July 30, 2025 • 36 mins
Cut The Tie Podcast with Scott Morris
What happens when your people don’t know what success looks like—or why their work matters?
In this powerful episode of Cut The Tie, Thomas Helfrich sits down with Scott Morris, founder and CEO of PropulsionAI. After 25 years in the aerospace industry, including 20 in C-level roles, Scott saw firsthand how unclear roles lead to disengagement, low productivity, and unnecessary turnover.
So he built Athena—a conversational AI coworker that helps leaders design roles based on real business outcomes, not bullet points. What started as a solution for job descriptions evolved into a platform for driving clarity, accountability, and retention at scale.
About Scott Morris:
Scott Morris is the founder and CEO of PropulsionAI, the company behind Athena, an AI-powered digital coworker that helps organizations design performance-based roles. With 25 years of experience in aerospace—20 of those in executive HR and operations roles—Scott brings deep insight into what companies really need to engage and retain top talent. PropulsionAI empowers managers to build clarity into every role, so teams perform better and people stay longer.
In this episode, Thomas and Scott discuss:
- Cutting ties with outdated role design—and boosting performance
Scott explains why traditional job descriptions don’t work and how redefining roles based on outcomes creates clarity and accountability. - Why 46% of new hires fail
He shares the hidden costs of poor role clarity—turnover, disengagement, and misalignment—and how PropulsionAI helps prevent them. - Designing jobs with outcomes, not tasks
Scott breaks down how Athena guides managers through defining success in terms of business value, not just checklists. - Creating bandwidth and strategic value for HR teams
PropulsionAI frees HR professionals from documentation overload so they can focus on higher-value work. - Helping employees grow into the roles they want
A real customer use case where Athena helped high-potential employees design the jobs they aspire to—turning retention into a strategic advantage.
Key Takeaways:
- Unclear roles are a hidden tax on your business
Misalignment and disengagement cost far more than most leaders realize. - Athena doesn’t replace humans—she makes them better
The AI guides thinking, but managers own the strategy and decisions. - Hiring starts with outcomes, not resumes
When you define the result you want, the right person becomes obvious. - Retention is built through clarity
When people know exactly what success looks like, they perform and stay longer. - Better role design = better business results
Clients have unlocked real value—like $800K in cash flow—just by rethinking one job.
Connect with Scott Morris:
💼 LinkedIn: Scott Morris
🌐 Website: www.propulsion.ai
Connect with Thomas Helfrich:
🐦 Twitter: @thelfrich
📘 Facebook: Cut the Tie Group
💼 LinkedIn:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, welcome to the Cut the Tie podcast.
We're doing a special sessiontoday to do a deep dive in with
Scott Morris of Propulsion AI.
Scott, how are you doing today?
I'm great, I'm great.
Thanks for having me.
I really appreciate it becauseyou were on the show and we were
discussing your technology andwhere it kind of helps
organizations of all kinds,right From just people with a
few hundred, people with a fewthousand and a lot of our guests
(00:21):
and listeners are in that zone.
Right, they run companies thatsize.
They, you know, maybe you knowin particular, they're trying to
hire and so if you're so this,so listen, if you're listening
and you're an hr professionaland you're running a good size
organization from a few hundred,a few thousand, uh, any
industry, really listen up,because this is something to
help you understand how you canget more engagement, more
retention and really keep thepeople you want to keep at your,
(00:42):
your place, have moreproductivity.
I mean, that's a fairassessment of, because what I
find in as I've interviewed lotsof people, it's a major problem
in companies is keeping talent,because people feel completely
disconnected and they feelcompletely like not part of it.
In particular, it's hybrid,remote.
So let's get Scott.
Just do a brief introduction,maybe yourself and a little bit
(01:05):
of your background and what youstarted there.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
So I have 25 years as a professional in the HR space
and about 20 of those years werein C-level roles, and I've
worked in organizations fromlike nimble startups to large
enterprises with 15,000 plusemployees, and I think the
breadth of that's reallyimportant At least I consider it
to be important because I'vestayed on the front lines.
(01:28):
I understand the problems thatfrontline HR people, frontline
employee relations people,frontline recruiters, frontline
HR business partners Iunderstand those problems
firsthand because even with aC-level title and smaller
companies, you do the frontlinework, and so I took all of that
experience and I turned it intobuilding a software company.
(01:52):
In 20 years of buying HRsoftware, one thing that I
discovered and I think a lot ofmy peers have discovered is that
it might be made by smartsoftware people, but they're
kind of adjacent to the problemsthat we deal with every day,
which are how to get people tocome to work, be happy and
productive and stay with us, getthe top talent in, keep the top
(02:15):
talent in, and so that's one ofthe things that we're doing at
Propulsion AI.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
It's like a FUBU of HR Horace Bias wasn't.
Sean John came up with the FUBU.
Okay, I've heard of that one.
You ever heard of FUBU?
No, fubu was a brand.
It was really focused by, like,the guy who started it,
african-american guy, successfulguy, but he had a brand called
Forrest Bias, so it was made by,you know, people of color and
(02:40):
anyway.
So this won't be.
Don't edit this out, guys.
Anyway you have, so I'll comeback at it.
So effectively you've made thesoftware that was specific to
point on problem as aprofessional and so what you
know if you think of like in theagile world of development.
You didn't take the technicalapproach.
You said this is the businessproblem and I need to solve that
(03:04):
with these types of attributesso it's usable, scalable,
affordable, all those kinds ofthings that go with it.
So you're coming from thebusiness element to make design
and solve a problem, not atechnical solve.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah, a hundred percent.
When we started the company, webrought together top chief
people officers, top heads oftalent, top recruiters, top HR
business partners and we startedto unlock the frameworks that
they use to help connect rolesto strategy and how to measure
them, and we built an AI coreinside of those frameworks.
(03:37):
Let me start maybe withsomething, though different,
thomas, because if I came to youtoday and I said to you, hey, I
want you to invest $500,000 inmy company right now, you would
ask me some really specificquestions, and those questions,
believe it or not, are reallythematic.
You probably asked me somethingaround how I was going to
(03:59):
create value with the money.
You'd ask me what kind ofreturn I could generate for you
and you'd probably ask mesomething about the timeline in
which I was going to generatethat return.
All of us think about those samequestions, or some variant of
those same questions.
If we're being asked for moneybut check this out Salary is an
(04:19):
investment, and so why is itthat that thinking seems to
break down when we start talkingabout putting people into roles
, if we're investing the salaryof that role, how that connects
to our broader strategy, whatthe objective measures are for
(04:49):
success and how we're going togo out and measure them, and
that's one of the things that wedo within the platform.
We make that thinking really,really accessible.
We created a conversational AIproduct that leads managers
through a proven role designprocess and helps draw out their
best ideas about what they wantthat role to achieve Not the
(05:11):
tasks that they want it to do,but the achievements that they
want that role to have for thecompany.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
So take me through what's today.
Look like How's it done today?
Lots of places, not everywhere,but like is it manly written?
Is it someone throws in GPT andsays here you go, like how does
someone do what your technologydoes today, and maybe identify
a few of the problems along withthat.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yeah well, so the biggest problem is that a lot of
organizations don't do that.
They think about how can I justthrow something together that I
can put out on the web?
Don't do that.
They think about how can I justthrow something together that I
can put out on the web?
And then they post that andthey get like five or 600
applicants and their recruiterskind of artificially dip up
maybe 20 of those and then theystart an interview process.
Except the manager hasn'treally thought through the role.
(05:57):
So they're working out in theprocess of the interviews what
they want.
And this is what leads a lot ofmanagers to say to HR people hey
, I need to see more candidates,right, because they haven't
really thought through what isthat role going to achieve?
How are we going to measure itand why is that going to matter?
And that's a big problembecause that's going to damage
employer brand.
It doesn't create clarity forthe manager, it doesn't
(06:20):
necessarily lead to greatselection and then, once you get
the person in the role, ithasn't done anything to help you
be more effective inperformance management.
And you know what the sad factis?
