Why do so many AI initiatives fail to create meaningful business results?
 
 In this episode of “The Moral Machine Podcast,” host Chris D. Warren sits down with Steve Bauer, founder of Bauer Consulting, to discuss AI adoption, change management, and what it really takes to successfully integrate artificial intelligence into an organization.
 
 Steve explains why the biggest challenge with AI transformation often isn’t the technology itself. It’s aligning people, processes, and leadership around how to use it effectively.
 
 Together, they explore the importance of employee training, AI governance, leadership buy-in, trust, and organizational change—and why businesses need more than the latest AI tools to create lasting results.
 
 For business leaders and organizations trying to move from AI experimentation to real-world implementation, this conversation offers a practical look at how to build an AI strategy that people can actually adopt.
 
 “The Moral Machine Podcast,” hosted by Chris D. Warren, explores the intersection of artificial intelligence, ethics, law, business, and society through conversations with experts navigating the rapidly changing world of AI. Subscribe for more conversations about AI adoption, governance, leadership, innovation, and the future of work.

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Transcript:

**This transcript has been prepared automatically by AI and may contain inaccuracies**

Chris D. Warren [00:00:00]:
Today, my guest is Steve Bauer, founder of Bauer Consulting Group. In his prior life, Steve was a consultant for Fortune 100 companies that advised on social marketing communications and crisis management. Last year, Steve launched his own consulting firm to help small and mid-sized companies build and deploy their own AI strategy by focusing on C-suite leadership and offering guidance on how to best enable their most valuable assets, people. Steve, thanks for joining us.

Steve Bauer [00:00:27]:
Thanks, Chris.

Chris D. Warren [00:00:27]:
Great to be here. Something I noticed on your website, which, which, you know, makes me wonder what I’m going to do now. 41% of employees are actively trying to sabotage their own AI deployment. Is that real?

Steve Bauer [00:00:44]:
Fascinating study. First of all, Chris, thanks for having me. Great to be here with you in person. Yes, there was a recent study earlier this year 36% of employees had admitted to sabotaging company AI rollouts. That number jumped to 41% when you’re talking about Gen Z. You gotta look at the meaning behind it. And if you think about what’s driving that behavior, it’s all rooted in emotion. Think about this year’s college graduates, the lowest job placement rate in Wow.

Steve Bauer [00:01:21]:
Unprecedented in our lifetimes for sure. There’s actually greater unemployment from college graduates than students still in high school right now. Picture that. So the young next generation, they’re feeling like they got left out.

Chris D. Warren [00:01:38]:
Yeah.

Steve Bauer [00:01:39]:
That they grew up with this technology and now the technology is making them Really scared to buy into it because they don’t have a role. You and I grew up in an era where we had lots of practice. We had to earn our stripes. We were in the trenches and we figured things out. We had to learn through the experience. That is a key. It is gonna be much harder for this next generation to do that when AI and tools and technology can sidestep that or accelerate the process completely. So it’s only natural that these emotions continue to rise to the surface when people are confused, they’re scared, they’re angry, and their employees aren’t meeting them where they are.

Steve Bauer [00:02:25]:
And I think that’s the key to all of this is you have to focus on your employees. So many companies are investing tons of money in the technology, the platforms, But they’re overlooking 2 other Ps that really matter, the people and the processes.

Chris D. Warren [00:02:43]:
Oh yeah. That’s one of my favorites is people, process, product.

Steve Bauer [00:02:46]:
Yes.

Chris D. Warren [00:02:47]:
You’re right. It’s the sink or swim mentality was the way that I was trained.

Steve Bauer [00:02:56]:
That’s how we learn. We make mistakes.

Chris D. Warren [00:02:58]:
Go into the fire and figure it out. Just make the mistakes. You’re right. You have all this technology that doesn’t necessarily make the same mistakes that a young professional would make. It’s just making different kinds of mistakes that you can identify because you are the professional you are right now and you understand what a mistake even looks like.

Steve Bauer [00:03:19]:
Yes. And we know what it’s like to go through and you learn by making mistakes.

Chris D. Warren [00:03:24]:
That’s right.

