to try to group some of the identified root causes. And these are root causes that are data-driven. Research has been done to support them, and see if we can categorize some of the reasons why we're getting such a high failure.

Barry Eustance:

Yeah, and for those who who aren't familiar with it, Space uh is is a framework uh developed uh by Hilary Scarlett in her book uh Neuroscience of Organizational Change. Additional three is available now, will be on the show notes here as well. And it takes the spelling S-P A C E S. The S stands for self-esteem, and very important that this is what humans need. They need self-esteem. So S is for uh self-esteem, P is for purpose, P P is for purpose, and we're gonna come back and cover all of these individually. P is for purpose. A is for autonomy, C is for certainty, E is equity, very important, and equity is is the balance, fairness, really important. And S, Mark will tell you, is for social connection.

Mark Blackwell:

And the important thing is it's important to remember that these factors all come from imagining who we really are, which is running around the savannah plane two million years ago. So it's a little bit like the type one thinking of in the fast and slow from Daniel Carneman. This is how our body reacts to situations. It's not necessarily our rational brain. So you can easily argue many of these things away, but that's not the point. We have to understand that this is how people feel when change is thrust upon them. And if we're ignoring these factors, then we're ignoring how people really experience situations and how we can mitigate and design programs to overcome this natural human reaction.

Barry Eustance:

Yeah, and I think it's really important. It's not just change. These are fun these are key elements that every human being needs generally. It's not just about change. Um what change tends to do, if it's not implemented correctly, is to is to start marginalizing some of those elements so it can impinge upon some someone's self-esteem or destroy their sense of certainty, kill their social interactions and connections, which are critical. We're social, we're basically social beings. Um it can destroy a sense of fairness, i.e. equity, and it can also reduce our purpose because suddenly we don't know where we're going. So Mark's gonna put all of those into context in the in in the in the particular context of AI execution and implementation.

Mark Blackwell:

So let's first of all kick off with self-esteem. And I think we can easily imagine the first one, which is people are worried that AI is going to take over their job and therefore they're gonna lose their status or role in society. That's an imaginable response to it. But there are some other factors which came out which I think are related to it. First of all, the level of training in AI is not as good as it should be. And I mean a large number of people feel that they or they do not receive sufficient training for an AI implementation to know how to use the tool, and so therefore they feel inadequate because they're being asked to do tasks and roles for which they have no capacity and capability to execute. So that's that's no surprise. And I think another one that really did interest me in the reading was we're at that stage in um AI where the reliability is not high. We've spoken in the past of the high illusion rate. And so there is evidence that people are concerned and they lose esteem, is you're asking me to put my credibility on the line and make recommendations from this AI tool, which I know is nowhere near as credible and reliable as I am as an individual. And so these are some of the factors that are impacting on the first S of Hillary's model.

Barry Eustance:

And the S remember is standing for self-esteem. Really, really important. And a lot of the other stuff can fall away very quickly if you impinge upon someone's self-esteem. Mark, tell me more how all this rolls out in a practical sense. So an example of how an implementation may impinge upon self-esteem.

Mark Blackwell:

Well, people feel sidelined, they feel that they're no longer the person that they once were. So as a result, they're going to lose engagement with the process. Right. So the that's something that we can explore in the second half of this podcast, one where the mitigation strategies can to address some of these root causes. You know, if you suddenly feel that you're sidelined in the office, then I don't think you're going to be the most productive person in the team. No. And the next issues that we face? Purpose. So I think this is, we spoke earlier, the shiny new toy. Well, there are some data to show that the shiny new toy exists. One of the studies showed that corporate strategy will have 80% of the time AI is critical to our future. And yet, in those same organizations, only 15% of the workforce believe it to be true.

Barry Eustance:

In other words, unbelievable, that's an unbelievable statistic, isn't it? Believe but this is actually going this is going back to what we were saying at the previous podcast, there'll be links to that as well, but it'll be in the Just Great People podcast very extensive library now. That that if you ask organizational employees executives, C-suite, how many of them know what the corporate strategy is, most of them haven't got a clue.