Speaker 1 (06:33):
46% of new hires fail in their first 18 months,
Particularly if you have ADHD.
I'm going to speak to the truthon that one.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Like you're done, it's a huge problem and you know
when you think about itmanagers if you ask the average
manager what they want, theywant people who will embrace
accountability and who will actwith initiative.
And if you ask the averageemployee what they want, they
want a role that has meaning andpurpose and they're both going
like this.
(06:58):
They're crossing each other,they're missing each other and
in part because the managers arenot sitting down and doing a
thoughtful role design.
And there are a couple ofreasons for that.
One is it's really reallyintellectually difficult.
And two, they don't usuallyhave a really good guide.
Maybe they get a template fromHR, but that doesn't help them
very much.
And the third reason is,historically, it's taken a long
(07:21):
time we solve those threeproblems.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
So from a role design , just devil's advocate.
Why can't they just use like aGPT or something and say here's
my main problem, here's what'simportant, here are all the
systems we have, this is what wehear in our culture, and just
say give me a role description,tell me how you guys like, why
they would do that, versus payfor it.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Bunch of reasons.
So, first of all, what you needmore than anything is not a job
description.
Nobody cares whether you have adocument or not.
What you need is clarity, andclarity comes from working
through a set of questions, fromthinking deeply about why
you're even hiring in this roleto begin with.
And so if you went to a chatGPT and you know what, if your
(08:04):
culture is, I just need a bunchof words with some bullets and I
need to call it a jobdescription.
I just need to get it out ofthe web and get you know out of
pain.
Hey, go to chat GPT, it's freeand it's there.
But the fact is you have to leadchat GPT.
Propulsion AI leads you, whichmeans you don't have to know how
to ask for anything.
You don't have to know what todo with it when you get back,
(08:27):
because Athena, our digitalhuman, is going to engage you in
a conversation and is going todraw out of you your best ideas
about what that role needs toachieve and how you're going to
measure that success.
You can't do that with ChatGPT.
Second reason is ChatGPTdoesn't scale to enterprise
level and Propulsion AI does.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
So so so the HR professional needs this.
When do they need this?
And then how often?
So cause you know, if it's a,if it's a flat organization,
meaning like they never go morethan a hundred employees or 500
employees do they need it?
Or give me this.
What I'm thinking is I mean,give me the scenario.
(09:09):
I think it's obvious whenyou're in a growth mode, you're
doing lots of hiring, but is itin a reorg mode?
Tell me, why does someone buy alicense as opposed to just one
off?
That's a great question.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
So I'll give you a couple of customer examples,
real life customer examples.
We have a market research firm.
The CEO came to us originallybecause she just needed to write
job descriptions and what sheultimately has told us is it's
caused her to rethink every rolein the organization.
That's, that's, you know, itemnumber one, right?
(09:42):
So you're going to touch theproduct, or the product is going
to be helpful to you whenyou're hiring, but also when
you're pivoting roles In theworld of today.
You know, you and I sit down.
You're my boss.
You come out of executive teammeeting and you say, hey, scott,
you know you and I sit down,you're my boss.
You come out of executive teammeeting and you say, hey, scott,
you know what Business haschanged.
I gotta.
I gotta pivot your role alittle bit and I'm like okay,
thomas, like not a problem, I'ma, I'm a good corporate citizen.
(10:02):
Tell me what you want.
You and I have a looseconversation about it.
I go off, I start doing thatjob.
Now maybe I develop clarity,but that degrades over time and
you turn around to update my jobdescription, except there are
15 other things that are moreimportant than updating a
document.
And so over time I start doinga job that's a little bit, and
then a little bit more and alittle bit more different than
(10:23):
my job description, and thewhole purpose is lost right In
the world of tomorrow.
Here's what you're going to doyou go to Athena.
You work out the changes to myrole.
No-transcript.
(10:59):
Greater autonomy on my part.
The more clear I am which isthe real purpose of a job
description the more clear I am,the more autonomously I can act
and the more I can be workingtoward the same thing that
you're working toward, which isan outcome that is really
significant to the business.
That leads to lessmicromanagement for you and
(11:20):
greater satisfaction for me asan employee.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
I was doing a job, someone else was also partially
doing and I had 20 dotted linepeople to me at points.
It really felt like it wascrazy, like every peer I had.
You know, does Athena doanything for organizational
alignment on roles,responsibilities?
So so you have people workingin the company, just grows
whatever grows and like, as youdescribed, I need you to do this
, someone else leaves.
I'm doing that.
I'm picking this up.
I never released it.
Does it ever go through andjust redo all role descriptions
(11:58):
for everybody and then tie it to, let's say, an eight to a like
a bamboo or something like forfor the purposes of performance,
like, walk me through thatorganization that's got people
and we benefit from a massive.
Let's make sure we got it allright and let's get it to our
our you know our performancebase, so we know how to comp
people.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Let me.
Let me take the easy part ofthat question.
We integrate with HRMS systemsand with recruitment management
systems.
So when Athena helps youthrough the role design process,
she also then will write.
By the way, when she's donewith with the interview
effectively, if you want to callit that, she's going to write a
performance-based jobdescription for you.
(12:35):
Seo optimized posting for theweb.
She's going to write socialmedia content.
If you want to post it to yourlive feeds.
She'll write interviewer guides.
You want that posting to godirectly into your RMS?
We integrate.
You want that job descriptiondocument to go into the employee
file?
We integrate.
But the harder part is thisright, it's more than updating
documents.
As a manager, you want to havethought clearly about what you
(13:01):
want out of that role.
Why do you even have me in thatrole?
Is it just to do things for you?
Because you know what that'sgoing to lead to Turnover?
That's not a job with meaningand purpose, right?
It's also a formula for youhaving to take time to manage me
, and the average manager spendsabout 20% of their time
compensating for unclear andunderperforming employees.
So the fact that I lack clarityabout the job and that you lack
(13:23):
clarity about the job isn't juston me, it's on both of us, and
it's a hidden tax on growth forthe organization.
So Athena has the ability totake an uploaded job description
and help you rewrite it.
The real value is in theconversation, where you start to
totally become crystal clearwhy do I need it?
(13:43):
What is it that I need you toproduce?
How am I going to measure it?
That's going to lead you tomanage me differently, so you're
going to get a better result,not just about having me
operating that role, butmanaging my performance along
the way.
It's going to lead me to feelgreat about the company, about
my relationship with you, andthat's going to reduce turnover.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Because I'm thinking like you know you're an HR
professional here is like youknow what I need this I get it.
How do they make the businesscase to the CFO to say hey.
Or the CEO to say I need areport into, we want to make
this investment in thistechnology?
How do you help them with theROI Cause?
At the end of the day, great,you can't prove ROI in a
business case.
(14:23):
No one's giving you fundingRight.
So so yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Yeah.
So let's let's say so, my, mylast corporate gig.
We were, we were doing a lot ofhiring, um, and there was a
little bit of it.
We were, we were growing byexpansion.
But there was also and therealways is for every company
there's also some churn right.
And so let's say we have$120,000 employee in our
organization and they leave thatrole.
It's going to cost us probablytwo X to replace that person in
(14:50):
that role.
And when you think about it,then there's also a productivity
gap.
Theoretically, I should begenerating about $10,000 worth
of productivity every singlemonth.
So let's say, it takes me 90days to get that role refilled.
So that's 30,000 right there.
So now we've got two Xreplacement costs, we've got
$30,000 of productivity loss,and then everybody else on the
(15:13):
team has to do the work that Ivacate.
That's why turnover is soincredibly expensive and why we
need to be working to keepproductivity incredibly high.
I don't know whether yourealize this or not, but an
employee that's fully engagedtends to produce 16% more than
(15:33):
we pay them.
But the opposite end of thatspectrum is true too.
A fully disengaged employeeonly produces about 60% of their
payroll value.
So even if you don't haveturnover.
If you have an underperformingemployee that's fully disengaged
, that $100,000 employeeeffectively costs you $160,000.