Steve Bauer [00:03:24]:
You don’t learn by having the machines do it for you. So I empathize with the next generation. I do think they’re gonna find themselves in a place of much greater abundance than we did growing up. I’m Gen X all the way. So I remember fending for myself, latchkey kid, you know, having to figure out how to—

Chris D. Warren [00:03:43]:
Come home when the lights go off.

Steve Bauer [00:03:44]:
Yeah, exactly. And this generation doesn’t remember a time when their parents weren’t tracking their every move. So it’s a very different mentality. And with that, looking at what’s the root of this behavior, it is all driven in fear. Fear of becoming obsolete. It is the new FOMO. It is FOBO. FOBO, FOBO, fear of becoming obsolete.

Steve Bauer [00:04:10]:
That is what’s driving this behavior. People wanna know that they’re relevant, that they have an opportunity to grow, that they have an opportunity to contribute, and that they’re gonna feel fulfilled in their work.

Chris D. Warren [00:04:23]:
Some purpose. What are you talking about? Some purpose.

Steve Bauer [00:04:25]:
Everybody needs to feel like the work that they’re doing has a purpose and it means something. And if we’re taking that opportunity to have meaning in the work, it’s natural that people are going to be doing that.

Chris D. Warren [00:04:38]:
What does a future look like where we have millions of 18 to 24-year-olds without purpose and without gainful employment with access to firearms? What does that future look like?

Steve Bauer [00:04:51]:
You know, I would say that there are new challenges, but Purpose comes from within and next generation are arguably, and the data shows they are more purpose-driven than previous generations. What’s different is they may not have the same corporate-level opportunities that we had when we first came out of school. However, entrepreneurship and building your own future has never been easier and never been a greater opportunity. The skills that you need to develop are different. We used to focus on really hard skills. Now with the capabilities that AI have, it’s like when we were growing up, you know, oh, well, we’ll just use a calculator for that. Well, take that to a fairly new level. This is not a calculator.

Steve Bauer [00:05:44]:
Now we all have calculators and we have the world’s smartest assistants in our pockets. Every single day.

Chris D. Warren [00:05:49]:
Yeah.

Steve Bauer [00:05:50]:
So what are the skills that matter? Good judgment, communications, relationships, and really focusing on having that higher purpose and being connected to the work that you do. That’s what matters. And people get to decide what matters most to them and how to pursue it. So I would say that this is not a dark spot. If anything, it is The greatest opportunity for the next generation that wasn’t possible just a few years ago.

Chris D. Warren [00:06:20]:
I love that perspective. Uh, I think of the Jetsons. We were all promised rosies. We weren’t, you know, they were supposed to help us do our laundry and cook us dinner and not take our jobs.

Steve Bauer [00:06:29]:
And that’s coming in a couple years.

Chris D. Warren [00:06:31]:
Yeah.

Steve Bauer [00:06:31]:
We, I mean, you look at what Elon’s building. We have robots.

Chris D. Warren [00:06:34]:
We have robots building robots right now.

Steve Bauer [00:06:36]:
Yes.

Chris D. Warren [00:06:36]:
We’re there.

Steve Bauer [00:06:37]:
We will, in the near future, have robots doing our dishes, our laundry.

Chris D. Warren [00:06:41]:
Yeah.

Steve Bauer [00:06:41]:
We will have them be my much more affordable, accessible, and taken care of much like we have today in our knowledge worker roles. We will have robots helping us with those tedious, time-consuming tasks at home that we don’t wanna do.

Chris D. Warren [00:06:58]:
Wouldn’t that be nice?

Steve Bauer [00:06:59]:
It’s coming.

Chris D. Warren [00:07:00]:
We’re talking about the definition of work and what it means to work. And I think that you’re 100% right that it’s changing. I really love the perspective of this is a bright spot. This is an opportunity for people to redefine themselves, what their purpose is in life in terms of what work looks like to them and their relationship with it. As we talked about time being recaptured, maybe it’s spending more time with family, maybe it’s spending more time with loved ones or friends, or maybe it’s traveling, or maybe it’s writing, or maybe it’s poetry, it’s art.

Steve Bauer [00:07:33]:
Who knows? We’re pursuing that personal passion that may not have been a career ambition, but something that still matters, that you hold sacred, that you want to make time for, but just wasn’t possible because of all the other priorities. I personally don’t think that we are going to become a soft, lazy society that takes, you know, 20-hour work weeks because AI has made this new future possible. I think we’re going to take advantage of redefining work in new ways. How about you, Chris? But I find myself almost working more these days because I’m able to do so much more in that natural curiosity of pushing, well, I want to try this. I’m going to build an app that can do this for me. There is this sense of discovery that didn’t exist before.