Mark Blackwell:

Wouldn't we just discuss last time there was if you put a multiple choice out to executives, that's as managers who should know, only 27% can recognize their corporate strategy in a multiple choice.

Barry Eustance:

And we're finding the same, same demographic coming out with AI implementation, unsurprisingly, unsurprisingly, because very often the same malaise that is getting in the way of people understanding strategy, i.e., not getting people involved, just telling them, and people go, yeah, whatever, just telling them, not getting them involved is happening not only with strategy implementation, which we discussed last time, but also, and in particular, AI implementation.

Mark Blackwell:

Well, this is just a special case of the same. You know, it's exactly. I mean, so people see some fancy new AI tool and think, yes, we must need that because it looks great and wonderful, but don't actually look at the work processes and where are the bottlenecks and bring in tools that bust the bottlenecks so that the work process is more efficient and flows faster. That's a fundamental error, and of course, many of these ideas are connected. If you engage people who own the work process and own the problem, they'll likely tell you exactly where the bottlenecks are, where it would be efficient, not just someone on high thinking that this great new fabulous tool will solve all the answers to our problems.

Barry Eustance:

And we we heard of one ERP implementation where the C-suite wanted it in in 30 days. And in 30 days for an organization that had 30,000 employees. That's gonna work. So, Mark, and the next, as we camper on through the list.

Mark Blackwell:

Autonomy. And this one, I think we can really show that we're people. There's this great phenomenon I've discovered called the shadow AI economy. Do you know what this is?

Barry Eustance:

This is so Tell the dear listeners, I've read the I've read the article, I'm I'm the shadow AI economy.

Mark Blackwell:

So the issue is not that AI is not being used, right? AI is widely used in the workplace. In fact, 90% of people in one survey were using AI in the workplace. It was just that it was their own personal version of Gemini, Chat, GPT, or Claude that they were using because they knew how to use it. They had selected the tool themselves, they'd used it at home and brought it into the workplace. Now, huge problems with governance and you know, major data risks, of course, but it's very insightful, right? That it's not that people are against AI itself, but we have to recognize that if we're not in control of the tools that we're using, we're going to resist. So I thought that was fascinating.

Barry Eustance:

Absolutely. And um and again, we'll come on to some of the remedies later on. And so now we've gone through autonomy. The next one will resonate, I'm sure, dear listener and viewers. Um, so please listen up here.

Mark Blackwell:

Certainty. We are, as Hillary in your podcast before so eloquently said, we are predicting machines. We crave certainty. And yet the reality is the number of change initiatives that are being thrust on people, and I use that word with care, you know, said definitively, has gone up in one study from two a few years to go to the average employee can expect ten change initiatives in any one year. AI implementation is only accelerating that trend. So recognizing is that we crave certainty and we want a world to be understandable and normal. So it only p wonder that people are reacting to this increased amount of change being thrust upon them.

Barry Eustance:

And the reason certainty is so important is it's our brain is basically a two million-year-old survival radar. It's constantly scanning the horizon for threats to survival. Um, and certainty is the brain's ability to go, we ain't gonna die today. And so it's really, really important. It's hardwired in. So this certainty is critical. So suddenly everything's changing, and you're but you don't know where your desk is going to be next week. It's really undermining, and your brain is firing off all of the survival response signals, which is closing off, isolation, resistance to change, all the things that make change so difficult, because as we'll come on to, and I but I I beat the drum for this, the most important element of any change program isn't the process, it's the people. And it's because the people have to implement it, have to live with it, have to accept it, and have to buy into it. And if they're they're basically perceiving threat, and certainty is a key element of this, then they're gonna be resistant to it because that's what the brain does. That's how it's wired up. It's going, I'm seeing this as a threat. So certainty is really important. And as is equity.

Mark Blackwell:

Now equity is a funny one because it may not be so obvious to all of our listeners, but we are hardwired to believe that the world should be fair. And when we see injustice, we react to it. So there's a number of realities going on here. You know, there is an age issue, which is a data supported statement that older people in the workplace typically find learning harder and less engaging than younger people with such a technology solution. So you have to have sensitivity and motivation to make sure that everyone's at the same standard. One of the other interesting data points is often a lot more of the implementations have been targeted at the top line of the organization, getting revenue into the organization, sales and marketing type implementations. When the data shows the ROI is much more likely to be successful on the cost side, reducing some of the administrative burden that we do. And again, for me in Echo's and other podcasts I'd love to have, which is we should use AI to free our creative skills, which is what we're good at, and focus on the tedious, mundane stuff. That's where we're going to get the best balance and best return.