Think about it that's an extra$60,000 role that you can't
(15:58):
afford to put into yourorganization because you are
leaking that money someplaceelse.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
The average SMB loses 20% to 30% of their top line
revenue due to underperformers.
So part of the business casewould be like you're, with
better role description, you geta better fit to actually
accomplish the main, the 80% ofthe job.
There's always that extra stuff, but like what this person
needs to do to help us moveforward, this better aligns,
that for sure.
Secondly, then it then it justgets the expectations correct to
(16:31):
, because what I see sometimesin roles right Like I think
others see this is that there'stoo much and they just keep
throwing shit on there asopposed to being very pointed
with it and then moving forward.
Then you're less likely tointerest.
So you can show that.
And then I would still have aCEO.
I'd have a tough time becausethat's like a future bet, like
where I'm, like do we have aproblem with with this right now
(16:52):
?
Like I'm like you, like youmean like if you have a company
doesn't lose people but, um, youknow, but they're handing out
gold watches because you've beenthere for 15 years, which is,
by the way, if your company doesthat, you should leave, just
just so you know that's not areason to anyway.
Maybe in the police force I'dsay, if you stay in la and you
can survive 25 years, is it,does anybody?
Speaker 2 (17:10):
does anybody have a gold, a gold watch?
Speaker 1 (17:12):
anymore.
You'll get stolen from it.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
My point is you have a tough time making that
business case.
I see the value.
Do you worry, though, thatfuture GBT-5 does this?
Do you worry about AI justbeing part of it, that it can
just figure out what you'redoing and it becomes a free tool
?
Does this worry you as abusiness?
Speaker 2 (17:32):
No, it doesn't worry us as a business, because people
that want that sort of you know, free GPT solution they're
working in cultures where theydon't.
You know this is not importantto them and what they need is
they need bullets on a page.
They need to get out of painquickly.
Fine, go, go, go do that.
And organizations and what ourcustomers are telling us is that
(17:52):
the Propulsion AI platform notonly handles a bunch of stuff
that their HR people used tohandle for them, not only does
it help provoke their managersthinking not only is it raising
their employees productivity,but it is doing it faster and
better than managers can do iton their own.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
And there's also security.
Right Like yours is the LLMsout there are public facing, so
anything you put in there iskind of becomes available if you
will.
Yours is not.
Yours is private, it's notshared information.
It can have a conversation, soto speak, without it being
public.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Yeah, just the company, and the company alone
has access to their data.
What they create isn't sharedbroadly.
But here's another thing thatthe platform does is it creates
bandwidth for HR teams, and Ican tell you as a practitioner,
there's no shortage for HR teamsof priorities, of things that
they want to work on.
And what Propulsion does is itcreates bandwidth by allowing
(18:53):
managers to interact aroundthese roles directly.
What a lot of our customers,chros, chief people officers
tell us is I don't have anyother choice.
My people have to be involved.
Until Propulsion AI came along.
Now I can say to the manageryou go work with Athena, you
think through this role and itsaves cycles for the HR team.
(19:14):
Now what that allows them to dois really two things One is
address other priorities thatare pressing, but the other is
come in at a much more senior,much more strategic level.
Think about it If you're arecruiter, what do you really
need?
You need a really, really goodspec.
So now the manager goes off,works all of their ideas out
with Athena, you get thatdocument as a recruiter and now
(19:37):
you've got crystal clarity aboutexactly what it is that manager
needs to see, and you didn'thave to spend two hours trying
to pull it out of their head.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Well, and this is where I thought was a really
interesting and we'll go throughsome of your like you know
we're kind of talking hyperbole,just a setup.
You have real use cases withclients we're gonna go through
in a minute.
But where I was thinking too islike a tech systems or a Robert
Half.
They're like giving them thatability as a distinguishing
thing for their customers.
Because, you know, because Iremember being one who bought
(20:08):
from them from those types ofcompanies, from staffing
companies, and they'll hand youa job description of this and
I'm like I just half-assed itBecause I don't know, I just
don't need it.
But if they had a tool thatallowed me to go in or they said
, hey, listen, I made this foryou.
They have added value intotheir customers.
They are more effective in whothey hire for, which makes them
so there's high value.
I think your market obviously HRprofessionals, but I think the
(20:30):
recruiting firms using this atscale would be a fantastic
client for you guys, becauseyou'd be helping that HR
professional ultimately who'shired them to go find a position
.
Because there's the ones whoare constantly tweaking the.
They're not getting the rightcandidates.
They're getting like this.
They can tweak the role toperformance with it.
I see that of them.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
You think about where the value is for those
organizations.
They need to recruit goodtalent for you, but they need to
do it quickly and they need tokeep their people focused on two
things interacting withcustomers and business
development into some of theselonger conversations that just
take a long time to get theideas out, or documenting things
(21:11):
and trying to get the wordsright so that everybody's got
one version that they're workingfrom.
And so we have a handful ofconsulting companies who
actually use the product withtheir customers.
They actually subscribe to theplatform and then they have
seats that they give to theircustomers and customers love it.
They see them as tech forwardand you know Athena is helping
(21:36):
those managers work toward adifferent kind of employee that
they're going to hire.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
I want to do a quick example for you really quickly.
Give me a client use case here.
So let's talk real world.
What was the problem, what didyou do and what was the result?
No, okay, so let's, let's talkreal world.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
What have you?
What was the problem?
What did you do and what wasthe result?
No, okay, so.
So we had a.
We had a customer that wastrying to hire an accountant.
Right, and you know you askpreviously.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
I'm still here.
I was giving you full screenhere.
Let me let me set it up again.
Sorry, I was doing.
This is going to be this.
This is one of your bits, gotit All right?
Editing team back up.
Let me ask you, let me do thequestion again and then come in,
give me an example, real world.
You know what was the problem,you know what did you guys
propose, what was the outcomefor your client, and you know
industry kind of set this up forme.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Yeah, so.
So I mean, we didn't proposeanything, but let me tell you
what the client situation was.
They were trying to hire anaccountant, right, and something
that you would normally writeinto a job description for an
accountant is like follow up ondelinquent accounts, right, and
you got to ask yourself why Doyou need to watch a person come
and sit at a desk and make abunch of phone calls to people
(22:42):
that don't want to get them andwrite emails to people that
aren't going to read them.
Is that what we're reallytrying to get?
And what our client realizedwas there was something else,
that those things were a meansto an end, to get to what they
wanted.
They're about a $10 millioncompany and in a $10 million
company, you figure, if you takethat revenue over the year and
(23:04):
you divide it up, it's a littlebit over $800,000 of revenue
that's getting generated in anygiven month.
Now, the end that follow-up ondelinquent accounts represents
is called days outstanding.
It's a measure of how fast thatorganization could collect on
(23:24):
money that it was owed.
And if let's say and I thinkthis was the actual number for
them let's say, 90 days wastheir day's outstanding number,
and what they wound up doing wassaying, look, we need to get
that number to be 60 days ratherthan 90 days.
You know the value of that is,thomas, that moving from 90 to
(23:45):
60 on that collection it's$833,000.
It's almost a million dollarsof value.
And so what they found is theywere recreating and again, this
is where you know the jobdescription is less important
than the clarity Now, what theywrote.
When they created that jobdescription, they said you know,
that's just.
You know, following upinquentaccounts is an activity.
(24:07):
Your job is to move daysoutstanding and our target for
this next year is to move itfrom 90 days to 60 days.
Now look at what gets set up.
First of all, we've said to theperson in that who goes into
that job you're responsible forsomething that's really
(24:27):
important Making calls.
You're going to have to doreally important Making calls.
You're going to have to do that.
Sending emails, you're going tohave to do that.
But that's not your job.
That's a tactic.
Your job is move daysoutstanding from 90 days to 60
days, and that will create abouta million dollars of value to
us.
Think about the individual thatgoes into that role.
Think about the difference thatyou feel in pride in the sense
(24:48):
that what you're doing every dayactually matters to the
business.