Chris D. Warren [00:08:24]:
It’s fun.

Steve Bauer [00:08:25]:
And it’s fun. It’s just fun. And we’re finding ways to make work easier. We’re also going to be, quote unquote, working to find ways to make our personal lives easier as well. Yes. Yes.

Chris D. Warren [00:08:39]:
I regularly get up in the middle of the night going, I gotta write this down. This is a great idea. And it’s, I can’t wait to get in front, back in front of Claude to talk about the next project.

Steve Bauer [00:08:50]:
That is it. Now, take a look at the study a little bit further. It wasn’t that people are pulling the plug on the internet or sabotaging in a real nefarious way. That could just be either resisting opportunities to use tools instead of manual processes, or it could be looking at, I’m gonna use my own personal account, even though you told me I need to use the enterprise account that has built-in safety, privacy, and security.

Chris D. Warren [00:09:23]:
Right.

Steve Bauer [00:09:24]:
I’m not going to listen.

Chris D. Warren [00:09:25]:
So shadow AI.

Steve Bauer [00:09:26]:
Shadow AI is another symptom of FOBO. It is, I don’t have to do what you tell me.

Chris D. Warren [00:09:35]:
So companies are spending lots of money, some of them hundreds of millions of dollars to implement enterprise-grade AI into their infrastructure. And to use your own AI essentially eliminates Or defeats all of that process, all of that governance in a very simple way. Just use my own iPhone and I can circumvent all of these protections. Yes.

Steve Bauer [00:10:00]:
And a lot of it is not necessarily intentional. The biggest culprit of all of this, Chris, is there’s a lack of investment in training and education for your employees.

Chris D. Warren [00:10:12]:
So you’re talking about training in terms of using AI?

Steve Bauer [00:10:15]:
It’s not just using AI, it’s knowing how to use AI responsibly, how to use it in a safe and responsible way that doesn’t put you or your organization or your clients or your customers in jeopardy by putting their proprietary data, their personally identifiable information into public tools that, you know, are gonna be fed to train the models. Most people don’t know that. We live and breathe the AI world every day, but a lot of people just think, oh, you know, I can put it in my own Claude, my own ChatGPT because, oh, my chat knows me better.

Chris D. Warren [00:10:51]:
Right.

Steve Bauer [00:10:52]:
That all falls under that quote unquote sabotage because it’s a lack of guiding people through the process. Yes, you can teach people how to prompt effectively or how to build an agent in insert platform here. But what they really need is the why. Why is it that we’re asking you only use company-provided tools? Why does that matter? What does it mean from a risk standpoint? What are the implications of not doing it right? And also, what can you do? Training shouldn’t just be about don’t do this. It, the policy police is a quick way to turn off your audience. So if you can pivot and think about, here are all the things that you can do. Use our company tools for proprietary information behind the firewall. You can still use ChatGPT.

Steve Bauer [00:11:41]:
Your personal account is fine. Just use it for publicly available information. That is a missing piece in what so many companies who are investing all this money, they’re still seeing their efforts get defeated just because of a lack of nominal investment in education on top of the tools that they’re licensing.

Chris D. Warren [00:12:00]:
Well, I advise my clients not to use, actually in our retainer agreements now, not to use their own personal AI chatbots to work on anything that they’re going to provide to me because there’s been some case law where confidentiality privilege is defeated.

Steve Bauer [00:12:16]:
Solid.

Chris D. Warren [00:12:16]:
In fact, that’s why we rolled out a consumer-facing, uh, our clients have their own Harvey account so they can actually upload and have conversations with the firm-controlled AI. That gives us all the context and conversation history, and we can work with our clients in developing their strategy and high-level legal work product.

Steve Bauer [00:12:36]:
That’s great. They need to know what’s considered discoverable, what is safe and private, protected. That education that you’re giving to your clients is invaluable, and more organizations need to do that for their own workforce.

Chris D. Warren [00:12:50]:
You’re 100% right. We have pretty high usage rates for Harvey. I think we’re at 90-something percent of the firm is using Harvey on a daily basis, which is, I think that’s pretty, it’s pretty great.