Barry Eustance:

That's the podcast we'll have. We need to have that discussion, absolutely. And equity is really important. I mean, again, getting back to the two million-year-old brain and the evolution, it's important. If you're if you're finding a food source on the on the savannah, you want, you are programmed to ensure that you get your equal share because it's a matter of survival. So you can see how all of this is so intrinsic to how we think, how we behave, and it's really important. And it's almost non-discretionary. It's how we're wired up, it's how the connections are made and how we've evolved over a very long period of time. Um, so equity we've covered, social connection.

Mark Blackwell:

Yeah, we are collaborators. We don't do it, we do it because it we enjoy it. So, you know, well, it is a very productive way of working, but it's something that we need to do. Now, if you put in systems which the collaboration is with the individual and the AI tool, and then as a result reduce the amount of teamwork in an organization, the team will react to that because there is less collaboration happening in the workplace. And another thing you see a little bit fairness is that comes up in a lot in the literature is this concept of pilot hell, which is just in small groups of people interminably running projects separated from the rest of the organization. And again, that's reducing this sense of collaboration and also a hint of equity of what's going on. So, and again, and why do we have pilot hail? Well, again, these things are all related. A lot of it is due to fact not well thought-through systems and not engaging people in the whole change process. Um, so yes, we've got to think about that because integrating people.

Barry Eustance:

Looking at the hard wiring, where did that come from? Why is social connection so important? Because as a species, our survival is linked in our ability to work in groups for food sources, for habitation, and generally those who survived the process were those who collaborated. And so it's another bit of evolutionary hardware that's really deep, deep, deep inside us. And it's why, again, the spaces model, which stands for self-esteem, purpose, autonomy, certainty, equity, and social connection is so important to us. So those are the where it's tripping up, Mark. What are the remedies?

Mark Blackwell:

Well, I think you've come up with it. So you are the one who created the people approach. So maybe you can tell the listeners and the viewers what is your thing. Yeah, just okay.

Barry Eustance:

Well, so I am a uh I'm uh Cottage Advanced Change Leader certified. I'm also a great, great follower of and fan of Julie uh Julie Hodges, People Centric Organizational Change, and Hillary Scarlett's the Neuroscience of Organizational Change. And uh you will know that uh Hillary, Julie, and I have had various podcasts together and we've got some more scheduled. But the the people change leadership, I come from an aviation background where taking complex issues and breaking them down to simple messaging is really important. You've got a highly complex system like an airplane. How does a mere mortal like I, like me, fly the thing? And the answer is by condensing information so it's easy to understand. And let me be upfront, no spoilers here. The single most important element of any change isn't process, it isn't systems, it isn't structures, it's people. And so the Success Consultancies develop the people change management and leadership framework. And each of each of the letters that spell people, P-E-O-P-L-E, basically provide the headline, the checklist for the disciplines that are really important to exercise when conducting any change. And it's all about people-centric change. And the first P of people is people-centric leadership. And Mark will explain why that's so important and how that affects the successful implementation of an AI implementation.

Mark Blackwell:

So if we think of the principles of people-centric leadership is putting people first, and we can just go through everything we've learned on Hillary's spaces model. Self-esteem. Engage people first, understand that their objections may be valuable insights to make this a much better implementation, and don't ignore what they're saying. So that's one example. All of this we can go on again. People make sure that there is clarity that connects the strategy to the tactical implementation to so that people understand why this is going to make their life better for themselves as well as for the organization. Autonomy, get people involved in the project, you know. Maybe get them, you know, why do we need something? What problem are we going to solve it? How do we select it? How are we going to train people? Get people involved in that process rather than a bunch of external consultants bringing a big black box and wonder why people don't use it.