That's what our customerdiscovered and it's a very small
mental paradigm shift thatactually creates the opportunity
for the company to do that.
It's moving from tasks tooutcomes.
That's what is so criticallyimportant when you think about
it.
That person now they come in,they want to do that job.
(25:10):
They also are in a betterposition to go back to the boss
and say, hey, wait a minute, ifthis is my job, shouldn't I be
doing these things?
And the boss and we learnedthis later the boss is like,
yeah, I hadn't even thoughtabout it.
Do that right.
That's initiative and that'swhat most managers want.
But you can't get initiativefrom people if you talk about
tasks and you stick them in alittle box.
(25:32):
The ends are not negotiable,they're set by the manager.
But they should be really trulyoutcome focused, because that
creates the opportunity for theindividual in the role to
innovate.
That leads to purpose.
That leads to you know thatindividual really recognizing
how they are doing somethingimportant for the business.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
I see a reverse of your product on the consumer
side is, yeah, rewriting aresume to meet exactly that.
That has the same tonality thatgoes the other way with it.
So you can use the GPT to doall this stuff.
But it does a terrible jobwriting a resume in my opinion.
But the flip side is, if it'soutcome-based to a role that
(26:13):
you're trying to find, it mightbe an interesting flip use case.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Well, you know.
So let me a cluster piece.
(27:00):
Yeah, Let me tell you anotherBuster piece.
Yeah, and the manager may notbe able to give them that role
they want, as long as it'screating value for the company
itself.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Is there a use case where either it's a candidate
that's applied for something orit's somebody internal Same
thing.
There's a person and they haveclear skills but they're just
not in the role that fullyutilize those and you may not do
that.
You may not discover that untilthe interview.
If it's a new candidate, youmay have not discovered that
until working with the personfor 18 months.
Like hey, I know you got hiredfor that.
You do it good just becauseyou're a talented individual,
(27:32):
but clearly you are really goodat this.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Does it take?
Could it look at their CV, soto speak, and then say here's
the job description for thisclearly talented employee?
Yeah, we are not, so we don'tdo anything on the candidate
side with resumes right now.
That's on our roadmap for thefuture.
But one thing that Athena doesdo once she walks you through
the process of defining theconnection to strategy for this
role and the achievements thatyou need it to produce, she's
going to look at thoseachievements and say, okay, let
me think about and make somerecommendations around
(28:07):
competencies and skills that arenecessary for you to execute
those responsibilities well, andshe's going to engage the user
in a conversation about thoseskills.
Now, what that does is it setsup for really good performance
management.
So you know, a typical jobdescription reads like an
obituary Task, task, task, task,blah, nothing right.
(28:29):
The way that Athena writes thatperformance-based job
description is she's got theachievements up front.
She's got examples of startingtactics.
Here are some of the thingsthat you're probably going to
have to do in order to get tosome of these achievements.
She's got competencies andskills.
Now, when I sit down with you asmy boss on a weekly basis,
we're talking about the stuffthat matters in my one-on-one.
(28:50):
Where are you to the resultsyou said you would generate?
How are you showing up withothers vis-a-vis the
competencies and the behaviors?
Let's talk about your growthpath around these particular
skills.
Now, if the role pivots I mean,we talked about that a little
bit earlier right, it's an easychange for you to make, so that
what you are saying to me isthis is your job.
(29:11):
This is why it's important,this is how I'm going to measure
you and that always stayscurrent.
That leads to less need for youto manage me and greater
satisfaction on my part, becauseI know what you want and I'm
out doing it.
What can a user or a companyexpect to kind of pay for this?
(29:32):
What's the load on them?
You know so we price as if youwere hiring an AI coworker, and
so you know.
The reality, though, is we'reabout half the price of what you
would pay to put another HRperson into your organization.
You know, our target customersare paying between $50,000 and
$75,000 a year, and that'sunlimited usage for every one of
(29:52):
their managers and every one oftheir employees.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Do you base it just on flat usage or like if it's a
company has you know if it's HR1 versus an HR 50.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Yeah, Well, when you think about it, you know if I,
if I put a new HR person in, I'mgoing to pay between a hundred
and $125,000 for for that personand they're going to work
regular hours and they're goingto have benefits, costs and
they're going to take breaks andthey're going to get sick and
they're going to be human beings.
But when you put Athena intothe organization, she's
available 24 seven.
So if your managers arethinking about this on the drive
(30:24):
home, she can have aconversation with you on the way
home.
If you know, if you know she'sworking on the weekends and she
doesn't complain, she doesn'tget sick, she's always on and
she's always ready to generatestuff and that's and that's what
we think it's good value.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
I mean so it becomes like an an uh, an agent for the
entire HR organization andmanagers, for that matter too.
I mean it becomes somethingthat's a very pointed job,
specific, if you will, a role oroutcome specific AI agent.
I believe AI agents are thefuture that we're about to face,
where AI agents do a lot of thework for you and bring you in
when it can't figure out withanother AI agent what needs to
(31:00):
happen.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
So I think there's there's one thing that I need to
point out for the sake ofpeople listening, which is this
is very much a system thatrequires both artificial
intelligence and humanintelligence.
The most important personentity in this equation is the
manager themselves.
They are the ones who areaccountable for the results.
(31:21):
They are the ones who have thisstuff inside of their head.
Athena helps unlock that, so wedon't call her an agent that
operates on her own.
She is an AI coworker thatworks with you, helps draw out
your best ideas and then doesthe heavy stuff for you, but
what she can't replace is humanjudgment and the ideas that the
(31:41):
manager has about what'snecessary, given their unique
context.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Well, exactly, and I think most organizations
recognize that AI plusautomation is still a little bit
on the dangerous side, veryfairly highly risky, but most
want them to accelerate theknowledge worker.
So, if it moves me forward, 10,20, 30% faster, better, more
precise hires.
10, 20, 30% faster, better,more precise, you know hires.
(32:06):
10, 20, 30% better a candidate.
You're trying to get thesemarginal firm-wide benefits that
lower attrition.
5, 10, 15%, like that's whathappens when you put things in
order that move faster, clearer,more clarity.
You got to bring humanstogether so you have more
consensus because it is clearwhat's supposed to be going on.
There's no, you know.
All those things stackincrementally to benefit, to
(32:27):
move forward, betterproductivity and outcome and you
know what?
Speaker 2 (32:31):
here's what.
Here's what a lot of ourcustomers, who are customers now
what they found is they went tothe website and they got in and
tried it, and we're convincedthat when people do that, they
they're going to immediately seehow Athena and how Propulsion
AI are going to change thecharacter of the business and
it's going to change the resultsthat those businesses are
(32:52):
achieving.
And it costs you nothing nocredit card up front, just get
in.
You can start immediately.
It's a fully cloud-based systemand I would encourage anybody
who's really curious about it gotry it out, because it's going
to change your mind about howyou're utilizing people as
strategic assets in yourbusiness.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
I mean before you kind of.
I love I always call it theshameless plug so people know
what's coming, you get ahold ofyou, but you and I were talking
this off camera.
Like this can really actuallybenefit any industry because
you're the knowledge piece ofthe industry.
When you come into it, it helpsyou with the reasoning,
thinking, organization and itdoes what it does based on your
knowledge effectively.
So that means it's applicablein any industry.
(33:32):
You've had some really goodsuccesses in healthcare.
What was the other one that youwas talking about Healthcare.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
manufacturing is another big one in our pack for
us.
Yeah, manufacturing is anotherbig one in our pack for us.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Yeah, so if you need those use cases typically to
make the business case andyou're in healthcare and you're
listening, give them a call,propulsionai or getpropulsionai,
yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
The website is getpropulsionai and it's free,
so I think that's a good thing.
Try it out for free, kind ofthing you can try it for free.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
So, like I think that's a goodthing, try it out for free, kind
of thing.
You try it for free?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely Allright cool, scott.
Thank you, by the way.
This is like I think whatyou're solving is it's pointed,
and I and I and I believe, Itruly believe just coming from
(34:30):
an AI solves one thing reallywell and the cost of that is
less than hiring a human or ateam of humans, or it's just not
being done across the team.
