Episode #16
AI Native, and Who Still Gets to Decide - Ep. 16
Philip Maymin and Jie Tao are joined by Senia Maymin — fractional Chief People Officer in AI, founder of Silicon Valley Change Executive Coaching, and a Stanford PhD in organizational behavior — on what going AI native takes when your company already runs on decades of process. Senia put her four-year-old in Italian day camp. Nobody taught the girl Italian; she was simply in it. That is the bar she sets for companies. At a conference of a hundred chief people officers, she met one who had cleared it: an AI chief of staff running her mornings. Push one button, drink your coffee, the day arrives triaged. Getting there is where they stop agreeing. Jie wants to start in HR and finance, where a failed pilot lands soft. Senia says take it to the core business or don't bother. He cites MIT: over 80% of AI initiatives stall under purely top-down or bottom-up rollout. Neither concedes. Then Jie admits the harder thing. "I have over 15 rules in my harness that guarantee by-the-book knowledge transfer, but my agents are still not there." Philip goes further: a company that advertised for a human CEO, a figurehead whose only job is persuading the AI. If the hand on the wheel isn't steering much anyway: "I don't want to hold the steering wheel.”