Barry Eustance:

Or a group of people piloting a lot of projects that no one knows about and then implementing them without really consulting. Which was which is what Mark described earlier.

Mark Blackwell:

Yeah, and exactly make sure that people are adequately trained so there's equity in the organization and design them around the workflows that people want so that people are best at the abstraction level, creating ideas at creativity, at problem solving. Let them implementations recognize the human strengths and focus on the things that we don't want to do, which is tedious administration.

Barry Eustance:

Yeah, and encouraging leadership throughout the organization. And that's controversial. What? Leadership bottom up? Of course. There are leaders everywhere throughout your organization right now, if you use them. Yeah. The people in the shop floor on the front counter have got fantastic ideas and will lead with them and will make the organization better if you use them. And so people centricity is really important to understand that your organization fundamentally its single biggest asset are its people. The next item on the list I will bring into the frame is so the second letter of people is E for empowerment. Over to you, Mark, to explain the importance of empowerment.

Mark Blackwell:

Well, we I think we've picked it echoes much of what we've said is give people control of identifying the problem and solving the problem and implementing the solution.

Barry Eustance:

Yeah, absolutely. And it couldn't be more simple than that. Encouraging leadership ideas from across the organization, not top-down. Diagonal slice of the organization we'll come to in innovation networks in a minute, but the importance of actually encouraging participation right across the entire workforce and stakeholders in the change itself. It's not a small group of people going into a pilot project and people on the outside starting to wonder what are they doing in there? How's it going to affect me? I've lost certainty. Is it going to affect my job? It's about everybody getting involved in a structured way and in a cultural way. And we can talk about culture either if we've got time in this podcast or in another one. That with the organizational culture encourages that, people will actually do it. It'll become part of the organizational muscle. So that is P for people-centric leadership, E for empowerment. And the next one for optimization.

Mark Blackwell:

This is a little bit of the process stuff coming in here, right? Garbage in equals garbage out, investing time making sure that not only you're solving the right problem, but the inputs to your problem is the right data source. That's me. That's key to do that. And again, also one other statistic was showed that was quite interesting is recognize that people external experts are probably better at designing the mechanics of the solution than internal. So external builds of AI solutions have a 66% success rate rather than internal builds have a 33%. But again, I'm talking more about the mechanics of writing the AI. Let's not forget everything that we've already said about identifying the problem, fitting the problem to the solution, and so and so forth. That's key. Another thing that people should try to do is make sure that these solutions are learning. It reminds me of the very first uh pocket computer that I bought because I was an enthusiast and you played with it and you felt very great. But as soon as you switched it off, all the RAM went. There was no memory. And I know we're a little bit like that with some other way that we use AI, is that it's not an iterative learn optimizing itself over time in an organization. So that's one of the major frustrations that that's being reported. But I think that will that will change itself over time, but not being forgetful of it.

Barry Eustance:

And I would add here that in the Cotter study on uh culture and organizational performance, and there's a book about it, they found that organizations that had a dual structure, that is a hierarchy, which is basically a 19th-century construct for reliability, dependability, chug, chug, chug. It's like a diesel engine chugging in the background. It just stuff just gets done in the hierarchy, provides that day-to-day reliability, dependability, repeatability. But alongside that, and we can quote some examples where that where this happens, you have the innovation networks, and that's very much a part of the people change uh management leadership framework. And that is that you have the hierarchy, but you also have this dual structure where you have an innovation network which is populated by volunteers from the organization. Volunteer is very important because volunteerism tends to encourage enthusiasm, buy-in innovation, and that people aren't compelled to do it, they're doing it because they want to. Give me one willing volunteer, as has been said. And they naturally form into nodes, basically, of speciality that collectively can take the problem or the change and work it up. So now they've got a strategic vision, we'll come on to that in a minute. The next bit they're then ready to go because when they've got a strategic vision they can work on, they can actually be the the the part of the organization, if you like, the fast the fast-turning petrol engine alongside the diesel engine, or dare I say, electric engine in these days, so that's spinning at the higher RPM and and actually getting the innovation uh done. And that is a part of the optimization process. Um that's so it's not just structures and processes, it's people again and putting and having that that innovation network communicating very much through the leadership team and critically the executive sponsor. And the executive sponsor has to be a very enthusiastic, energetic, and well-qualified component of the process. So that is O for optimization.