You have a business case and ause case that can be sustainable
to go do something for you.
So it's, it's, it sounds likethat's there and you're.
You're finding people who arelike yes, we need this.
I love that, I guess that'sfantastic.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
We're growing pretty quickly and that means good
things, because Athena is thefirst of about six AI coworkers
that we see working together,and so we're excited to continue
to deepen the number oforganizations that are using
this current product and thatare are interacting with Athena,
cause it means it means growthfor us and the ability to
(35:07):
produce more.
That does Awesome.
Hey, listen.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Scott, thanks for jumping on the day with me.
Again, appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
I'm really happy to be be back and thanks for thanks
for taking the time to divedeep.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Yeah, no, I love this stuff, it's you know I'm an AI
nerd.
Maybe one day I'll restart thatchannel again.
Love this stuff, it's you knowI'm an AI nerd.
Maybe one day I'll restart thatchannel up again.
But anyway, thank you so muchfor joining.
Anyway, listen, check outgetpropulsionai If you'd like to
.
You know if you're, if you're aHR professional, you want to
see how to you know to applythis to your own organization.
Give it a shot.
Thanks for listening.
Thanks, thomas.
Hey, welcome to the Cut the Tie podcast.
We're doing a special sessiontoday to do a deep dive in with
Scott Morris of Propulsion AI.
Scott, how are you doing today?
I'm great, I'm great.
Thanks for having me.
I really appreciate it becauseyou were on the show and we were
discussing your technology andwhere it kind of helps
organizations of all kinds,right From just people with a
few hundred, people with a fewthousand and a lot of our guests
(00:21):
and listeners are in that zone.
Right, they run companies thatsize.
They, you know, maybe you knowin particular, they're trying to
hire and so if you're so this,so listen, if you're listening
and you're an hr professionaland you're running a good size
organization from a few hundred,a few thousand, uh, any
industry, really listen up,because this is something to
help you understand how you canget more engagement, more
retention and really keep thepeople you want to keep at your,
(00:42):
your place, have moreproductivity.
I mean, that's a fairassessment of, because what I
find in as I've interviewed lotsof people, it's a major problem
in companies is keeping talent,because people feel completely
disconnected and they feelcompletely like not part of it.
In particular, it's hybrid,remote.
So let's get Scott.
Just do a brief introduction,maybe yourself and a little bit
(01:05):
of your background and what youstarted there.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
So I have 25 years as a professional in the HR space
and about 20 of those years werein C-level roles, and I've
worked in organizations fromlike nimble startups to large
enterprises with 15,000 plusemployees, and I think the
breadth of that's reallyimportant At least I consider it
to be important because I'vestayed on the front lines.
(01:28):
I understand the problems thatfrontline HR people, frontline
employee relations people,frontline recruiters, frontline
HR business partners Iunderstand those problems
firsthand because even with aC-level title and smaller
companies, you do the frontlinework, and so I took all of that
experience and I turned it intobuilding a software company.
(01:52):
In 20 years of buying HRsoftware, one thing that I
discovered and I think a lot ofmy peers have discovered is that
it might be made by smartsoftware people, but they're
kind of adjacent to the problemsthat we deal with every day,
which are how to get people tocome to work, be happy and
productive and stay with us, getthe top talent in, keep the top
(02:15):
talent in, and so that's one ofthe things that we're doing at
Propulsion AI.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
It's like a FUBU of HR Horace Bias wasn't.
Sean John came up with the FUBU.
Okay, I've heard of that one.
You ever heard of FUBU?
No, fubu was a brand.
It was really focused by, like,the guy who started it,
african-american guy, successfulguy, but he had a brand called
Forrest Bias, so it was made by,you know, people of color and
(02:40):
anyway.
So this won't be.
Don't edit this out, guys.
Anyway you have, so I'll comeback at it.
So effectively you've made thesoftware that was specific to
point on problem as aprofessional and so what you
know if you think of like in theagile world of development.
You didn't take the technicalapproach.
You said this is the businessproblem and I need to solve that
(03:04):
with these types of attributesso it's usable, scalable,
affordable, all those kinds ofthings that go with it.
So you're coming from thebusiness element to make design
and solve a problem, not atechnical solve.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah, a hundred percent.
When we started the company, webrought together top chief
people officers, top heads oftalent, top recruiters, top HR
business partners and we startedto unlock the frameworks that
they use to help connect rolesto strategy and how to measure
them, and we built an AI coreinside of those frameworks.
(03:37):
Let me start maybe withsomething, though different,
thomas, because if I came to youtoday and I said to you, hey, I
want you to invest $500,000 inmy company right now, you would
ask me some really specificquestions, and those questions,
believe it or not, are reallythematic.
You probably asked me somethingaround how I was going to
(03:59):
create value with the money.
You'd ask me what kind ofreturn I could generate for you
and you'd probably ask mesomething about the timeline in
which I was going to generatethat return.
All of us think about those samequestions, or some variant of
those same questions.
If we're being asked for moneybut check this out Salary is an
(04:19):
investment, and so why is itthat that thinking seems to
break down when we start talkingabout putting people into roles
, if we're investing the salaryof that role, how that connects
to our broader strategy, whatthe objective measures are for
(04:49):
success and how we're going togo out and measure them, and
that's one of the things that wedo within the platform.
We make that thinking really,really accessible.
We created a conversational AIproduct that leads managers
through a proven role designprocess and helps draw out their
best ideas about what they wantthat role to achieve Not the
(05:11):
tasks that they want it to do,but the achievements that they
want that role to have for thecompany.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
So take me through what's today.
Look like How's it done today?
Lots of places, not everywhere,but like is it manly written?
Is it someone throws in GPT andsays here you go, like how does
someone do what your technologydoes today, and maybe identify
a few of the problems along withthat.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yeah well, so the biggest problem is that a lot of
organizations don't do that.
They think about how can I justthrow something together that I
can put out on the web?
Don't do that.
They think about how can I justthrow something together that I
can put out on the web?
And then they post that andthey get like five or 600
applicants and their recruiterskind of artificially dip up
maybe 20 of those and then theystart an interview process.
Except the manager hasn'treally thought through the role.
(05:57):
So they're working out in theprocess of the interviews what
they want.
And this is what leads a lot ofmanagers to say to HR people hey
, I need to see more candidates,right, because they haven't
really thought through what isthat role going to achieve?
How are we going to measure itand why is that going to matter?
And that's a big problembecause that's going to damage
employer brand.
It doesn't create clarity forthe manager, it doesn't
(06:20):
necessarily lead to greatselection and then, once you get
the person in the role, ithasn't done anything to help you
be more effective inperformance management.
And you know what the sad factis?
Speaker 1 (06:33):
46% of new hires fail in their first 18 months,
Particularly if you have ADHD.
I'm going to speak to the truthon that one.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Like you're done, it's a huge problem and you know
when you think about itmanagers if you ask the average
manager what they want, theywant people who will embrace
accountability and who will actwith initiative.
And if you ask the averageemployee what they want, they
want a role that has meaning andpurpose and they're both going
like this.
(06:58):
They're crossing each other,they're missing each other and
in part because the managers arenot sitting down and doing a
thoughtful role design.
And there are a couple ofreasons for that.
One is it's really reallyintellectually difficult.
And two, they don't usuallyhave a really good guide.
Maybe they get a template fromHR, but that doesn't help them
very much.
And the third reason is,historically, it's taken a long
(07:21):
time we solve those threeproblems.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
So from a role design , just devil's advocate.
Why can't they just use like aGPT or something and say here's
my main problem, here's what'simportant, here are all the
systems we have, this is what wehear in our culture, and just
say give me a role description,tell me how you guys like, why
they would do that, versus payfor it.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Bunch of reasons.
So, first of all, what you needmore than anything is not a job
description.
Nobody cares whether you have adocument or not.
What you need is clarity, andclarity comes from working
through a set of questions, fromthinking deeply about why
you're even hiring in this roleto begin with.