Steve Bauer [00:13:02]:
Better than just about any organization I’ve heard of.

Chris D. Warren [00:13:06]:
But we embrace AI from a holistic perspective. We launched an AI-native law office. We’re doing everything kind of from the ground up in terms of how do we integrate a client into the law firm and taking it from How much of this can AI do upfront for us to make it a more productive use of everyone’s time?

Steve Bauer [00:13:26]:
That is the right way to do it. So we talked about people, process, platforms. That is the process part that others are getting wrong because they don’t try to reimagine from the ground up. A lot of times it’s, all right, let’s slap an AI onto this and put a bandaid on an old, outdated, broken workflow. Can AI provide some nominal incremental help?

Chris D. Warren [00:13:49]:
Perhaps.

Steve Bauer [00:13:50]:
But the real value is we’ve got a chance now to hit the reset button. And so many companies are missing out on that chance to start from scratch, clean slate.

Chris D. Warren [00:14:02]:
It’s hard.

Steve Bauer [00:14:03]:
I mean, I think— It is hard, but that’s where you want to see order of magnitude growth instead of incremental step change over time. That’s how you got to do it.

Chris D. Warren [00:14:13]:
I went to a tech conference not long ago, and the thing that I noticed was That it’s not the technology that’s difficult, it’s the people that are difficult. It’s the change management.

Steve Bauer [00:14:21]:
That is absolutely it.

Chris D. Warren [00:14:22]:
And I think a lot of that friction is not necessarily that they don’t see the future, right? They see it coming. It’s almost that they almost don’t want to admit that they see it coming. I think a lot of the friction is the economic models don’t really mesh with the future of work. And a lot of the pushback is, let’s see how long we can stave off the impending disaster. And let it be someone else’s problem, which is a very old school mentality, I think.

Steve Bauer [00:14:51]:
If you’re 64 and you’re seeing the end of the finish line and you’re about to retire, that may be a tolerable strategy. But for the most part, change is happening so fast and it is literally like sitting on the Titanic and waiting to go down. I tell all of my clients and their employees when I guide them through transformational change, I say, first of all, can we all agree that in the next 2 years, AI is gonna be a much bigger part of our lives and our jobs than it is right now?

Chris D. Warren [00:15:25]:
Yeah.

Steve Bauer [00:15:26]:
Nobody ever argues. Then can we also agree that regardless of what happens with job displacement, with transformation, those who lean in, learn, and embrace this, whether you like it or not, are the ones who are gonna have an unfair competitive advantage over those who are denying and delaying their role in learning all about the technology and the role it can play.

Chris D. Warren [00:15:51]:
I write about this all the time as well. The legacy lawyers, right? I call them legacy lawyers. They don’t adopt, they refuse to, they, and it’s almost to their detriment. Their ability to provide a better work product faster and more affordable for their clients is I don’t understand how they even compete with me. My efficiency gains are aligned with the client’s goals. So the better I get, the faster I get, the more on point I get, the better outcome I have for my client. And it’s at the same time I’m reducing costs and providing greater value. I don’t know how you compete with that.

Steve Bauer [00:16:25]:
Everybody wins.

Chris D. Warren [00:16:26]:
Everyone does win. The only one who doesn’t win under the old model is the client.

Steve Bauer [00:16:30]:
Yeah, because they’re paying for extended amount of time instead of the outcomes that you’re able to deliver. I grew up in the communications industry, so nearly 3 decades of helping organizations with integrated marketing communications. My focus has always been, my son plays hockey, so I, I love the hockey analogy of skating to where the puck is going.

Chris D. Warren [00:16:53]:
Mm-hmm.

Steve Bauer [00:16:54]:
So the early days of the web to looking at social and then transformation to mobile. Those were tremendous changes. And in the communications industry, chief communications officers, PR practitioners were reluctant and resistant to embrace social for years. They thought, oh, this is a fad. This is, you know, something that the kids will use.

Chris D. Warren [00:17:23]:
And Right.

Steve Bauer [00:17:24]:
I felt like I was an evangelist for change at the time.

Chris D. Warren [00:17:27]:
Yeah.