Mark Blackwell:

And the next one purpose-driven vision. So here's one of my real favorites, if I may, have a minute on this one. So I think we've explored this idea that at the shop floor level or the workplace level, you've really got to have a tool which fits in with a strategy and solves a real problem. But at a higher level of what we mean in organizational change coming for us, there is a very good argument to be made that as AI comes into organizations and we have more decentralized activity in the organization, the role of leaders to create a purpose, that's a vision and mission that inspires in the heart, not just something in the entrance room, but a purpose and vision that is key to unify this increasingly decentralized organizations. And so leaders are gonna have to step up, I think, in a way that they haven't done before in many organizations, with some key exceptions, providing a compelling unifying vision, which brings back to some of these things like connectedness that we've thought and purpose in in the organization. So that's key. And I have a podcast coming up. I'm very honored to have um Stephen Wonker, who is the co-author of AI and the Octopus Organization, and we're going to explore some of these ideas later on. So uh look out for that one.

Barry Eustance:

Yeah, and actually, for anybody who's got any doubt about the importance of purpose driven vision uh and buy-in uh and and actually the importance of the emotional aspect, you're dealing with people, and people are emotional beings, um, then I encourage them also to read um leading With your head and heart with by Bill Lucia, who was the CEO of um HMS, the Fortune 500 company, that um ran through a change program from 2015 to 2020, using all of these principles in the Cotter model and Bill's explanation of how important connecting that vision with the heart and emotions of the people of the organization is. And so that piece of work is really very important. And it is. For all the reasons we gave when we were talking about the spaces model, we are emotional beings. And we now I've had a I've had people um who have said, don't you start with a purpose-driven-driven vision? And the answer to this is that actually, unless you've got people-centric leadership, uh, you've empowered your stakeholders, your workforce, uh, and you've got an optimized organization, your purpose-driven vision is going to fall flat unless you've got all of those aligned, ready to go. A very important part of that is that you've got all of those critical components in place, and then you're ready to go with your strategic vision. Not just once, not just twice, but any time you want to roll it out. Because you've basically dealt with the cultural side and the structural side of your organization before you get to that point. So now we have the second P is purpose-driven vision, as as Mark has explained. Leading on very rapidly to the next bit, which is L for learning. So the L in people is for learning, and that I hope is obvious, and Mark will explain why.

Mark Blackwell:

Well, I think L is a fundamental requirement in an adaptive world that we live in. I think we are we've we've never lived, I would argue, in a completely predictable world. But if we recognize the world is changing, we need to adapt to it. You can only adapt if you learn from your mistakes, and you will make mistakes. So that's the whole point about it is try experiment. Remember what is successful in an AI implementation, be comfortable that there's parts of it might not be perfect. Don't let that be a root cause for throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but identifying what could be better and improved as a result of that learning experience.

Barry Eustance:

Yeah, really, really important. Eric Reese's uh build, measure, learn, pivot. Learn from last time, build, measure, learn, pivot, learn, build, measure, learn, pivot, go through the cycle again and again, fail fast, fail cheaply. Failure is an integral part of successful change, an integral part of success. And if you want any evidence of that, look at look at PayPal and other organizations that started off as a completely different idea. So learning is important. And as part of that, through the learning process, we've got to be also celebrating the fact that we are achieving things. That's part of the learning process. When people learn that what they've done has been successful and has achieved stuff, celebrate it publicly, make it a really big event, because it's important that people understand that this is we're moving in the right direction, and there is good reason to celebrate because we're driving towards a future and a better future.

Mark Blackwell:

And finally, make sure this sticks. And I think if you've addressed a lot of the issues that we've done, by natural consequence it will be stuck because this is the way that we things get done around here, because it makes sense. We've brought people along in the process, we've engaged them in undiagnosing what are the problems to fix, we've made sure that they've had a d democratic part in finding solutions and implementing them. Because it's natural and it's going to make people's lives better. What will not stick is an unnatural add-on to an organization that isn't helpful.