And so if you went to a chatGPT and you know what, if your
(08:04):
culture is, I just need a bunchof words with some bullets and I
need to call it a jobdescription.
I just need to get it out ofthe web and get you know out of
pain.
Hey, go to chat GPT, it's freeand it's there.
But the fact is you have to leadchat GPT.
Propulsion AI leads you, whichmeans you don't have to know how
to ask for anything.
You don't have to know what todo with it when you get back,
(08:27):
because Athena, our digitalhuman, is going to engage you in
a conversation and is going todraw out of you your best ideas
about what that role needs toachieve and how you're going to
measure that success.
You can't do that with ChatGPT.
Second reason is ChatGPTdoesn't scale to enterprise
level and Propulsion AI does.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
So so so the HR professional needs this.
When do they need this?
And then how often?
So cause you know, if it's a,if it's a flat organization,
meaning like they never go morethan a hundred employees or 500
employees do they need it?
Or give me this.
What I'm thinking is I mean,give me the scenario.
(09:09):
I think it's obvious whenyou're in a growth mode, you're
doing lots of hiring, but is itin a reorg mode?
Tell me, why does someone buy alicense as opposed to just one
off?
That's a great question.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
So I'll give you a couple of customer examples,
real life customer examples.
We have a market research firm.
The CEO came to us originallybecause she just needed to write
job descriptions and what sheultimately has told us is it's
caused her to rethink every rolein the organization.
That's, that's, you know, itemnumber one, right?
(09:42):
So you're going to touch theproduct, or the product is going
to be helpful to you whenyou're hiring, but also when
you're pivoting roles In theworld of today.
You know, you and I sit down.
You're my boss.
You come out of executive teammeeting and you say, hey, scott,
you know you and I sit down,you're my boss.
You come out of executive teammeeting and you say, hey, scott,
you know what Business haschanged.
I gotta.
I gotta pivot your role alittle bit and I'm like okay,
thomas, like not a problem, I'ma, I'm a good corporate citizen.
(10:02):
Tell me what you want.
You and I have a looseconversation about it.
I go off, I start doing thatjob.
Now maybe I develop clarity,but that degrades over time and
you turn around to update my jobdescription, except there are
15 other things that are moreimportant than updating a
document.
And so over time I start doinga job that's a little bit, and
then a little bit more and alittle bit more different than
(10:23):
my job description, and thewhole purpose is lost right In
the world of tomorrow.
Here's what you're going to doyou go to Athena.
You work out the changes to myrole.
No-transcript.
(10:59):
Greater autonomy on my part.
The more clear I am which isthe real purpose of a job
description the more clear I am,the more autonomously I can act
and the more I can be workingtoward the same thing that
you're working toward, which isan outcome that is really
significant to the business.
That leads to lessmicromanagement for you and
(11:20):
greater satisfaction for me asan employee.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
I was doing a job, someone else was also partially
doing and I had 20 dotted linepeople to me at points.
It really felt like it wascrazy, like every peer I had.
You know, does Athena doanything for organizational
alignment on roles,responsibilities?
So so you have people workingin the company, just grows
whatever grows and like, as youdescribed, I need you to do this
, someone else leaves.
I'm doing that.
I'm picking this up.
I never released it.
Does it ever go through andjust redo all role descriptions
(11:58):
for everybody and then tie it to, let's say, an eight to a like
a bamboo or something like forfor the purposes of performance,
like, walk me through thatorganization that's got people
and we benefit from a massive.
Let's make sure we got it allright and let's get it to our
our you know our performancebase, so we know how to comp
people.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Let me.
Let me take the easy part ofthat question.
We integrate with HRMS systemsand with recruitment management
systems.
So when Athena helps youthrough the role design process,
she also then will write.
By the way, when she's donewith with the interview
effectively, if you want to callit that, she's going to write a
performance-based jobdescription for you.
(12:35):
Seo optimized posting for theweb.
She's going to write socialmedia content.
If you want to post it to yourlive feeds.
She'll write interviewer guides.
You want that posting to godirectly into your RMS?
We integrate.
You want that job descriptiondocument to go into the employee
file?
We integrate.
But the harder part is thisright, it's more than updating
documents.
As a manager, you want to havethought clearly about what you
(13:01):
want out of that role.
Why do you even have me in thatrole?
Is it just to do things for you?
Because you know what that'sgoing to lead to Turnover?
That's not a job with meaningand purpose, right?
It's also a formula for youhaving to take time to manage me
, and the average manager spendsabout 20% of their time
compensating for unclear andunderperforming employees.
So the fact that I lack clarityabout the job and that you lack
(13:23):
clarity about the job isn't juston me, it's on both of us, and
it's a hidden tax on growth forthe organization.
So Athena has the ability totake an uploaded job description
and help you rewrite it.
The real value is in theconversation, where you start to
totally become crystal clearwhy do I need it?
(13:43):
What is it that I need you toproduce?
How am I going to measure it?
That's going to lead you tomanage me differently, so you're
going to get a better result,not just about having me
operating that role, butmanaging my performance along
the way.
It's going to lead me to feelgreat about the company, about
my relationship with you, andthat's going to reduce turnover.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Because I'm thinking like you know you're an HR
professional here is like youknow what I need this I get it.
How do they make the businesscase to the CFO to say hey.
Or the CEO to say I need areport into, we want to make
this investment in thistechnology?
How do you help them with theROI Cause?
At the end of the day, great,you can't prove ROI in a
business case.
(14:23):
No one's giving you fundingRight.
So so yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Yeah.
So let's let's say so, my, mylast corporate gig.
We were, we were doing a lot ofhiring, um, and there was a
little bit of it.
We were, we were growing byexpansion.
But there was also and therealways is for every company
there's also some churn right.
And so let's say we have$120,000 employee in our
organization and they leave thatrole.
It's going to cost us probablytwo X to replace that person in
(14:50):
that role.
And when you think about it,then there's also a productivity
gap.
Theoretically, I should begenerating about $10,000 worth
of productivity every singlemonth.
So let's say, it takes me 90days to get that role refilled.
So that's 30,000 right there.
So now we've got two Xreplacement costs, we've got
$30,000 of productivity loss,and then everybody else on the
(15:13):
team has to do the work that Ivacate.
That's why turnover is soincredibly expensive and why we
need to be working to keepproductivity incredibly high.
I don't know whether yourealize this or not, but an
employee that's fully engagedtends to produce 16% more than
(15:33):
we pay them.
But the opposite end of thatspectrum is true too.
A fully disengaged employeeonly produces about 60% of their
payroll value.
So even if you don't haveturnover.
If you have an underperformingemployee that's fully disengaged
, that $100,000 employeeeffectively costs you $160,000.
Think about it that's an extra$60,000 role that you can't
(15:58):
afford to put into yourorganization because you are
leaking that money someplaceelse.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
The average SMB loses 20% to 30% of their top line
revenue due to underperformers.
So part of the business casewould be like you're, with
better role description, you geta better fit to actually
accomplish the main, the 80% ofthe job.
There's always that extra stuff, but like what this person
needs to do to help us moveforward, this better aligns,
that for sure.
Secondly, then it then it justgets the expectations correct to
(16:31):
, because what I see sometimesin roles right Like I think
others see this is that there'stoo much and they just keep
throwing shit on there asopposed to being very pointed
with it and then moving forward.
Then you're less likely tointerest.
So you can show that.
And then I would still have aCEO.
I'd have a tough time becausethat's like a future bet, like
where I'm, like do we have aproblem with with this right now
(16:52):
?
Like I'm like you, like youmean like if you have a company
doesn't lose people but, um, youknow, but they're handing out
gold watches because you've beenthere for 15 years, which is,
by the way, if your company doesthat, you should leave, just
just so you know that's not areason to anyway.
Maybe in the police force I'dsay, if you stay in la and you
can survive 25 years, is it,does anybody?
Speaker 2 (17:10):
does anybody have a gold, a gold watch?