Steve Bauer [00:17:27]:
I said, we need to lean in and learn this. This is how people are communicating. This is how we are engaging as a culture, as a society. Now, AI is much bigger than all of that because it touches not just communications and engagement, it touches every facet of every industry. And it’s so critical That we don’t turn a blind eye and wait until it’s too late to start developing the skills that we need to help ourselves, to help our company, and to really be ready for what’s next.

Chris D. Warren [00:18:02]:
This is so much more transformative than just social media. My daughter, both my daughters are college age, and they, it’s fascinating to watch them communicate with their peers. They don’t text each other as much anymore. They use Instagram and they use Snapchat and they use, and that’s how they, when they meet someone, they exchange Instas. They don’t exchange cell phones.

Steve Bauer [00:18:24]:
Or snaps.

Chris D. Warren [00:18:24]:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s, but that’s, that’s their mode of communication.

Steve Bauer [00:18:29]:
Yes.

Chris D. Warren [00:18:29]:
This is happening so much faster. And I think, I think that the adoption, the rate of adoption is so much, is so much more accelerated because of the benefits conferred by those of us who can see the light in a way, right?

Steve Bauer [00:18:44]:
Yes.

Chris D. Warren [00:18:44]:
Evangelizing is easy when I, when when I’ve seen it.

Steve Bauer [00:18:47]:
It’s very clear, tangible benefits, and they’re immediate.

Chris D. Warren [00:18:50]:
Right.

Steve Bauer [00:18:50]:
Because we all love our instant gratification, our immediate results.

Chris D. Warren [00:18:54]:
I mean, it’s also fun. I mean, when you start programming your own harnesses and really getting into creating agentic anything, any type of workflow, and then watching it happen, it’s really satisfying. It’s fantastic. And you come back an hour and a half later, and you have 90% of a work product that you spend however long you need to tweak it to whatever your specifications are. That’s, it’s almost like magic.

Steve Bauer [00:19:17]:
It’s almost— It is. I, I remember when I showed my daughter Notebook LM, she’s 15, and she was looking for new ways to digest really complex information from history and just science, just classes that the content wasn’t sticking. And a couple months later she said, Dad, I’m never going back to studying the old way again.

Chris D. Warren [00:19:42]:
Can’t do it.

Steve Bauer [00:19:43]:
Because now I have, it’s almost like a custom tutor.

Chris D. Warren [00:19:46]:
Yeah.

Steve Bauer [00:19:46]:
That can speak in my language and, you know, create mnemonic devices, songs, you know, make it relevant to pop culture, things that I’m interested in. I encourage everybody, if you’re not leaning in now, even if you’re not doing it at work, find something that you’re passionate about, whether it’s music, entertainment, sports, culture, anything in the world. Use that as a starting point. It’s safe and it will naturally spark more curiosity and give you a chance to dive in in a safe and easy way to explore and see what’s possible.

Chris D. Warren [00:20:21]:
So you’re working with a lot of businesses and it runs the gamut of accounting firms and finance and law firms and Fortune 500 companies.

Steve Bauer [00:20:30]:
Yes.

Chris D. Warren [00:20:30]:
So you’re in there in the mix and when you’re speaking to these founders and C-suite, Folks, what is the message that you’re delivering them for their people, for their company to see it prosper into the future?

Steve Bauer [00:20:44]:
Most of my conversations start with, you’re probably feeling left behind or that you need to catch up or somehow figure out this whole AI space. Am I right? Yes. You also probably don’t really know where to start. And that is the biggest problem for all of the clients that I work with. It’s not that they don’t believe in the power of AI and the fact that it’s going to change everything. It for so long has felt like yet another thing on people’s to-do lists.

Chris D. Warren [00:21:17]:
They can’t get to it.

Steve Bauer [00:21:18]:
That is uncomfortable. And when you don’t know where to start, there’s no clear roadmap. These tools don’t come out of the box with instructions.

Chris D. Warren [00:21:27]:
That’s true.

Steve Bauer [00:21:29]:
It’s intimidating for some, especially those who are not necessarily the most tech savvy CEOs, business leaders who’ve been leading their company, their industry for decades. This is new. This is different. And what they need is a guide. They need a trusted advisor who’s not trying to sell them tools.

Chris D. Warren [00:21:49]:
Sure.

Steve Bauer [00:21:50]:
Who’s not trying to sell them technology.