Barry Eustance:

And it's really important uh to go through uh Roger's diffusion curve available on any good Google search. And you'll notice, you know, you get the earlier doctors and and you you get the the techies at the beginning who really love it, uh, and then you you get up to the sort of 50-50 spot, you you'll get about 16%, the laggards and the the the Dyden the Wolves who will never well, the Dyden the Wolves who will never go at the Laggards will be later doctors. But if you've got 65% of your organization, for example, as as Bill Lucia had, already involved in the innovation network, you're already over the hump, you're already over the hill, you're down the other side. Now you've got to persuade basically the remaining 16% uh of the organization that it's a great thing, and that's a cultural thing. Culture starts as a small group of people doing things differently, and people see the success, they see the advantages, they see the benefits, and they they it then becomes a cultural norm. And so if you've got 65% participating in the change process itself, you've already got a significant amount of cultural change happening naturally, which will then spread out, and then you're building the change into the fabric of the organization, not just from a systems and procedures point of view, but also internalized within the stakeholder body themselves, the employees.

Mark Blackwell:

Brilliant. Well done, Barry. I think you've summarized it all perfectly. Let's go and conquer the world and let's bust this 95% and give it 95% success.

Barry Eustance:

I was rambling on a little earlier on about sort of easy messaging. That's the point. When you've when you've been through the people change management change leadership uh framework, you go, well, what does it spell? It spells people. It's about people. And the processes, and as we go through it, it's all about people. And it spells people and it's there for everybody to see. It's simple messaging. Everybody can understand it and get on board. And that's the critical element of change. It's not difficult. It does need to be structured, it does need to have that processing of all the key elements in there, the disciplines rather than the process, perhaps, but it it's about having that engagement, the critical element of the emotional two-million-year-old brain and associated systems that are crucial. And you'll see that the two of them, the people change leadership uh management framework and the spaces framework from Hillary uh uh Scarlet completely align.

Mark Blackwell:

Absolutely. And I'd say this is completely consistent with the way I just um take about any engagement trying to bring change in an organization. I could, you know, the four-step approach. Understand what people want, what is happening in the organization concerns, co-create solutions with people, enable giving them the capabilities to do the job, and sustain the change. I think we're completely alignment, Barry. We've got it. We've got it cracked.

Barry Eustance:

We've got it cracked. And what I will say, folks, dear listener and dear viewer, is that this was not a pre-rehearsed podcast. Uh Mark wrote a paper that basically assessed the failure of implementation of AI in organizations. What you've just heard is literally a free-ranging uh chat. Uh, none of this has been rehearsed. We didn't prep it, we haven't scripted, there's nothing. So this is our genuinely felt views. Uh, and I'm more than happy, as is Mark, to discuss them with you at any time. Indeed, yes.

Mark Blackwell:

I was still editing the paper, but minutes before we started the podcast. So that's that's the up-to-date, real-time situation we have for you. But you will get a link to it in the show notes. Please definitely have a look at it.

Barry Eustance:

They'll all be there. So listen, Mark Blackwell from Acaro, um, once again, as always, Mark, great to chat.

Mark Blackwell:

And the next one we're going to do is gonna be about We're gonna make why humans are different to AI. And I think how can we build on our strengths and delegate the weaknesses to AI so that we can get the best of both? I've got a few things I've learned that I really need to tell you, but that's next time.

Barry Eustance:

So, from us from the Just Great People Podcast, Mark Blackwell, Barry Eustace, the Success Consultancy in the People Change Leadership Framework and the uh Hillary Scarlett Spaces model. Um, very goodbye from us and thank you for uh listening to our Just Great People podcast. We'll see you again on another one very soon. Thank you, Darry. Bye-bye. Thank you, Mark. If you'd like to know more about the Success Consultancy's People Change Leadership and Management Framework, please simply click on the QR code or in the link in the show notes below. And please do remember to like and subscribe the Just Great People podcast. Thank you. So that's it for today's Just Great People podcast from the Success Consultancy. We hope and trust you've enjoyed it. Please join us next time and please do remember to subscribe. Thanks for joining us.

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Mark Blackwell

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Barry Eustance

Guest

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