Speaker 1 (17:12):
anymore.
You'll get stolen from it.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
My point is you have a tough time making that
business case.
I see the value.
Do you worry, though, thatfuture GBT-5 does this?
Do you worry about AI justbeing part of it, that it can
just figure out what you'redoing and it becomes a free tool
?
Does this worry you as abusiness?
Speaker 2 (17:32):
No, it doesn't worry us as a business, because people
that want that sort of you know, free GPT solution they're
working in cultures where theydon't.
You know this is not importantto them and what they need is
they need bullets on a page.
They need to get out of painquickly.
Fine, go, go, go do that.
And organizations and what ourcustomers are telling us is that
(17:52):
the Propulsion AI platform notonly handles a bunch of stuff
that their HR people used tohandle for them, not only does
it help provoke their managersthinking not only is it raising
their employees productivity,but it is doing it faster and
better than managers can do iton their own.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
And there's also security.
Right Like yours is the LLMsout there are public facing, so
anything you put in there iskind of becomes available if you
will.
Yours is not.
Yours is private, it's notshared information.
It can have a conversation, soto speak, without it being
public.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Yeah, just the company, and the company alone
has access to their data.
What they create isn't sharedbroadly.
But here's another thing thatthe platform does is it creates
bandwidth for HR teams, and Ican tell you as a practitioner,
there's no shortage for HR teamsof priorities, of things that
they want to work on.
And what Propulsion does is itcreates bandwidth by allowing
(18:53):
managers to interact aroundthese roles directly.
What a lot of our customers,chros, chief people officers
tell us is I don't have anyother choice.
My people have to be involved.
Until Propulsion AI came along.
Now I can say to the manageryou go work with Athena, you
think through this role and itsaves cycles for the HR team.
(19:14):
Now what that allows them to dois really two things One is
address other priorities thatare pressing, but the other is
come in at a much more senior,much more strategic level.
Think about it If you're arecruiter, what do you really
need?
You need a really, really goodspec.
So now the manager goes off,works all of their ideas out
with Athena, you get thatdocument as a recruiter and now
(19:37):
you've got crystal clarity aboutexactly what it is that manager
needs to see, and you didn'thave to spend two hours trying
to pull it out of their head.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Well, and this is where I thought was a really
interesting and we'll go throughsome of your like you know
we're kind of talking hyperbole,just a setup.
You have real use cases withclients we're gonna go through
in a minute.
But where I was thinking too islike a tech systems or a Robert
Half.
They're like giving them thatability as a distinguishing
thing for their customers.
Because, you know, because Iremember being one who bought
(20:08):
from them from those types ofcompanies, from staffing
companies, and they'll hand youa job description of this and
I'm like I just half-assed itBecause I don't know, I just
don't need it.
But if they had a tool thatallowed me to go in or they said
, hey, listen, I made this foryou.
They have added value intotheir customers.
They are more effective in whothey hire for, which makes them
so there's high value.
I think your market obviously HRprofessionals, but I think the
(20:30):
recruiting firms using this atscale would be a fantastic
client for you guys, becauseyou'd be helping that HR
professional ultimately who'shired them to go find a position
.
Because there's the ones whoare constantly tweaking the.
They're not getting the rightcandidates.
They're getting like this.
They can tweak the role toperformance with it.
I see that of them.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
You think about where the value is for those
organizations.
They need to recruit goodtalent for you, but they need to
do it quickly and they need tokeep their people focused on two
things interacting withcustomers and business
development into some of theselonger conversations that just
take a long time to get theideas out, or documenting things
(21:11):
and trying to get the wordsright so that everybody's got
one version that they're workingfrom.
And so we have a handful ofconsulting companies who
actually use the product withtheir customers.
They actually subscribe to theplatform and then they have
seats that they give to theircustomers and customers love it.
They see them as tech forwardand you know Athena is helping
(21:36):
those managers work toward adifferent kind of employee that
they're going to hire.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
I want to do a quick example for you really quickly.
Give me a client use case here.
So let's talk real world.
What was the problem, what didyou do and what was the result?
No, okay, so let's, let's talkreal world.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
What have you?
What was the problem?
What did you do and what wasthe result?
No, okay, so.
So we had a.
We had a customer that wastrying to hire an accountant.
Right, and you know you askpreviously.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
I'm still here.
I was giving you full screenhere.
Let me let me set it up again.
Sorry, I was doing.
This is going to be this.
This is one of your bits, gotit All right?
Editing team back up.
Let me ask you, let me do thequestion again and then come in,
give me an example, real world.
You know what was the problem,you know what did you guys
propose, what was the outcomefor your client, and you know
industry kind of set this up forme.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Yeah, so.
So I mean, we didn't proposeanything, but let me tell you
what the client situation was.
They were trying to hire anaccountant, right, and something
that you would normally writeinto a job description for an
accountant is like follow up ondelinquent accounts, right, and
you got to ask yourself why Doyou need to watch a person come
and sit at a desk and make abunch of phone calls to people
(22:42):
that don't want to get them andwrite emails to people that
aren't going to read them.
Is that what we're reallytrying to get?
And what our client realizedwas there was something else,
that those things were a meansto an end, to get to what they
wanted.
They're about a $10 millioncompany and in a $10 million
company, you figure, if you takethat revenue over the year and
(23:04):
you divide it up, it's a littlebit over $800,000 of revenue
that's getting generated in anygiven month.
Now, the end that follow-up ondelinquent accounts represents
is called days outstanding.
It's a measure of how fast thatorganization could collect on
(23:24):
money that it was owed.
And if let's say and I thinkthis was the actual number for
them let's say, 90 days wastheir day's outstanding number,
and what they wound up doing wassaying, look, we need to get
that number to be 60 days ratherthan 90 days.
You know the value of that is,thomas, that moving from 90 to
(23:45):
60 on that collection it's$833,000.
It's almost a million dollarsof value.
And so what they found is theywere recreating and again, this
is where you know the jobdescription is less important
than the clarity Now, what theywrote.
When they created that jobdescription, they said you know,
that's just.
You know, following upinquentaccounts is an activity.
(24:07):
Your job is to move daysoutstanding and our target for
this next year is to move itfrom 90 days to 60 days.
Now look at what gets set up.
First of all, we've said to theperson in that who goes into
that job you're responsible forsomething that's really
(24:27):
important Making calls.
You're going to have to doreally important Making calls.
You're going to have to do that.
Sending emails, you're going tohave to do that.
But that's not your job.
That's a tactic.
Your job is move daysoutstanding from 90 days to 60
days, and that will create abouta million dollars of value to
us.
Think about the individual thatgoes into that role.
Think about the difference thatyou feel in pride in the sense
(24:48):
that what you're doing every dayactually matters to the
business.
That's what our customerdiscovered and it's a very small
mental paradigm shift thatactually creates the opportunity
for the company to do that.
It's moving from tasks tooutcomes.
That's what is so criticallyimportant when you think about
it.
That person now they come in,they want to do that job.
(25:10):
They also are in a betterposition to go back to the boss
and say, hey, wait a minute, ifthis is my job, shouldn't I be
doing these things?
And the boss and we learnedthis later the boss is like,
yeah, I hadn't even thoughtabout it.
Do that right.
That's initiative and that'swhat most managers want.
But you can't get initiativefrom people if you talk about
tasks and you stick them in alittle box.
(25:32):
The ends are not negotiable,they're set by the manager.
But they should be really trulyoutcome focused, because that
creates the opportunity for theindividual in the role to
innovate.
That leads to purpose.
That leads to you know thatindividual really recognizing
how they are doing somethingimportant for the business.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
I see a reverse of your product on the consumer
side is, yeah, rewriting aresume to meet exactly that.
That has the same tonality thatgoes the other way with it.
So you can use the GPT to doall this stuff.
But it does a terrible jobwriting a resume in my opinion.
But the flip side is, if it'soutcome-based to a role that
(26:13):
you're trying to find, it mightbe an interesting flip use case.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Well, you know.
So let me a cluster piece.