Chris D. Warren [00:21:51]:
They already have the tools. They have all the tools.

Steve Bauer [00:21:53]:
That is the smallest This is the easiest part. This is the part that you should be focusing on.

Chris D. Warren [00:21:58]:
This is the easiest part.

Steve Bauer [00:21:58]:
It’s always the question a lot of people ask. It’s, you know, what, what tools should I be using? The tool that your people will use is the best tool.

Chris D. Warren [00:22:05]:
The line between what you can imagine and what you can create is zero. You, anything you can dream of, you can now create in a day.

Steve Bauer [00:22:12]:
It is not about the tools. It’s about how do you get your people to use them, use them safely, use them responsibly, start with some quick wins. But also look at the longer term. We can’t really predict, honestly, 6 months from now, who knows what the AI landscape is gonna look like.

Chris D. Warren [00:22:29]:
Right.

Steve Bauer [00:22:29]:
But I say, let’s, let’s start with a 24-month plan. Let’s think about in 24 months, if we were to fully lean in, embrace AI, and use it to address all the bottlenecks, all the pain points, capitalize on the opportunities, what would that look like?

Chris D. Warren [00:22:46]:
So you’re talking about use case, which is where you should start any analysis. What do I need to use AI to do?

Steve Bauer [00:22:52]:
That is part of it, but it’s also thinking about what is the goal? The very first question is, what are we hoping to accomplish? What’s the problem we’re trying to solve? The use cases fall into that, but it’s, let’s picture where we are 2 years from now. We’ve figured out all of our problems. What does success look like? How do we know that we’ve done this the right way? And then we work backwards from there.

Chris D. Warren [00:23:16]:
I want to just, You don’t have to give me the answer, but I want to bet that most people, money is not the thing that is the measure of success.

Steve Bauer [00:23:24]:
No, it’s a lot of people, it’s time. It is higher quality, more fulfilling work. It’s being able to better serve customers, clients, patients. It’s helping to feel good about the work that you’re doing. It’s back to purpose.

Chris D. Warren [00:23:42]:
It’s back to purpose-driven.

Steve Bauer [00:23:43]:
It’s all back to purpose, yes. You know, most organizations at least mean to have some sort of vision, mission, values, purpose, your goals, core values. Start with those. How are we living out our values? How can this help us live out those values in an accelerated way? How can it help us get there faster, smarter, better, easier to give back, to help our people free up from the time-consuming, tedious tasks that they don’t want to do to focus on something with purpose.

Chris D. Warren [00:24:18]:
You know, having been in professional services for a large percentage of my adulthood, all this always sounded like lip service to me. You know, the live out your dreams and fulfill your purpose and do things that you love and enjoy. it always felt shallow and hollow because at the end of the day, the economics were driven by how many hours are you working?

Steve Bauer [00:24:45]:
Yeah.

Chris D. Warren [00:24:45]:
And it’s a constant pressure, not just from internal pressure, from external pressure from clients to perform and to do it quickly yesterday.

Steve Bauer [00:24:55]:
Yes.

Chris D. Warren [00:24:55]:
Yeah. And the biggest measurement of loss certainly is time, right? That opportunity cost.

Steve Bauer [00:25:03]:
That is something we just can’t buy back.

Chris D. Warren [00:25:04]:
Right.

Steve Bauer [00:25:04]:
You will never buy back. 100%.

Chris D. Warren [00:25:06]:
Um, this does feel so very different to me than ever before because the tools are now available to me.

Steve Bauer [00:25:17]:
Yes.

Chris D. Warren [00:25:18]:
To really do just that, right? Increase my productivity. Yes. But I don’t have to fill up that empty space again with more work. I think that The revolution, if you want to call it that, the AI revolution is going to redefine what work looks like for everybody. Not just professionals, but everybody.

Steve Bauer [00:25:39]:
Yes.

Chris D. Warren [00:25:40]:
And what the future in 2 or 3 years is going to look like, I think is going to be unrecognizable from today as more people see the light of this and go, how do I create value when the easiest chunk of that value is so rote? so easy to get to. Yeah. The barrier to get to 80%, to getting to that first draft, to starting, right, which is always the hardest part, right?

Steve Bauer [00:26:07]:
That’s the hardest part of the journey.