(27:00):
Yeah, Let me tell you anotherBuster piece.
Yeah, and the manager may notbe able to give them that role
they want, as long as it'screating value for the company
itself.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Is there a use case where either it's a candidate
that's applied for something orit's somebody internal Same
thing.
There's a person and they haveclear skills but they're just
not in the role that fullyutilize those and you may not do
that.
You may not discover that untilthe interview.
If it's a new candidate, youmay have not discovered that
until working with the personfor 18 months.
Like hey, I know you got hiredfor that.
You do it good just becauseyou're a talented individual,
(27:32):
but clearly you are really goodat this.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Does it take?
Could it look at their CV, soto speak, and then say here's
the job description for thisclearly talented employee?
Yeah, we are not, so we don'tdo anything on the candidate
side with resumes right now.
That's on our roadmap for thefuture.
But one thing that Athena doesdo once she walks you through
the process of defining theconnection to strategy for this
role and the achievements thatyou need it to produce, she's
going to look at thoseachievements and say, okay, let
me think about and make somerecommendations around
(28:07):
competencies and skills that arenecessary for you to execute
those responsibilities well, andshe's going to engage the user
in a conversation about thoseskills.
Now, what that does is it setsup for really good performance
management.
So you know, a typical jobdescription reads like an
obituary Task, task, task, task,blah, nothing right.
(28:29):
The way that Athena writes thatperformance-based job
description is she's got theachievements up front.
She's got examples of startingtactics.
Here are some of the thingsthat you're probably going to
have to do in order to get tosome of these achievements.
She's got competencies andskills.
Now, when I sit down with you asmy boss on a weekly basis,
we're talking about the stuffthat matters in my one-on-one.
(28:50):
Where are you to the resultsyou said you would generate?
How are you showing up withothers vis-a-vis the
competencies and the behaviors?
Let's talk about your growthpath around these particular
skills.
Now, if the role pivots I mean,we talked about that a little
bit earlier right, it's an easychange for you to make, so that
what you are saying to me isthis is your job.
(29:11):
This is why it's important,this is how I'm going to measure
you and that always stayscurrent.
That leads to less need for youto manage me and greater
satisfaction on my part, becauseI know what you want and I'm
out doing it.
What can a user or a companyexpect to kind of pay for this?
(29:32):
What's the load on them?
You know so we price as if youwere hiring an AI coworker, and
so you know.
The reality, though, is we'reabout half the price of what you
would pay to put another HRperson into your organization.
You know, our target customersare paying between $50,000 and
$75,000 a year, and that'sunlimited usage for every one of
(29:52):
their managers and every one oftheir employees.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Do you base it just on flat usage or like if it's a
company has you know if it's HR1 versus an HR 50.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Yeah, Well, when you think about it, you know if I,
if I put a new HR person in, I'mgoing to pay between a hundred
and $125,000 for for that personand they're going to work
regular hours and they're goingto have benefits, costs and
they're going to take breaks andthey're going to get sick and
they're going to be human beings.
But when you put Athena intothe organization, she's
available 24 seven.
So if your managers arethinking about this on the drive
(30:24):
home, she can have aconversation with you on the way
home.
If you know, if you know she'sworking on the weekends and she
doesn't complain, she doesn'tget sick, she's always on and
she's always ready to generatestuff and that's and that's what
we think it's good value.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
I mean so it becomes like an an uh, an agent for the
entire HR organization andmanagers, for that matter too.
I mean it becomes somethingthat's a very pointed job,
specific, if you will, a role oroutcome specific AI agent.
I believe AI agents are thefuture that we're about to face,
where AI agents do a lot of thework for you and bring you in
when it can't figure out withanother AI agent what needs to
(31:00):
happen.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
So I think there's there's one thing that I need to
point out for the sake ofpeople listening, which is this
is very much a system thatrequires both artificial
intelligence and humanintelligence.
The most important personentity in this equation is the
manager themselves.
They are the ones who areaccountable for the results.
(31:21):
They are the ones who have thisstuff inside of their head.
Athena helps unlock that, so wedon't call her an agent that
operates on her own.
She is an AI coworker thatworks with you, helps draw out
your best ideas and then doesthe heavy stuff for you, but
what she can't replace is humanjudgment and the ideas that the
(31:41):
manager has about what'snecessary, given their unique
context.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Well, exactly, and I think most organizations
recognize that AI plusautomation is still a little bit
on the dangerous side, veryfairly highly risky, but most
want them to accelerate theknowledge worker.
So, if it moves me forward, 10,20, 30% faster, better, more
precise hires.
10, 20, 30% faster, better,more precise, you know hires.
(32:06):
10, 20, 30% better a candidate.
You're trying to get thesemarginal firm-wide benefits that
lower attrition.
5, 10, 15%, like that's whathappens when you put things in
order that move faster, clearer,more clarity.
You got to bring humanstogether so you have more
consensus because it is clearwhat's supposed to be going on.
There's no, you know.
All those things stackincrementally to benefit, to
(32:27):
move forward, betterproductivity and outcome and you
know what?
Speaker 2 (32:31):
here's what.
Here's what a lot of ourcustomers, who are customers now
what they found is they went tothe website and they got in and
tried it, and we're convincedthat when people do that, they
they're going to immediately seehow Athena and how Propulsion
AI are going to change thecharacter of the business and
it's going to change the resultsthat those businesses are
(32:52):
achieving.
And it costs you nothing nocredit card up front, just get
in.
You can start immediately.
It's a fully cloud-based systemand I would encourage anybody
who's really curious about it gotry it out, because it's going
to change your mind about howyou're utilizing people as
strategic assets in yourbusiness.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
I mean before you kind of.
I love I always call it theshameless plug so people know
what's coming, you get ahold ofyou, but you and I were talking
this off camera.
Like this can really actuallybenefit any industry because
you're the knowledge piece ofthe industry.
When you come into it, it helpsyou with the reasoning,
thinking, organization and itdoes what it does based on your
knowledge effectively.
So that means it's applicablein any industry.
(33:32):
You've had some really goodsuccesses in healthcare.
What was the other one that youwas talking about Healthcare.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
manufacturing is another big one in our pack for
us.
Yeah, manufacturing is anotherbig one in our pack for us.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Yeah, so if you need those use cases typically to
make the business case andyou're in healthcare and you're
listening, give them a call,propulsionai or getpropulsionai,
yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
The website is getpropulsionai and it's free,
so I think that's a good thing.
Try it out for free, kind ofthing you can try it for free.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
So, like I think that's a goodthing, try it out for free, kind
of thing.
You try it for free?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely Allright cool, scott.
Thank you, by the way.
This is like I think whatyou're solving is it's pointed,
and I and I and I believe, Itruly believe just coming from
(34:30):
an AI solves one thing reallywell and the cost of that is
less than hiring a human or ateam of humans, or it's just not
being done across the team.
You have a business case and ause case that can be sustainable
to go do something for you.
So it's, it's, it sounds likethat's there and you're.
You're finding people who arelike yes, we need this.
I love that, I guess that'sfantastic.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
We're growing pretty quickly and that means good
things, because Athena is thefirst of about six AI coworkers
that we see working together,and so we're excited to continue
to deepen the number oforganizations that are using
this current product and thatare are interacting with Athena,
cause it means it means growthfor us and the ability to
(35:07):
produce more.
That does Awesome.
Hey, listen.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Scott, thanks for jumping on the day with me.
Again, appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
I'm really happy to be be back and thanks for thanks
for taking the time to divedeep.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Yeah, no, I love this stuff, it's you know I'm an AI
nerd.
Maybe one day I'll restart thatchannel again.
Love this stuff, it's you knowI'm an AI nerd.
Maybe one day I'll restart thatchannel up again.
But anyway, thank you so muchfor joining.
Anyway, listen, check outgetpropulsionai If you'd like to
.
You know if you're, if you're aHR professional, you want to
see how to you know to applythis to your own organization.
Give it a shot.
Thanks for listening.
Thanks, thomas.
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