Chris D. Warren [00:26:08]:
Plato used to say the hardest part is the first step. That part’s now the simplest part.

Steve Bauer [00:26:14]:
It can be. Yeah.

Chris D. Warren [00:26:16]:
I think so. And the friction becomes zero in that way. And you get to do the part that you now enjoy. You get to do the part that gives you the fulfillment. You get to be that high-level advisor. You get to strategize with your client. You don’t get bogged down in mundane, the mundane tasks that used to take so long that you would dread. It’s more of the things you really get to enjoy.

Steve Bauer [00:26:35]:
And that is exactly why I went and did my own thing and got back to the core of what fulfills me and helps others, which is helping organizations, leaders, and their teams prepare for change and set themselves up for better success.

Chris D. Warren [00:26:53]:
Amazing.

Steve Bauer [00:26:53]:
That is just And what it’s all about at my core, that’s always been my focus, you know, web, social, crisis. How can I help people get to where they need to be faster? Because a lot of times that first step is the hardest step. And if you can help people be that trusted objective guide to, here’s how we go, it’s step by step, we’ll get you there, but soon you’ll be walking the path on your own and you won’t need me. That’s right. And that’s a win for me.

Chris D. Warren [00:27:23]:
So, that’s success for you is—

Steve Bauer [00:27:25]:
When teams are able to lean in, embrace, understand, and do it in a way that aligns with their vision, mission, values, that hits on business goals and objectives, and allows them to transform work in a way that is not about cutting headcount. It is about capitalizing on the greatest resources that organizations have, which is their people.

Chris D. Warren [00:27:49]:
Either IP.

Steve Bauer [00:27:50]:
Their data and their people, and not in that order. Companies who are short-sighted slashing right now, trying to save another penny for the quarterly earnings reports, they’re going to end up having to hire a lot of people back. And it’s unfortunate, but it’s part of the transformation process.

Chris D. Warren [00:28:11]:
The nature of work is changing. Nature of work is changing. You know, we touched on this earlier, which was the The change management part of this is the most difficult part of this. And it’s, people are scared, hey, I’m gonna lose my job. But I think that it’s not that you’re gonna lose your job, it’s that if you don’t embrace using AI, you will lose your job.

Steve Bauer [00:28:34]:
There’s a much greater likelihood of doing it, yeah.

Chris D. Warren [00:28:37]:
But someone who embraces AI and finds a better way to do what they’re already doing or add value in a a different capacity, that’s the person that is going to maintain or grow their position into whatever it is that brings them the greatest fulfillment.

Steve Bauer [00:28:52]:
Yes.

Chris D. Warren [00:28:53]:
I read a story about IKEA. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Steve Bauer [00:28:56]:
8,500 customer service jobs cut without, or changed without losing any headcount.

Chris D. Warren [00:29:01]:
Right.

Steve Bauer [00:29:02]:
Incredible.

Chris D. Warren [00:29:02]:
So it’s, that’s—

Steve Bauer [00:29:03]:
It’s all the same story. It was just, that is the gold star example of what it can look like when companies really do this with intentionality.

Chris D. Warren [00:29:12]:
What did they do right?

Steve Bauer [00:29:14]:
They focused on eliminating the task, not the talent. What are the tasks that need to go? And if we free people up from those tasks, how can we repurpose their role, their areas of expertise, and their institutional knowledge of our company in a much more productive way? And listening to their people, it’s, it’s My favorite brand new case study because it just literally, I think I saw it yesterday or this morning, but it is a shining example of what’s possible and other companies should follow suit.

Chris D. Warren [00:29:48]:
I have a little note on my desktop. It’s actually a sticker on the back of my laptop says, can AI do this? Right? And I’m always looking for ways to systematize and create processes that not only I can use, but my colleagues can also use to increase their efficiencies.

Steve Bauer [00:30:04]:
Right?

Chris D. Warren [00:30:04]:
We have essentially an AI lab at the law firm where we meet weekly and think of things to do that we can transform into skills or processes that could be made autonomous to free up attorneys from administrative time, to free up attorneys from the mundane tasks, the day-to-day.

Steve Bauer [00:30:23]:
Yeah.

Chris D. Warren [00:30:23]:
One of the things we developed was a free AI policy that we’re publishing on myfirstaipolicy.com.

Steve Bauer [00:30:31]:
Love it.

Chris D. Warren [00:30:32]:
So you—

Steve Bauer [00:30:33]:
Incredible.

Chris D. Warren [00:30:33]:
You can literally answer a couple questions and it’ll spit out an AI policy that we’ve crafted. And it’s being released on GitHub. So as it iterates, people can share and it creates the new floor of, you know, if you don’t know where to start, this is a great place to start. It’s free. It’s created by the law firm. And if you have questions—

Steve Bauer [00:30:55]:
So it’s been backed by trusted, credible, reputable sources, but To your point, that’s the floor.

Chris D. Warren [00:31:01]:
That’s the floor.

Steve Bauer [00:31:02]:
That doesn’t mean that you’re getting rid of your business by publishing this. It is such a smart strategic move and not just the output, but the approach that you took, Chris, I think is worth noting because change management doesn’t happen when you get everybody into a conference room once and show them, here’s how to log in and here’s how to do your tolls. No, it has to be a regular part of people’s jobs. It needs to be part of their job descriptions. their performance evaluations, and there needs to be this collaboration and sharing that happens on a regular basis in order to truly change behavior. You’re doing all those things. So fantastic. Thanks.

Chris D. Warren [00:31:42]:
The GitHub part I’m particularly excited about because we get to see how people adapt the tools.

Steve Bauer [00:31:47]:
You get to see the ratings. You see how many—

Chris D. Warren [00:31:50]:
Well, that part, but more importantly for me, I want to see how people adapt it. I want to see what people are doing with the policy saying, okay, I’m going to make this change, and then hopefully they reshare it.

Steve Bauer [00:31:59]:
Yes.

Chris D. Warren [00:31:59]:
Right? So the goal is not to close off. A lot of companies are spending a lot of money to make sure that they keep things private from the public. We’re doing the opposite. We’re saying, here it is, here’s the work product. And as people iterate, please, this is open source. It’s meant to be shared.

Steve Bauer [00:32:14]:
I mean, open source legal documents is just revolutionary in and of itself. That’s fantastic. Yeah.

Chris D. Warren [00:32:21]:
GitHub is going to be good for this.

Steve Bauer [00:32:22]:
That’s great.

Chris D. Warren [00:32:23]:
Perfect for this. And the same thing with governance. Governance is next on the plate of things that we’re We’re looking to create baseline. You know, here, the hardest part is starting, right? So here’s the baseline of what a governance even looks like. When you talk about NIST frameworks, no one has any idea what I’m talking about.

Steve Bauer [00:32:39]:
No.

Chris D. Warren [00:32:39]:
So the fact that we can create some awareness around the governance, I think at least raises the question, what do I do with this? And how do I work it into my people, my process, my product? How do I turn this into a living thing? As opposed to just something we do, like get the policy and you’re done. No, no, no.

Steve Bauer [00:33:00]:
Policy is the list of rules. Right.

Chris D. Warren [00:33:02]:
That’s right.

Steve Bauer [00:33:02]:
And the governance is how do you enforce it and who’s responsible?

Chris D. Warren [00:33:06]:
Who owns it?

Steve Bauer [00:33:07]:
And who owns it? Exactly. And that missing piece is what organizations who don’t have experience with this need help figuring out. So again, you’re helping others and continuing to fulfill your mission of not only providing great service, but helping others take it and make their own thing out of it.

Chris D. Warren [00:33:29]:
Steve, I remember looking at your website, you have your own assessment of some kind.

Steve Bauer [00:33:33]:
Tell me more about that. A lot of people, like I said, just don’t know where to get started. So I provide a free AI readiness assessment on my website that will give you some guidance on where you are in your AI journey and where you probably need to focus in order to be ready for the AI transformation, whether that’s data, your processes, your people, leadership, all sorts of different touchpoints that go into really being well-equipped to embrace change and drive transformation from within.

Chris D. Warren [00:34:08]:
So Steve, thanks again for sharing that vision, that purpose that I think a lot of companies are going to find that valuable. How does someone find you?

Steve Bauer [00:34:16]:
What’s the best way to get ahold of you? Easy way is just bowerconsulting.ai. You can find me. I do a free AI readiness assessment so you see if and where you are in your AI journey and where possibly I can help you out.